Ezra Levant Show： April 27 2018
Episode Stats
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Summary
Tonight, Kim Jong-un visits South Korea to talk peace, and the South Koreans credit Donald Trump for it. Is it possible that Donald Trump is the best thing that has happened to North Korea in a long time, and it s all thanks to Donald Trump?
Transcript
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Tonight, North Korea's tyrant visits South Korea to talk peace, and the South Koreans
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It's April 27th, and you're watching The Ezra Levant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my
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Well, here's something that's never been seen before.
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Kim Jong-un, the dictator for life of North Korea, son of a dictator, grandson of a dictator,
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walking into South Korea by foot, meeting the democratically elected president of the
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A lot of talk about mutual cooperation, economic cooperation, transportation, humanitarian relief,
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which is all another way of saying South Korea will bail out North Korea and try to alleviate
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the devastation that the dictatorship has done to its own people.
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They talk of reunification, which makes sense historically, ethnically, geographically.
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It's a bit like East Germany and West Germany reuniting, except that was done to Germany by
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North Korea and South Korea were divided because the North invaded the South, the communists
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And so we need to be skeptical because the North is the hostile party.
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Because as a regular guest on this subject, Gordon Chang and Claudia Rosette always remind us,
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North Korea is masterful at playing the West and playing South Korea, playing on our hopes,
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They take what they can get through reconciliation and negotiation, and then they firm up their new
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hard line, fire off a missile or two, and make new demands.
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It's sort of like battered women's syndrome, as it used to be called, because they know we
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Now, the joint statement contains this provision.
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South and North Korea confirm the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization,
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All right, I'll believe it when I see it, but I suppose before you do it, you have to agree
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Take it from the foreign minister of South Korea herself.
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Clearly, you know, credit goes to President Trump.
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He's been determined to come to grips with this from day one.
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Do you think it was Barack Obama or George W. Bush before him or Bill Clinton before him?
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It's hard to believe now, given the carnage of the Obama regime, I mean, wars and coups
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everywhere, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, what happened in Crimea, endless perpetual war.
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It's hard to believe that Obama actually received the Nobel Peace Prize.
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And he received it immediately after his election, which is funny.
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Now, he picked up the award eight months after his inauguration.
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But the Nobel Committee made their decision literally weeks after he was inaugurated.
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Let me read the first line of their award to him.
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The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded
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to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy
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The committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without
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So did Syria, actually, until Israeli jets hit their nuke facility.
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But that first line, their Norwegian Nobel Committee.
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Did you know that unlike the scientific Nobel Prizes, like for chemistry or economics, which
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are decided by fellow scientists, experts, did you know the Nobel Peace Prize is chosen by
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It would be like if a group of liberal MPs in Ottawa would decide who's the peace prize winner
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It's 100% political, dressed up as something nonpartisan.
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Of course it's to score points for Norwegian leftists.
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So, of course, Donald Trump will not be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing about more
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change in North Korea in 15 months as president than the rest of the world did in 15 years,
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Donald Trump has been thinking about Korea for many years, though.
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He's been tough but open-minded, ready to fight but hoping to negotiate a deal.
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Here, listen to Trump almost 20 years ago on the subject.
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And they're not doing it because they're having fun doing it.
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And wouldn't it be good to sit down and really negotiate something, and ideally negotiate?
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Now, if that negotiation doesn't work, you better solve the problem now than solve it
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And you know it, and every politician knows it, and nobody wants to talk about it.
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I say again, it's too soon to tell if this is real.
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They're probably the worst negotiators in the world right now.
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They'd practically do anything for peace, or at least something that looked like peace.
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But all the fancy people said Trump was a fool, especially when he engaged in his Twitter
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But he was showing Kim Jong-un who the real tough guy was.
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Do you remember some of Trump's tweets, like this one in particular?
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I mean, Kim Jong-un was boasting about having a nuclear button, and Trump boasted right back,
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saying, my button is much bigger and more powerful, and my button works.
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But what do you think works with a reclusive tyrant from the hermit kingdom, as North Korea
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He has literally had his own family members assassinated.
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And yes, his missile program sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
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He gets by on bravado to his own people and to the world.
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Certainly, he intimidates South Korea, and with good reason.
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But Donald Trump can out-bravado anyone, can't he?
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Wasn't it obvious that's what he was doing with that tweet?
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I mean, for the fifth time, let me recommend to you the book, The Art of the Deal, where
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Trump explicitly describes the reasons for his tactic of making outrageous statements,
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Only the fools on the left in Hollywood and Washington would think that a successful
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man, a billionaire, a president, who beat the odds time and again.
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He was really just a grade school troll on Twitter, as opposed to that being part of
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But Trump has been conducting major military exercises in the region.
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By the way, if Trump's tweets didn't work, well, his aircraft carriers would.
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Literally this month, Trump deployed thousands of U.S. troops in combination with 300,000 South
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Barack Obama would send Kim Jong-un a stern letter of apology.
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That's how he negotiated with them, with Iran, with Vladimir Putin, with anyone.
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Let me remind you how Trump was derided just a few months ago.
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You don't need to be reminded, because it hasn't stopped in any other field.
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Even here in Canada, where the CBC has obviously been instructed to smear Trump daily.
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When they're not complaining about us here at The Rebel.
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President Trump tweeted, as if that wasn't hilarious enough, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un
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just stated that the nuclear button is on his desk at all times.
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Will someone from his depleted and foodstaff regime please inform him that I, too, have
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a nuclear button, but it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his.
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This is the President of the United States tweeting foreign policy, but also filled with
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what we've now come to know as customary sexual innuendo.
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This is no way to run a foreign policy, and this certainly isn't a way to run American
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Here they are quoting the Russians saying that Trump's approach to North Korea was foolish.
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Newsweek and the mainstream media are in a Russia panic these days, a red scare, claiming
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that Russia is manipulating Trump as some sort of Manchurian president, but they'll stop
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to quote one of Putin's little helpers if it means they can smear Trump.
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Yeah, I don't quite get it either, and neither do Newsweek's readers, most of whom have just
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It's the far-left brainy site that always tells you their reporting explains things to
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you, because you're apparently too stupid to understand the facts.
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They call it, Trump escalates tensions with North Korea.
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He's psychologically inappropriate, as president says, the New Yorker.
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I mean, her calm, rational approach to military affairs, like in Libya.
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Now, of course, the left didn't just criticize Trump.
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Could you imagine if the left-wingers at Twitter had actually blocked Donald Trump from tweeting
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Could you imagine if those left-wing kooks in San Francisco who run Twitter had somehow
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managed to derail this historic deal because they didn't like Trump's style?
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I always take my foreign policy advice from Alyssa Milano, don't you?
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I think that disqualifies their judgment, don't you think?
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I remember when I was in college, I loved staying up at night to watch late-night TV for
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I mean, sure, they always tilted liberal, but at least there was still some
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jokes there, and you couldn't always predict what they were going to do or say.
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Now, late-night comedy is really just Obama and Clinton talking points with a laugh track.
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Yeah, I'm not convinced that Kim Jong-un is done yet.
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But what has happened since Trump has become president is new, and it is hopeful.
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Donald Trump will not win the Nobel Prize, even if this deal is real.
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They'll give the prize to the two Korean leaders, and that's fine.
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Donald Trump is not loved by the media, and he's not loved by that small committee of the
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Norwegian parliament that chooses the Nobel Peace Prize.
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But if this deal works, 50 million free South Koreans and 25 million imprisoned North Koreans,
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those 75 million people will know who broke the 65-year stalemate.
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And so will the left, though they will never admit it, even grudgingly.
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Well, I saw this interesting tweet, and I had never seen the facts put this way.
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It's from a conservative MP from Saskatchewan, Brad Trost.
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It says, there are now more illegal asylum claims made in Canada than legal claims.
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And it's only April, three times the amount of illegal crossings in 2017.
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The government is projecting up to 400 people a day to illegally cross our border this summer.
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And joining us now via Skype is our friend Brad Trost.
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But this is not considered shocking to the media party, to the political media establishment, I don't think.
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No, I think after last year, they sort of anticipated this was going to shoot up.
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We just had the Liberals say they've got $173 million budgeted so far for this issue this year.
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Numbers just go up as the spending goes through the year.
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You know, you mentioned $160-odd million, but that doesn't sound like it's even close to handling things.
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We've seen Quebec say they're at the breaking point.
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They're now shipping their illegal border crossers to Ontario.
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We see the mayor of Toronto, John Tory, saying we are bursting at the seams.
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We already have quadruple the number of refugees in our homeless shelters as we had just a year or two ago.
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So even center-left politicians are starting to say it's just too much.
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I saw news that a Parti Québécois MNA in Quebec is actually talking about a border fence with the United States.
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Even people who are on the left are saying it's too much.
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Because looking at Justin Trudeau, looking at Ahmed Hassan, they don't seem to be blinking one bit.
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Yeah, they still have pretty much a sense of arrogance on this one.
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They've been throwing stuff back to the Conservatives about you guys took away dental benefits from illegal refugees.
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You're all a bunch of heartless, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.
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So that's sort of been their attitude at this point, sort of a let-them-eat-bake mentality.
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I mean, as I said, they just said $170 million.
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One of our critics pointed out that $86 million has just been spent on overtime for the various enforcement.
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It doesn't count on social services by the provinces.
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I mean, essentially what the Americans are doing and what the illegal refugees are doing is they're offloading a problem in the United States,
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and they're onloading the problem into Canada, and it's going to get worse.
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And that's not a good thing for either regular Canadian citizens or for people who have gotten in line the proper way
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and want to apply to come to Canada in the regular channels.
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You know, it's perplexing to me that the government would proceed in this way, the Liberal government.
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A poll taken by the Liberal government under Trudeau asked Canadians what they thought about the numbers of immigrants to Canada,
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and only 8% thought the numbers should be increased.
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Well, they increased it from 250,000 to 300,000, and that was before this open-border fake migrant problem from the States.
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I can't believe that there's any broad-based support in any province, in any demographic,
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other than, I suppose, some direct immigration industry types.
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But even there, you know, I think sober-minded people would say it's broken.
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You just can't force in tens of thousands of people like this.
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I think that they're in jeopardy of actually burning up whatever remaining goodwill Canadians have towards immigrants.
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I think this, what they're doing, being so reckless, it will actually cause a backlash.
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For your viewers who don't know, my wife's an immigrant from Asia.
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I've got a bunch of family members who are there.
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They're a lot more hard-line, tough on this, than native-born Canadians.
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I worked hard to get here, and now these people are cutting in front of the line.
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So I think one of the things that a lot of viewers who are native-born Canadians should realize,
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places like Toronto are going to get more upset about this than areas that are so far away.
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They have no real day-to-day connection with this.
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But I think that's one of the things that people actually have to understand.
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Anyone who's gone through the system really resents people cutting to the front.
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I think you're right to talk about places like Toronto and Vancouver and, to a degree, Montreal.
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Those are the three cities that absorb the bulk of these migrants.
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And they're also the places with the longest hospital wait lists, with the food bank shortages.
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I mean, every single social service is being taxed.
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And the thing is, we're not even choosing who gets to jump to the front of the line.
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These are people who are self-deporting from the United States because they know they won't meet the legal standards.
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They're either because of criminality or they're just fake or whatever.
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If this was a deliberate selection of people from around the world, a witting, thoughtful decision,
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we could argue about it, but at least it would be abiding the rule of law.
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I think what's particularly grating here is the anarchy and that really the biggest scammers and the biggest tricksters get to go to the front of the line.
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And Trudeau and Hassan, they don't even seem to care.
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It's in league with his tweet, with Trudeau's tweet last year.
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And I think this is all about politics for liberals.
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They want to make the conservatives look like a bunch of green shade accountants who are just heartless and mean.
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So they're going to try to sack us in and say, we don't care about human beings and play the same old dirty tricks they tried.
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I mean, we saw that back in the 2015 election campaign.
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I think they're just trying to make the conservatives look like a bunch of meanies.
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I don't think there's any policy thinking about, you know, what's best for the country, what's fair and what's just.
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I mean, that's, I think, their extremist feminism, gender equality, everything, gender equality in this new peacekeeping mission to Mali, which is going to be, I hate to say it, a human disaster for our men and women in the armed forces.
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I think it's all about being so absurd and provocative that anyone who dares speak out against it is racist, sexist, Islamophobic, whatever.
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But I don't think that that should be a reason not to push back because, you know, putting aside the spin, I think Canadians are mad about the substance.
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And I think Canadians are getting a little sick of being scolded by the liberals and the media as racist that, misogynist that, when I don't think we are.
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And as you point out, even other new Canadians like your wife and her family, they don't support this at all.
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And I know that you were a leadership candidate who did very well in the last conservative leadership, but you did not win your nomination and you're in litigation with the party.
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So I know that you have a certain position about the party.
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Is the conservative, and I'm putting those things out there just to disclose to our viewers that you have sort of a special position in the party.
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You're a conservative who has been at odds with the party.
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Do you think Andrew Scheer, Michelle Rempel, and the rest of the conservative party are fighting this issue vigorously enough?
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And I know you're a loyal conservative, but you also have some disagreements.
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Candidly, I think the problem for them is there's just so many issues right now to fight the liberals on.
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I mean, the pipeline issue is something that is absolutely crucial.
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So the problem is we've got so many issues to deal with, we have to pick and choose.
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Their latest justice bill is an absolute atrocity.
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So to be honest, liberals are doing so many bad things, it's tough to choose.
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So I'm encouraging them to double down and push harder on this one.
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I think particularly our Quebec caucus also is too.
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The pipeline thing is awfully big in Saskatchewan, not quite as big in Alberta.
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But I know our Eastern Canadian MPs are saying, hey, this isn't our backyard.
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And so today, the last couple of days in question period, they've hit it hard.
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And largely, it's going to depend on what they hear from the grassroots.
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But again, the problem is the liberals are doing so many dumb, stupid things.
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I'm glad to hear your Quebec colleagues are on this issue, because I think Quebec has been
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First, the Haitians and the Salvadorians, and none of whom are coming from those original
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Most of them are just walking up from New York.
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And that's, I think, the frustration is the scam there.
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Well, listen, Brad, I really appreciate you coming on the show and speaking so candidly.
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And I agree that you are conservative in the bone, and that's how you ran your leadership
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Let me ask you what you think your political future is.
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And I didn't mean to speak negatively a moment ago.
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I just wanted to disclose to our viewers who might not have been following things in the
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But what do you think the political future holds for yourself?
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For people who don't know, I have a two-and-a-half-month-old, and I have a three-year-old daughter at
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Look, I lost my nomination literally by an inch, frankly, because half of my supporters
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Had another couple dozen showing up, I'd be there.
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And both of the candidates were more from the left side of the Conservative Party, and they
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But when you've got kids as young as mine, maybe it's not a bad thing to sit out for six,
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Give me one last word about the new premier of Saskatchewan.
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We haven't had a chance to have him on the show yet.
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He looks like he's following in some of the good examples set by Brad Wall, who was certainly
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one of my favorite premiers in the last decade.
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Tell me a little bit about the Saskatchewan premier.
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Were you familiar with him from your travels in the province?
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I don't know him personally as well as I knew two of the other contenders in there.
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And the other two, he's one I'm not too familiar with.
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But everyone who does know him say he's really a grassroots sort of guy.
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He sort of had never thought about running to be premier.
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And this just sort of happened and he stepped up to the plate.
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So I think you're going to see a guy who's pretty humble and sort of a meat and potatoes, thick to basic issues.
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But he's going to be unafraid to stand up for his province.
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Well, that sounds like a perfect fit for Saskatchewan.
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A little bit humble, a little bit grassroots, solid, reliable, neighborly.
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That's my favorite Saskatchewan adjective, neighborly.
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And I think Brad Wall, it was sort of amazing to see a politician leave at the top of his game in Canada.
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Can I just say to your viewers, continue to pray for the folks in Humboldt and in Saskatoon.
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And I know in parts of Alberta who were impacted by the tragedy.
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I represented Humboldt for 11 years in the House of Commons.
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And those people are still going to need prayers.
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Going through the next weeks and, frankly, the next years.
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So, continue to think of, have them in your thoughts.
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And we'll call on you from time to time, I hope, in the months ahead.
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You can be one of our windows into Ottawa, what's going on.
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He's the Conservative MP for Saskatoon University, giving us an update on immigration and other matters
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Well, our next guest had a feature interview with John Cardillo.
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But for those of you who didn't see it, I am delighted to bring back Matt Schreier.
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He's many things, including an author of the new book Dawn Prayer, or How to Survive in a Secret Syrian Terrorist Prison,
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which alludes to his more central identity, I suppose.
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He was actually captured and held prison by Al-Qaeda.
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And I think he's the only person, the only Westerner at least, to have been kept prisoner and then escaped.
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I've been free for coming up on five years in July.
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I was in captivity for seven months, from December 31st, New Year's Eve 2012, until July 29th, 2013.
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In that time, are you aware, were there any efforts to free you, any commando teams sent by the U.S. military to try and free you?
00:27:45.160
I understand that the U.S. takes very seriously the recovery of captured prisoners who were Americans.
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All the evidence in my case proves the exact opposite.
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I was labeled an enemy of the state by the FBI.
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And they basically exploited the situation to gather as much intelligence as possible.
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Now, let's go back, because I've certainly jumped ahead.
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How did you come to be in that god-awful place?
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I was photographing the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo.
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I was in the Carmel-Jebel area, which is like the worst area you could possibly be in right before I was captured.
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I got the photographs I wanted and decided that it was time to go.
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And when I was about 45 minutes from the Turkish border on my way home, that's when the cab driver I was with, along with one other person, set me up.
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I guess the cab driver would have detected that he had a Westerner in the back.
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And in that environment, a Westerner equals cash.
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I mean, there's many reasons why Al-Qaeda or another terrorist group would take a prisoner.
00:29:05.080
Well, I mean, they never made any demand, so I never officially became a hostage.
00:29:09.780
But my former cellmate was eventually released in a deal negotiated by Qatar.
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And we all know that Qatar, they're the ones the U.S. government goes to when they need them to shell out money to get people home.
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So, my guess is they were definitely planning on asking for money.
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Did they know you were going over there in the first place?
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Was this the first time you went to a war zone?
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I was in Syria about a month before, feeling things out in southern Turkey on the border and northern Jordan at the Zaatari camp.
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And that's where I made all the connections that I needed, because I'm not going to just wander into a war zone uninvited.
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So, I made the connections that I needed, and I was invited back, and I accepted.
00:29:58.400
Now, you say that the United States thought you were a terrorist yourself.
00:30:06.180
Had you had any interaction with radical Islam, with international groups?
00:30:17.900
I mean, were you just a freelancer going out as an amateur, or were you associated with any established company?
00:30:26.020
No, I was a freelancer, and I had no previous history of extremism or connection to it whatsoever.
00:30:33.880
They knew this because they confiscated my computer, and there was nothing on it that would point to me being a terrorist.
00:30:42.680
They basically came to this assumption because my identity was stolen by some Canadian jihadis who they brought in to interrogate me,
00:30:50.060
and they took all my personal and financial information, and they went on a shopping spree.
00:30:54.120
And during this time, they paid off my Discover card.
00:30:57.200
And apparently, because my Discover card was paid off, the FBI came to the conclusion it must be me,
00:31:02.500
and that I had joined al-Qaeda, and I was the one making these purchases.
00:31:07.260
It is weird that someone who steals a credit card would pay it off.
00:31:13.560
Yeah, it is strange, I mean, but I don't think it's a big enough flag to, you know, judge somebody guilty until proven innocent.
00:31:27.580
And when you think about it strategically, it's a smart move if you plan on, you know,
00:31:33.400
using this discredited information for a cell or people that you have in the States.
00:31:37.440
So keeping an active line of credit open makes sense from their point of view.
00:31:42.420
Now, tell me a little bit more about the interrogation that you went under
00:31:46.000
and the information that was taken from you by terrorists.
00:31:55.260
January 31st, exactly, one month after I was taken,
00:31:58.780
I was brought into a room and sat down with three Canadians
00:32:01.440
and the emir of the Katiba holding me, that's a militia group,
00:32:08.080
And for the past month, they'd been trying to get my financial information out of me,
00:32:16.460
And they basically put a piece of paper and a pencil in front of me and said,
00:32:19.120
all right, give us your passwords to all your credit cards online,
00:32:23.560
your social security number, passwords to Facebook, YouTube, your website,
00:32:29.840
We want everyone you know, everywhere you've been,
00:32:49.720
Did anyone, were police involved at this point?
00:32:53.340
Had you been in touch with folks back home who were expecting to hear from you
00:32:57.840
when you were captured on New Year's Eve and you were gone?
00:33:03.940
Or did they think, oh, Matt's gone away for a long time.
00:33:07.240
It's not unusual to not hear from him for a month.
00:33:11.240
My best friend was, at the time, was my point of contact.
00:33:14.500
I told him if he didn't hear from me for two weeks, something was wrong.
00:33:17.200
But he always had this mentality where, you know, Matt's good at taking care of himself.
00:33:22.200
So he just assumed, whatever, that I was off working.
00:33:26.260
And my mother reported me missing coincidentally on January 31st,
00:33:30.500
the very same day that they took all this financial information.
00:33:33.980
And she reported me missing with the State Department,
00:33:40.600
They gave my mother the runaround for like two months.
00:33:43.100
Never referred her to law enforcement until, you know, the very last minute.
00:33:48.940
But still, they didn't tell her which branch of law enforcement to go to.
00:33:56.900
So the State Department is just as culpable in what the FBI was doing.
00:34:03.820
they were buying laptops and tablets to terrorists.
00:34:12.520
You gave them that password, and these transactions went through.
00:34:22.740
You mentioned laptops and tablets and things like that.
00:34:31.180
And how long did that go on before those credit card companies cut you off?
00:34:44.940
They practically rebuilt a Mercedes and, you know, cologne, sunglasses, a Kama Sutra guide from iTunes.
00:35:00.560
Over $17,000 was stolen from my personal savings account.
00:35:07.660
I'm sorry, over $16,000 from my personal savings.
00:35:13.380
And that's when finally Citibank realized something was wrong because there was an overdraft of $553 in my personal account.
00:35:21.800
And they froze my business account, not the FBI.
00:35:28.340
The very same day that Citibank froze my account, a message was put into, a note was put into the Citibank system from the FBI.
00:35:37.680
This is on June 6th, saying that if anybody calls about this account being frozen, refer them to the lead case agent.
00:35:46.060
So, obviously, the FBI was monitoring this whole situation because in real time, as soon as Citibank froze my accounts, they called Citibank and told them to put this message into their system.
00:35:57.620
So, obviously, they were sort of tracking things.
00:36:02.340
You mentioned there were Canadians who interrogated you.
00:36:05.960
These were Canadians who had come from Canada to Syria to join the terrorist war.
00:36:24.240
My cellmate grew up in Vermont, right on the border.
00:36:30.460
And on top of that, after I came home, I started investigating everything that went on and looking at all the receipts.
00:36:36.380
And I noticed that two tablets were mailed to a guy named Henrik Fee in Quebec.
00:36:41.420
And several others were mailed to the border, the Turkish border, the Turkish-Syrian border on the Turkish side.
00:36:50.720
And this guy, Henrik Fee, that's his real name.
00:36:56.580
And he's never even been arrested, from what I've been told.
00:36:59.220
Even though that the RCMP kicked in his door, raided his house, and confiscated some of these devices.
00:37:06.200
Now, I heard about this, and I saw your tweets about it.
00:37:13.080
And, in fact, if I'm not mistaken, you have a photograph of someone who you say you recognized.
00:37:19.620
Is that correct, that you saw someone without a mask over there in Syria, and you see them now back here in Canada?
00:37:30.280
That guy is, basically, while I was in captivity, they were forwarding emails to a certain email address.
00:37:37.320
Any emails between myself and editors back home who were my contacts, they were forwarding these emails to somebody,
00:37:44.580
obviously, in an attempt to see if they could get ransom for me from these organizations.
00:37:50.340
Now, I took that email address, and I cut and pasted it into the Facebook search engine.
00:37:55.920
And this guy set up his Facebook account with the exact same email address, so his profile came up, and that's where I saw his picture.
00:38:03.100
And then, after one of them, a different suspect took a selfie with your prime minister and then posted it on his Facebook page,
00:38:11.060
the media got a hold of that, and I told the RCMP that if they don't give me an update, I'm going to start giving interviews.
00:38:16.100
So they invited me up to Montreal to avoid me going public and humiliating Trudeau, which really is not hard.
00:38:22.960
And they did a photo lineup, and in this photo lineup was the exact same person they were forwarding these emails to,
00:38:37.280
I mean, I know you had a good discussion with my colleague, John Cardillo.
00:38:44.600
Give me one minute on the escape itself, and then I'm just going to ask for an update of how you've been since you've returned these past five years.
00:38:53.260
I mean, you know, you're a young guy, so you have some wits about you and some physical strength and endurance, I suppose.
00:39:02.580
But, I mean, being a prisoner by al-Qaeda, that sounds like it would be pretty tough just to break free.
00:39:07.600
Yeah, well, I mean, I was in a basement cell on a base with a wall around it.
00:39:14.780
So, basically what I did was, I don't want to ruin the end of the book, I figured out how to take apart the wires that were welded onto the window holding us in.
00:39:23.940
So, I stared at the wires because I couldn't pull them off, I couldn't pry them off.
00:39:28.540
So, after I stared at them for a while, I realized, all right, you know, strength isn't going to do this.
00:39:34.140
So, I started thinking of characters in books and movies, and how did they get it done?
00:39:37.840
And I thought of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, and how when they jumped up at the electrified screen, they never hit the same spot twice.
00:39:44.200
So, I started testing every wire, and by doing that, I figured out that it was held together by tension, and I can just really unweave it and take it apart.
00:39:56.780
So, you got out, you got out of the cell, you got out of the prison, and then where did you go?
00:40:10.280
You know, in that environment, you can't walk it.
00:40:14.200
So, I had to basically weave through the back roads until I was far enough away.
00:40:19.060
I was walking through Aleppo for like 35, 40 minutes.
00:40:24.660
And then I basically tricked a couple of guys into walking me right up to a Free Syrian Army headquarters, and they took me in.
00:40:32.940
And the next day, bought me a brand new jumpsuit, make me look like one of them.
00:40:37.820
We piled into the backseat of their Jeep Cherokee, the same kind of car I got kidnapped in, believe it or not.
00:40:46.160
And you just went across the border, and you phoned home, or you flew home, or what happened then?
00:40:53.140
I went across the border, and about two hours after I got there, the Turks took me right in.
00:40:59.780
They were really, really compassionate and great guys.
00:41:03.140
And they let me call the embassy, and the embassy's like, yes, we've been looking for you.
00:41:07.060
We're going to send the consulate to pick you up from Adana.
00:41:10.000
And about two and a half hours later, he arrived and let me call my mother.
00:41:17.020
And then they drove me back to Adana, and it took about two days to get all the paperwork, temporary passport, stuff like that together.
00:41:22.560
And after two days, I jumped on a plane to Istanbul, Istanbul to JFK, where my mother and the evil FBI agent, who was doing all this stuff to me, were waiting for me.
00:41:36.100
And it sounds like there's not a lot of closure there.
00:41:39.380
The bad guys who got you have not been arrested in North America that we know of.
00:41:45.760
And do we know what's happened to your captors back in Syria?
00:41:49.860
Has that geographic place been reconquered by Syria or others?
00:41:59.100
Well, since I got home, I mean, I got to be honest with you.
00:42:02.460
The FBI and the RCMP and Crown Prosecutor Linda Carey have caused me a lot more aggravation and pain than anything that happened over there.
00:42:10.580
The FBI has two Canadians they claim in custody for four years who interrogated me, but they won't prosecute them because of all these issues that occurred from the tactics that they used, I believe.
00:42:23.400
And they won't let the Canadians arrest anybody, even though they have an airtight case.
00:42:27.420
I mean, all the evidence, they have actually a tape recording of one of them admitting that he did this while talking on the phone with his girlfriend.
00:42:36.880
And still, you know, Crown Prosecutor Linda Carey, who is in charge of prosecuting these people, will not move forward with the case.
00:42:46.520
And then at the same time, I'm reading online that she's trying to prosecute a couple because they had a pressure cooker and a box of nails in their house and they're Muslims.
00:42:53.100
So this all of this causes me a lot of aggravation and no, I don't have closure and I'm not going to give up.
00:43:00.480
I'm going to keep fighting until these people are held accountable on both sides.
00:43:06.900
As far as what I'm doing now, I'm writing a second book.
00:43:10.160
I do a lot of speaking engagements with the military.
00:43:14.700
And I have some other projects that are starting to gain speed.
00:43:19.060
And hopefully I'll be able to talk about them soon and make some announcements.
00:43:23.560
Well, thanks for taking the time with us today.
00:43:27.220
And I hope that you do get justice both in North America and back over there.
00:43:34.380
The book we're talking about is called The Dawn Prayer or How to Survive in a Secret Syrian Terrorist Prison.
00:43:58.380
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about the liberals using the Toronto attack as justification to censor their political opponents online.
00:44:05.240
Ron writes, you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.
00:44:12.260
I mean, the left or just big government in general.
00:44:14.980
I mean, this income tax is just temporary until we win World War I.
00:44:32.200
But it's certainly used an excuse an inch to take a mile.
00:44:37.320
On my interview with Brandon Morse about baby Alfie.
00:44:40.440
Tammy writes, thank you for interviewing Brandon Morse.
00:44:43.000
Alfie Evans is being subjected to horrific treatment by the NHS.
00:44:46.780
This child and his parents are being held hostage.
00:44:51.980
Maybe it's because I have a little one about that age and Alfie looks so cute.
00:44:59.700
When tyranny comes to the West, it will not come wearing a military uniform.
00:45:03.860
It will not come with a foreign leader wearing some Stalin's mustache and a Russian accent.
00:45:10.540
Tyranny will come through the hospitals, through the schools, through social workers,
00:45:14.920
through, I don't know, some child and family services activist.
00:45:26.340
Every time I go to the UK, I come back depressed that it is not what I hoped it was,
00:45:30.920
not what I thought it was, not what it once was, even recently.
00:45:35.020
Susan writes, this is what happens when you let bureaucrats run the health care system.
00:45:51.640
I mean, that's the theory and the excuse we hear,
00:45:56.880
We have the right to tell you what to do or not do
00:46:01.500
By definition, it gives the government a stake in your own life, your own body.
00:46:06.940
Yeah, I don't think we're as far gone as the UK,
00:46:15.480
Until Monday, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,