Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Is Russia going to invade Ukraine again？ Joe Biden seems to think so — he says he's actually fine with that.

00:00:00.000 Hello, my rebels. Today, I take you through some American politics, but of course, it affects

00:00:03.980 the whole world as most things from America do. Joe Biden gave a very long press conference

00:00:09.400 for his standards. I mean, Trump would go on for 60, 90 minutes a day, no problem.

00:00:15.940 But Biden does it very rarely. And you can sort of see why. He runs out of juice,

00:00:21.220 runs out of energy quickly. But he did mutter a few consequential things yesterday that I think

00:00:26.620 are very dangerous. I'll take you through it. I'll show you a bunch of clips and then we'll

00:00:29.760 talk to Joel Pollack about what it means. That's today's podcast. But first, let me invite you

00:00:34.420 to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of this podcast. I want you to

00:00:38.920 see with your eyes how weak Joe Biden is. You'll hear it on the audio podcast. You'll hear the long

00:00:44.780 pauses, the rambling nature, but you've got to see this 79-year-old man just lost. It's quite something.

00:00:53.160 Go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month. We'll bargain it twice the price.

00:00:57.940 All right, here's today's podcast.

00:00:59.760 Tonight, is Russia going to invade Ukraine again? Joe Biden seems to think so. He says

00:01:19.360 he's actually fine with that. It's January 20th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:26.640 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:30.320 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:01:34.380 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my

00:01:39.000 bloody right to do so. Yesterday, Joe Biden had an absolutely disastrous press conference.

00:01:48.880 I just keep thinking of this comment by Joe Rogan.

00:01:52.460 Biden, to me, is like having a flashlight with a dying battery and going for a long hike in the woods.

00:01:59.340 It is not going to work out. It's not going to make it.

00:02:05.740 That is such a great comparison. Here, watch just one of many clips I could show you from that last night alone.

00:02:13.060 Well, that could school reopenings or closures become a potent midterm issue for Republicans to win back the suburbs?

00:02:22.100 Oh, I think it could be, but I hope with God that they're, that, look, maybe I'm kidding myself, but as time goes on,

00:02:36.700 the voter who is just trying to figure out, as I said, how to take care of their family, put three squares on the table,

00:02:46.680 stay safe, be able to pay their mortgage or their rent, et cetera.

00:02:52.100 It's becoming much more informed on the motives of some of the political players and some of the political parties.

00:03:16.540 And I think that they are not going to be as susceptible to believing some of the outlandish things that have been said and continue to be said.

00:03:28.720 You know, every, every president, not necessarily in the first 12 months, but every president, the first couple of years,

00:03:36.400 most every president, excuse me, of the last presidents, at least four of them,

00:03:40.140 have had polling numbers that are 44% favorable.

00:03:45.900 So it's this idea that, but you all, not you all, but now it is, well, Biden's that one poll showed him at 33%.

00:03:53.580 The average is 44, 44, 45%.

00:03:57.900 One poll at 49%.

00:04:00.040 I mean, the idea that the American public are trying to sift their way through what's real and what's fake.

00:04:14.220 And I don't think as, I've never seen a time when the political coverage, the choice of what's...

00:04:32.540 What? What was he talking about? Did he forget?

00:04:35.580 What was his point? After 15 seconds, I don't think he remembered the question.

00:04:39.720 And then 15 seconds later, I don't think he could remember what his answer was supposed to be.

00:04:46.400 I tell you, there were many moments like that.

00:04:48.920 Have you ever met anyone who's slowly losing their cognitive powers?

00:04:53.060 It's often sad and they're often very frustrated because they can't find a word or a name.

00:04:59.240 They can think of it or imagine it or see it in their mind, but they can't connect the idea to the word.

00:05:05.920 And they're still sharp enough to realize all this.

00:05:08.220 They're not fully gone.

00:05:10.500 Biden snapped at reporters yesterday when it was clear he couldn't be articulate.

00:05:16.940 He does that a lot.

00:05:17.940 He sort of panics and starts to shout or attack.

00:05:21.380 He's been doing that for a few years, actually, and I really don't think it's covered a lot.

00:05:25.620 It gets swept under the carpet.

00:05:27.240 Here's an excuse from last night.

00:05:29.280 Frustration and anger.

00:05:30.260 You know, Utah, you campaigned and you ran on a return to civility.

00:05:36.280 And I know that you dispute the characterization that you called folks who would oppose those voting bills as being Bull Connor or George Wallace.

00:05:46.340 But you said that they would be sort of in the same camp.

00:05:50.340 No, I didn't say that.

00:05:51.320 Look what I said.

00:05:52.540 Go back and read what I said and tell me if you think I called anyone who voted on the side of the position taken by Bull Connor that they were Bull Connor.

00:06:06.060 That is an interesting reading of English.

00:06:10.860 I assume you got into journals because you like to write.

00:06:14.940 So did you expect that that would work with Senators Manchin or Sinema?

00:06:20.480 No, here's the thing.

00:06:21.480 There's certain things that are so consequential.

00:06:24.200 You have to speak from your heart as well as your head.

00:06:27.660 I was speaking out forcefully on what I think to be at stake.

00:06:33.800 That's what it is.

00:06:34.820 And by the way, no one.

00:06:38.340 I don't think it's controversial to say that Joe Biden really isn't in charge of the White House.

00:06:43.160 He doesn't have the physical stamina.

00:06:45.140 He does a few events, a few very public interactions with reporters for some reason.

00:06:50.060 And I don't quite understand it.

00:06:51.200 They built this fake replica of the Oval Office that he does weird press events from.

00:06:56.560 I just don't understand.

00:06:58.860 Maybe it's nothing, but it seems odd.

00:07:00.620 I know that Ronald Reagan was alleged to have Alzheimer's disease.

00:07:03.660 He's set in in the end of his second term.

00:07:07.060 Reagan was 78 years old when he finished his second term.

00:07:11.120 Joe Biden is 79 years old in his first term.

00:07:16.120 And he's much foggier than Reagan ever was.

00:07:19.260 Let me show you a few more clips from the press conference.

00:07:22.340 But then let me end on the most terrifying part.

00:07:25.740 Biden talking about what he thinks of Vladimir Putin's plans to invade Ukraine again.

00:07:30.460 I promise I'll come back to that.

00:07:32.580 Let's start with this one.

00:07:33.660 Does Joe Biden think the upcoming midterm elections in America will be legitimate?

00:07:39.140 I mean, polls suggest Biden is deeply unpopular.

00:07:42.520 That's showing up in elections, for example, a few months ago.

00:07:44.740 The Republicans swept Virginia, which had gone for Biden just a year earlier by 10 percent.

00:07:49.060 Republicans almost won New Jersey, which was plus 16 for Biden a year earlier.

00:07:54.360 It's looking like it's going to be a disaster for the Democrats.

00:07:57.460 Will Biden accept the results?

00:07:59.520 I'll show you what he said.

00:08:00.360 But just a reminder, the media party said it was atrocious that Donald Trump would be

00:08:05.480 skeptical of the sanctity of the results of the 2020 election.

00:08:08.440 In fact, if you claim there was widespread voter fraud in that election and only that election,

00:08:14.100 you could say it about any other election.

00:08:15.640 But if you say it about that election, YouTube will suspend your account.

00:08:19.380 So here's what Biden said.

00:08:21.500 Speaking of voting rights legislation, if this isn't passed, do you still believe the upcoming

00:08:26.320 election will be fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate?

00:08:31.540 Well, it all depends on whether or not we're able to make the case to the American people

00:08:41.780 that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election.

00:08:46.360 But he won't say he respects or trusts the results.

00:08:49.000 He's trying to pass a bill to water down voter fraud prevention.

00:08:52.460 Remember, he won in large part because of vote harvesting and mail-in ballots.

00:08:57.560 Those were actually legalized in the months before the 2020 election using the pandemic

00:09:02.200 as an excuse.

00:09:03.400 That's why Trump was worried.

00:09:05.440 Trump was ripped for that.

00:09:06.920 And now Biden himself is saying he can't trust the voting system.

00:09:11.440 So there were substantive things like that.

00:09:13.840 But again, just watching a human flashlight battery dying was the most salient part of the

00:09:19.200 performance for me.

00:09:19.840 It's like when someone is tongue-tied and they can't finish their sentence.

00:09:23.680 And I don't know, you lean forward in your chair, maybe you want to help them by filling

00:09:27.620 in the word they can't quite say, but you don't quite know what they're trying to say.

00:09:32.520 So you actually can't.

00:09:34.160 Take a look.

00:09:35.300 5%.

00:09:35.780 One poll of them at 49%.

00:09:37.940 I mean, the idea that the American public are trying to sift their way through what's real

00:09:50.820 and what's fake.

00:09:52.160 And I don't think as I've ever seen a time when the political coverage, the choice of what

00:10:10.180 political coverage the voter looks to has as much impact on what they believe.

00:10:15.640 They go to get reinforced in their views, whether it's MSNBC or whether it's Fox or whatever.

00:10:23.500 I mean, and one of the things I find fascinating that's happening, and you all are dealing with

00:10:29.180 it every day, and it will impact on how things move, is that a lot of the speculation and the polling data

00:10:39.420 shows that the cables are heading south.

00:10:49.640 They're losing viewership.

00:10:52.100 No?

00:10:52.860 Well, Fox is okay for a while, but it's not dated, and a lot of the rest are predicted to be

00:10:59.320 not very much in the mix in the next four to five years.

00:11:03.360 I don't know whether that's true or not.

00:11:04.500 But I do know that we have sort of put everybody in, put themselves in certain alleys,

00:11:12.520 and they've decided that, you know, how many people who watch MSNBC also watch Fox,

00:11:20.640 other than they're a politician trying to find out what's going on in both places?

00:11:24.220 How many people?

00:11:25.520 Again, I'm no expert in any of this, but the fact is, I think you have to acknowledge

00:11:31.500 that what gets covered now is necessarily a little bit different than what gets covered

00:11:39.580 in the past.

00:11:40.960 I've had a couple, well, I shouldn't get into this, but the nature, not, the nature of the way

00:11:52.600 things get covered.

00:11:54.640 Huh?

00:11:55.680 I mean, what do you think Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping thought watching that?

00:12:01.280 Now, one brave reporter just came out and asked about all that.

00:12:04.500 Take a look.

00:12:05.600 Yes.

00:12:06.740 Thank you very much for this honor.

00:12:08.580 James Rosen with Newsmax.

00:12:10.200 I'd like to raise a delicate subject, but with utmost respect for your life accomplishments

00:12:16.720 and the high office you hold, a poll released this morning by Politico Morning Consult found

00:12:25.380 49% of registered voters disagreeing with the statement, Joe Biden is mentally fit.

00:12:35.720 Not even a majority of Democrats who responded strongly affirmed that statement.

00:12:43.640 Well, I'll let you all make the judgment whether they're correct.

00:12:45.620 Well, so the question I have for you, sir, if you'd let me finish, is why do you suppose

00:12:50.840 such large segments of the American electorate have come to harbor such profound concerns

00:12:58.220 about your cognitive fitness?

00:13:01.480 Thank you.

00:13:02.700 I have no idea.

00:13:04.220 I should point out Biden was only calling upon pre-approved reporters in a list given to

00:13:09.420 him by someone else.

00:13:10.640 We don't know who.

00:13:11.320 Trump would call on whoever he liked, including his rivals and sworn enemies at CNN, for example.

00:13:17.200 Biden is scripted as much as possible, and he still failed.

00:13:22.380 The, uh, uh, uh, Allison Harris, please.

00:13:25.760 But look, most of that is just personally embarrassing, and it just goes to people's confidence and

00:13:32.260 trust in their government to fix things like the lockdowns and vaccine mandates and the

00:13:36.800 pandemic in general and inflation and foreign affairs crises like the hasty surrender in

00:13:41.540 Afghanistan that left hundreds of American citizens behind and gave billions of dollars

00:13:46.160 in equipment to the Taliban, including an air force.

00:13:48.220 It just tells Americans they have a doddering half their president.

00:13:53.240 No one really knows who's in charge.

00:13:55.060 I mean, it's not this woman.

00:13:57.440 At what point does the administration say, you know what, this strategy isn't working.

00:14:02.140 We're going to change strategies.

00:14:03.660 Six former administration officials last week wrote that open letter urging the administration

00:14:08.580 to change course, to change strategy.

00:14:11.440 Is it time?

00:14:12.300 It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day.

00:14:19.980 Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available

00:14:27.060 to us to slow this thing down.

00:14:30.140 So just so you know, Russia and the whole world has been trying to take the measure of

00:14:35.240 Biden for a year.

00:14:36.320 I think they have learned a lot from how he fled Afghanistan.

00:14:39.960 Not that he left at all.

00:14:42.000 Trump was slowly leaving, too.

00:14:43.480 But the panicky Biden retreat, chaotic, unplanned, leaving people and property behind, fleeing

00:14:49.700 is the real world.

00:14:51.460 I mean, this image is just so outrageous if you're an American or even a Canadian, because

00:14:56.180 we spent more than 150 Canadian lives in Afghanistan.

00:14:59.060 But imagine what you would think of that if you're Afghan or Taiwanese or Japanese or,

00:15:04.760 of course, Ukrainian.

00:15:05.720 Can you trust anything Biden says?

00:15:07.820 Remember, Russia invaded Ukraine and permanently annexed a large swath of it in 2014 when Obama

00:15:15.080 was president and Joe Biden was vice president.

00:15:18.540 John Kerry was secretary of state because they, by, I mean, by then, Putin had Obama's measure.

00:15:28.200 Putin knew Obama and Biden, the vice president, would do nothing.

00:15:31.280 Trump was elected in 2016 and inaugurated in 2017, January, and Russia didn't try a thing

00:15:39.420 during his whole tenure.

00:15:40.560 Neither did anyone else, really.

00:15:42.240 North Korea, China.

00:15:44.160 Trump mopped up ISIS in a few months, really.

00:15:47.620 People knew Trump was tough and that he was sometimes unpredictable.

00:15:52.420 His enemies and friends both knew that.

00:15:54.860 But Biden, malaise is the word, a flashlight with a dying battery.

00:16:00.080 So, yeah, I think America's enemies are emboldened, even if Biden were to talk tough.

00:16:06.140 But what if Biden says in advance that, no, he actually won't do anything, anything at all?

00:16:13.800 So I think what you're going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades. 0.95

00:16:20.500 And it depends on what it does.

00:16:22.100 It's one thing if it's a minor incursion and then we end up having to fight about what to do and not do, etc.

00:16:28.460 A minor incursion?

00:16:29.780 What is a minor incursion?

00:16:31.040 A few cities, maybe?

00:16:31.980 Half the country?

00:16:32.820 I don't know.

00:16:33.420 Was the last Russian invasion a minor incursion?

00:16:36.320 Would China invading Taiwan be a minor incursion?

00:16:38.980 It's a little place.

00:16:40.380 The thing about sovereign countries is that any incursion is an act of aggression, an act of war.

00:16:45.040 One inch or one mile, it's like the law of assault.

00:16:47.800 It could be a punch in the face or it could be someone flicking your nose.

00:16:51.700 They're both assaults.

00:16:53.960 But actually, listen to the wording.

00:16:55.380 Biden said, we end up having to fight about what to do and not do.

00:17:01.660 Whoa, that'll scare Putin.

00:17:03.660 So the U.S. and its allies haven't even figured out their plan yet.

00:17:07.760 They still haven't, you know, decided internally, I presume, about what to do or not to do.

00:17:15.260 And he just said that to the world.

00:17:17.100 You know, Russian collusion, Russia gay, Trumping a Russian spy, all that hoax, that disinformation for years led by the media.

00:17:25.380 Putin didn't dare make a move on Ukraine or anyone, really, with Trump in power.

00:17:30.160 A year into Biden and a preemptive letter of surrender to Russia from the Democrats.

00:17:35.760 Even the Democrat Party's propaganda machine in CNN couldn't believe it.

00:17:39.360 Here's Jake Tapper, the biggest Democrat partisan around, who asked a CNN reporter on the ground in Ukraine what was going on.

00:17:46.860 Here's one of the many things that President Biden had to say about Russia and the possibility of an invasion, another invasion of Ukraine.

00:17:55.600 Russia will be held accountable if it invades. 0.94

00:18:00.740 And it depends on what it does.

00:18:02.220 It's one thing if it's a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, etc.

00:18:08.160 But if they actually do what they're capable of doing with the force amassed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia.

00:18:16.100 My guess is he will move in.

00:18:18.480 He has to do something.

00:18:19.540 So, let us go now to Matthew Chance, who is in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, where I'm sure officials were watching with interest and maybe even chagrin.

00:18:31.880 Matthew, was Biden's, were Biden's remarks interpreted there as a less than wholehearted warning to Putin to not invade?

00:18:46.260 Well, I mean, that's, that's an understatement.

00:18:49.140 I mean, they, they watch those remarks, I think, I think with horror.

00:18:52.560 One Ukrainian official who I've been in close contact with while this marathon press conference is underway said that he was, you know, I'm quoting here,

00:19:01.880 shocked that President Biden would give a green light to Vladimir Putin in this way.

00:19:07.700 That the U.S. president would distinguish between an incursion and an invasion.

00:19:12.520 And it suggests that a minor incursion would, would, would elicit, you know, a lesser response than a more, a more full invasion.

00:19:21.240 The big concern, of course, which is what he was alluding to, is that it gives Putin, and this is another quote from me,

00:19:26.820 it said it gives the green light to Putin to enter Ukraine at his pleasure.

00:19:31.400 And that's not just one Ukrainian official.

00:19:34.260 Other Ukrainian officials have responded in a similar way.

00:19:37.280 Kiev, in the words of another, is stunned by what President Biden had to say.

00:19:42.820 And the reason for that is twofold.

00:19:44.660 First of all, a minor incursion is perhaps the preferred option of, of Vladimir Putin.

00:19:49.840 When CNN says it's bad, you know it's really bad.

00:19:54.300 We're already seeing the cleanup.

00:19:56.180 I'm already seeing in my text exchanges with people around the president, cleanup on Isle State Department going on right now.

00:20:03.320 Now, look, I don't want to, I don't want Putin to reconquer the former Soviet socialist republics.

00:20:08.520 I don't want the Soviet empire coming back. 0.99

00:20:11.120 I don't want Russia taking over Ukraine or the Baltics or Poland or anywhere.

00:20:14.520 I don't want to see them colonize the world again, just like I don't want China to colonize Taiwan or Korea. 0.97

00:20:21.460 But I also don't think it's up to Canadians or even Americans to go to a war with Russia over this.

00:20:27.700 I'm not saying I like Biden's surrenderism.

00:20:29.920 I'm just not sure that the other alternative has to be war.

00:20:34.800 The fact that Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, did millions of dollars worth of business,

00:20:38.700 as if he's a legitimate businessman, as if he was paid for anything other than his access and influence to his father,

00:20:44.520 that muddies the waters here further.

00:20:46.860 I'm not even sure what side Hunter Biden is on, frankly.

00:20:50.520 He took money from both Russians and Ukrainians.

00:20:53.520 Gee whiz. 0.91

00:20:54.260 It might have been useful to vet Biden and his corrupt, drug-abusing, eminently blackmailable son before the election, don't you think? 0.97

00:21:02.360 I know every possible detail about Donald Trump's personal life and financial life and his tax returns and those of his kids.

00:21:09.500 The media was obsessed with finding traces of corruption or links to Putin.

00:21:14.520 What do we know about Biden, other than that when Hunter Biden's laptop was revealed,

00:21:19.420 Twitter and Facebook banned any media from publishing news about it?

00:21:24.440 Ironically, if Biden is in the payroll of Ukraine, I have no idea.

00:21:28.520 It's his sheer weakness that makes Putin know he can grab that land.

00:21:32.720 Hong Kong fell first.

00:21:34.940 Then Afghanistan.

00:21:36.860 Ukraine will be next, God forbid. 1.00

00:21:38.820 Maybe Taiwan soon enough, I fear. 0.88

00:21:42.520 I worry for South Korea and even Japan.

00:21:44.580 Maybe Iran will make a move against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. 0.85

00:21:48.000 I don't know.

00:21:49.200 Weakness is tempting.

00:21:52.200 The answer is, as it always is, countries must defend themselves.

00:21:56.060 After the Cold War, Ukraine had an enormous number of nuclear bombs left over from its time as a Soviet colony.

00:22:01.200 Incredibly, they agreed to give them up in return for worthless assurances from Bill Clinton.

00:22:07.580 No surprise there.

00:22:09.520 No one can rely on Joe Biden.

00:22:11.420 I think friends and enemies alike see that now.

00:22:14.780 I'm glad Israel and the moderate Arab states are friends now.

00:22:18.020 Maybe they'll be mutual defense partners.

00:22:20.200 Who would have imagined that five years ago?

00:22:22.400 And remember, that peace legacy, the Abraham Accords, that's a legacy of Donald Trump who did the impossible.

00:22:30.980 I don't know.

00:22:31.380 Maybe India will become a regional superpower to help check the ambitions of China.

00:22:36.120 I don't know.

00:22:36.540 I have no idea.

00:22:38.320 I just know that having a dying flashlight battery as president is more than just embarrassing.

00:22:44.420 I think it might just start a war that nobody wants, except the very worst of the world's tyrants.

00:22:49.840 Stay with us for more.

00:22:57.600 Well, whenever we talk about U.S. politics, we like to check in with Joel Pollack, senior editor at large with Breitbart.com.

00:23:03.100 Joel, I know you watched the president's press conference very carefully yesterday.

00:23:07.720 I just showed a few clips from it.

00:23:09.540 What would you say the most interesting or the most important part of yesterday's performance was?

00:23:14.460 Well, there were two major statements by the president that caused shockwaves, not just in the United States, but around the world.

00:23:25.840 One was about the legitimacy of the 2022 elections.

00:23:30.460 And he suggested that if he didn't see the Senate pass his voting legislation, that the elections would be illegitimate.

00:23:39.320 And he said that twice.

00:23:40.520 He was given an opportunity to clarify, and he clarified that's exactly what he meant.

00:23:45.400 Now, the next day, Press Secretary Jen Psaki ran around the cable news channels and the White House briefing room saying that she believed, that the president believed the elections would be legitimate, even if his legislation did not get passed.

00:23:59.440 But that created some consternation, especially because there's this idea that Democrats have put out there that merely questioning the sanctity of our elections, as they did in 2000, 2004, 2016, that amounts to a kind of treason, insurrection should result in you being banned from social media.

00:24:20.200 So she had to do some cleaning up there.

00:24:50.200 And this, after Democrats made such a huge deal out of Trump supposedly being too friendly to Russia, which was, of course, not the case, and after they claimed that Trump had endangered Ukraine when they went after him in the first impeachment trial, now Biden has essentially conceded the territorial integrity of a supposed American ally, and we're all supposed to look the other way.

00:25:12.840 He did this as Secretary of State, Tony Blinken was in Kiev talking to Ukrainian leaders, and they were absolutely astounded.

00:25:22.620 They said it was basically a complete surprise to them that it was deeply disappointing, and it was a green light for Putin to invade.

00:25:34.520 So those were the two major developments.

00:25:37.440 Psaki cleaned that one up, or tried to anyway, shortly after the press conference, but she was still splitting hairs. 0.67

00:25:44.160 The White House is still trying to say that some kinds of incursions by the Russians wouldn't actually be invasions.

00:25:51.920 And Biden, the day after the press conference, said, well, if there are assembled Russian military units, then they would consider that an invasion requiring a more serious response.

00:26:02.860 Well, he was vice president when Russia invaded and occupied Crimea, and still does.

00:26:09.280 And it's not as if they came across the border in tank battalions.

00:26:12.920 They infiltrated quietly, one by one, with soldiers who were wearing unmarked uniforms.

00:26:19.420 They did this quietly, secretly, although people could see it was happening.

00:26:24.300 They weren't assembled military units.

00:26:26.100 So all Biden is doing is promising the same sort of appeasement that saw Crimea carved away from Ukraine through military force when he was last in office.

00:26:35.400 And the result of all of this is a complete shattering of any confidence that anyone around the world can have in this president.

00:26:43.420 There's no reason to believe anything he says.

00:26:46.520 He can't even get his own agenda passed.

00:26:48.880 Hours after the press conference, Democrats failed to pass those voting bills in the Senate, and they failed to undo the filibuster rule, which requires a supermajority to close debate and move to a vote.

00:26:59.000 So Biden is essentially adrift.

00:27:01.640 His presidency is over.

00:27:02.820 There's nothing left of it.

00:27:03.780 He's just sort of in charge, and he might react to things as they happen.

00:27:08.080 But there's nothing left for Joe Biden to do.

00:27:11.100 And all he's doing right now is failing to do the things that his predecessor, his much maligned, dark, evil, terrible, insurrectionist predecessor, Donald Trump, left for Joe Biden, like a successful vaccination program, like an economic recovery, like strong relationships with our allies.

00:27:29.900 Biden is undoing all of that, unraveling all of that.

00:27:32.300 And Jen Psaki keeps saying, well, our allies are privately very happy that Biden is back, that democracy is back, and so forth.

00:27:41.020 But you can see the reality when you look at what's happening in Ukraine.

00:27:45.000 The Ukrainian leaders are terrified.

00:27:46.700 Their people are terrified.

00:27:47.720 They're trying to project confidence.

00:27:49.820 And all Biden can do is say to Russia, well, you know, invasions cost lives.

00:27:54.460 You're going to pay a price, and here are some economic sanctions that you're not going to care about because you never care about economic sanctions.

00:27:59.880 We might deny you access to the dollar in your banking institutions, not that they care.

00:28:05.040 They have commodities, and they can exert leverage now on Europe because of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that Biden allowed them to build and Trump did not.

00:28:12.580 So Biden's presidency in policy terms is over.

00:28:16.620 There is nothing left for him to do.

00:28:18.860 He could get some wins, perhaps, if the United States government responds to whatever's happening in the world in some kind of a competent way.

00:28:26.940 But this presidency is now in a state of decline.

00:28:30.380 It is in a state of decadence in terms of its ideology.

00:28:35.640 Most of what the Democrats are pursuing is for their own ideological benefit, this idea of voting rights.

00:28:41.160 There are no voting rights bills.

00:28:42.820 No one's voting rights are threatened.

00:28:44.060 Democrats have yet to produce a single person who wasn't able to vote.

00:28:47.440 It's very easy to vote in this country.

00:28:48.760 But they're going to talk to each other about how they're standing up for voting rights and equality and diversity and equity and all that stuff.

00:28:55.340 Meanwhile, Biden's approval ratings will continue to plummet.

00:28:58.960 His presidency is over.

00:29:00.280 There's just nothing left for him to do.

00:29:01.840 His agenda is dead, and his leadership is bankrupt.

00:29:04.660 Wow.

00:29:05.200 I think you're right.

00:29:06.740 And I think a few proof points are popping up.

00:29:09.500 The statewide race in Virginia that went plus 10 for Biden a year ago, now a strong DeSantis-style Republican governor.

00:29:19.520 I just can't stop thinking of that phrase that Joe Rogan used for Joe Biden, saying he was like a flashlight that the batteries were running out.

00:29:29.620 And that's just exactly how it felt to me.

00:29:31.600 But let me say this.

00:29:33.140 Although he can't get things through the Congress, and he still has certain rules.

00:29:37.600 I'm not going to call them ceremonial.

00:29:38.940 But the president has still the power to make appointments, for example.

00:29:42.720 Those can be fettered by the Senate, but when he speaks for America on foreign policy, when he sends troops here or there, that really is within the president's power.

00:29:55.140 You correct me if I'm wrong constitutionally, but, I mean, no one else speaks on foreign matters in the same manner that a president does.

00:30:04.300 And so even though I think he bungled it, you're right, his presidency is over in terms of a positive agenda he wants to do.

00:30:12.640 But I think he can still do enormous damage with foolish statements.

00:30:18.940 Give me one more second on this.

00:30:20.360 For example, when he said a minor incursion would be fine, he actually said, well, and we would be fighting amongst ourselves what we could or couldn't do.

00:30:30.520 So he was sort of blabbing internal politics in public because his mind isn't sharp enough to say, oh, there's certain if we have a weakness internally, if we're divided internally, don't say that publicly, show strength publicly.

00:30:47.720 So I think the fact that he still is, at least in name, the president, and at least on the org chart, the guy who gets to talk foreign policy, I think he could cause disasters around the world just because he's losing his wits.

00:31:05.680 Well, that's true. He can certainly make more mistakes.

00:31:10.620 And you point out the power of appointments.

00:31:13.680 The issue of the Supreme Court could become something that unifies his party behind him once again.

00:31:19.580 For example, if there's a vacancy and he has the power to appoint someone, all of that is true.

00:31:25.720 But he has failed in the basic mission of his presidency.

00:31:28.920 He was elected as the alternative to Trump, the one who would restore a sense of normalcy and calm to the country.

00:31:33.660 He did that only by default because the Democrats called off the riots once Trump was no longer in office.

00:31:40.300 Most of these Black Lives Matter Antifa groups respond in some way to the political prodding and the financing that comes from Democrat activists or Democrat-aligned donors.

00:31:51.120 So they called off the shock troops, if you will, of the resistance.

00:31:54.540 But Biden failed to unify the country, and he was trying to explain in his press conference that when he said Republicans were like Bull Connor, the legendary, infamous law enforcement official who sicked dogs on civil rights protesters in the South, when he was calling Republicans Bull Connor, he didn't literally mean they were actually Bull Connor.

00:32:16.360 He just meant they were siding with Bull Connor.

00:32:19.040 Now, there really is no difference, but he was trying to say there is one and that he ought not be held accountable for insulting Republicans, including people who have supported him in the past on issues like infrastructure.

00:32:31.520 So Biden is at the end of his rope.

00:32:35.220 There's nothing more he can do that's positive.

00:32:37.200 And, yes, he has other things he can do that can be damaging, the appointments and so forth, but he may lose that as well.

00:32:44.820 The Senate could end up in Republican hands.

00:32:47.120 If that happens, there's no way Biden is getting anyone onto the Supreme Court.

00:32:50.220 He's not going to have an easy time appointing executive appointees and so forth.

00:32:54.920 And there's a real crisis within the Democratic Party.

00:32:57.500 You mentioned Biden speaking out about these internal deliberations about foreign policy and whether NATO would agree to this or that.

00:33:04.000 I agree with you.

00:33:04.660 That was extraordinary.

00:33:05.420 You know, when they asked Trump what his plans were, what he was going to do, Trump often gave an answer, which was, I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to do.

00:33:12.500 I'm just going to do it when it comes to foreign policy and dealing with terrorists.

00:33:16.400 That was the right approach.

00:33:18.480 His enemies, our enemies, could not read what Trump was going to do, and therefore they didn't act.

00:33:24.120 They didn't want to provoke him.

00:33:25.360 Whereas with Biden, it's exactly the opposite.

00:33:27.200 Biden tells people what he's going to do or what he might do or might not do.

00:33:30.680 And what everybody knows is that he's going to do nothing or he's going to try to do something.

00:33:35.160 But if he does, it's going to be ineffective.

00:33:37.200 So Biden is out there speculating about whether Putin might do this or Putin might do that, a minor incursion, a broader invasion.

00:33:43.340 We don't know.

00:33:44.000 He hasn't made up his mind.

00:33:45.200 So Biden is now trying to guess what Putin is doing with Trump or was the other way around.

00:33:48.540 But I think there's a reason Biden is doing things this way.

00:33:52.540 It's not just that he is losing mental capacity, although that may be true, but he is trying to find an excuse for inaction by telling the American people that his hands are tied when it comes to Ukraine.

00:34:04.520 If other NATO members don't agree to what I want to do, he says, then I can't do it.

00:34:11.440 So therefore, it's not my fault that Ukraine might be invaded tomorrow by Russia, because after all, I have to get NATO to agree with me if I want to do something.

00:34:19.340 That's not traditionally the role of the United States within NATO, but it is a convenient excuse for a democratic administration that prefers, quote unquote, diplomacy, i.e. inaction, to any other course of action and is looking for excuses.

00:34:32.280 So, again, the presidency has no forward momentum.

00:34:35.960 He is essentially a caretaker president, and someone else is taking care of him.

00:34:40.200 It's not clear he knows what's going on in his administration.

00:34:42.760 This idea that the 2022 midterms would be illegitimate was refuted or tried to be refuted by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who seems to have a lot more power than his typical press secretary.

00:34:53.840 Biden's administration may be administered by other people.

00:34:57.020 So we're just left adrift as a country, and people are deciding to take matters into their own hands.

00:35:03.040 They're not listening to coronavirus restrictions anymore.

00:35:05.600 They're not listening to health policy directives anymore.

00:35:08.900 They don't trust the government anymore, and they certainly don't trust the media.

00:35:12.000 People are basically moving ahead regardless.

00:35:14.420 That's good in some ways.

00:35:15.460 It does mean that our economic recovery is going to be stronger because I think people will simply ignore Biden's policies.

00:35:20.960 But it's also bad in other ways.

00:35:22.360 And you're seeing, especially in foreign policy, that chaos is having consequences.

00:35:26.900 Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.

00:35:28.320 Joe Biden says things repeatedly, and then Jen Psaki, a spokesman, comes out and says, no, no, no, that's not what he meant.

00:35:35.140 Well, says you.

00:35:36.160 Says who? 0.65

00:35:37.040 I mean, Biden didn't pull back some of those things.

00:35:40.180 Like, you've got to wonder who is the real decider.

00:35:44.020 Do you have a theory on that?

00:35:45.800 I mean, it's sort of a Kremlinology.

00:35:50.100 I mean, I personally don't think that Joe Biden is the master of any brief.

00:35:54.720 Like, there are some political leaders that you know are reading every briefing note, every file in Canada.

00:36:00.740 Our previous Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, was known for reading every bloody briefing note and really engaging.

00:36:08.020 And I'm not going to say becoming an expert, but you couldn't hornswoggle him.

00:36:12.700 I don't think anyone believes that Joe Biden is getting into the details here.

00:36:16.360 I don't believe he's that attentive.

00:36:18.680 I don't think he has the stamina.

00:36:20.280 I don't think he has the work ethic.

00:36:22.180 I look at how many times he's on vacation in in Delaware.

00:36:26.040 Not that you can't work from from your home.

00:36:28.860 Who.

00:36:30.520 Is actually the power behind the throne?

00:36:32.440 What's your theory?

00:36:33.220 I know this is speculation, but I just don't believe that Joe Biden is running the most powerful country in the world.

00:36:38.480 I don't believe it.

00:36:39.020 It's a kind of a politburo.

00:36:41.240 I mean, Kremlinology is the right term. 0.90

00:36:43.620 It's a group of Democratic insiders who formed a kind of government in exile at a consulting firm called West Exec, I believe is its name.

00:36:53.200 And they existed in Washington.

00:36:56.120 They involved Psaki and a variety of other people.

00:36:58.740 I think Psaki was at the Brookings Institution, but they have they involved a small sort of cohort of Obama and Clinton alumni who believe that they represent the cutting edge of policy and so forth.

00:37:11.160 During the first Trump impeachment, there was this phrase that appeared for the first time in the public consciousness interagency process.

00:37:18.960 When Colonel Alexander Vindman, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, came out and said that he opposed Trump's policy on Ukraine, his main bone of contention was that Trump ignored the interagency process, that Trump thought that just because the Constitution gave the president the power to conduct foreign policy doesn't mean the president actually should.

00:37:36.260 No, the president has to delegate to these bureaucrats in the interagency process, which is sort of a way of saying there are different people who run different parts of the government and they're supposed to agree on everything.

00:37:47.700 I think we are being governed by the interagency process and the interagency is dominated by these lifelong democratic establishment apparatchiks and they are engaged in a policy or process of negotiating with each other about what the government should do.

00:38:02.420 Hence, the government can't figure out what to do at all.

00:38:05.420 So you've got Susan Rice, who has no domestic policy experience, but is now running the Domestic Policy Council at the White House. 1.00

00:38:11.420 You've got Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, who are Clinton alumni, supposedly running the foreign policy at the State Department.

00:38:19.240 Then you've got Jen Psaki, who is a much more powerful press secretary, I think, than any of her predecessors. 1.00

00:38:24.200 She's not just running communications. 0.74

00:38:25.620 I think she is running policy to a great extent.

00:38:28.720 And you've got various other people in these little positions and they're responding to donors on the outside, like the George Soros of the world and so forth.

00:38:35.120 But they're basically conducting the government's affairs by committee.

00:38:39.740 And, you know, if you try to do anything by committee, you might get some consensus finally after much deliberation.

00:38:45.800 So there might theoretically be more unity going forward.

00:38:48.380 But, as you know, almost nothing ever gets done by a committee.

00:38:51.720 If you try to write an article, for example, or I was a speech writer, I used to hate when I had to write a speech by committee, when different politicians would have to weigh in on the draft because it would mean that whatever I wrote had to be done from scratch, redone.

00:39:04.260 And committees just don't function.

00:39:06.440 So, hence, the United States government is essentially paralyzed by this interagency, which was held up as the epitome of competence under the Trump administration and how dare Trump go around them.

00:39:16.180 Well, it turns out the A-team, the best and the brightest, don't know what they're doing and can't organize, as the phrase goes, you know, a piss up in a beer hall.

00:39:25.240 They just can't do anything.

00:39:26.940 And that's why we are where we are.

00:39:28.880 And Russia is taking advantage.

00:39:30.920 China is taking advantage. 0.68

00:39:32.720 And we'll see if the 2022 midterms have any effect on it.

00:39:36.060 I think it might affect some of the policies.

00:39:38.800 It might restrain some of the worst tendencies of the left, which dominates within the Biden administration as part of this interagency.

00:39:45.400 But I don't think it's going to solve the problem.

00:39:48.420 And the question for 2024 is really going to be, can the United States rediscover strong leadership again?

00:39:55.520 And does that leadership have to come from Donald Trump or is there another Republican who can provide it?

00:39:59.960 You know, when you say interagency process, I think that's an academic way of saying the deep state.

00:40:06.280 People, the security and intelligence and, you know, unfireable, the outlast any elected politicians, they they take care of themselves.

00:40:17.840 I think that's just a fancier way of saying the deep state.

00:40:20.680 But let me talk.

00:40:21.220 You mentioned Alex Vinderman and I had written him down on my notes here to ask you about him, because, you know, when Trump was president,

00:40:28.900 you had all these deep state whistleblowers, defectors, you know, people who were just saying, I don't like what Trump is doing.

00:40:37.960 I have no constitutional authority to usurp that of the president.

00:40:41.200 But I'm just mad about it.

00:40:43.000 Vinderman, you know, was treated as some sort of hero.

00:40:45.220 And I didn't follow it closely.

00:40:46.640 I found it a bit confusing, to be honest.

00:40:48.000 But I presume these people wanted to strengthen Ukraine and protect it from Vladimir Putin.

00:40:54.960 I think that's what their goal was.

00:40:57.860 Has Vinderman, who I think one time mused about becoming the defense minister of Ukraine, have those anti have the folks who whipped up the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was a Russian agent,

00:41:11.880 a Russian stooge, was subject to Russian blackmail, was soft on Russia, have any of these pro-Ukraine, anti-Putin conspiracy theorists had a word to say in the last 24 hours about Biden essentially?

00:41:23.500 No.

00:41:24.160 No?

00:41:24.980 Not at all.

00:41:25.940 I mean, Vinderman didn't tweet at all or respond at all publicly to what Biden was doing to Ukraine.

00:41:31.420 And Vinderman, of course, was so deeply, deeply concerned about the fate of Ukraine, the land of his birth and so forth.

00:41:37.520 But under Biden, it doesn't matter because these people are all about politics and power.

00:41:41.640 They're not about principle.

00:41:42.960 The one thing he did say on Twitter about Ukraine was he responded to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who was trying to project an attitude of confidence.

00:41:53.000 And he was mocking Zelensky and said, you better, I'm paraphrasing here, but said, you better tell your countrymen to expect the worst rather than telling them anything that's going to give them false confidence.

00:42:04.080 So it looks like Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vinderman has basically given up on Ukraine, just like Biden has given up on Ukraine.

00:42:10.220 And the word came through today that members of Congress and various committees are being briefed by intelligence officials that they expect a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

00:42:17.660 There's not going to be a deterrent.

00:42:19.360 We are now playing on Vladimir Putin's Turk.

00:42:22.760 We are now discussing the absurd question of how to limit the extent of his invasion rather than how to prevent an invasion and how to hold Russia in check. 0.51

00:42:34.340 This doesn't stop at Ukraine.

00:42:35.800 I don't think the United States needs to be the world's policeman.

00:42:38.300 But we have NATO allies like Poland, for example, that fears Russian incursion as well.

00:42:45.560 We have a variety of countries in Eastern Europe, whether they're part of NATO or not, who want to be closer to the West, who are telling us that Russian invasion is a constant worry for them.

00:42:54.120 And somehow there's this idea that, like Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland, that if we just allow a little incursion into Ukraine, it doesn't matter.

00:43:03.620 The democratic establishment has learned nothing from 2014 and Crimea.

00:43:08.800 They've learned nothing of the positive lessons of Donald Trump's presidency, of strong leadership, of being unpredictable on the world stage, of making sure that our military is a feared threat, calling terrorists terrorists, making sure people know there's going to be retaliation if they cross the line.

00:43:25.660 None of that has been learned.

00:43:27.620 And it's to their great disadvantage because they've achieved nothing in a year of foreign policy other than giving Iran time to accelerate its nuclear weapons program, giving the Houthis time to attack Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. 0.63

00:43:38.820 There's been no progress at all.

00:43:40.800 China on the march everywhere around the world. 0.96

00:43:43.360 And so here we are.

00:43:44.280 We are basically at the end of this presidency in a functional sense.

00:43:48.880 You know, it's got no forward momentum.

00:43:51.560 And it's a crisis for the country.

00:43:53.280 It's a crisis for the Democratic Party.

00:43:54.740 And there's no sane human being who could watch that press conference yesterday and feel like we're being led by someone who knows what he wants to do and who's stable about it.

00:44:02.280 Yeah.

00:44:03.040 Listen, you've been very generous with your time.

00:44:04.800 I just have one more observation I'd like to share with you.

00:44:07.160 And I had forgotten about it.

00:44:08.420 But after the fall of the Soviet Union, when it sort of splintered into the former Soviet republics, Ukraine had a lot of nuclear warheads because they were stationed beyond just the Russian SSR.

00:44:20.400 They were around the former Soviet Union.

00:44:22.500 So in 1994, and you correct my history if I'm wrong here, Bill Clinton, along with other leaders, negotiated for Ukraine to give up its nukes, which maybe was the right idea for the world.

00:44:36.020 I don't know.

00:44:37.040 But in return for promises of territorial integrity.

00:44:40.520 Well, that was, I don't know, 25 years ago or more.

00:44:44.240 And I think there's a lesson at the end of the day, what diplomats said, there are no friends.

00:44:53.500 There's only interests.

00:44:54.800 There's no permanent friends or enemies.

00:44:56.520 There's only permanent interests in foreign affairs.

00:44:59.940 And well, that's especially true with Russia. 0.73

00:45:01.780 You know, we don't have a reason to be enemies with Russia.

00:45:05.820 We don't have a reason to be friends with Russia. 0.99

00:45:07.440 We have a lot of interests that coincide with Russia, and we have a lot of interests that diverge.

00:45:12.760 So the relationship is always going to be complicated.

00:45:16.080 But the idea that we would simply roll over and allow Russia to take advantage of Ukraine after giving it security guarantees, as you point out, in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons, is so corrosive to American security generally, because it means there's no advantage for countries in being aligned to us, at least while a Democrat is in the White House.

00:45:35.420 So you've got Saudi Arabia being punished by this administration for having worked with Israel and tried to counter Iran.

00:45:43.540 You've got the United Arab Emirates being punished.

00:45:45.260 They had an arms deal canceled or suspended by the Biden administration.

00:45:49.680 And now you've got Ukraine, which is being punished for hoping that the West might come to its aid.

00:45:56.780 And Biden is just debating what the definition of an incursion might be.

00:46:01.320 It's so ridiculous.

00:46:02.500 You know, when you go to Las Vegas, you always want to play with the House's money.

00:46:06.540 You know, you win a few chips and then you can bet with those so that if you lose, you're not losing anything that you brought with you to Las Vegas.

00:46:13.820 Putin is playing with our chips.

00:46:15.840 He's basically decided that he's going to extract concessions from the West by marching all these troops and all of these weapons to the border with Ukraine.

00:46:24.220 It looks like he's winning because Biden is already negotiating in public about whether we would station strategic arms in Ukraine and so on and so forth, whether we would allow Ukraine to become a member of NATO.

00:46:33.220 He says it's not likely anyway.

00:46:34.560 So who cares?

00:46:35.600 Those are all concessions to Putin that Putin has already achieved just by moving troops around within his own country.

00:46:41.140 And now we're having a debate about what a Russian military incursion might be that would require us to respond instead of what we did with Trump, where Trump would launch 59 airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad while the Chinese premier was eating chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago.

00:46:55.720 I mean, that's a real difference.

00:46:56.860 You know, we're lucky here in Canada, as someone once said, we're a fireproof house far away from inflammable materials.

00:47:05.120 We're lucky enough to be right by the United States.

00:47:08.420 If we were Taiwan, Israel, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Poland, the Baltics, or, of course, Ukraine, we would be in a pretty tough spot.

00:47:16.140 I think it's dark days, and I hope the dominoes don't fall.

00:47:18.960 Joel, you've been very generous with your time.

00:47:20.880 I look forward to keeping an eye on your essays and columns and news reports at Breitbart.com.

00:47:26.580 Thanks for being here today.

00:47:28.320 Thanks, Ezra.

00:47:29.100 All right, there you have it.

00:47:29.820 Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.

00:47:32.680 Stay with us.

00:47:33.220 More ahead.

00:47:42.500 Hey, welcome back.

00:47:43.440 Your letters about Xinhua applying for parliamentary press gallery status.

00:47:47.760 Rob A. says,

00:47:49.160 Got to hand it to China.

00:47:50.100 Their 40 chess game is impressive.

00:47:52.100 Plus, they are willing to plant individuals for 20-plus years all about the long game.

00:47:56.580 Oh, exactly.

00:47:57.560 You know what?

00:47:58.100 Just as the parliamentary press gallery hears the application from the Communist Party of China,

00:48:03.840 the government of Canada is refusing to let MPs see the truth about, I don't know if you remember,

00:48:10.200 the Chinese nationals who were working in Winnipeg's very high-security virus lab,

00:48:15.420 and then the police raided the place.

00:48:18.480 The Liberal Party won't show the facts of that to MPs.

00:48:22.160 I wonder why.

00:48:24.000 Kerry says,

00:48:25.440 Does this mean Australia isn't the worst anymore?

00:48:29.340 Australia's pretty bad.

00:48:31.060 The state of Victoria in Australia is awful.

00:48:33.920 The way they treat that city of Melbourne breaks your heart.

00:48:36.780 But I think Canada's getting bad.

00:48:37.920 I don't know if you've seen just how awful it's getting in Quebec these days.

00:48:42.200 Janice Williams says,

00:48:43.000 Thank you for sharing this information with the public.

00:48:45.640 I honestly had no idea what was happening in my own country.

00:48:48.720 Well, how would you when 99% of the media is on the payroll?

00:48:52.660 And I really mean 99%.

00:48:54.340 It's actually more than that.

00:48:55.680 You might recall a few months ago,

00:48:56.900 I published a list of 1,500 media companies in Canada that take Trudeau's subsidy.

00:49:03.620 I didn't even know there were 1,500 media companies in Canada.

00:49:06.700 Did you?

00:49:07.840 Anyway, let me leave you with our video of the day,

00:49:10.400 a Quebec pizzeria that won't enforce the vaccine passport.

00:49:14.040 I hope they do well.

00:49:15.220 I get the feeling they're going to be crushed like Adam Skelly's barbecue was in Toronto

00:49:19.660 with riot police and riot horses and 50 police cars.

00:49:23.640 Just outrageous.

00:49:24.920 I'll leave you with that.

00:49:25.720 Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,

00:49:29.300 to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:49:32.540 So I would just ask this restaurant owner and all other merchants to be patient.

00:49:39.540 If it's anything like we've seen in the past,

00:49:41.140 we experienced a minimum of a 60 to 70% decrease in income.

00:49:44.560 And I know it's difficult.

00:49:45.520 We have put in place the measure to help them financially.

00:49:49.140 We've done that.

00:49:50.360 I mean, provincially, we haven't really, we haven't gotten anything from Quebec.

00:49:52.840 It's been all federal.

00:49:53.820 We've gotten empty promises, as usual.

00:49:56.280 That's all they like to give.

00:49:57.860 So I'm just saying, let's make sure that we don't go back.

00:50:01.660 And let's go and do those measures gradually.

00:50:05.180 That's the only thing I could say.

00:50:06.620 We'd like to say to other restaurants that are leaning or on the fence,

00:50:11.100 that there are hundreds and hundreds of people who are ready to fill up any restaurant

00:50:14.100 who are ready and willing to join.

00:50:16.260 Hello, everyone.

00:50:20.120 Here is something interesting that will happen in Quebec next Sunday, on January 30.

00:50:26.960 A civil disobedience movement has been instigated by restaurant owners,

00:50:33.180 sport associations, store owners, and other entrepreneurs

00:50:36.620 with the intention of reopening on that day,

00:50:40.460 without requiring the QR code associated with the vaccine passport.

00:50:44.840 This calls quite a star, to the point that Christian Dubé, Quebec health minister,

00:50:51.500 specifically asked during a press conference to be patient and not to reopen for the moment.

00:50:57.980 So I would just ask this restaurant owner and all other merchants to be patient.

00:51:05.160 I know it's difficult.

00:51:06.020 We have put in place the measure to help them financially.

00:51:09.680 We've done that.

00:51:10.720 Here is what the owner of the Keste restaurant in Montreal had to say about this movement.

00:51:17.140 Why it's really important for you to join the movement to reopen on the 30th of January without vaccine passport?

00:51:23.960 So for us, the main reason we're doing this is because we think it's time that we all notice that there's time for change.

00:51:31.020 And we think that if you just ask for one portion of the population that are vaccinated to come in,

00:51:36.900 you're not going to get nearly as much support.

00:51:38.400 You're not going to make as much of an impact and as much of a message.

00:51:40.820 So we think by including everybody, because at the end of the day, we're all in this together.

00:51:45.080 It's not like this is just one portion of the population that's faced with this issue.

00:51:48.800 So I think it's important that you include everybody.

00:51:51.220 And I mean, it is discriminatory to do what is being done right now.

00:51:55.800 And I mean, it's important that we all band together and make a difference as a unit rather than just separating society like it's being done right now.

00:52:03.100 How did you receive the decision from the government that they decide to close all the restaurants on the 31st of December?

00:52:11.560 It was the same kind of decision that it took from last Easter.

00:52:17.240 What was the impact on your business that day?

00:52:20.720 So as per usual, they announced it last second.

00:52:24.040 They don't give any forewarning.

00:52:25.520 They just throw it on you.

00:52:27.860 And so, I mean, for us, it wasn't as much of an impact as other restaurants.

00:52:30.440 We still lost half of our staff that aren't coming back because, I mean, they're fed up at this point.

00:52:33.880 They don't want to go into an industry that they're going on shomage, off of shomage, onto shomage.

00:52:37.240 It doesn't make sense.

00:52:38.280 So we lost half of our staff.

00:52:40.340 We've been closed ever since the last closing because we just were like, I mean, it's just it's mentally just very frustrating.

00:52:46.320 So we closed.

00:52:46.840 We've been closed for the past two weeks.

00:52:48.180 If it's anything like we've seen in the past, we experienced a minimum of a 60 to 70 percent decrease in income.

00:52:53.880 So that's another big thing we all experienced.

00:52:55.600 But for us, our food costs and our costs aren't as high as other restaurants.

00:52:58.980 But for other restaurants that have much higher costs, meaning rent, food costs, if you have steaks or if you have fish, your cost is obviously a lot higher.

00:53:07.360 Your food expires a lot quicker.

00:53:08.920 So for them, they all get ready in anticipation for New Year's and they're only told the day before.

00:53:14.240 So for some restaurants, for example, because of also the SAQ has been on strike.

00:53:17.440 Everyone had to pre-buy all their alcohol.

00:53:20.480 Some restaurants bought over $100,000 worth of alcohol.

00:53:22.540 They bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of food that unfortunately had to just be either the alcohol you can always return, but the food has to get thrown away.

00:53:31.700 So it was a big loss for everybody.

00:53:34.440 And it was like usual, very last second without any warning and without any consideration to what we've all been through for the past three years.

00:53:41.460 The governmental help has definitely helped federally.

00:53:44.180 I mean, provincially, we haven't really we haven't gotten anything from Quebec.

00:53:46.700 It's been all federal.

00:53:48.180 We've gotten empty promises as usual.

00:53:49.820 That's all they like to give.

00:53:52.180 And I mean, on Quebec's end, they haven't helped federally.

00:53:54.920 They did provide rent subsidies and staff subsidies that definitely helped a lot.

00:53:59.760 But I mean, we don't need the money.

00:54:01.540 Keep us open and give that money to hospitals that actually need it.

00:54:04.640 There's no need to close us.

00:54:06.980 Keep on funneling money into restaurants to keep them open while they're closed and then not give anything to hospitals that are still struggling.

00:54:12.620 Like it's just counterintuitive if you're saying the hospitals are in need of help, not us.

00:54:17.200 So keep the hospitals open.

00:54:19.020 I mean, keep the restaurants open and give that money to the hospitals and actually fix the issue rather than just closing endlessly for the next God knows how many years.

00:54:26.820 And since you announced that you will reopen and disobey to the regulation of the government on the 30th of January, how the population did react to your choice, your decision?

00:54:37.060 Overall, I'd like to say it's been very, very positive.

00:54:40.700 So I'd like to say a good.

00:54:43.040 I can't give an exact percentage, obviously.

00:54:44.980 Just I'm just basing myself because it's me who's been answering all the all the messages on Instagram and on Facebook and going through them.

00:54:50.540 Minimum 70 percent, like minimum 70 percent.

00:54:53.380 It's been completely positive.

00:54:54.800 We've had obviously like everyone has their own opinions on situations and we all have to respect that.

00:55:00.740 And we've had a good like about a 30 percent just whatever comments.

00:55:06.100 And we've had like five percent of the comments just completely just awful.

00:55:11.000 Just not even just becomes a discussion, just becomes a hatred towards somebody based on their views on life.

00:55:17.320 So, I mean, that's just we knew we were going to face it.

00:55:19.900 So it's it's obviously it's part of it's part of it.

00:55:22.760 And we knew it was going to come.

00:55:24.120 And I mean, we work in a restaurant.

00:55:25.640 So you're always going to you're always going to deal with unhappy people.

00:55:27.680 So it's it's just it's part of the part of it all.

00:55:31.000 You know, a lot of other restaurants will open the same day.

00:55:35.620 So as of now, we know that there's going to be what we've we've we're getting messages and we're going back and forth.

00:55:42.480 A lot of restaurants as of now confirmed.

00:55:44.200 We have obviously ourselves Cafeteria Europia in Laval.

00:55:48.860 We have one restaurant in Quebec City that we're talking to that we'll be announcing tomorrow.

00:55:53.480 So I'm not going to give their name. I'll let them announce it.

00:55:55.280 They'll be announcing as well.

00:55:56.480 And then we also saw today that Saint-Houblon will be joining as well.

00:56:01.040 They have three locations in Montreal.

00:56:03.140 And then besides that, there's also Maison Istanbul in Laval as well, who will be opening.

00:56:07.980 Putting your business at risk is something that is definitely scary for everybody.

00:56:10.860 I mean, we risk losing licenses. We risk heavy fines.

00:56:14.120 We risk I mean, we risk losing the support of our clientele because I mean, you don't you're not guaranteed to have support.

00:56:19.920 You can either receive it or have people completely against you.

00:56:23.040 So there's definitely that as a fear factor to to make people jump in.

00:56:26.680 And another thing we've we'd like to say to other restaurants that are that are leaning or on the fence,

00:56:32.580 that there are hundreds and hundreds of people who are ready to fill up any restaurant who are who are ready and willing to join.

00:56:38.720 And I'm sure there's a well, not sure that I've seen that there's a ton of people who are ready to support anything that a restaurant may do.

00:56:44.680 There's a bunch of lawyers who are ready to back anybody up.

00:56:46.960 There's we have a community. Canada is strong. Canada is not divided, as we all think.

00:56:51.040 I mean, there is a lot of people ready to jump on this cause and a lot of people ready to make change in this movement.

00:56:55.960 So we will still be following all the sanitary measures because, like I said, we want really we really want to like push the fact that we want everybody on board.

00:57:03.200 So there are people who are against the mask. Obviously, there are people who are for it.

00:57:06.360 There are people for everything. So we're trying to find the middle ground where everyone can meet in the middle and feel safe if they come in one,

00:57:12.480 because we obviously don't want to we don't want our clients to come in feeling like they're going to get sick and leave being sick.

00:57:17.400 So we're going to follow all the sanitary measures. We're having a crew come in next week to properly clean the place.

00:57:22.440 We're looking into getting some HEPA filters to also make the quality of the air in place.

00:57:27.340 I mean, it's going to clear out the air and remove 99 percent of bacteria as well.

00:57:30.560 So we are going to be following ways to show that, look, there's a way where we can meet in the middle.

00:57:35.780 And there's a way where we can do this properly, where you don't have to close us all the time.

00:57:40.140 There's a way we can do this properly and efficiently. And there's no need for us to be closed.

00:57:44.160 Because, I mean, like we all know, there's no statistic, there's no fact that says it was us.

00:57:48.700 Now you're just pointing fingers and taking the blame off of yourselves.

00:57:51.380 So far, we can count more and more establishments joining in.

00:57:56.800 Some of them want to reopen, but keeping the sanitary measure in place,

00:58:01.640 while others simply want to remove the vaccine passport that discriminates against a part of the population.

00:58:09.140 We can feel the impatience of the population for the reopening of these businesses.

00:58:15.680 While this day go down smoothly, that remains to be seen,

00:58:20.780 but Ribbon News will be there to bring you the other side of the story.

00:58:25.420 This was Alexa for Ribbon News.

00:58:28.440 If you want us to fight against these vaccine passports, 1.00

00:58:36.140 please go to fightvaccinepassport.com,

00:58:40.240 chip in generously so we can hire a top-notch lawyer to go against it.

00:58:45.080 And if you think you are a specific case,

00:58:49.840 please fill the form at the same webpage, fightvaccinepassport.com.

00:58:55.720 Thanks.

00:58:58.440 We'll see you next time.

Rebel News Podcast - January 21, 2022

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Is Russia going to invade Ukraine again？ Joe Biden seems to think so — he says he's actually fine with that.

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