Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ New smoking gun documents reveal Biden's social media censorship agenda

00:00:00.160 Hello, my friends. Some incredible revelations in the United States about how Joe Biden

00:00:04.300 threatened Facebook and Instagram to censor vaccine skeptics, and they threatened to do

00:00:10.220 such damage to Facebook, Facebook panicked and gave in. We'll have the actual memos for you

00:00:18.180 today. I want you to see them with your own eyes, which means I want you to see the video version

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00:00:37.220 based on your support. So please go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe, get the video

00:00:42.240 version of these podcasts, and here's today's show. Tonight, the smoking gun. New documents show how Joe

00:00:49.760 Biden threatened Facebook and Instagram, and they panicked and agreed to violate their users' rights.

00:00:55.320 It's July 27th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:01.760 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:13.720 Censorship is almost always a bad thing. I should really say it's always a bad thing,

00:01:19.560 but I can think of one example where it's not. In the year 1644, a philosopher-poet named John Milton

00:01:27.520 wrote a defense of freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the United Kingdom. He gave it a Greek 0.99

00:01:33.060 name, Areopagitica. He nailed it, though. He got it right, and it really hasn't been improved upon in

00:01:40.840 380 years. I think this is the best thing ever written on free speech. You might know his most famous

00:01:45.880 line from this essay, let truth and falsehood grapple. Whoever knew truth put to the worst

00:01:52.200 in a free and open encounter. Isn't that the truth? Now, sometimes truth takes a little while

00:01:58.240 to get its boots laced up, and falsehood has already run around a bit, but truth catches up in the end,

00:02:05.100 I believe. And who are the censors to censor? Why are they able to look at the words and see if they're

00:02:11.200 bad or good before telling us we can see it or not? Why do they can look at the bad tweets and the bad

00:02:15.280 books and a bad movie and then make a decision for us? Why can't we be our own censors? What I mean

00:02:20.720 is, are they made of better stuff than us? They think you can't handle the truth. You'd be corrupted

00:02:26.440 by it. You'd be misled by it. They're better than you. They won't be fooled. They can look at the bad

00:02:32.400 things and tell you if it's okay. Who chose them? And just by censoring something, haven't you

00:02:39.900 actually imbued it with a magical power? It's cool now. You've made it more attractive. It's a bad

00:02:45.820 boy thing. You've also said something about the regime that has done the censoring, though, haven't

00:02:50.720 you? That regime must be brittle. It cannot withstand scrutiny. It's weak. Anything done forcibly has that

00:02:58.220 effect, doesn't it? Let me give you the example of vaccines. I think I know people who would have

00:03:02.860 considered taking the vaccine had they been permitted to make the decision freely for themselves.

00:03:08.860 They'd have done their research. They'd have thought about it, weighed it. Maybe they wouldn't

00:03:13.300 have taken it, but I think others might have, but for the fact that they were being forced to do so.

00:03:19.260 It's quite a disease that was so meek that most of the time you had to have a special test to know if

00:03:23.960 even had it. And it's quite a vaccine that's so safe and effective that you had to be forced on pain of

00:03:30.240 being fired to get the jab. Do you see my point? The very brutality of it is what turned off many. They

00:03:37.600 couldn't persuade us, so they tried to force us. But if you'd force a man and a woman and a pregnant woman 0.99

00:03:43.200 and a young child, if you'd force them to actually take a vaccine, it's not hard to believe that you would

00:03:48.360 force people to stop asking questions about them. Am I right? You would force them not to see things

00:03:55.960 that are critical. Hey, let me show you a comedy sketch by a comedian named Jimmy Dore. But of course,

00:04:01.400 he's much more than a comedian. He's a very thoughtful, skeptical, social commentator. He's a

00:04:07.140 man of the left, and he can't believe what's happened to the left, but left or right, watch this. I think

00:04:12.640 he's brilliant and funny. Take a look.

00:04:14.780 It happened around COVID. I'd never noticed this before in any other time in my life,

00:04:18.860 but you weren't allowed to ask questions at any point during this. You just had to do what the

00:04:25.420 man on the TV said without questions, and then you're a good person. But if you question it,

00:04:30.780 Jimmy, only dumb people ask questions. No, I'm pretty sure we're supposed to question authority. 0.98

00:04:38.800 It's like a value. Is that what they taught you in comedy school?

00:04:45.440 Yeah, that is what they taught me in comedy school. Even comedians would get on stage and

00:04:50.040 they would shame people for trying to get informed about a medical treatment that was experimental,

00:04:55.880 that they had to take or they would lose their jobs and they wouldn't be able to travel. And

00:04:59.700 when people tried to get informed about that, other people shamed them. They would say,

00:05:03.320 please tell me you're not going to do your own research. You know, before COVID, doing your

00:05:09.700 own research used to be called reading. Now you're shaming me for reading? At the behest of big

00:05:21.020 pharma? It's like I woke up in the middle of a Bill Hicks bit. Well, looks like we got ourselves a

00:05:25.820 reader. Tell me, boy, what you reading for? Don't you know everything that needs to be

00:05:38.940 read? It's already been read by a smart person. That's how much people internalize the propaganda

00:05:46.320 for big pharma. You would never shame people for trying to get informed, no matter what other

00:05:51.020 subject it was. Like if I say, hey, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go buy a car. Don't look into it. Well,

00:05:57.680 how will I know which car to get? Ask the salesman. He's the expert. My point is the marketplace of

00:06:04.940 ideas. It generally works. I can't really think of a time or a place where the people doing the

00:06:10.400 censorship were the good guys in the sweep of history. I acknowledge there are some very limited

00:06:16.140 examples to the contrary. Frankly, the only one I could think of right now is in wartime.

00:06:19.700 Censoring a report about secret troop movements that might help the enemy. But unless it's that

00:06:26.780 extreme and limited a case, what is censorship other than an admission that you cannot deal with

00:06:31.980 someone else's ideas? You can't debate them. You don't have an idea yourself. You're too lazy. You're

00:06:37.700 too above it. I don't know. Did you see David Menzies accosting that man playing rugby in a women's team

00:06:44.040 the other day? By the way, his female teammates were defending him, but they couldn't muster any arguments.

00:06:48.520 Just watch the craziness here for a moment.

00:06:51.600 Mr. Davis, Ash, why are you doing this? I'm David Menzies, Rebel News.

00:07:00.340 Hi. No, you're not really a part of this. Human rights. What about the human rights of

00:07:04.740 biological women being injured by this man? As a mother, why would you expose your kids 1.00

00:07:09.940 to a misogynist? Because that is my partner. That is my wife that you are being an asshole. 1.00

00:07:15.800 Sorry, he's a lesbian? It's not a sport. It's not an issue. 1.00

00:07:20.740 I'm a registered social worker, sir, and I demand human rights for everybody.

00:07:24.480 Oh, okay. Yeah, what's a biological female? How do you feel about a biological male playing

00:07:32.320 in rugby now? Thank you. I don't really give a f***. Everybody. Okay. I don't know what

00:07:37.720 is a crime anymore. Well, sometimes we all ask ourselves that, right?

00:07:42.560 But it's not just 19-year-old rugby players who can't debate. Neither can the President

00:07:47.960 of the United States. Let me show you what he did. This is new. This is from the Congressional

00:07:52.760 Inquiry into the Weaponization of the State Against Political Dissidence. It's a thread

00:07:58.880 of Twitter posts made by Jim Jordan, the Republican leading the inquiry. And you should know that

00:08:04.500 our friend Janine Yunus is the lawyer on that committee. I'm so proud to know her. Let's

00:08:09.560 read through them. It's actually more than a dozen tweets. All right, let me read some of

00:08:13.600 these tweets. The first one says, the Facebook files, part one. Smoking gun docs prove Facebook

00:08:18.580 censored Americans because of Biden White House pressure. Let me read through them. And I'm going

00:08:23.720 to go through them because I really can't improve upon them. And it's not even for me to improve

00:08:28.480 upon. I want to show you what the U.S. Congress is doing. And maybe I'll make you a little bit

00:08:32.340 jealous that we don't have this kind of parliamentary curiosity in Canada too. Never before released

00:08:39.240 internal documents subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee prove that Facebook and Instagram censored

00:08:44.320 posts and changed their content moderation policies because of unconstitutional pressure

00:08:49.740 from the Biden White House. During the first half of 2021, social media companies like Facebook

00:08:54.960 faced tremendous pressure from the Biden White House, both publicly and privately, to crack down

00:09:00.340 on alleged, quote, misinformation. In April 2021, a Facebook employee circulated an email

00:09:06.920 for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, writing, we are facing continued

00:09:14.040 pressure from external stakeholders, including the Biden White House, to remove posts. Isn't that

00:09:20.480 crazy? That's a direct violation of the First Amendment. You don't need to be a legal scholar to

00:09:25.260 know that. And then he shows the memo. That's the difference. It's not just an accusation now.

00:09:30.520 He shows the email. Mark, Sheryl, we are seeking your guidance on whether to take more aggressive

00:09:35.580 action against certain vaccine discouraging content. Look what's highlighted in yellow.

00:09:40.860 We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House and the

00:09:45.120 press, to remove more COVID-19 vaccine discouraging content. And they go on a little bit. In another

00:09:54.120 April 2021 email, Nick Clegg, Facebook's president for global affairs, informed the team at Facebook that

00:10:00.160 Andy Slavitt, a senior advisor to President Biden, was, quote, outraged that Facebook did not remove

00:10:06.420 a particular post. And here's what he said. And again, this is an internal document.

00:10:11.080 Just got off hour-long call with Andy Slavitt. There are some pretty serious and sensitive

00:10:16.220 issues we need to address. A summary. And then you can see the bullet points. And the one that's

00:10:22.660 highlighted below says, as an example, he was outraged, not too strong a word to describe his

00:10:28.340 reaction, that we did not remove this post, which was third most highly ranked post in the data set

00:10:34.160 we sent to him. And then what do you think it was? Do you think it was some false scientific claim?

00:10:42.940 Do you think it was some complete fabrication or lie? Get a load of this. What did the Biden White 0.66

00:10:50.380 House want removed? A meme. That's right. Even memes weren't spared from the Biden White House's

00:10:55.940 censorship plans. And they show the meme. It's this one. It's a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio

00:11:03.560 pointing at something. Looks like a TV set. And it says, 10 years from now, you will be watching TV

00:11:09.320 and hear, did you or a loved one take the COVID vaccine? You may be entitled. You know, just like

00:11:15.320 there are class action lawyers advertising. It wasn't misinformation. It wasn't a lie. It was an

00:11:23.920 opinion. It was a joke. It was a daydream about what might happen 10 years from now. And Andy Slavitt,

00:11:30.140 the president's senior advisor, was shouting at the president of Facebook internationally for an hour.

00:11:37.180 And this was what made him most furious. That's not disinformation. That's not a lie. It's not a falsehood.

00:11:44.020 It's not defamatory. It's not obscene. It's an opinion. And the White House demanded it be taken

00:11:49.640 down. When Clegg, quote, countered that removing content like that would represent a significant

00:11:55.680 incursion into traditional boundaries of free speech, free expression in the U.S., Slavitt

00:12:00.380 disregarded the warning and the First Amendment. And they show, again, that email. I countered that

00:12:07.440 removing content like that would represent a significant incursion in traditional boundaries of

00:12:11.460 free expression in the U.S. But he replied that the Post was directly comparing COVID vaccines to

00:12:16.480 asbestos poisoning in a way which demonstrably inhibits confidence in COVID vaccines amongst

00:12:21.460 those the Biden administration is trying to reach. You know what's amazing is Nick Clegg is not even

00:12:26.720 American. He's a Brit. And he cares more about freedom of speech in the United States and the First

00:12:32.080 Amendment than the U.S. president did. I'll keep reading. What happened next? Facebook panicked.

00:12:38.200 In another April 2021 email, Brian Rice, Facebook's VP of public policy, raised the concern

00:12:43.340 that Slavitt's challenge felt, quote, and I'm going to quote from the yellow part of the email here,

00:12:49.180 very much like a crossroads for us and the White House in these early days. But Facebook wanted to

00:12:55.740 repair its relationship with the White House to avoid adverse action. And I'm going to quote again

00:13:00.400 from the email. This is from Nick Clegg. Given what is at stake here, it would also be a good idea

00:13:06.320 if we could regroup to take stock of where we are in our relations with the White House and our

00:13:10.200 internal methods too. So Facebook did not want to censor these things. And they're very censorious

00:13:17.580 to begin with. Even a foreigner, Nick Clegg, understood the importance of the First Amendment, 0.99

00:13:22.340 not just in life, but to their business. But they were so terrified of the White House senior advisor

00:13:27.440 shouting at them for an hour. They said, this is a real crossroads. This is really going to determine

00:13:32.800 our relationship with the White House. They were terrified. I'll keep reading.

00:13:36.980 This wasn't the first time that the Biden White House was angry that Facebook didn't censor more.

00:13:41.280 According to these documents, the Biden White House demanded to know why Facebook had not

00:13:44.680 censored a video from, you guessed it, Tucker Carlson. So Facebook prepared its response to

00:13:49.980 appease the Biden White House. Talking points were drafted for Clegg. They knew that Biden hated

00:13:55.320 Tucker Carlson and they were ready for it. Facebook was ready to tell the White House that it had

00:14:00.000 demoted a video posted by Tucker Carlson by 50 percent in response to the White House's demands,

00:14:05.620 even though the post didn't violate any policies. Can you believe that? They throttled, they turned down

00:14:12.100 the availability. They stopped people from seeing it, even though in their mind there was nothing wrong

00:14:17.980 with it. They were censoring to appease Biden. You can see the internal email. Thanks, Nick. Here's

00:14:24.640 some talking points that you can use if Andy raises Rob's questions. You can say reduced and demoted.

00:14:31.440 What does that mean? There's 40,000 shares on that video. Who is seeing it now? How many? How as effective

00:14:36.280 as that? Like the detail that they hated their critics and they had this whole team of censors is shocking.

00:14:44.640 I'm going to keep reading. Public pressure mounted as well. In July 2021, President Biden publicly denounced

00:14:49.840 Facebook and other social media platforms claiming they were killing people by not censoring alleged

00:14:55.320 misinformation. On August 2nd, 2021, Facebook admitted it was going to change its policies because of pressure

00:15:01.880 from the Biden White House. And you can see a lengthy memo about that. Facebook's leadership asked

00:15:08.220 misinfo policy to brainstorm some additional policy levers we can pull to be more aggressive.

00:15:14.560 This is stemming from continued criticism of our approach from the Biden administration.

00:15:22.940 That's illegal. You can't do things indirectly that you can't do directly. You can't outsource

00:15:30.000 censorship. If you're threatening Facebook, which is obviously how they felt and what was happening,

00:15:35.860 imagine a one-hour call being shouted at by an outraged senior advisor to the president.

00:15:40.060 They were terrified. And if Facebook, which has been censoring Americans and people around the

00:15:45.060 world for a decade, is being forced to censor even more than they naturally want to, you can imagine

00:15:49.780 how bad it was. But it wasn't just the White House. Facebook also changed its policies in direct

00:15:55.860 response to pressure from Biden's Surgeon General, censoring members of the disinformation dozen.

00:16:02.620 What? Yeah. They came up with like a hit list of people that they did not think should be allowed

00:16:11.860 to talk. You know, there's a concept of a bill of attainder. And it's one of the things that was

00:16:17.000 motivating the American Revolution, where you pass laws to target that guy and pass a law to target

00:16:22.940 that guy. It's called a bill of attainder. That's basically what the White House was doing.

00:16:27.140 I recommend you read the tweets. I'm not going to read every single word of it. But what's new here

00:16:33.900 is for the first time ever, Facebook has disgorged its documents. Facebook shows the internal panic

00:16:42.240 amongst its executives. Facebook shows the pressure it was under, that they literally made these choices

00:16:48.400 to preserve their peace with the White House. They were afraid. It's a violation of the First

00:16:55.280 Amendment by the government. I think that people who were banned and punished and censored by Facebook

00:17:01.000 might have a legal claim against Facebook and against the government. In a way, I can understand

00:17:08.300 Facebook's position. I don't agree with it. I can at least understand it, that they were between a rock

00:17:13.540 and a hard place. Even their own principles were violated. I think they should have gone public.

00:17:17.720 I think they should have resisted. I think they should have said, look, we're built on freedom of

00:17:21.240 speech. See you in court. Instead, they took a cowardly way out. But at the end of the day,

00:17:26.520 I understand that they were going to be smashed by the government if they didn't do so. I don't

00:17:30.940 exculpate them, but I understand them. I think that Americans who were censored, and the disinformation

00:17:36.520 doesn't or should be amongst them, should sue Facebook for violating the terms of service,

00:17:42.040 and should sue the U.S. government for violating the First Amendment. Will the Americans reclaim their

00:17:48.320 freedom? Will Facebook push back? Certainly they have a role model in Elon Musk, who's turned Twitter

00:17:54.400 into a free speech machine. Or do they sort of like being told to censor by Biden, because now they can

00:18:00.700 just blame Biden, and now they're not treated poorly like Biden. But let me close with what I think is

00:18:06.440 the most obvious point as I stand here in Canada reading about this. Why can't we have this kind of

00:18:13.460 inquiry in Canada? Why doesn't anyone in our political system care about freedom of speech?

00:18:18.360 Why don't we have political inquiries, legal inquiries? Why don't we have a vigorous, coast-to-coast,

00:18:25.420 multi-partisan freedom of speech caucus? Why don't we have lawyers and politicians and, frankly,

00:18:31.240 other media doing this? Well, you know the answer. Because freedom has been slowly rung out of our

00:18:36.780 system. The media has been colonized. Law schools teach wokeness. It's not just in the lawyers,

00:18:42.620 it's in the judges now. I'm afraid our system is not as strong as the Americans. If anyone's going

00:18:49.100 to save our freedom in Canada, it just might be Americans saving it for us. Wouldn't it be something

00:18:55.520 if this American inquiry causes Facebook to take its foot off the neck of controversial outlets?

00:19:03.700 We might be the beneficiaries up here. And wouldn't it be something if those same Americans who love

00:19:09.800 their freedom stop some of Trudeau's other plans, like C-18 and C-11, to regulate and censor the media?

00:19:17.040 Stay with us for more.

00:19:27.400 Well, there's a new poll out by Abacus. You've heard me talk about that pollster before.

00:19:31.960 They're a liberal-oriented firm, so I'm a little bit cautious of what they report.

00:19:36.480 But when they report news and do a poll that shows the liberals in a terrible light,

00:19:41.640 which their latest poll does, I tend to take it seriously because they wouldn't say that if it

00:19:46.420 weren't the case. I've never seen a poll this starkly in favor of the conservatives. In fact,

00:19:52.800 it suggests a conservative party majority. I see that the liberals are trailing badly across most of the

00:20:00.080 country, even Ontario. For the first time in memory, the conservative party actually has a lead

00:20:04.800 amongst women. Even Atlantic Canada is pretty much split. And the demand for a change is enormously high. 0.99

00:20:14.320 You might recall that it's this same firm that detected 81% of Canadians wanted a change. Well,

00:20:21.160 Justin Trudeau's no dummy. He won in 2015, 2019, and 2021 because he pays close attention to the polls.

00:20:28.740 And if his party is despised, and if it's going down in the polls and people want change, well,

00:20:34.700 change he'll give them. He won't replace himself, of course, but he replaced an enormous number

00:20:41.000 of cabinet ministers. Some of them were achingly awful and had to be replaced. Others, I think he's

00:20:47.480 just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. But what will it mean for your tax load? Because I think

00:20:53.760 economics are one of the reasons that people want to change inflation, mortgage rates, the cost of

00:21:01.140 living. Things are tougher than ever. An enormous number of Canadians are one paycheck away from

00:21:06.620 disasters. And God forbid, if they lost their job or were off work for a single pay period, they simply

00:21:12.800 wouldn't be able to make ends meet. People are scared. And it's money issues again, even though Trudeau

00:21:18.480 likes to work on cultural Marxist divisions. Well, who do we talk to if we want to know about how the

00:21:25.060 new cabinet will hit our pocketbook? There's only one group I trust on that. And you know who I'm

00:21:31.160 talking about. It's the Canadian Taxpayers Federation because they do not take any money from the

00:21:36.100 government. So when they speak on these matters, they speak in a nonpartisan way. In fact, what I like

00:21:41.520 about them is they sometimes criticize the conservatives too. And joining me now via Skype from Ottawa is our

00:21:47.820 friend Franco Teresano with the latest on this liberal cabinet shuffle. Franco, good to see you

00:21:53.280 again. I saw a tweet by you today. Let me read it. I thought it was a good point. You said total salary

00:21:59.920 cost of Trudeau's cabinet, $11,310,000. And you compared it to years past. Last year was $10 million,

00:22:07.900 the year before $9 million, the year before $7 million. I mean, the election before $7 million. You're

00:22:12.700 pointing out that we're paying more than we ever have for a cabinet, but that's pretty crooked

00:22:19.600 timber in this cabinet. Take it away, Franco. Well, yeah, the reason we're paying more for this

00:22:25.460 cabinet is more ministers with bigger salaries. Now, doesn't that just always seem to be the case

00:22:29.980 with this government? More, more, more, more, more coming from Canadian taxpayers. What's not more?

00:22:34.940 The value that we're getting, right? Because let's not also forget that the Trudeau,

00:22:38.780 since he took office back, what, after the 2015 election, he's hired more than 98,000 bureaucrats,

00:22:45.520 ballooning the size of the bureaucracy by what? 40%? Now, is anyone out there getting 40% more value

00:22:52.700 from the federal government? No. Maybe the only thing we're getting that's 40% more is 40% more

00:22:59.960 wait times every time we try to get a passport renewed. Yeah. And just disaster in airports,

00:23:05.540 really all the practical things that the government's responsible for. Now, I take the

00:23:10.200 point of your tweet that we have the biggest, flabbiest cabinet ever. And I think it's also

00:23:15.260 true to say that a lot of those cabinet ministers aren't really running the show. I think Trudeau has

00:23:21.060 an approach that he wants to show a diversity, an ethnic and a demographic and a geographic diversity

00:23:28.480 in his cabinet for PR sake. But I think the key decisions are made in the prime minister's office.

00:23:35.140 I really think so. We learned some of that during the Trucker Commission of Inquiry, where we learned

00:23:39.700 that Marco Mendocino wasn't even consulted with key decisions. His own staff knew he wasn't the

00:23:46.380 decider. Here's my point. It's gross how big the cabinet is. Trudeau's trying to shuffle the deck to

00:23:54.140 say, hey, Canadians, you want change? I'll give you change. But I think the core problems are still

00:23:59.400 there. Trudeau himself and his disastrous finance minister, Chrystia Freeland. I think those two

00:24:07.060 people really are the core of this government. In some ways, I think Chrystia Freeland actually makes

00:24:11.660 more decisions than Trudeau does. What do you think of that thesis, Franco?

00:24:16.700 Well, okay. First of all, like a cabinet change, that's not what Canadians really need. What Canadians

00:24:21.700 really need is a culture change from this government. And you know, you mentioned Freeland. I'm glad you

00:24:26.920 did. Because here's the thing, folks. Until the government, whether it's Freeland, whether it's

00:24:31.740 Trudeau, actually changes its policies, i.e. put out its fiscal dumpster fire and stop raising taxes

00:24:39.000 that make everything more expensive, until the government does that, I mean, all of this is just 0.91

00:24:43.400 adding lipstick onto a pig, right? I mean, the government can, you know, shuffle its cabinet every

00:24:49.660 single day. It can pose for the camera every single day. None of that would matter until the

00:24:55.400 government actually does what? Two things. Stop raising taxes. That makes everything more

00:25:00.200 expensive. In fact, the whole point of the Trudeau government's and Freeland's carbon tax increases

00:25:05.440 are to make your life more expensive, right? Live the way we say or pay. And the next thing that the

00:25:11.520 government has to do, stop spending money like crazy. The reason Canadians are paying too much tax

00:25:16.420 is because the government loves to shower itself, living a lavish lifestyle on our tab. 0.73

00:25:22.760 I think there's a related point, would you agree with this, Franco, about printing money? Because

00:25:28.260 by printing so much money, they devalue the amount of money out there. It's sort of like counterfeit

00:25:33.920 money. Counterfeit money dilutes the value of real money. Well, it's the same thing. The government

00:25:38.120 adds billions of dollars just by printing. It makes us all poorer, drives prices up. I think that's

00:25:43.560 a source of inflation, isn't it? One of the sources. It's not a source of inflation, Ezra. It's the

00:25:48.960 source of inflation. Look, I'm not saying that there aren't things going on internationally,

00:25:53.700 whether it's supply shortages of that nature. I'm not saying that doesn't impact it. But what that

00:25:58.480 explains are changes in relative prices. But what makes all prices go up? An increase in the money

00:26:04.980 supply. Brr, the printing press. And what happened during the pandemic? Well, in the two years between

00:26:10.820 March 2020 to March 2022, the central bank, the Bank of Canada printed about $370 billion right out

00:26:19.120 of thin air and then dropped all that freshly printed cash into an economy that was essentially

00:26:24.700 locked down by government fiat. What does that do? Too many dollars chasing too few goods. And to tie

00:26:31.560 the bow on this, Ezra, what was the Bank of Canada largely purchasing? Government of Canada debt.

00:26:38.680 Okay. That is using the printing press to finance Ottawa's deficits. It's the inflation tax. And it's

00:26:45.100 why your life is more expensive. You know, the other day, Chrystia Freeland was on a panel with a lot of

00:26:50.560 foreign media and she boasted that Canadian inflation was, they finally whipped it. And she was so proud

00:26:57.900 of herself, but that wasn't quite true, was it? Inflation in Canada has come down. You didn't ask me

00:27:04.100 about this, Matt. I can't believe it. Okay. Inflation. We had our inflation number on Tuesday,

00:27:09.160 2.8%. Isn't that great? Yeah, it is. Yeah. Okay. We are now within the Bank of Canada's target range.

00:27:18.040 This is huge. It's come down from 8.1% last June. Okay. So whenever you hear those headlines like

00:27:25.240 inflation is cooling, this is what it actually means, folks. And you already know this, right? Because if

00:27:29.680 you're not living under a rock, if you've left that rock to go to a gas station or a grocery store in

00:27:34.220 the last, I don't know, couple of years, you know, that this is the case. In 2022, we had 40 year high

00:27:39.700 inflation, 40 year high inflation. And now inflation is cooling to 2.8%. What does that really mean?

00:27:47.920 Well, if you trust the government numbers, let's take it at face value for the sake of it.

00:27:51.520 It means inflation was a 40 year high last year and prices are still going up by another 2.8%.

00:27:58.960 It's still inflating. It's still, but you know, let me tell you a little anecdote because I,

00:28:03.860 this blew me away. I, the other day I had the pleasure of going to a museum

00:28:07.220 and handling a real coin called a piece of eight, pieces of eight. It was silver from a mine,

00:28:15.420 I think in Bolivia or something. Give me just one minute to tell you this story. This was the most

00:28:20.100 prolific mine in world history for silver. And it was this, it's what really fueled the Spanish 1.00

00:28:27.200 conquistadors who kept going to South America. This mine produced so much silver and it was sort

00:28:33.880 of cool to handle the coin. This was 500 years ago, but you dumped more silver into the world

00:28:39.480 than had ever seen before. It chased, like you said, you had so much more money chasing so many

00:28:45.160 more things. The prices zoomed. It distorted the entire world's economy. This one little mine in,

00:28:53.320 I think it was Bolivia. And I just, to hear this story in the museum, it was shocking to think that

00:28:59.260 these things happened like half a millennium ago here in Canada, but at least the silver was real.

00:29:04.720 But in Canada, we're just, the bank of Canada is just print, like a Xerox machine. And there isn't

00:29:13.380 even anything underneath it. At least silver, you could use it for jewelry. You could use it for

00:29:18.680 things. They're just printing paper money. And it's, I think it's doing the same thing. It's driving up

00:29:25.340 the price of everything. You just made me think of those, that pieces of eight silver mine story,

00:29:30.140 and we're doing it all over again. Well, I've got a couple things on that. Okay. So number one,

00:29:36.520 it doesn't take a PhD in economics to understand that if you print more money, the dollars that

00:29:41.140 everyone has is going to be able to buy less. That's inflation. In fact, I think the only people

00:29:45.780 who can understand that fact nowadays are the people with PhDs in economics working at their

00:29:51.240 taxpayer funded universities. Okay. But the next thing, you know why inflation is so pernicious?

00:29:56.360 Two reasons. Number one, fundamentally undemocratic, right? Because everyone knows

00:30:02.180 when the sales tax goes up, everyone knows when an income tax goes up, and then they're able

00:30:07.300 to hold their politicians accountable. But like people, if you just stop anyone at any main street,

00:30:13.360 how many people are going to know how much the Bank of Canada printed? In fact, go talk to those

00:30:17.660 338 members of parliament that are walking around Ottawa. How many of those members of parliament even

00:30:22.960 know what's going on at the Bank of Canada? It's a pretty tough bet there, right? But the third thing

00:30:30.560 that we have to understand, and another reason that inflation is so pernicious, is because it's

00:30:34.840 a fundamentally redistributive scheme. Because not everyone gets those new dollars right away,

00:30:40.820 right? They're not dropping it from the sky from an airplane. No, no, no. The people who are closest

00:30:46.060 to the newly printed cash, whether it's those big banks that the Bank of Canada is getting the money

00:30:51.400 from, or getting the bonds from, or if it's wherever the government is spending that money

00:30:55.740 quick, will they essentially get a transfer of wealth? So not only is inflation, the Bank of

00:31:02.460 Canada, increasing the cost of living, not only is it undemocratic, but it's fundamentally a

00:31:08.100 redistributive scheme as well. You are so right. Whoa, my brain is stretched. Franco, it's great to see

00:31:14.860 you again. Keep up the fight. And I recommend again that our viewers support Taxpayers Federation,

00:31:20.760 the only nonpartisan group in Ottawa on the tax beat that doesn't take money or direction from

00:31:27.280 the government. Great to see you, my friend. Keep up the fight. Thanks so much. All right. Well,

00:31:31.200 stay with us. More ahead. And I'm going to go study that silver mine again. It was quite something to

00:31:36.500 hear about worldwide inflation a half a millennium ago. I got to beef up on that. Stay with us. More ahead.

00:31:44.860 Well, it's great to be back in Toronto. You'll notice I'm not actually in the studio. We did an

00:31:50.980 amazing thing in the studio. We sort of raised the roof literally. Hopefully I'll be back in that room

00:31:56.340 on Monday and I'll show you what it's like. It's very exciting. But I'm in our boardroom. You can

00:32:00.920 see behind me a couple of plaques. Our million subscriber plaque from YouTube isn't that relevant

00:32:06.660 to my monologue today and some of our donor plaques too. That's how we survived the crackdown by social

00:32:11.400 media. I hope you enjoyed my trip to Hungary. I know that's rather an obscure subject matter.

00:32:17.880 There's only 10 million Hungarians in Hungary and some millions around the world. It's not a large

00:32:23.540 country like France or Italy or the UK. But I think what they're doing is very interesting in the fact

00:32:28.440 that Viktor Orban has resisted the globalist woke brigades. And he talks that way. He talks about it.

00:32:33.800 He talks about being colonized by the European Union and even foreign powers other than that.

00:32:39.340 So I enjoyed my trip there and I hope you thought it was okay that I was away for some time. Then I

00:32:45.360 went to Lethbridge to cover the trial of the Coutts IV, at least a pre-trial hearing. What I learned

00:32:51.140 there was a little bit disturbing. I know some people are upset that we are not championing in the same

00:32:55.480 way the Coutts IV as we are the Coutts III. You might remember we're defending three other truckers

00:33:01.900 who were arrested and charged. But they were not accused of any violence. They're just civil

00:33:06.240 disobedience. Of course, we're representing hundreds, indeed more than 2,500 people across the country,

00:33:12.220 including Tamara Leach. And when I say we, I mean either Rebel News or Rebel News is crowdfunding for

00:33:17.400 the Democracy Fund. So we are defending literally thousands of people, including very prominent

00:33:22.740 victims of the lockdowns. I just have to say in all honesty and candor, I cannot divert Rebel News and

00:33:31.420 Democracy Fund donors to a conspiracy to commit murder. It just is outside the scope of how we raise

00:33:37.920 the money. I know some people are upset by that. I hope that the men are acquitted. I hope the charges

00:33:42.420 against them are false. And I hope that they did not do the things they're accused of. And if so, I'll happily

00:33:47.760 eat my words. But until then, we'll do our best to do fair journalism on their case. But I'm worried that some

00:33:56.120 people got a little too deeply into this diagonal on fake reactionary militia and then actually became real when 0.98

00:34:06.640 the town was swarming with cops and they said a bunch of stupid things that I can't report to you now, but it'll come 0.98

00:34:11.920 out in trial. That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at 0.99

00:34:18.460 home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:34:25.460 Shame on you, you sensorism bug. 0.92

Rebel News Podcast - July 27, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ New smoking gun documents reveal Biden's social media censorship agenda

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