EZRA LEVANT ｜ Harvard study compares how badly the lockdown has hit the richest people vs. the poorest
Summary
Harvard looks at the impact of the lockdown on the poor, the working poor, and the true blue-collar class, compared to the wealthiest people in the country. You won t be surprised to learn that the lockdown has been good to some people and bad for others.
Transcript
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Hello, my Rebels. Today, I take you through a study from Harvard, of all places, that shows how
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the poorest of the poor, the working poor, the true blue-collar class, has fared under the
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lockdowns compared to how the wealthiest have fared. You won't be surprised, I don't think.
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The lockdown has been very good to some people and very bad for others. That's ahead. Before I
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get to that, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the video
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in this case, lots of very interesting charts and graphs. It's only eight bucks a month. Go to
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Tonight, a Harvard study compares how badly the lockdown has hit the richest people versus
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the poorest. It's June 21st, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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The only thing I have to say to the government, the wire publisher, is because it's my bloody
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I'm going to show you a study on who's losing under the lockdowns and who's winning.
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It's a Harvard study, not exactly a group of wild-eyed right-wingers. It's heartbreaking.
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You know, it's June 21st today, the summer solstice, the longest day of the year in the
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Northern Hemisphere. Not quite the middle of the calendar year, but pretty close. So yeah,
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we're pretty much at a year and a half of our lives being consumed by the pandemic panic.
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Here's Theresa Tam's page on the Government of Canada website. Look at figure 1b, selecting for
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the moving average of deaths per seven days prior. So it's a weekly count. You can see a bunch of
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graphs under that for each province. Canada had a wave of deaths right near the beginning
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in April 2020. Then another wave over Christmas, the flu season. Slowly scroll down province by
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province. Most places haven't really had an issue in months, really a year. The other day,
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I showed you the Statistics Canada report that said the excess deaths in Canada in 2020 were
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for seniors dying from COVID in the spring of 2020. But by the time the end of the year came
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around, the excess deaths, that is more deaths than were expected, were amongst young people,
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drug overdoses, and suicides. It's not from a coronavirus. That's from abusive politicians
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who were much deadlier. You know, every day we hear a new way to terrify us.
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This new variant, or that new variant, or a new mutation, whatever. It's like they have a
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thesaurus that they keep going to, to be scary. To explain why they aren't keeping their earlier
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promise to end the lockdown on whatever day they're promising now. Even today, both Ontario and Alberta
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have their roadmap out of the lockdown. Both provinces have already exceeded the conditions
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that the politicians themselves set for being led out of the lockdowns already. As in, the politicians
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promised it was only until certain counts, like the hospitalizations or whatever, were under control.
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Well, they are, but the lockdowns haven't been lifted. Oh, I'm shocked. Today was literally called
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Freedom Day in the United Kingdom. It was going to be the day that the last of the lockdowns were lifted.
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The UK is pretty much back to normal. I mean, they have a huge soccer games, thousands of fans in
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the street. Everyone's acting like it's life back to normal because it is. Here's the UK stats. Look
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at deaths within 28 days of positive tests by date of death. Those are for the UK country of nearly 70
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million people. Some days there's only five people in the whole country who die from the virus, or to be
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more precise, die and happen to have a positive COVID test in the previous month. As in Canada,
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the average age of death is around 80. The average victim died with multiple serious other diseases.
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COVID is pretty much over in the UK, and I wouldn't even blame them for the counts there. I mean,
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if you have three or four comorbidities, did you really die from COVID?
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But not for the politicians. It's not over for them. It's just too good to give up.
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Well, it's been too much excitement, too much of a safe emergency. By that, I mean, not a real
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emergency. The UK's had emergencies before. They had a real war. This is not a real war. This is not
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a real crisis anymore, at least. There are those crises in the world that are real wars, an earthquake,
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a tsunami, whatever. But for this COVID panic, it's all upside for a crisis for those in authority.
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Spend money, borrow money, pass regulations without parliament, total media obedience,
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police powers against any dissidents. All the upside for a politician without, you know,
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the actual Luftwaffe coming to bomb London. So yeah, Freedom Day is postponed. Of course it was.
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Same here in Canada. It's going to get worse. It's over. But here come the vaccine passports. There are
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nine new pharma billionaires since the pandemic began. You can imagine the lengths they will go to
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keep the gravy train coming. Same with the next nine men who think they ought to be
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pharma billionaires because of it, too. They're not done yet. But it's not just the ultra-rich,
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the Jeff Bezos's of the world. Look at this study from Harvard. Take a look at this. I came across it
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in an article from the Foundation for Economic Education. New Harvard data accidentally reveal
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how lockdowns crush the working class while leaving elites unscathed. That's a good headline,
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but I want to make sure you know they're not talking about the billionaire class when they
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say elites. They're just talking about sort of average well-to-do, the professional class,
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upper middle class kind of thing. Not zillionaires, not one percenters. Let me read a bit.
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A new data analysis from Harvard University, Brown University, and the Bill and Melinda Gates
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Foundation calculates how different employment levels have been impacted during the pandemic to date.
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The findings reveal that government lockdown orders devastated workers at the bottom of the
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financial food chain, but left the upper tier actually better off. The analysis examined
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employment levels in January 2020 before the coronavirus spread widely and before lockdown
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orders and other restrictions on the economy were implemented. It compared them to employment
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figures from March 31st, 2021. The picture painted by this comparison is one of working class destruction.
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So this is Harvard and Bill and Melinda Gates, for heaven's sakes. But here's what they found.
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Employment for lower wage workers, defined as earning less than $27,000 annually, declined by a
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whopping 23.6% over the time period. Employment for middle wage workers, defined as earning from
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$27,000 to $60,000 a year, declined by a modest 4.5%. However, employment for high wage workers,
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defined as earning more than $60,000 a year, actually increased 2.4% over the measured time
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period, despite the country's economic turmoil. So that's a summary of it. Here's the study itself.
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This is the Harvard website, tracktherecovery.org. Look at the graph on the left.
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Recession has nearly ended for high wage workers, but job losses persist for low wage workers,
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while employment rates have rebounded to pre-COVID-19 levels for high wage workers,
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they remain significantly lower for low wage workers. And you can see the graphs. More than
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$60,000 a year, so we're not even talking about one percenters here. There's a boom on for those
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folks. They're fine now. Bad year, but they're through it and back to normal. That's the green
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graph. It's actually up a little bit, 2.4%. But what about the poor? Folks making less than $27,000 a
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year. Those jobs are slaughtered. We're talking Great Depression stuff. Number of working class
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jobs down 24%. Makes sense. If you're a lawyer, you just work from home. If you're a government
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sector union, you probably didn't even work for the first six months, but you still got paid.
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If you're a politician, well, in Canada, our MPs and senators gave themselves two raises,
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last April and this April. So you're loving life. Government has grown this past year,
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in case you didn't notice. But if you're a waiter, a waitress, a bartender, a retail shop clerk,
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a mom and pop shop of any sort, a barber, a hairstylist, tough luck. Now this is an American
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study, but really it's the same in Canada. But worse, I would imagine, since our lockdowns up here
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are worse than any in America. Seriously, the lightest Canadian lockdown is heavier than the
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heaviest American lockdown. Let me show you the graph on the right here. Low income employment down
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in affluent areas. Declines in high income spending led to significant employment losses
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among low income individuals working in the most affluent zip codes in the country,
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as shown in the map below of employment declines in early June in New York City.
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That's another way of saying, if you're in the service sector, a helper outer, an odd jobber,
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tough luck for you. Landscaping, construction, housekeeping, do your work by Zoom. Yeah,
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no, it doesn't work that way. Now, if you click the button that says, explore the data,
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you can see some more details. On the right, the three graph lines. You can see middle-class jobs
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that are still down four and a half percent. And what's worrying is that those trends are
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still declining in 2021. It's actually getting worse in America. And look at the left, a little image
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showing all 50 states. Hover the mouse over some of them. California, the biggest state in the union,
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one of the worst lockdowns. Look at that, down 38.3% in working-class employment. How is that even possible?
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More than one in three working-class jobs is gone. Still gone. In Massachusetts, it's 51%
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more than half the working-class jobs in that state are gone. Texas is down a bit. Florida is
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actually growing. And do you know what's making all this worse? That is, if you're a low-income,
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blue-collar worker. Open borders. Under Biden, hundreds of thousands of low-skill, off-the-books
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workers are streaming in from Mexico. It's because Biden and Kamala Harris have just opened up the
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southern border, just stopped building Trump's wall, stopped enforcing the law. Here in Canada,
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we don't overwhelm our low-income workers with illegal migrants. I mean, Roxham Road is still open,
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but it's not hundreds of thousands through there. No, we invite in low-skill, low-income
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competitors legally. Seriously, record immigration numbers planned in the middle of the Great
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Depression. Record numbers and record numbers of low-skill or no-skill workers to drive down the
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cheapest wages. Housing prices in Canada have never been higher. Well, let's add a million people to
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that. Inflation is back. Unemployment is still high. It's been devastating for the working class.
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And here come a million new migrants. And you're a racist if you object to those economics. Yeah,
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Well, for those of you old enough to remember the Brady Bunch, you'll remember there was a refrain,
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Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. Well, during the Trump administration, it was Russia, Russia, Russia.
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Everything was proof that Russia helped steal the election in 2016 for Donald Trump. It was a
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cockamamie theory. There was no one more capitalist than Donald Trump. He's no commie. In fact, it was
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Bernie Sanders that took his honeymoon in the Soviet Union when it was still under communist rule. But it
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was such a hot meme in the media that it actually became a multi-year, multi-tens of millions of dollars
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investigation by Robert Mueller, who in the end found no proof of collusion whatsoever.
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Well, Joe Biden has been president for not even six months. How has he done with Russia? Has he been
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tougher with Vladimir Putin? Or has he done what the media alleged Donald Trump did? Give things away to
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Russia? Well, let me show you a headline. You know, I've just got a couple of stories in front of me here,
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just incredible. This is a story from Joel Pollack in Breitbart.com. I'll just read one headline.
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Joe Biden got nothing in Geneva summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin. I just want to read the
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first sentence or two, and then we'll bring Joel in. President Joe Biden gave Russian President
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Vladimir Putin almost everything he could have wanted at their summit. And the degree to which
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the summit was a disaster became evident when Putin emerged for his press conference alone with a
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forum all to himself. Joe Biden did not want to be seen on a platform with Putin, lest the relative
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strength and mental acuity between the two became too easy to compare. Joining us now is the author of
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these two items, our friend Joel Pollack, senior editor at large at Breitbart.com. Joel, I tell you,
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I want to jump right into these stories. There's so many terrible anecdotes and vignettes canceling
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$100 million in aid to Ukraine, approving Russia's Nord Stream pipeline. Everything the Democrats said
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Trump was bad at for Russia, Biden just did it. Right. It's amazing how Democrats just don't seem
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to care about appeasement with Russia when they're the ones allegedly doing it. I don't think Donald Trump
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appeased Russia at all. I think Trump was very tough on Russia. He tried to block the Nord Stream 2
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pipeline. The U.S. forces in Syria wiped out Russian mercenaries there. He also interfered with
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Russia's alliance with Iran and other troublesome countries. And he slapped more sanctions on Russian
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officials than had ever been done before. So this idea that Democrats had that Trump was somehow a puppet
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of Putin had nothing to do with reality and everything to do with their excuses for losing the 2016
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election. Anytime Trump was simply cordial to Vladimir Putin, the Democrats portrayed it as
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some betrayal of national security. Yet not only was Joe Biden more than cordial to Putin in their
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summit in Geneva last week, he gave him an entire summit. I mean, the G7, that's just seven leaders
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from a bunch of other nations. But Putin got a very special meeting all to himself, and he got it
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before Biden met with the president of Ukraine. And so Biden elevated Putin even before he arrived
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in Geneva. When he left Geneva, he had nothing to show for it. All he really had was the Russians
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allowing the U.S. ambassador back to Moscow. Well, big deal. I mean, it wasn't as if we kicked out the
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Russian ambassador. The Russians withdrew their ambassador several months ago. So that is now
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restored, okay, for whatever that's worth. What Putin has been able to do is to get a five-year
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extension of the New START Treaty, which is a one-sided treaty of disarmament favoring Russia.
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He just asked for one year. Biden gave him five. Russia also gets the Nord Stream 2 pipeline supplying
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natural gas to Europe, which not only makes Europe dependent on Russia, but also circumvents Ukraine.
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Ukrainians were the conduit for a lot of the natural gas going to Europe. Now they are going to be cut out
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of the picture. So they lose leverage and they lose billions of dollars in revenue. Plus, you add to that
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the fact that Biden is allowing Russia to cooperate with Iran to protect all sorts of bad actors at the UN
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and in other places. And Biden is actually appeasing the Russians while lifting sanctions on Russian
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officials and playing footsie with Putin in Geneva. So this is really astonishing how the media and the
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Democrats have decided that all of a sudden it doesn't matter how nice we are to Russia. Russia doesn't
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really matter. And isn't it wonderful? In fact, CNN was talking about how fantastic it is that Biden
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was cordial to Putin. If Trump was cordial to Putin, they accused him of treason.
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You know, I'm looking through your articles, looking at all the things America gave away,
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and as you say, even more than was demanded. It reminds me of how much of a dealmaker and a
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negotiator Donald Trump was. I mean, I can't think of any tougher industry and place in the world
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than cutthroat New York State property development, whether it's dealing with,
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I don't know, mafia in the construction unions or crooked, you know, state and city regulators,
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just tough competitors, financial vagaries. There is no tougher business and you've got to be
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extremely sharp. As the late Izzy Asper used to say, our Canadian nickel has a little beaver on it.
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You know, you've got to shave the beaver off a nickel. You've got to be so, you've got to watch
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every single penny. If you can survive a New York real estate, you can survive anywhere.
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Joe Biden has never been in a real negotiation like that against a real enemy in a zero sum game.
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So he goes over there and he just gives things away. I don't think he's ever,
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I can't think of anything he's ever negotiated, any deal he's ever done, any person he's ever stared
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down. I just don't think he has that skill set. And, and the people around him are people who gave
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it all away under the Obama administration to Iran, for example. I, I just think this is the,
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we feel the lack of Trump more than ever in these foreign affairs matters.
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You're right that Biden doesn't have the skill set for that kind of tough negotiation. The U.S.
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Senate is a place where Democrats and Republicans come together to agree to fleece the American
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taxpayer. It's very easy to negotiate deals when your own interests aren't directly at stake.
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Biden doesn't have the skill set to stand up in a tough negotiation,
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nor does he really represent the American people. I mean, yes, of course he does. He's our democratic
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leader. He's supposed to represent our interests, but Democrats, including Biden have for decades,
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often sought accommodations with our enemies. They often view America as the problem.
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They apologize for us. They feel sad that we have become involved in so many conflicts. It's
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a nature of our system. It's part of our systemic racism, perhaps, or our arrogance or something,
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but they are eager to reach an accommodation with countries that don't like us. And that's why he
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returned from Europe triumphant in his own mind, because he proclaimed diplomacy is back. Of course,
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Trump was very good at diplomacy. Trump was probably the least war prone of our recent presidents.
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But with Trump, diplomacy meant standing up for American interests in a very serious way.
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With Biden, diplomacy means going along to get along. And he was very pleased that the Europeans
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liked him and they have a very favorable opinion of him. If you look at the opinion polls, there's
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been this dramatic turnaround in European views of the United States since Biden took over. It's very
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much a reflection of our media rather than reality. And I was told yesterday that quietly,
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European governments are quite troubled by the Biden administration's stance because it is one
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of appeasement on every front. We were told, for example, he was going to go to Europe and get the
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European leaders and the G7 to agree on tough action against China. Well, that didn't happen.
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I mean, Biden is not about defending American interests or the West. He's about reaching an
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accommodation with those who challenge us in the hope that we won't offend them too badly. And then he
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can come home and talk about diplomacy, sort of like Neville Chamberlain returning with a piece of
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paper. I mean, diplomacy is fine. Anyone can use diplomacy. What do you use that diplomacy to
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achieve? Trump achieved things like the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, and he did it by
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being tough on our trade partners. Trump achieved things like the Abraham Accords, and he did it by
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standing firmly with American allies, particularly with Israel. What's Biden doing? Biden's basically
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giving away the store. He comes home and talks about diplomacy because they slapped each other on the
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back in public, at least when they weren't obeying social distancing rules. But there's no real
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achievement to his diplomacy. So not only does he lack the skill set, but he's not even really
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representing our interests. Yeah. And you mentioned that the foreign opinion likes Biden. Now, it's
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always bizarre when foreign opinion is reported back to Americans as if that is somehow more important
00:20:24.520
than American opinion about who the American is. I mean, yeah, I suppose every country wants their
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country to be liked. But I think the purpose of an American president is to do the bidding of
00:20:36.200
Americans like the purpose of a Canadian prime minister is. I mean, we've lost that a long time ago
00:20:40.280
under Justin Trudeau. But I think, put aside the media love for Biden, which is so obviously a factor,
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I think Europeans like to deal, any country likes to deal with a weak American president if that's a change
00:20:59.220
from, let's say, Donald Trump demanding that NATO countries spend more on military. One of the
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constant refrains from Trump was that America's allies should pay their own defense bills. And
00:21:11.360
every time he went to NATO, he would really publicly shame them. He shamed Trudeau. It was it was
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wonderful. He on the spot in a live joint presser, he asked Trudeau how much Trudeau was spending on
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NATO and he knew the numbers and Trudeau didn't. Here, here's a quick flashback to that.
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China does not meet the 2% standard. Should it have a plan to meet the 2% standard?
00:21:33.880
Well, we'll put them on a payment plan, you know, we'll put Canada on a payment plan, right? I'm sure
00:21:38.060
the prime minister would love that. What are you at? What is your number? The number we talk about is
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70% increase over these past years, including and for the coming years, including significant
00:21:52.120
investments in our fighter jets, significant investments in our naval fleets. We are increasing
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significantly our defense spending from previous governments that cut it. Okay. Where are you now
00:22:03.960
in terms of your number? We're at 135? 1.3. 1.4. 1.4. And, and continuing to move forward.
00:22:14.020
They're getting there. They, they, they know it's important to do that. So I think when you've got a
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pushover, like Biden, who never asked for anything, who never embarrasses them, of course, they're going
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to like him more. But I believe what you're saying, that they're a little worried while they may be let
00:22:28.380
off the hook for some bilateral thing. Who's on guard for the free West? Who's going to challenge
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China? That's exactly right. And China, meanwhile, is advancing on every front. They have things that
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the rest of the West wants. They have markets, they have money, and they have control. The irony is
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they don't really have control when you look at the problems they're wrestling with. They've got
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a huge coronavirus problem that's still raging over there. They've got environmental damage and
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devastation. They've got a rising middle class that has aspirations that the Communist Party may not be
00:23:01.600
able to fulfill. And they're encountering increasing challenges. But instead of looking at China in that
00:23:07.280
critical way and seeing where can we make an impact so that our values line up with our foreign policies
00:23:14.360
so that we can encourage freedom in China and so that we can defeat China in the race for global
00:23:20.260
domination. I mean, China envisions a world that serves its own interests. It doesn't serve anyone else's
00:23:25.380
interests. And already they're exercising their will over our freedom of speech here at home. They're
00:23:31.360
stealing our intellectual property. They've cornered the market on rare earth minerals. They're changing
00:23:35.620
the way we live. They have an effect over our lives, which we don't really want. We don't do that to
00:23:41.440
other nations. I mean, the United States has never really sought dominion over other countries. It's
00:23:46.020
sought to create what Biden calls the international rules-based order. Well, Biden cares about it. He has to
00:23:50.840
defend it. But he's not doing that. He's basically seeking an accommodation with China. And he's unleashed
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this hapless crew of career diplomats who've achieved nothing except weak deals like the Iran
00:24:01.700
nuclear deal and a North Korea deal that allowed the Kim regime to go nuclear. They don't know what
00:24:07.740
they're doing. And they make the same mistakes over and over again. And they never seem to learn.
00:24:11.700
But, you know, the Trudeau example is interesting. I mean, Canada is in a very bad situation relative to
00:24:16.680
the United States with regard to coronavirus. The Democrats often look to Canada as a model for
00:24:21.560
what they want to do domestically in the United States. And yet this problem of Canada's struggle
00:24:27.560
with coronavirus and the draconian enforcement of coronavirus restrictions is something that our
00:24:31.700
media didn't want to talk about. But Trudeau's closeness to China, his inability to chart a
00:24:36.520
different path, is basically the path the Democratic Party foresees for the United States. And yet we're
00:24:40.440
not asking ourselves, does that model actually work? I tell you, Joel, I bet your American readers would
00:24:45.980
be shocked to learn so many of the weird political decisions that were made. I mean, Justin Trudeau's
00:24:52.140
first vaccine move was to sign a deal with a vaccine company affiliated with the Chinese People's
00:25:00.220
Liberation Army. I mean, I think if your American viewers knew some of the crazy decisions made in
00:25:06.400
Canada, and even the fact that today we're under a strict lockdown, two-week travel, quarantine. I'm in
00:25:11.920
the world's most locked down city of Toronto, according to the BBC. I mean, indoor restaurants
00:25:18.400
have been banned in most of Canada for most of the last year. I think Americans would be shocked what's
00:25:23.320
going on up here. But let me get back to China. I don't know. I tell you, it's just so bad up here.
00:25:28.260
I wouldn't have thought we would be as bad as we are. Let me ask you a question about China.
00:25:32.760
I follow a lot of the Chinese propaganda outlets because I want to see what they're saying,
00:25:37.720
and I want to try and reverse engineer what they're thinking. There's this one outlet called
00:25:41.900
Global Times. It's in English. It's on Twitter, which is banned in China itself, which tells you a
00:25:48.320
lot. Global Times is saying every few hours that the shutdown of Hong Kong's leading democracy
00:25:57.000
newspaper called Apple Daily is imminent. The police have already arrested their editor and their
00:26:03.680
publisher and have frozen their bank accounts, but they're going to formally ban this major
00:26:10.280
newspaper. It would be like Trump arresting the editor of the New York Times, seizing their bank
00:26:15.840
account and shutting the New York Times down. It's that prominent newspaper. I have not seen a single
00:26:21.120
statement from the Canadian government about this. Is America paying attention to that at all,
00:26:27.020
to Hong Kong at all? Does anyone care? Has Biden or his Secretary of State Blinken talked about it at
00:26:33.820
all? They don't really talk very much about it. The American media are unconcerned about it.
00:26:39.760
I listened to most of the press briefing today at the White House. I didn't hear all of it, but
00:26:43.920
I didn't hear too many concerns being voiced there. I know that at Breitbart is something we've been
00:26:47.620
following, and we covered it last week when residents of Hong Kong stood in line for hours to buy
00:26:52.620
editions of the Apple Daily to show their support for it. But we don't seem to be taking any particular
00:26:58.240
interest in the freedom of Hong Kong. And it's something peculiar, but we're just not interested,
00:27:05.180
apparently, even though Hong Kong is certainly interested in us. I mean, even under the Trump
00:27:10.280
administration, which at first tried to finesse the diplomatic situation with Hong Kong, people in
00:27:15.260
Hong Kong were waving American flags as symbols of freedom, and they're big fans of Donald Trump because
00:27:19.760
they understand that Trump stands up to China and nobody else will. But, you know, we don't really
00:27:25.600
have an elite in this country that stands up for freedom in Hong Kong or here. I mean, when journalists
00:27:30.960
are attacked in the street here by Antifa thugs, there's no outcry. There's no one who says,
00:27:37.060
hey, this is not what we should be doing in a free society. In fact, there are people who criticize
00:27:40.840
him. So I think we're in a situation here where press freedom is taken for granted or actually
00:27:48.540
denigrated by those who ought to be benefiting from it. Yeah, I feel like this account of Global
00:27:54.500
Times is like testing the way like a stalking horse for the Communist Party, putting the idea out
00:28:00.220
there like every two hours, we're going to shut it down. We're going to shut it down almost to
00:28:04.260
gauge reaction to it to see because this is going to be a heck of a move. Like, I mean, they've arrested
00:28:10.780
Democratic politicians, they've arrested editors. Now they're going to close a huge newspaper. And I think
00:28:18.060
they're going to get away with it without a peep. I don't know. I know in the past, Donald Trump,
00:28:23.520
even if he wouldn't have actually done anything, there would have been a legitimate fear on the
00:28:27.720
Chinese side that he would have done something. He might do something. Even the body language.
00:28:33.300
I'll let you go, Joel, because you're so busy. But there's so much body language of Boris Johnson
00:28:39.740
and Emmanuel Macron getting right into Joe Biden's face, physical, like his, like getting in his face
00:28:46.240
physically pointing right near his face, touching him in a way that I know if they had done that,
00:28:51.660
they would never have done it to Trump. And if they tried, Trump probably would have grabbed their
00:28:55.540
hand or pushed them. Like even the physical contempt for Biden was palpable. Did you notice that?
00:29:04.560
It's hard to judge from little snippets and snapshots, but I don't think people have particular
00:29:10.260
respect for Joe Biden. And I don't think he conducted himself with particular physical
00:29:14.980
dominance or prominence. Donald Trump commanded a room. I think Joe Biden is lucky to survive these
00:29:20.320
meetings. He tended to forget the names of leaders and so forth. He is not entirely 100%.
00:29:28.420
He's functional enough to at least appear in public as the head of the administration,
00:29:33.820
but he's not really running things. And it's a group behind the scenes in the White House who are
00:29:37.880
really taking care of most of the business. So they feel relieved that he returned from Europe
00:29:42.480
in one piece. But I think you're correct. I don't think the other Western leaders are feeling
00:29:46.080
particularly confident in his leadership. They're glad that the pressure is off. Or as one of our
00:29:51.200
local journalists said, they're glad that they're no longer traumatized by the scars of Donald Trump
00:29:56.500
demanding that they live up to their commitments to pay 2% of their defense budgets to NATO. But
00:30:01.420
they're comfortable around him because he's not making demands of them. But I don't think they're
00:30:07.840
confident in his leadership. There was one moment where Biden called Putin Trump. I think that sort
00:30:14.680
of showed his cognitive state. Joel, it's great to see you again. Thanks for spending so much time with
00:30:19.020
us. Thank you. All right. There you have it. Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large at
00:30:24.020
Breitbart.com. Stay with us. Hey, welcome back. On Rebel News and the other litigants losing our
00:30:42.620
federal court of Canada case against Trudeau's COVID airport jails, MK writes, the judge ignored
00:30:48.400
all the evidence and spewed out liberal talking points as a ruling. Well, I don't think the judge
00:30:53.540
ignored the evidence. I think he, as carefully as he could, tried to take a position to save the
00:30:58.860
government's case. I don't think he ignored it. I think he sort of gamed it. I think we've got a
00:31:03.860
strong case on appeal. I spoke with our lawyers again today, and we intend to appeal, and I know
00:31:09.200
at least some of the other litigants intend to appeal. Now, that's not going to say we're going to
00:31:12.820
win it, but we're sure not done fighting. Thor writes, it's not government's job to protect the
00:31:18.980
people. It's their job to protect the people's liberties. Yeah, I mean, the whole point of the
00:31:23.320
chart of rights and freedoms is to protect us from the state, and I don't think the courts have done
00:31:27.980
that. They just haven't. Show me a case in Canada where the worst civil liberties violations ever in
00:31:33.360
our country's history have been rolled back by the courts. I just haven't seen it. Pegwin writes,
00:31:39.580
necessary sacrifice. Yeah, but only sacrifices the small people, not the ruling class. Well, that's what
00:31:45.260
I just showed you in the Harvard study today. This has devastated the working class. I couldn't even
00:31:50.320
believe it. In Massachusetts, half of working class jobs just eliminated. But yeah, the $350,000 a year
00:31:57.500
federal court of Canada judge, he thinks we're all going to keep making sacrifices. I wonder what
00:32:01.960
sacrifices he's made. Well, that's the show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here
00:32:06.780
at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home. Good night, and keep fighting for freedom.