Rebel News Podcast - June 12, 2023


EZRA LEVANT ｜ Justin Trudeau meets with Ukraine’s leading Holocaust denier — and both the Canadian media and the Jewish lobby are silent

Topics
Andrei Melnick meeting Trudeau Trudeau meeting with Ukraine's leading Holocaust denier
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Andrei Melnick Donald Trump Hillary Clinton Joe Biden Polen Vladimir Putin George Soros Christine Anderson Michael Levitt Stepan Bandera Mark McKinnon Barack Obama Vladimir Zelensky Chrystia Freeland Ben Weingarten Dave Johnson Denken Sie Marty York Cannon and 37 more
EZRA LEVANT ｜ A scuffle breaks out at duelling rallies over transgenderism. But there's a surprising wrinkle to it EZRA LEVANT ｜ Rebel News wins battle in lawsuit against Trudeau's Twitter blacklisting

Episode Stats


Length

48 minutes

Words per minute

164.43

Word count

8,043

Sentence count

552

Harmful content

Misogyny

11

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

17

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Justin Trudeau meets with a Holocaust denier, and both the Canadian media and the Jewish lobby are silent. Ezra exposes the hypocrisy of the Canadian press, and asks if there's any good reason why a weak leader like Justin Trudeau would make a phone call to Vladimir Putin.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. You know, I saw a picture of Justin Trudeau meeting someone in Ukraine,
00:00:04.360 and I had no idea who he was because no Canadian journalist identified him, but the man identified
00:00:09.180 himself. His name was Andrei Melnick, and that name probably doesn't ring a bell, but
00:00:14.100 he's a prominent Holocaust denier. What was Trudeau doing meeting with him? I'll tell you
00:00:20.980 the details, but first let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. It's
00:00:25.220 this podcast, but with video, and especially on a show like today that's so useful. I want
00:00:30.440 to show you these pictures of Trudeau swanning around Kiev with this Nazi Holocaust denier.
00:00:37.500 You won't believe it unless you see it. Go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe. It's
00:00:42.060 eight bucks a month. You get the video version of this daily podcast, and the eight bucks
00:00:45.940 a month may not sound like a lot to you, but we rely on it to pay the bills here. I'd be
00:00:52.020 very grateful if you subscribed. Please go to rebelnewsplus.com. All right, here's today's
00:00:57.320 podcast.
00:01:13.720 Tonight, Justin Trudeau meets with Ukraine's leading Holocaust denier, and both the Canadian
00:01:19.200 media and the Jewish lobby are silent. It's June 12th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
00:01:26.200 Shame on you, you censorious bug.
00:01:39.340 On the weekend, Justin Trudeau made a trip to Ukraine. Here's a photo of it arriving, being
00:01:46.200 greeted by a Ukrainian politician named Andrei Milnik. I'll talk about him a bit more. It
00:01:52.640 was a surprise trip to Ukraine for Trudeau, but in a way not surprising. Trudeau's far better
00:01:57.040 received there than he is here in Canada, where he's heckled mercilessly whenever he appears
00:02:02.780 in public spaces that aren't controlled by his staff. 1.00
00:02:06.320 Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! You fucking piece of shit! Fucking pedophile! Fuck you! 1.00
00:02:17.340 But it's not just the common people in Canada who are turning against Trudeau. The fancy people, 1.00
00:02:22.040 well, they're giving Trudeau a hard time, too. Dave Johnson, the disgraced former governor general,
00:02:27.360 hired by Trudeau to make his Chinese corruption scandal go away. Well, Johnson resigned, and it
00:02:32.500 looks just awful. A new poll by Abacus Research, which is run by a liberal activist, by the way,
00:02:38.280 so they're certainly as pro-Trudeau as they get. They found that only 20% of Canadians think Trudeau
00:02:44.120 deserves to be re-elected. That's incredible. That's the little red bar at the bottom there.
00:02:50.100 20% of Canadians think he's doing well. So basically, I don't know, that's all the government
00:02:55.180 employees, Chinese diplomats, and CBC staff, and that's about it. I mean, who wouldn't want to go
00:03:00.980 to Ukraine to be treated like a rock star? Trudeau just gave away another half billion dollars to
00:03:07.500 Ukraine's war. No debate in the House of Commons about it, let alone a vote. I mean, there was no
00:03:12.320 debate or vote about giving 13 billion dollars to Volkswagen to build a battery factory in Canada.
00:03:17.440 Half a billion here, 13 billion there. Pretty soon you're talking real money. Gee, I wonder why we're
00:03:23.140 having inflation and high taxes. The media that accompanied Trudeau on his trip to Ukraine were
00:03:28.820 gushing over him, of course. Look at this tweet from the Globe and Mail's Mark McKinnon, just as one
00:03:34.720 example. He says, at the Canadian embassy in Kiev, I asked PM Justin Trudeau whether he would take a
00:03:42.300 phone call from Vladimir Putin. After a long pause, oh, I bet it was very dramatic. He said he'd never
00:03:48.520 consider the question, quote, he is not someone that I have a particular level of trust or interest
00:03:56.300 in at this point. That's your question for Trudeau? Look, whenever you think of Putin, there are
00:04:03.180 various reasons why he might call, I don't know, Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, or Americans Joe Biden,
00:04:09.880 or France's Emmanuel Macron, or the UK's Rishi Sunak, or Xi Jinping of China, or Erdogan, or Germany's
00:04:16.060 Schultz. In what possible scenario could you imagine, either a good or a bad reason, can you
00:04:22.340 think of any reason why Putin would call Justin Trudeau? I mean, is there a less consequential
00:04:28.880 leader on the world stage? Is there a weaker lightweight than Trudeau? I'm truly curious
00:04:34.300 in what scenario the Globe and Mail thinks Putin would telephone Trudeau. I mean, for good or bad
00:04:40.280 reasons. Can you think of one? Even the United States and the United Kingdom and Australia have just set
00:04:45.920 up their own foreign affairs club called AUKUS, so they don't have to include Canada anymore.
00:04:54.240 Here's that same Mark McKinnon when Trudeau arrived this weekend. He tweets,
00:05:00.720 in standing up for press freedoms during his visit to Kiev, Justin Trudeau rediscovers Canada's historic
00:05:06.880 role in Ukraine. My take. Yeah, really, Trudeau standing up for press freedoms, that's a new one.
00:05:11.860 But for now, just look at that photo again. You see that man there again, that Andrei Melnyk? He met
00:05:18.240 Trudeau and was touring him around the Capitol. Now, I read Mark McKinnon's entire story in the Globe and
00:05:25.320 Mail, and it doesn't mention Melnyk. Same with every other media company that covered the trip.
00:05:32.980 None of them mentioned Melnyk. But there's no chance they didn't know who he is. He's the deputy foreign
00:05:38.900 minister of Ukraine. That's why he was meeting Trudeau and touring him around. That's why he
00:05:43.300 was the official greeter. But he's much more than that. He's a notorious Holocaust denier and Nazi
00:05:50.160 sympathizer. For real. I mean, a real Nazi, not a Nazi, like Trudeau calls anyone who disagrees with
00:05:56.300 them. Andrei Melnyk is a passionate defender of the Nazis, and he has caused international incidents
00:06:02.980 over it. I mean, watch just for a couple of minutes as he goes on a rant about how the Jews
00:06:08.580 are lying to him about the Holocaust and about how Stepan Bandera, Ukraine's leading Nazi during the
00:06:15.740 Second World War, was actually a good guy and don't believe the lies about him. This is an excerpt for a
00:06:20.420 much longer show. This wasn't a gaffe or an accident or a secret recording. Andrei Melnyk was on the record
00:06:27.760 very proudly and stubbornly defending the Nazi project in Ukraine. Watch for a bit. 0.80
00:06:33.860 That was, was sie, was du nennst. Es gab mehrere Massaker an Polen in der West-Ukraine 0.82
00:06:38.020 durchgeführt von den Barriere-Porten. Ja, und es gab auch, und es gab auch auf gleiche Weise
00:06:41.920 die gleichen Massaker der Polen gegenüber der Ukraine. Auch 10.000 der Ukraine. Macht ja nichts
00:06:46.180 besser. 10.000 der Ukraine wurden, das war, das war, das war ein Krieg. Und deswegen, das wollen
00:06:52.980 jetzt die Polen, also diese Geschichte, politisieren. Wir sind dagegen. Aber hat Israel Unrecht? Israel,
00:06:58.260 der Staat Israel, das 800.000 Juden auch von Banderas Truppen und Bandera umgekehrt? Also Israel, 0.80
00:07:02.880 was heißt? Denken Sie sich das aus? Ich weiß nicht, was Sie sich ausdenken, aber wir reden über Bandera. Und
00:07:09.180 wir reden über Bandera. Und schon ist die ganze Welt erkennt an, dass Bandera an der Ermordung von
00:07:13.200 den von hunderttausenden Juden beteiligt sind. Nein, das stimmt nicht. Außer die Ukraine. Es gibt keine Belege,
00:07:18.960 dass Bandera-Truppen hunderttausende Juden ermordet haben. Es gibt keine Belege. Es gibt,
00:07:24.480 das ist diese Narrative, dass die Russen bis heute durchsetzen und das in Deutschland und auch in Polen
00:07:30.900 und Israel auch unterstützen können. Denken sich die jüdischen Gemeinden das alle aus? Ich weiß nicht,
00:07:35.680 woher sie diese Daten nehmen, aber ich bin bereit, auch mit den jüdischen Gemeinden darüber sachlich
00:07:42.540 zu reden. Wenn sie wirklich nicht nur das wiederholen, was wir seit Jahrzehnten hören,
00:07:48.640 Bandera ist... Es gab Flugblätter, als die Deutschen reingekommen sind nach Reviv. Da hieß es,
00:07:53.460 Volk, das musst du wissen. Moskowiten, Polen, Ungaren und Juden, sie sind deine Feinde. Vernichte sie.
00:07:59.400 Das musst du wissen. Deine Führung. Dein Führer, Stepan Bandera. Was für Flugblätter? Als die Deutschen
00:08:07.140 gerade einmarschiert sind, da haben sie quasi an die Bevölkerung das verteilt, die ja noch unter anderer
00:08:13.180 Herrschaft an Lawanen. Die haben sich ja mit den Deutschen verbrüdert. Das ist doch ganz klar.
00:08:19.200 Also... Und ich frage mich, ich frage mich halt, ich meine, ich verstehe... Also ich werde dir heute
00:08:25.120 nichts sagen, dass ich mich davon distanziere. Und das war's. Ja. Und das war's. Das ist ja deine Entscheidung.
00:08:30.860 Ja, das ist meine Entscheidung und das kannst du nicht verstehen, aber weil... Ich verstehe nicht, wie man
00:08:36.700 jemanden als Helden bezeichnen kann, der gleichzeitig Massenmörder von Juden und Polen war.
00:08:42.860 Bandera war kein Massenmörder. Von Juden und Polen. Er war kein Massenmörder.
00:08:49.120 Das war part of a lengthy conversation. He denies that the Nazis killed 800,000 Ukrainian Jews.
00:08:55.400 He said there was zero evidence of it. He said that Germany and Poland and Israel were all lying
00:09:01.540 about it. In effect, he said those countries were faking the Holocaust and that it didn't 0.58
00:09:06.900 actually happen that way. Those countries were shocked. Poland and Israel lodged an official
00:09:12.360 diplomatic protest. Germany, which doesn't take kindly to Holocaust deniers, pressed Ukraine to dismiss
00:09:18.620 Melnick as their ambassador to Germany. And they did. Melnick literally caused an international
00:09:25.560 incident by championing the leading Ukrainian Nazi leader. It was so serious, Ukraine actually caved
00:09:33.140 and fired him. Else Germany would have deported him, I suppose. And that's literally the first man Trudeau
00:09:41.180 met with when he arrived in Kyiv. That's the man who toured around the city with Trudeau. Oh, and look
00:09:48.440 who was there too. Chrystia Freeland. You might recall that Freeland's own grandfather worked for
00:09:55.040 Bandera, the Ukrainian Nazis. Freeland's grandfather actually published a Nazi newspaper in Ukraine that
00:10:01.700 he had expropriated from a Jew, actually. I'm not blaming Freeland for her grandfather. How could I?
00:10:07.840 But she kept his identity a secret and whitewashed it and claimed it was Russian propaganda.
00:10:13.380 She literally tried the same tactic as Andrei Melnick of claiming that any concerns were fake.
00:10:21.180 Chrystia Freeland's grandfather was a Ukrainian Nazi and she tried to hide it. And there she is on the 0.54
00:10:27.980 weekend proudly touring around Kyiv with Justin Trudeau under the guidance of Ukraine's most senior
00:10:33.980 Nazi sympathizer, Andrei Melnick. He's not shy about his views. He's not a nobody. He was the former 0.91
00:10:40.720 ambassador to Germany. He caused a multinational scandal. It's still scandalous that he's in the Ukrainian 1.00
00:10:46.020 government at all. But for Trudeau and Freeland to choose to be toured around with him publicly, no less,
00:10:51.860 is so utterly gross. Before Melnick had his video rant against the Jews in Israel, Trudeau and Freeland
00:10:59.120 might have been able to plead ignorance. But after? No. The only possible explanation is that they're fine with
00:11:06.500 him. Either they're fine with him and they don't mind spending time with him, learning from him, being led
00:11:14.000 by him. Either they're fine with that or, God forbid, they actually agree with him. It's got to be one of the
00:11:21.180 two. And not a word from the media other than, Mr. Trudeau, if Putin called you on the phone, what would you
00:11:28.520 say? That's a child's question. That's a flattering hypothetical question that puffs up Trudeau. It's never
00:11:33.320 going to happen. But it's a lot easier to ask a dreamy question than that. Then why are you meeting
00:11:38.820 with Ukraine's leading Holocaust denier? Did the reporters who accompany Justin Trudeau on this trip
00:11:44.860 genuinely not know? Or are they simply afraid Vladimir Zelensky has banned opposition media
00:11:52.060 just as he's banned opposition political parties and he suspended elections in Ukraine indefinitely?
00:11:58.760 He's literally suspended elections until the war is over, until the emergency is over, which isn't
00:12:03.800 happening anytime soon. No wonder Trudeau likes this guy. Oh, and he's even cracking down on churches that
00:12:09.300 he thinks are insufficiently loyal. That's his move. Anyone in the media, in politics or religion who
00:12:14.520 doesn't support him, he says is a traitor working for Russia. So yeah, maybe journalists just don't want
00:12:20.380 to ask about Andre Melnick because they're afraid of being detained or jailed or worse. But what's the
00:12:28.020 excuse of Canada's official Jewish lobby? I say this as a Canadian and I say this as a Jew, and actually
00:12:34.680 as a former director of one of these groups, for years I was on the board of the Canada-Israel
00:12:39.000 Committee, which is now part of Canada's largest Jewish lobby group called CJA, or the Center for Israel
00:12:44.360 in Jewish Affairs. If you skim their website, you can see they claim to fight anti-Semitism
00:12:50.520 and Holocaust denial. Really? It's the same for the B'nai B'rith, which is a kind of competitor to CJA.
00:12:57.240 And then there's even a special Holocaust-oriented Jewish group called the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
00:13:03.960 I was checking their Twitter feeds all weekend and today, all three of these groups, and there's simply
00:13:09.000 nothing on Trudeau meeting and greeting and touring and learning and praising Ukraine's
00:13:12.840 leading Nazi. Not one word.
00:13:17.960 CJ's busy, though. He's busy tweeting about an Israeli soccer team. Thanks for that.
00:13:23.480 And here's a tweet from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. They're upset about a spray-painted
00:13:27.640 swasca. I get it, me too. But which do you think is perhaps more momentous, Trudeau meeting with Ukraine's
00:13:33.720 leading Holocaust denier in public proudly and giving him half a billion dollars, or
00:13:38.680 some anonymous spray-painted graffiti on a fence? Look, it's pretty obvious what's going on here.
00:13:44.760 These Jewish lobby groups don't dare criticize Justin Trudeau. In fact, 0.94
00:13:49.240 the Simon Wiesenthal Center's new president just happens to be Michael Levitt, a former Trudeau MP.
00:13:55.720 Maybe that's why he was tweeting about golf this weekend instead of his former boss. Mustn't upset
00:14:02.600 the boss. Hey, do you remember a few months ago when Christine Anderson, the member of the European
00:14:07.960 Parliament from Germany, came to visit in Canada? Do you remember when she was denounced as a racist 0.98
00:14:13.960 by everyone? Everyone in the media, all the so-called human rights group, frankly,
00:14:18.760 even Pierre Paglia's office denounced him. Do you remember that, denouncing her?
00:14:23.880 I know Christine Anderson a little bit, not personally, but I know her politically.
00:14:26.920 I've interviewed her a few times before. She's great. She was really strong on freedom and the
00:14:31.960 truckers. It's just a reminder. It goes out to all the Canadians, especially the Canadian truckers.
00:14:39.160 I am so very proud of you. I applaud your bravery and your determination to stand up for freedom,
00:14:47.160 democracy and the rule of law. She was universally condemned as a Nazi, 0.98
00:14:53.160 but that's the thing about Germany. And it's a reason why they kicked out Milnik and refused to give
00:14:57.800 him, to have him as Ukraine's ambassador. It is literally a crime to be a Nazi in Germany.
00:15:05.080 So you can say a lot of things about Christine Anderson. You can say she's wrong or you don't
00:15:09.160 like her or whatever, but the accusation that she's a Nazi is actually not only untrue, it's legally
00:15:16.120 impossible. It is a crime in Germany to even say Heil Hitler or to fly a Nazi flag. Holocaust denial is a crime.
00:15:24.200 If she had said or done anything that this Nazi, Melnick, had said, she would be ejected from her
00:15:30.360 role and prosecuted and jailed. The insane and defamatory smears against her were built on nothing,
00:15:37.080 really just a factually false smear of her published in the Toronto Sun by liberal opposition trickster
00:15:42.600 Warren Kinsella. But nonetheless, Sija, the biggest Jewish lobby group in Canada, they went nuts over her.
00:15:49.080 Here's just one example. We're deeply concerned by Conservative Party of Canada MPs, Leslyn Lewis,
00:15:55.960 Dean Allison, Colin Carey, meeting with Christine Anderson, a member of the far-right German AFD party,
00:16:03.080 known for Islamophobic and anti-immigrant views. We raised this directly with Conservative Party
00:16:07.720 headquarters. So naming and shaming Conservative MPs for meeting with a Conservative member of the European
00:16:13.640 Parliament. Not just condemning them in public, but demanding the peer poly of discipline them. That's what
00:16:18.520 Sija was doing there. Nothing about Jews, by the way. Nothing about the Holocaust, by the way. She's never 0.77
00:16:23.720 said or done anything like that. She's actually a Philo-Semite. She likes the Jews. She likes Israel. 0.77
00:16:29.720 But these Jewish groups were raging against her. Not a peep about Trudeau, though. Not from Sija, not from the
00:16:36.120 Simon Wiesenthal Center. Isn't that funny? I wrote an email to those three Jewish groups, and I have
00:16:44.840 some connection to each of them. Two of them, Sija and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, didn't even write
00:16:49.480 back. I mean, why would they? They've decided to stay quiet. They're not going to feed the fire here.
00:16:55.400 The third group, the B'nai B'rith, they wrote back. I'll give them credit for that. They said,
00:16:59.000 Hi, Ezra. Thanks for your email. We have researched Andrei Melnyk and found one contentious statement.
00:17:05.880 It's a highly disappointing statement. For certain, we denounce in the strongest possible
00:17:11.240 terms any remarks that have the capacity to distort or diminish the facts of the Holocaust. However,
00:17:16.600 our research did not produce any evidence that suggests Mr. Melnyk is a notorious Ukrainian
00:17:21.640 Nazi and Holocaust denier. Signed, Marty York, Director of Communications. Really.
00:17:29.640 Did you not see the video? Germany kicked him out. When was the last time Germany kicked out a
00:17:35.400 diplomat? It created an international scandal. Poland and Israel put up public statements condemning
00:17:41.080 him. That's not really enough to move the needle for the B'nai B'rith. Would they be making any public
00:17:47.640 comment at all? I wrote back to Marty and he said, Ezra, just to re-articulate my remarks in my previous
00:17:52.760 email to you, based on the evidence available to us, we don't share your interpretation. We will not be
00:17:57.880 making a public statement on this. Really. A private email telling me they don't like his
00:18:05.320 one contentious comment, but they're not going to even tweet about it. But even that is more than
00:18:11.720 Michael Levitt, the former Trudeau MP who now runs the Simon Wiesenthal Center. But of course,
00:18:17.080 I mean, he knows his job. Use the Simon Wiesenthal Center as a forum to call conservatives anti-Semites.
00:18:23.640 He'd never say that about his boss, Justin Trudeau. His job there is to smear conservatives, don't you
00:18:28.440 know? And siege it. What a disappointment. Not a peep from them, but why? Is it that important that
00:18:36.920 they ingratiate themselves with Trudeau? Will they literally abide a Nazi Holocaust denier just for that?
00:18:44.280 Well, that and a lot of money. You know, you can search online all the grants from Trudeau to
00:18:52.600 different groups. Here's a list of the grants given by Trudeau to the three organizations. 25 grand, 25 grand,
00:18:59.720 113 grand, 53 grand, 150 grand to the B'nai B'rith. There are literally 72 checks. It actually goes back,
00:19:07.720 predates Trudeau. I haven't added it all up, but it's millions. Maybe that's why the B'nai B'rith won't
00:19:14.520 criticize them publicly. Criticize a Nazi, get millions of dollars from the government. Here's the
00:19:23.480 Simon Wiesenthal group, 15 grand, 27 grand. I added it up, more than $200,000 from Justin Trudeau
00:19:30.680 since Michael Levitt, the Trudeau MP, took over a couple years ago. No wonder Michael Levitt won't
00:19:36.920 say a word about Trudeau's new Nazi friend. And then there's CJA, the biggest group. Here's a list of
00:19:43.640 their grants. Quarter of a million under Trudeau. Quarter of a million dollars, including a huge chunk
00:19:52.200 for, quote, fighting racism, just not Andrei Melnick's racism. That's an enormous amount of
00:19:59.560 money, but in another way, it's a tiny amount of money. I mean, is that really all it takes to make
00:20:04.840 a Holocaust remembrance group accept a Holocaust denier? For Jewish groups to stay silent from
00:20:11.080 someone who says the Jewish community is lying about the Holocaust? Is that all it takes?
00:20:17.960 What do you think? Do you think it's fine for Trudeau to swan around with a Holocaust-denying
00:20:24.840 Nazi apologist? And for Canada's regime media to ignore it? And for the Jewish lobby to abide it 0.87
00:20:32.520 or excuse it? I'm stunned, actually. I really am. But I'll tell you one thing. The next time Trudeau
00:20:38.040 accuses a trucker of being a Nazi, you'll know he's just using the Holocaust and the loss of six million
00:20:44.600 Jews as a partisan talking point, as a political weapon. Trudeau doesn't give a damn about actual
00:20:50.120 Nazis or actual Holocaust deniers. He just finished spending the weekend with one of them. He's fine 0.60
00:20:56.280 with them. And so is the Canadian media. And shockingly, so is Canada's official Jewish lobby 0.56
00:21:03.400 groups. That's what's sad here. You just can't take them seriously anymore. When they cry wolf about
00:21:10.360 anti-Semitism, how could you possibly believe them? Stay with us for more. 0.99
00:21:28.680 Hey, you want to be careful about accusing your political opponents of criminality. And
00:21:32.920 you don't want them to accuse you of the same easily because we don't want to criminalize
00:21:37.160 political disagreements. That's what I say whenever people say we should get Trudeau for treason.
00:21:42.600 I said, well, first of all, I don't think he's actually committed treason. He's done some
00:21:45.560 atrocious things. And who knows, maybe there will be some revelations in his secret deals
00:21:49.880 with the Chinese Communist Party. He's certainly trying to stop those facts from coming out.
00:21:53.720 But we do not want to too easily criminalize a difference of opinion. First of all, we want to have
00:22:00.760 a freewheeling political public square. And second of all, don't think for a second
00:22:05.560 that it wouldn't be weaponized against our side first, because the other side has no compunction
00:22:11.640 about these things. They don't play by the Marcus of Queensbury rules. I look at the legal troubles of
00:22:18.440 Donald Trump and I compare them to the absolute immunity by the Democrats. Here's Hillary Clinton,
00:22:24.280 who tweeted this photo of herself the other day, wearing a hat that said, but her emails, a reference
00:22:29.480 to the illegal storage and use of a private email address on a private email server, and then
00:22:37.160 deleting tens of thousands of those contrary to the law. Do you think she was charged, detained,
00:22:44.040 searched, fingerprinted, any of that? Of course not. And she's so confident that she won't be. She'll
00:22:49.080 literally have a taunting ball cap pointing out her immunity. Well, not so Donald Trump. And joining us 0.62
00:22:57.320 now to talk about his latest legal travails is our friend Ben Weingarten, the senior contributor
00:23:02.920 for thefederalist.com. Ben, great to see you again. I'm trying to understand if these charges against
00:23:09.880 Donald Trump are just more noise, like the last 200 allegations against him, or if there's something
00:23:16.280 qualitatively different about these, because it's the legal system as opposed to just journalistic and
00:23:23.720 political hatchet jobs. Can you give our viewers, especially those of us up here in Canada who
00:23:28.440 maybe aren't following it super closely, what exactly is going on with Donald Trump and the
00:23:33.320 courts these days? Well, this federal indictment is qualitatively and frankly quantitatively different
00:23:41.800 from anything that we've seen in American history. And as you noted, the use of the legal system to
00:23:48.520 criminalize political dissent, certainly something that is no place in a free country and a free
00:23:53.640 society, and certainly something that is relatively anathema when you look at American political and
00:24:00.600 legal history. Now we have the first federal prosecution of a president, an indictment of a
00:24:07.400 former president and leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. And the
00:24:16.680 charges are very serious. And if you take all the counts and the years associated with them together,
00:24:21.320 you're talking about potentially hundreds of years behind bars. So that is qualitatively and
00:24:26.120 quantitatively different from what we've seen before. This case, however, is consistent with what
00:24:30.920 we've seen before in the sense that it represents the height of the weaponization and hyper politicization
00:24:37.720 of the national security and law enforcement apparatus, and can be seen as one act of a running tragedy
00:24:47.240 for America and for the free world, in which there have been efforts to sabotage and subvert,
00:24:55.080 quote unquote, our democracy, but really to undermine our republic, first beginning with Russiagate,
00:25:00.680 which sought effectively to halt the peaceful transfer of power to President Trump,
00:25:05.160 then continuing with Ukrainegate and the exploitation of January 6, and continuing with a slew of frivolous
00:25:11.480 suits now to this one. But again, this is different because these are Espionage Act charges,
00:25:19.080 which not to get too into the weeds, but there's a very strong, I believe, case to be made that that's
00:25:25.640 wholly inapt, that this case should have been, if it was going to be brought, that the relevant statutes
00:25:31.960 would have been the Presidential Records Act. And then on top of that, there's an obstruction case of
00:25:38.040 a non-crime, I would argue, layered on top. And this is something that is meaningful for many reasons
00:25:47.480 beyond being clear election interference and this arising at the very same time that Joe Biden faces
00:25:54.200 charges of allegedly taking a bribe and massive revelations about his family's own dubious dealings,
00:26:01.240 influence peddling, potentially criminal influence peddling with America's worst adversaries that could
00:26:06.280 have really compromised national security. But beyond that, what this reflects is essentially
00:26:13.160 a bureaucratic squabble and unhinged bureaucrats launching a case against the president, which was
00:26:21.560 a fishing expedition on grounds we've never seen before applied with very odd machinations as well,
00:26:29.800 given that this investigation and the grand jury originally and many of the major decisions leading
00:26:36.920 to this indictment were made in a DC venue, which would be favorable to the DOJ, not in Florida,
00:26:45.640 where the case is ultimately going to be heard. So there are many in the weeds aspects of this,
00:26:51.240 but I think at the highest level, we've never seen a prosecution brought like this,
00:26:55.240 an investigation executed the way this investigation was executed and a president be held, not just
00:27:01.800 treated unequally, but below the law. And you mentioned Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton was 1.00
00:27:06.920 a secretary of state dealing in such information. This is a president and a president does have different
00:27:13.000 powers from any other government officer as a commander in chief, when it comes to being able to
00:27:18.520 retain documents, access documents, share documents, etc. So no one has ever been treated as far below
00:27:25.080 the law, I would argue, as Donald Trump has been at such a senior position in the government,
00:27:29.880 the senior most position in the federal government.
00:27:31.960 Yeah, it's my understanding that by nature of the office, a president may declassify anything at
00:27:37.960 any time for any reason without any oversight. It is his power alone. And I mean, correct me if I'm wrong
00:27:45.000 on that. But also this wasn't in, for example, one of the things that the Clintons were doing
00:27:49.880 when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state is husband Bill was running the Clinton foundations
00:27:54.600 that was simultaneously raising donations, 10 million, 25 million dollars from other countries
00:28:01.880 that Hillary Clinton was operating with as secretary of state. So Hillary Clinton was making decisions 1.00
00:28:07.480 as secretary of state. And Bill was collecting literally eight figure checks from the same
00:28:14.120 countries. Donald Trump, it sounds like, just has some paperwork at Mar-a-Lago. He's not trying to
00:28:21.320 hustle, you know, 20 million dollar grants from Russia or Ukraine. It just seems so qualitatively different,
00:28:28.360 but they're going after him and not her or Obama or any others. I don't know.
00:28:34.120 I let me ask you this. Does it have a chance? Does this have a chance of success? Or is this such a
00:28:41.320 obvious, you know, attempt to make something out of nothing that it'll fail if not at the first
00:28:48.920 instance, certainly in any court of appeal? Does this have any chance of succeeding is what I'm saying.
00:28:54.120 Well, before I go there, let's also just note, and then there's Joe Biden who had records from
00:28:59.160 his time as a senator and a vice president when he had no authority to declassify them,
00:29:04.440 let alone take them, and they were in his possession. And I even hasten, I even hasten to
00:29:10.360 go into this, you know, double standard aspect of it because such a case has never been brought
00:29:15.640 against a president or a vice president or anyone else at this level on these kinds of grounds,
00:29:20.600 investigated in these ways with the shock and awe raid on his estate, etc. There's nothing else like
00:29:27.320 this. And so that's why I hasten to even go into let's look at precedent or there's a case judicial
00:29:33.640 watch pursued against Bill Clinton about tapes that were hidden in his socks drawer, which show that he
00:29:39.400 basically had clear free ran to do with them as he wished. Without even going there, you know,
00:29:44.680 this gets to the broader point that you're asking about, you know, not so much is there merit to this
00:29:50.440 necessarily. But where does it ultimately go? And, you know, luckily in this case, unlike in many
00:29:57.080 other cases, particularly in D.C., a hostile deep state dominated venue, it does appear that the
00:30:03.720 judge presiding over this case, Judge Cannon, who was a Trump appointed judge, made rulings with
00:30:10.280 respect to a special master reviewing the documents that the FBI had taken originally from Mar-a-Lago,
00:30:16.680 made judgments that seemed to hold merit and that seemed to challenge the government's position
00:30:21.800 in certain instances, and rightfully so. However, what I would say is that we don't know how what
00:30:28.840 this jury is ultimately going to be composed of. I mean, I trust a jury of Floridians in a Southern
00:30:33.960 district, probably over in Washington, D.C., but you know that the prosecution will be as zealous and as
00:30:41.720 enraged as they could possibly be. And the special counsel, Jack Smith, obviously does not want to
00:30:47.720 lose this case. So I wouldn't put anything past them. Now, ultimately, where does this go?
00:30:52.840 This may ultimately end up being appealed upwards, and it could potentially end up in front of the
00:30:57.320 Supreme Court. And one of the things I've been speculating about is that one of the reasons they
00:31:02.280 are now attacking Judge Cannon, they being many in the media aligned with the prosecutors bringing this
00:31:09.080 case, is that ultimately, this is telegraphing what they will do with the Supreme Court, which
00:31:13.400 they've been attacking, as you know, mercilessly for years now, particularly as the composition
00:31:18.440 changed and became more conservative under Trump, to attack that court and call it illegitimate,
00:31:23.960 and to try to claim that these trumped-up ethics violations that are not there with respect to the
00:31:29.880 likes of a Justice Clarence Thomas, for example. And I believe that ultimately, if and when this case,
00:31:35.320 or several other cases, because there's other prosecutions ongoing, do end up at the Supreme
00:31:40.120 Court, that there's going to be a massive campaign to try and coerce and threaten those justices,
00:31:46.680 directly or indirectly, to rule rightly, as the progressives who dominate here would like them
00:31:53.480 to rule. And I think that's where this is ultimately going, is if and when any or all of these cases go to
00:31:58.920 the Supreme Court, and there may be other indictments forthcoming, there's going to be a massive
00:32:02.600 pressure campaign against whoever is perceived to be weak-kneed to try and get the court to go along
00:32:08.600 and make what, in my judgment, would be a grossly negligible and horrific rulings
00:32:13.960 for our republic, and again, more broadly, for the free world.
00:32:17.960 You know, I have a question for you. There's so many of these things, and they all sound the same to me.
00:32:23.160 This one's going to bring down Trump, Stormy Daniels this, you know, the Russians,
00:32:27.400 like there's just, there's been so many of these, and they all feel the same. And I know they're all
00:32:31.800 a little different, but it's such a blur. And every time Democrat cable news whips it up, this is,
00:32:38.520 the walls are closing. We've probably all seen the TV mashup of journalists using that turn of
00:32:44.440 phrase, the walls are closing in, the walls are closing in. They really said that for four years
00:32:48.520 when he was president. So to me, I start to tune it out as noise. I say, oh yeah, they're going after
00:32:55.720 Trump and he's quarreling back. I'm not even going to look at the details. I believe that the deep
00:33:00.920 state, so to speak, is how to get them. But I guess on the other side, there's a lot of people
00:33:05.400 who are either Democrats or some independents who are saying, another one of these, I'm not going to
00:33:10.680 look into the details. I just know that Trump equals chaos. Trump equals, you know, he's talking about
00:33:18.520 himself. He's defending himself. He's calling for vengeance. He's showing his emotion. I'm not even going
00:33:24.440 to look at the details. It's just a bunch of quarreling, quarrelsome people. So for me,
00:33:30.680 I tune it out and say, oh, that's just the deep state. But I suppose the other side tunes it out
00:33:35.160 and say, oh, that's Trump. We know he's guilty. He's just never not in trouble. And I guess that's,
00:33:40.680 that's a PR win for the other side is there's probably more people. There's probably enough people
00:33:45.880 who are just sick of the Trump moving festival of oddities and curiosities that say, I just got,
00:33:55.240 I just don't want that anymore. Biden is awful, but at least he's not, you know, he stumbles and
00:34:01.080 he forgets his words, but at least it's not like a moving thunderstorm all the time. What do you think
00:34:06.600 of that? Yeah, I think that's part of the point. I think they want to instill Trump fatigue so that
00:34:12.920 even people who view the deep state's attacks as egregious or who voted for Trump once or twice
00:34:21.720 might say, you know, enough is enough. I don't want to deal with the headache. But what I would
00:34:26.200 argue the counter to that is if you let Trump be victim of this system, you are next. And we've
00:34:33.560 already seen, and to think that someone who would be purportedly unimpeachable and have none of Trump's
00:34:39.560 foibles wouldn't still be subjected to an equal assault to the extent they presented a real threat
00:34:46.600 to the powers that be is beyond foolish and beyond an underestimation of what we're up against. I mean, 0.61
00:34:52.200 we've seen something akin to in Canada where you have parents concerned about their kids being
00:34:58.280 indoctrinated in racial Marxism in schools or who oppose draconian COVID-19 related policies
00:35:05.400 who are targeted literally as domestic terrorists. You had a bulletin put out by an FBI office
00:35:12.360 calling for potentially trying to implant spies in local Catholic churches. And this is stuff that is
00:35:19.880 totally anathema to our system. And then, of course, obviously, the J6 prosecutions where you have 0.98
00:35:26.920 the lowliest of people with non-criminal backgrounds who are treated as domestic terrorists. And sometimes
00:35:34.040 the federal prosecutors try to slap them with terrorism enhancements and such. So Trump is the
00:35:39.720 tip of the iceberg here. It's potentially millions of Americans that are under threat, their liberties
00:35:46.360 under threat. And to your point, however, I do agree as well, it's easy to become desensitized to
00:35:53.480 these assaults because it's just perpetual. But there is something different here, which is,
00:35:59.720 it's one thing when it comes to impeachment and removal, let's say, which is the highest of all
00:36:04.600 political remedies. Now we're talking about federal prosecutors with weaponized law at a time where
00:36:12.360 any and all conservative lawyers, by the way, in America are under assault by organized pressure from
00:36:18.120 the left. There's something called 65 project where they target for personal and professional ruination.
00:36:25.160 Any and all judges who might represent conservatives, for example, in election integrity cases,
00:36:29.960 the group gets its name for the 65 lawsuits that were tossed around election integrity in 2020.
00:36:37.080 So there's not necessarily people out there willing to provide defense in a federal prosecution.
00:36:43.000 It's easy to slip up and be caught on a technicality. And essentially, you have to be a thousand percent
00:36:48.440 right. And the other side can still concoct things to make you look wrong or bad and create unease
00:36:55.880 within the jury. And that's why I think a lot of people got a very weak knee when they saw the
00:37:00.520 indictment. Because if you look at the indictment, it presents things that make it appear as if Trump
00:37:06.360 has tried to mislead or thrown investigators off from some heinous crime. And that is what is different
00:37:14.440 here is that you have the strongest, most powerful law enforcement apparatus going after him now.
00:37:21.640 And you don't know what's going to happen in a court and when it gets kicked up potentially to higher
00:37:25.720 courts. So the legal peril is more potential legal peril here is significantly more substantial.
00:37:32.920 And of course, it's in the middle of a presidential election as well. So on the one hand, yes,
00:37:37.480 it's a never ending assault and the walls are perpetually closing in, but not really closing in.
00:37:41.960 On the other hand, this represents kind of the heightening to its apex of the assaults,
00:37:47.560 because you're talking about Trump behind bars at the end of the day.
00:37:51.320 You know, I see Trump has made a statement on his own version of Twitter called Truth Social,
00:37:55.800 and I'm just going to read a little bit about it. It says, this is Trump. Now that the seal is broken,
00:38:01.720 he's talking about the information about the Biden family taking crimes. In addition to closing the
00:38:08.360 border and removing all of the criminal elements that have illegally invaded our country, making 0.51
00:38:12.760 America energy independent and even dominant again, and immediately ending the war between
00:38:16.920 Russia and Ukraine, I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in
00:38:21.640 the history of the USA, Joe Biden, the entire Biden crime family, and all others involved with
00:38:26.520 the destruction of our elections borders and country itself. And I read that and I can't help. And by the way,
00:38:33.800 I think I was the biggest Trump booster in the entire country of Canada, other than maybe Conrad Black
00:38:39.560 in 2016. I mean, well, there was only two of us, us and Conrad Black. So it's not hard to be the
00:38:46.120 biggest or the second biggest. So I mean, and there was a lot of things I loved about Trump. But when I
00:38:51.960 read this, I think, you had four years, brother, including when you had strong support in the Congress,
00:38:58.520 you didn't build the wall. Yes, he did make America energy independent, but he didn't fight
00:39:05.880 hard. He didn't prosecute Hillary or Obama. And maybe he shouldn't have, but he was not using all
00:39:11.960 the levers of state that he could. And, you know, especially the wall rings, the wall does not ring
00:39:17.880 true to me. He had four years. And yes, I know the problems he faced, but I know a Democrat would have
00:39:23.400 forced it through. And I don't think that Ron DeSantis is going to be able to beat Trump in the
00:39:29.240 primary. But the one thing I'll say about DeSantis is he was Democrat-like in his commitment to use
00:39:36.840 all the tools available to him, all the legal leverage. There was one prosecutor who would
00:39:43.160 refuse to enforce some law. I forget which one. DeSantis fired him. Like that's an unthinkable
00:39:49.640 act of political power to most Republicans. Democrats don't think twice about it.
00:39:55.320 You know, he would take on Disney and rip up their agreement. And frankly, right or wrong,
00:40:01.400 he showed a chutzpah, a willingness to do dramatic things because he had that power and he wasn't shy
00:40:10.200 about using that power. And I think the problem that America has, and definitely we have it in Canada
00:40:15.580 too, is that the other side has no limits on their ambition and their quest for power,
00:40:21.660 and they will literally do anything. And I don't want to become like that. I don't want to be an
00:40:25.260 ends justify the means totalitarian. But I think our side could use a little bit more courage and
00:40:31.980 audacity in using the legitimate legal and constitutional authority we have. When I look at
00:40:37.340 Trump's statement, I think, I don't believe you, sir, because you didn't do it for four years.
00:40:42.220 I don't believe if he's reelected, he's going to go after Biden. I just don't believe it.
00:40:48.860 Yeah. What I would say is, I think, kind of looked at from the opposite perspective,
00:40:54.940 the other side, so to speak, acts with total impunity precisely because they feel they will pay
00:41:02.300 nothing even remotely close to a commensurate price to the kind they inflict on their political foes.
00:41:09.660 And so it's incumbent upon anyone who wants to be the next Republican president to lay out
00:41:15.180 not only concretely what their agenda is to wield power in service of just and true ends consistent
00:41:26.460 with law and consistent with liberty and justice. And at the same time, also to explain how they're going
00:41:33.980 to overcome an administrative state that has become a state unto itself that acts with total impunity,
00:41:42.380 and that is going to be 99.999% at your throat from well before day one and throw at you everything
00:41:51.020 they threw at Donald Trump in his first term and then subsequently. Plus, how are you going to overcome
00:41:57.260 that? And I think those are massive questions to anyone who wants to be president. And by the way,
00:42:01.740 it may be an intractable problem, at least in one or two terms, when you have an administrative
00:42:07.260 state that is wholly antithetical in its views to yours, that knows it will outlast you or is
00:42:15.020 confident that it will outlast you, and that holds views that are diametrically opposite and will do
00:42:20.860 anything and everything to stop you within and without the law. And that is the real challenge to
00:42:27.180 anyone who wants to be an executive. It requires the utmost thinking and prudence with respect to
00:42:34.460 all of your cabinet picks and beyond. But even that still many layers down, you're going to be
00:42:39.900 facing people who want to subvert and sabotage you. And that's a massive challenge to overcome. And it's
00:42:45.500 why civil service reform has to be among the first items for anyone who wants to be the next Republican
00:42:52.620 president. Yeah. Well, that's all terrifying and depressing. I saw an analysis of George Soros
00:42:59.020 when he went after the district attorneys and when he went after the secretaries of state positions.
00:43:04.700 And someone said, well, that's Soros. He is an arbitrager. And he realized you could spend 50
00:43:11.740 million or 100 million dollars in the presidential race or 20 million dollars in the Senate race
00:43:17.820 and maybe make a difference. But you could spend one million dollars in an election of this prosecutor
00:43:25.260 or half a million dollars for the secretary of state of this small state. And on the state level,
00:43:31.740 secretary of state is not about foreign affairs. It's about things like running the election. So
00:43:35.580 Soros thought I could spend a hundred million bucks and not win, or I could spend one million dollars in
00:43:42.700 a hundred little races, win most of them and make a disproportionate difference. I don't know if
00:43:48.860 there's anyone on our side who even thinks that way. And by the way, now Soros has formally handed his
00:43:54.780 empire over to his even more radical son, Alex Soros, who his first announcement, he's going to be even
00:44:00.300 more political than his father. I am worried about these things. And if America can't resist them,
00:44:05.580 well then how could any country like the UK or Canada resist them? I'm a little bit afraid of that.
00:44:11.580 Last word to you, Ben.
00:44:14.300 Yeah, I would just say our side has not, I don't know if it's something that it is ill-equipped to do
00:44:22.940 or just has not developed the reflexes for, but the left almost definitionally has been about
00:44:28.300 organizing, overtaking institutions, wielding power. That is not something that the right has been
00:44:35.260 uncomfortable doing. It doesn't have muscles that's built up over generations doing so.
00:44:42.140 But I think you have to ask the question, what would a conservative George Soros do? What would
00:44:46.940 a conservative Nancy Pelosi do? What would a conservative Chuck Schumer do? What would a 0.99
00:44:50.860 conservative Barack Obama do? If you're not thinking the way the left thinks and operating with an equal and
00:44:58.460 opposite sort of gusto and shrewdness and seriousness in your strategy and tactics,
00:45:05.020 then ultimately you're going to lose. Almost definitionally, you're going to lose.
00:45:08.940 So the right has to think more like the left, to your point, in terms of its ambitions and in
00:45:15.020 terms of how to wield power in ways that are actually durable. Because of course, if it's just
00:45:20.220 executive action, we know that can be very quickly unwound, while the other side is dominating all the
00:45:25.900 institutions, the cultural institutions, the social and political institutions. And it sets
00:45:30.780 itself up to be the dominant power, regardless of these temporary interregnums that we might have.
00:45:35.980 So we need to be thinking very ambitiously, very strategically and shrewdly and over a long term.
00:45:43.100 And that may mean taking some tactical losses in the interim to compete and ultimately triumph over the
00:45:48.700 long run. Well, that's a big, that's a tall order, but it took 30 years or maybe 60 years to get into
00:45:57.500 this pickle and maybe it'll take us long to get out. Ben Weingarten, great to see you again. Ben is
00:46:01.740 the senior contributor for thefederalist.com. We'll see you again soon. Thank you. All right. Stay with us.
00:46:08.380 More ahead.
00:46:20.540 Hey, welcome back. Your email's to me. Golden Retriever says no mainstream news outlet will
00:46:24.380 touch the video with the Muslim kids. But if Catholic schools don't want pride flags, the PM has to comment
00:46:29.980 on it. Oh, absolutely right. I mean, it reminds me of when those 50 Catholic churches were torched or
00:46:36.380 vandalized, not a peep from anyone in the establishment, by the way, not from the RCMP,
00:46:41.420 no politicians, no media crusade. It was just, oh, well, you know, they sort of deserve it.
00:46:47.420 JC 510 says forcing LGBTQ doctrine down people's throats, it's going to hurt their community in
00:46:53.020 the long run. And then when will people start? And then when people start with the hate towards
00:46:57.500 these groups, the progressives will move on to another political issue and abandon them.
00:47:01.180 I think they want to provoke. I mean, there's this thing in different cities of painting crosswalks
00:47:09.740 in the rainbow flag colors. And obviously crosswalks are on the street and obviously people drive on them.
00:47:17.340 So paint a crosswalk. If there's tire marks on it, claim that it's a hate crime. Rinse and repeat. It's
00:47:24.780 it's crazy. On April Hutchinson, Heidi B says, I remember a time when unions actually protected
00:47:31.580 their members. As for athletes feeling safe and respected, clearly that is not happening here.
00:47:36.940 Well, there's different ways to look at it, but one way that's increasingly clear to me
00:47:42.300 is that this really is a war on women. I mean, my whole life I thought feminism was overreaching. I 0.99
00:47:48.060 thought, you know, you have equality before the law and, you know, right to vote, right to hold any
00:47:53.740 office, the right to go to university, right to do things. And if women choose not to do that and 1.00
00:47:58.380 they choose to be homemakers or some other path, that's their choice. I thought feminism should take 1.00
00:48:03.580 a victory lap and, you know, OK, we got what we wanted. But incredibly, they are actually losing ground
00:48:13.020 in women's spaces, whether it's a prison or a battered women's shelter or a sports team or a
00:48:18.700 changing room. Women today actually have fewer rights than women did in 1980. 1.00
00:48:27.180 Women are actually losing rights. And I think a lot of people who would call themselves feminists 1.00
00:48:34.300 are staying silent about that. I find it very strange that me, a right wing guy, is more feminist
00:48:40.780 than most feminists. That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at
00:48:46.940 Rebel World Highquarters, to you at home, good night. Keep fighting for freedom.