Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT： Social media censors grilled in the US, why does it never happen in Canada？

00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. Interesting, and I'm a little bit jealous of it. America had hearings in their

00:00:04.580 Congress about Twitter's censorship. I'm jealous in that we rarely have the same banter and

00:00:11.600 inquiries, and, you know, we just don't have the same accountable checks and balances in our system.

00:00:18.940 I'll show you what happened in the States. I'll play you video clips of some of the exchanges,

00:00:22.700 and if you're like me, you'll wish we had more of that in Canada. But first, let me invite you

00:00:27.140 to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of this podcast. I want you to

00:00:31.260 see these congressmen and these Twitter executives going head-to-head. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com,

00:00:37.280 click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month. You get my show every weekday, and you get the satisfaction

00:00:42.580 of knowing that your eight bucks a month helps us keep the lights on here because we do not take

00:00:46.380 any money from the government. All right, here's today's show. You're listening to a Rebel News

00:00:56.120 Podcast. Tonight, social media censors were grilled in the U.S. Congress. Why doesn't that

00:01:09.360 ever happen up here? It's February 10th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:12.920 You're fighting for freedom! Shame on you, you censorious bug!

00:01:26.120 If you remember the Trump years, whenever there was some hearing about Donald Trump, 0.93

00:01:33.700 some accusation about Donald Trump, the impeachment process against Donald Trump,

00:01:38.700 Canadian media couldn't get enough of it, even though every single one of those fusses 1.00

00:01:44.000 resulted in a big nothing. Do you remember the Mueller investigation for Russian influence?

00:01:49.420 It came up with nothing. There must have been hundreds of stories. I can't think of a single

00:01:56.060 American left-wing activist. Like, remember Michael Avenatti, who was going to be the next

00:02:00.120 president of the United States? He's in prison now. The Canadian media loved covering every

00:02:07.060 jot and tittle, every trifle and trivial matter that was to embarrass Donald Trump. But there have been

00:02:13.740 hearings in Congress this past week that, as far as I know, have not been covered anywhere in the

00:02:20.920 Canadian mainstream media, although they are of great substantive gravity. The hearings are for the

00:02:28.060 former executives of Twitter. These hearings are happening only because the Republicans have the

00:02:33.800 majority in Congress now, so they can set the agenda. And, very fortuitously, because Elon Musk bought

00:02:42.140 Twitter, took it private, spent $44 billion, and released some powerful secrets about what Twitter had done

00:02:51.680 under the previous regime. In fact, not only did Elon Musk release this, he invited independent

00:02:58.700 journalists, including many on the left, to go to Twitter headquarters, sift through hundreds or

00:03:04.660 thousands of internal memos, and publish their results on Twitter. There was several tranches

00:03:12.060 of these Twitter files, as they've been called, showing political interference, especially in the last

00:03:19.140 presidential election. COVID interference, including where a Pfizer executive, Scott Gottlieb,

00:03:25.500 actively interfered to stop critics of Pfizer and scientists with alternative viewpoints,

00:03:32.220 including that natural immunity was powerful. One of the scariest things that was revealed in these

00:03:37.660 Twitter files is the FBI merger with Twitter. It was basically used not only to capture information about

00:03:47.340 people that the FBI wanted to learn about, but to shut down comments and political conversations that the FBI

00:03:54.380 wanted to stop. Since when was that the matter for police? But I've been saying this even before Elon Musk bought

00:04:01.660 the company and revealed it. Twitter really is an information operation, a spy network where you are the

00:04:10.140 product. I mean, think about it. If you don't have to pay to use Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google,

00:04:17.260 Twitter, if you don't have to pay, are you what's for sale? Well, the answer is, of course. And that's not a shocking

00:04:24.700 thing to think about. When you read a newspaper, you may buy the newspaper or pay for a subscription,

00:04:30.540 but really the advertisers are buying you, the audience and your eyeballs. It's not a shocking

00:04:35.820 concept. The thing is, when you're on Twitter, it's much more than just what you're reading. It's

00:04:41.740 everything you send in what's called a direct message. Every direct message you send through

00:04:46.540 social media becomes the property of that company. You may not know this, but the terms of service of

00:04:51.660 Facebook and Instagram, when you upload a photo to those websites, you grant Facebook, Instagram,

00:04:59.500 and the rest of them a license to use those however they like. You may think, well, maybe they're going

00:05:05.660 to do it to advertise their system, but actually much more troublingly, they sell that information about

00:05:12.620 you. Well, to advertisers for sure, but imagine the treasure trove of information available to the CIA,

00:05:19.900 the FBI, the State Department. Because remember, Twitter is an international service in many

00:05:26.140 languages. The old board of directors of Twitter didn't have a lot of tech bros on it. It was full

00:05:33.740 of people in their 60s and 70s and maybe even their 80s who were known for their role in the military

00:05:40.380 industrial espionage complex. These are people who didn't know anything about the online world other than

00:05:48.220 that's a great way to gather information on people and to spread information that you want to spread.

00:05:55.580 It wasn't just Americans, of course, foreign agencies too, including the Saudis who had a major

00:06:01.500 investment in Twitter and whose spy agency was caught using Saudi staff at Twitter to spy on dissidents.

00:06:10.060 TikTok, one of the most popular social media apps in the world, is obviously a Chinese spy app. 1.00

00:06:17.900 Anyways, what news we have is that these Twitter executives under the former regime

00:06:23.660 have been called to testify in Washington, D.C. And indeed, they attended. Sometimes tech leaders

00:06:30.380 simply resist or refuse to attend, but they were there. Now, I have to tell you very candidly,

00:06:36.060 some of these representatives asked good questions, excellent questions even, but some of them,

00:06:41.900 in my view, they didn't. Now, I completely sympathize with them. But in the case of,

00:06:46.220 for example, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, two conservative Republican congressmen,

00:06:52.380 their questions of Vijaya Gaddy and Ewell Roth were more painful complaints of how they had been censored

00:06:59.740 and abused. They were more howling at the injustice than they were lawyers doing a cross-examination.

00:07:04.860 You'll see that. And you might not particularly be impressed by their questions, but you should be

00:07:09.500 impressed by the fact that this is allowed to happen at all. And you might think to yourself,

00:07:14.380 why don't we ever ask such questions in Canada? I want to show you the first clip of Representative Nancy

00:07:20.140 Mace, a Republican, asking questions of Vijaya. That's her name. She was one of the senior censors

00:07:30.620 at Twitter who had previously told the public there was no shadow banning. There was no

00:07:36.220 censorship. Vijaya Gaddy is her name. I'm going to play for you several minutes of this. It's

00:07:40.460 fascinating. One of the most interesting things said here is that this congressman herself

00:07:44.940 regrets getting the vaccine. And one of the things that she is furious about is that she was not able

00:07:53.420 to get both sides of the story medically about the vaccine because of Twitter's ideological

00:07:59.980 censorship. She actually regrets it and wonders why they censored doctors, medical doctors with

00:08:07.500 great expertise. Here, let me play a few minutes of this. I thought this was illuminating.

00:08:10.540 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Twitter files were not just about Hunter Biden's laptop.

00:08:15.180 Twitter files make it apparent Twitter worked overtime to suppress accurate COVID information.

00:08:21.020 Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford who once tweeted an article he wrote

00:08:26.220 about natural immunity. Thanks to Elon Musk's release of the Twitter files, we learned some of

00:08:30.940 his tweets were tagged with the label of trends blacklist. Apparently, the views of a Stanford doctor

00:08:36.860 are disinformation to you people. I, along with many Americans, have long-term effects from COVID.

00:08:42.620 Not only was I a long hauler, but I have effects from the vaccine. It wasn't the first shot,

00:08:47.340 but it was the second shot that I now developed asthma that has never gone away since I had the second

00:08:52.540 shot. I have tremors in my left hand, and I have the occasional heart pain that no doctor can explain,

00:08:59.980 and I've had a battery of tests. I find it extremely alarming Twitter's unfettered censorship spread

00:09:06.540 into medical fields and affected millions of Americans by suppressing expert opinions from

00:09:11.660 doctors and censoring those who disagree with the CDC. I have great regrets about getting the shot

00:09:17.180 because of the health issues that I now have that I don't think are ever going to go away. And I know

00:09:22.300 that I'm not the only American who has those kinds of concerns. Another example of what Twitter has done

00:09:28.860 to censor folks is from Dr. Martin Koldorf, a Harvard-educated epidemiologist who once tweeted,

00:09:35.900 COVID vaccines are important for high-risk people and their caretakers. Those with prior 0.60

00:09:40.780 natural infection do not need it, nor children. The Twitter files reveal this tweet was deemed false

00:09:46.780 false information because it ran contrary to the CDC. So my first question this morning of Ms. Gatti,

00:09:53.180 may I ask of you, where did you go to medical school? I did not go to medical school. I'm sorry?

00:10:00.380 I did not go to medical school. That's what I thought. Why do you think you or anyone else at

00:10:03.900 Twitter had the medical expertise to censor a doctor's expert opinion?

00:10:08.780 Our policies regarding COVID were designed to protect individuals. We were seeing...

00:10:17.660 You guys censored Harvard-educated doctors, Stanford-educated doctors, doctors that are educated

00:10:23.180 in the best places in the world, and you silenced those voices. My next question is, the U.S.

00:10:31.340 government... Oh, excuse me. I have another chart I want to show you, Ms. Gatti. I have another tweet by

00:10:35.900 someone with a following of a full 18,000 followers. This person put a chart from the CDC on Twitter.

00:10:43.900 It's the CDC's own data, so it's accurate by your standards, and you all labeled this as misleading.

00:10:51.180 You're not a doctor, right, Ms. Gatti? No, I'm not. Okay. What makes you think you or anyone else

00:10:56.940 of Twitter have the medical expertise to censor actual, accurate CDC data? I'm not familiar with these

00:11:05.660 particular situations. Yeah, I'm sure you're not, but this is what Twitter did. They labeled this

00:11:10.380 as inaccurate. It is the government's own data. It's ridiculous that we're even having to have

00:11:17.020 this conversation today. It's not just about the laptop. This is about medical advice that expert

00:11:21.500 doctors were trying to give Americans because social media companies like Twitter were silencing

00:11:27.100 their voices. I want to play for you another clip. This is a very interesting exchange between

00:11:31.900 Representative Byron Donalds, a Republican. I think he's from Florida. He was grilling Yoel Roth,

00:11:38.540 really the chief censor of Twitter. In fact, he briefly worked for Twitter even under

00:11:45.740 Elon Musk until he was finally sacked. Byron Donalds asks questions, and there's another FBI man who was

00:11:53.660 briefly with Twitter under Elon Musk until he was sacked. And look at this Republican, ask about how the

00:12:01.660 Biden team would simply make requests to Twitter and they would jump right on them, request to

00:12:08.300 censor critics of Biden. Take a look at this exchange. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Real quick,

00:12:14.060 Mr. Roth, you've stated already that what happened with the New York Post story was similar to

00:12:21.900 the hack and leak scenarios from 2016. You also said that you've you actually were opposed to

00:12:29.580 deleting the New York Post story. Who advocated for the removal of the New York Post story?

00:12:39.020 The company's decision to treat it as a violation. Mr. Roth, who at the company

00:12:43.900 actually went over your recommendation because you're pretty high up?

00:12:46.300 Who overrode you? The decision was communicated to me by my direct supervisor. Who was that person?

00:12:53.180 Her name was Del Harvey. She was the vice president of trust and safety at the time.

00:12:57.020 All right. Thank you so much. Ms. Gaddy, real quick, you said to the chairman earlier,

00:13:00.860 and I want to paraphrase what I heard earlier, is that Twitter had no contact with anybody from

00:13:05.820 the Biden team. Is that correct to your knowledge? Not to my knowledge.

00:13:09.740 Put that up for me. Okay. Over my right shoulder, we have an email reference. This is like this is

00:13:18.460 Saturday, October 24th, 539 PM, referencing five different tweets. Is that with a Twitter email

00:13:28.940 chain? Under the line, it's more to review from the Biden team. Does anybody have a comment on how

00:13:36.780 much interaction was happening with the Biden team at Twitter with respect to tweets that they wanted

00:13:42.860 Twitter to review? Ms. Gaddy, Mr. Roth? I'm not familiar with this email.

00:13:48.620 So you're not familiar with this email, Mr. Roth? Are you familiar with this email?

00:13:53.020 Only from what's been reported in the Twitter files.

00:13:55.980 Did you ever have contact with anybody from the Biden team?

00:13:58.780 No, sir, I did not. We explicitly separated the teams that would interact with campaigns

00:14:03.180 from teams like mine that were responsible for content monitoring.

00:14:05.580 How big was the organization in Twitter that was actually working with campaigns?

00:14:09.900 I couldn't say for sure. Did you ever have any contact with the DNC?

00:14:13.740 Directly? No, I did not. Did anybody at Twitter have any contact with anybody at the DNC?

00:14:18.060 I think it's likely that somebody at Twitter did, yes.

00:14:21.100 In these emails, it's listed that these are tweets that had to be flagged from the Biden team.

00:14:25.260 That's what's in the files. You have no idea how many people actually

00:14:30.860 engaged with the Twitter team or how frequently that engagement happened?

00:14:34.300 No, and again, that was by design. We kept those functions separate from content moderation so

00:14:40.380 that we could impartially assess reports like that.

00:14:42.860 Do you know how many tweets were actually flagged and taken down at the behest of the Biden team?

00:14:49.180 I wouldn't agree with the characterization of it as being at the behest of them.

00:14:52.540 These tweets were reported and Twitter independently evaluated them under its rules.

00:14:56.620 But the email is very clear. More to review from Biden team. The response three hours later at the

00:15:03.740 bottom, hold this up real quick so you can see. The request at the bottom, it says, handled these.

00:15:09.500 What does handled these mean?

00:15:10.860 My understanding is that these tweets contained non-consensual nude photos of Hunter Biden,

00:15:18.860 and they were removed by the company under...

00:15:20.620 Hold on, real quick, Mr. Roth. How could you know so much about the content of these tweets?

00:15:23.980 I mean, as far as I'm concerned, these are just web addresses. I don't know what's in these tweets.

00:15:28.300 You have these things committed to memory that you know the content,

00:15:30.460 but you don't know who you talk to, who you talk to at the Biden team?

00:15:32.940 Sir, I didn't meet with the Biden team, but there was extensive public reporting

00:15:38.300 about these tweets specifically that uncovered what they were.

00:15:41.340 You know the contents of the tweets. It was obviously at Twitter. But you have no idea how

00:15:47.100 often people who worked in your organization had with the Biden team during the end of the 2020

00:15:55.020 presidential elections. All right, I want to show you another clip. This is from Lauren Boebert, who

00:15:59.820 is a controversial conservative. And of course, the left would say every conservative is controversial.

00:16:06.140 But, you know, I acknowledge that she's a spicy, feisty Republican. And by the way,

00:16:11.980 that's allowed under freedom of speech. She was clearly hurt that she was censored by Yoel Roth.

00:16:18.620 I want to play this for you. And again, I don't think this was particularly good cross-examination

00:16:24.060 if this were a court of law, but it's a court of public opinion. And Lauren Boebert certainly has

00:16:28.460 her fans. Take a look. Watch for yourself. Mr. Roth, Ms. Gaddy, did either of you approve

00:16:33.820 the shadow banning of my account at Lauren Boebert? Yes or no? No, I did not. Not to the best of my

00:16:44.060 recollection. Well, let me refresh your memory, because on March 12th, 2021, and Mr. Roth,

00:16:49.900 I know you looked at it because fascist Twitter 1.0 had a public interest exceptions policy, which means

00:16:56.780 for members of Congress to be shadow banned, it had to go before you, Mr. Roth. So I'll ask again,

00:17:02.940 did you shadow ban my account? Yes or no? Again, not to the best of my recollection.

00:17:08.060 So the answer is, Mr. Roth, yes, you did. I found out last night from Twitter staff

00:17:12.460 that you suppressed my account for this tweet. It's a freaking joke about Hillary Clinton being angry 1.00

00:17:20.780 that she couldn't rig her election. It's a joke. But in response, being the sinister overlords that you 0.98

00:17:28.940 all are, you placed a 90-day account filter so I could not be found. And now we see here that Twitter

00:17:36.220 staff said the visibility filter on my account excluded me from top searches, prevented notifications

00:17:41.980 for non-followers, and much more. This is considered an aggressive visibility filter. You silenced members

00:17:50.140 of Congress from communicating with their constituents. You silenced me from communicating with the American

00:17:56.940 people over a freaking joke. Now, who the hell do you think that you are? The smugness of you, 0.99

00:18:04.780 Bill Roth is incredible. You know, one of the criticisms of Twitter in the pre-Elon Musk era

00:18:13.340 was that it was extremely harsh on conservatives, on Republicans, on anyone politically incorrect,

00:18:20.140 on anyone who would misgender a trans person, for example. But they had no problem with, say,

00:18:26.700 the Ayatollah of Iran or various Chinese dictators. They banned Donald Trump, who was a sitting

00:18:33.660 president at the time. But they let every dictator in the third world on Twitter. They banned Lauren

00:18:39.340 Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, but they allowed child pornography. They simply wouldn't take it down. 0.99

00:18:47.740 Well, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had some questions about that. She was banned, 1.00

00:18:53.740 but the porn was allowed. Take a look. So glad that you're censored down. I'm so glad you've lost your jobs.

00:18:59.900 Thank God Elon Musk bought Twitter. And you know what? Let's talk about something a little bit further.

00:19:06.860 It's amazing to me, Mr. Roth, as the head and trust of safety at Twitter, your ability, or should I say

00:19:16.220 inability to remove child porn. Now, here's something that disgusts me about you. In your doctoral 0.63

00:19:24.060 dissertation entitled Gay Data, you argued that minors should have access to Grindr, an adult male 0.51

00:19:32.140 gay hookup app. Minors? Really? You know, Elon Musk took over Twitter and he banned 44,000 accounts that

00:19:42.220 were promoting child porn. You permanently banned my Twitter account, but you allowed child porn all over

00:19:50.220 Twitter. Twitter had become a platform, you said, connecting queer young adults. You also wrote on 0.71

00:19:57.660 Twitter in 2010, can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers?

00:20:03.580 In 2021, while you were the director of trust and safety on Twitter, an underage boy and his mother 0.54

00:20:09.820 announced a lawsuit against Twitter because Twitter was benefiting from and refused to remove a lewd video

00:20:19.740 featuring this boy and another minor. That is repulsive. But you violated me. What were my tweets? Okay,

00:20:28.140 let's talk about them. I was talking about the deaths being reported on VAERS. By the way,

00:20:34.060 that's on the CDC website. I was also saying that I didn't think any entity should enforce a non-FDA

00:20:43.820 approved vaccine or mask. Guess what? A lot of people agreed with me, but you called that COVID

00:20:49.660 misinformation. By the way, I'm a member of Congress and you're not. I also said the controversial COVID-19

00:20:57.340 vaccines should not be forced on our military. You want to know something? Republicans stop that

00:21:03.820 in the NDAA. I'm not just referring to pornography in general. I'm talking to child pornography,

00:21:09.180 which of course is the product of actually raping children and abusing them. Why was that allowed 0.99

00:21:15.580 for years on Twitter? I think it's a fair question, even if it's asked in anger by someone who was

00:21:21.020 personally hurt by Twitter censorship. Now, of course, it wasn't just Republicans who asked questions of

00:21:26.380 Twitter. The Democrats were there. And with a very small exception, the Democrats loved the censorship.

00:21:36.460 You would think that Democrats would share the belief in a free system. I mean, aren't we all in

00:21:42.460 this great public debate together? Don't we all think that ideas should, you know, truth and falsehood

00:21:48.220 should grapple? Incredibly, the vast majority of Democrats excused or applauded the censorship of

00:21:56.940 Twitter because they know Twitter was on their side. And these censors were absolutely anti-Republican.

00:22:03.580 Here's Representative Jimmy Gomez lobbing softballs to that same Yul Roth about Marjorie Taylor Greene.

00:22:11.100 Please explain to us why Miss Marjorie Taylor Greene or the representatives from Georgia was removed from

00:22:17.660 Twitter. Thank you for the question, Congressman. My recollection is that her personal account was

00:22:26.060 banned from Twitter after repeated written notices due to repeated violations of the Twitter rules.

00:22:32.940 Can you add a little specificity to the violation of the Twitter rules?

00:22:37.180 Yes. Again, I didn't have access to my Twitter email, documents, anything that would have let me

00:22:42.220 prepare to answer that in more detail. But my recollection is that the Congresswoman repeatedly

00:22:47.500 violated Twitter's policies about sharing misinformation about COVID-19. She received

00:22:52.780 multiple written warnings about that conduct. She received multiple timeouts related to that conduct.

00:22:58.620 And then ultimately, consistent with the written and published policy,

00:23:02.700 those repeated violations resulted in her account being permanently suspended.

00:23:07.260 Well, like I say, Americans are lucky that they have a Congress and a political system

00:23:12.140 that's more responsive than us. I'm flummoxed and stunned every time I consider that our third

00:23:18.300 branch, you know, there's various branches of government. There's the legislature. That's easy

00:23:22.620 to understand. That's your elected lawmakers, your MPs at the federal level, your MPPs or MLAs

00:23:29.420 at the provincial level. That's easy to understand. There's the executive. Those are cabinet ministers who can

00:23:34.700 make decisions on everything from going to war to interest rates, things like that, although they

00:23:42.060 would claim that interest rates are independent. And then the third branch of government is the judiciary,

00:23:47.020 the judges, which serve to be a check on legislators or the executive branch that gets too big for its bridges,

00:23:53.900 too big for the Constitution. But alas, here in Canada, our judiciary has yet to weigh in.

00:23:59.180 The Supreme Court of Canada has yet to bother itself with anything regarding the lockdown,

00:24:04.220 or that civil liberties bonfire. Isn't that incredible? We do not have the same active

00:24:11.500 checks and balances in democracy that they have in the United States, and I'm jealous.

00:24:16.300 So they had these hearings, and these hearings were televised, and there was a congressional record.

00:24:22.140 And what did the media party say? Well, as I said, in Canada, our media simply ignored this.

00:24:27.820 They would follow every detail in a Mueller investigation about Russian influence or

00:24:33.820 the endless Trump impeachments. But this, censorship by one of the world's most important social media

00:24:38.700 companies, they couldn't be bothered. Here's the media party saying the Twitter files are no big deal.

00:24:45.100 Take a look.

00:24:46.060 15% of Americans care about it. But Jen Psaki, the problem also with these hearings are,

00:24:50.700 you look at these issues, they never produce it. The Twitter files. You remember the Twitter

00:24:54.860 files? Oh boy, that was right. It's going to be the end.

00:24:58.940 It's fascinating that the Twitter files had such an extraordinary blind spot. It ended up being the

00:25:05.500 most biased thing I've ever seen in my life. Because we find out after the Twitter files come out,

00:25:10.460 I guess Elon didn't give them all the information about, like, Twitter executives cowering in the

00:25:16.300 corner and doing whatever Donald Trump wanted them to do. You've got the Twitter files, you've got the

00:25:20.940 New York Post, the Hunter Biden laptop thing. These things have been looked at. It's just like when,

00:25:29.260 when they were, you know, who's his special character? Durham. It's just like Durham. I'd read Durham's

00:25:33.820 pleadings and I'd say, okay, I, there has to be something here. And Mika will tell you, I read one

00:25:39.740 pleading all day and I called about 30 legal experts. I go, what's here? And everyone of them said,

00:25:44.060 I've been reading it. I don't think anything's here. Conservatives keep doing this. They did it with

00:25:49.980 Durham and their witch hunt against the FBI. They did it on Hunter Biden's laptop and their witch

00:25:55.660 hunt against Twitter. They did it on the Twitter files and their witch hunt. Like, they only want

00:26:01.980 to go after blue witches. They don't want to go after red witches. These things never, ever produce 1.00

00:26:08.060 the punch they expect. No, I mean, and to go back to Mike Barnacle's earlier point, I mean,

00:26:12.860 this is like a word salad of right wing craziness, right? I mean, and if you are just a normal person,

00:26:19.420 80% of the country, by the way, that is not on Twitter, and you're hearing things like Durham,

00:26:25.420 woke mobs, many of the sentences in Sarah Huckabee Sanders's speech the other night,

00:26:31.100 you, you tune in and you think, I have no idea what you're talking about. I am, I have to go buy

00:26:36.940 eggs. My healthcare is too expensive. My prescription drugs are too expensive. I'm not sure about gas. It

00:26:43.820 seems down, but I don't want it to go up. And it just feels very far away. So in a strange way,

00:26:49.740 the, this Republican strategy right now has made them seem like this, like right wing elite society

00:26:55.820 that is not connected with what is actually happening in the country.

00:26:59.500 Yeah. MSNBC and Jen Psaki, who of course was a senior Democrat official, they both agree that

00:27:06.740 Hunter Biden laptop story. It's not even real. And here's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying,

00:27:13.380 the whole thing is a waste of Congress's time. Let's do something more important,

00:27:18.100 like impeaching Donald Trump twice. Take a look at AOC.

00:27:21.780 Let's, let's, I just want to start off right here at the top here. This isn't even my line

00:27:27.220 of questioning, but I'd like to submit to the record, a Washington Post article,

00:27:30.980 now warning about Hunter Biden laptop disinformation, the guy who leaked it.

00:27:36.660 Here's the deal. Before I even get into my questions, I think that the story here with the

00:27:42.660 New York, with the Washington Post reporting is that what they're saying right here, when the New

00:27:46.900 York Post first reported in October, 2020, that it had obtained contents of a laptop computer,

00:27:51.540 allegedly owned by Joe Biden's son Hunter, there was an immediate roadblock faced by other news

00:27:56.820 outlets that hoped to corroborate reporting, as many did. The newspaper wasn't sharing what it

00:28:02.100 obtained. New York Post had this alleged information and was trying to publish it

00:28:08.340 without any corroboration, without any backup information. They were trying to publish it to

00:28:12.980 Twitter. Twitter did not let them. And now they were upset. I believe that political operatives who

00:28:18.580 sought to inject explosive disinformation with the Washington Post couldn't get away with it.

00:28:23.700 And now they're livid. And they want the ability to do it again. They want the ability to inject this

00:28:30.820 again. So they've dragged a social media platform here in Congress. They're weaponizing the use of

00:28:36.900 this committee so that they can do it again. A whole hearing about a 24-hour hiccup in a right-wing

00:28:43.780 political operation. That is why we are here right now. And it is, it's just an abuse of public

00:28:51.060 resources and abuse of public time. We could be talking about health care. We could be talking

00:28:55.140 about bringing down the cost of prescription drugs. We could be talking about abortion rights,

00:28:58.820 civil rights, voting rights. But instead, we're talking about Hunter Biden's half-fake laptop story.

00:29:04.980 I mean, this is an embarrassment. Well, I'm jealous of America for a number of reasons. One of them is,

00:29:10.820 hey, can we have the Canadian version of Twitter files? Can we know about Justin Trudeau or Gerald

00:29:18.500 Butz contacting Twitter to tell Twitter to throttle or ban or suspend their enemies? You doubt it

00:29:24.260 happened? Obviously, all of this is happening at the other social media companies too. It's not just

00:29:30.100 the Twitter files. You know Facebook, YouTube, Google, Instagram, and the rest of them are doing

00:29:35.620 this too. It's just, we found out about it because Elon Musk bought the company, took it private, and then

00:29:41.220 revealed the dirt on his own company. The third thing I'd say, and you heard me talk about this the

00:29:46.420 other day about our lawsuit against, not against Twitter itself, but against Stephen Gilbeau,

00:29:53.380 the environment minister, former heritage minister, for blocking Rebel News and our access to the

00:29:58.900 government service. I'm very excited about that lawsuit. I'm amazed at how much interest it's had

00:30:03.460 nationwide. Over 100 newspapers touched on it. And we are having that trial in June, which is not very

00:30:11.140 far away. I'll keep you posted. In fact, I'll upload some more information to twitterlawsuit.ca.

00:30:18.020 I think we've actually got a chance. And it's not so much that relying on that source of information,

00:30:25.780 that Twitter account of the environment minister, is the most important thing in the world. It's

00:30:32.260 important, and we have a right to it. And I am interested in what the environment minister has

00:30:36.820 to say. It affects me as a citizen, and I have a right to it. But it's also important that the

00:30:41.860 federal government know that it simply cannot punish people based on their political differences with us,

00:30:49.300 that they simply can't ban people from getting access to government services because they disagree

00:30:55.300 with us or because we disagree with them. I look forward to that trial, and I'm optimistic, a little

00:31:01.620 bit, a little bit optimistic. Stay with us. More ahead.

00:31:17.140 Well, you know it's got to be bad if the CBC is covering it. Roxham Road is what I'm talking about.

00:31:24.340 About 100,000 illegal migrants have crossed the border from the United States. And of course,

00:31:30.580 there is no such thing as a refugee from the United States. It's one of the safest, 0.52

00:31:35.380 freest countries in the world. These are often people who are escaping law enforcement in the

00:31:42.020 United States, either for being a fake refugee applicant in that country, or some of them are

00:31:47.380 actually criminals fleeing justice of another sort to Canada. Justin Trudeau only too happy to receive

00:31:53.540 them. But the news in Radio Canada, the French wing of the CBC today, is even crazier than normal.

00:32:00.180 And the only reason I cite the CBC is because you know it must be bad if they're talking about it.

00:32:07.140 Let me read to you the translated version of their story.

00:32:09.940 U.S. federal agents are said to be driving migrants to Roxham Road. The Canadian police

00:32:20.500 would have been informed of this situation, learned Radio Canada. Let me just read the first sentence.

00:32:26.180 It wouldn't just be American taxi drivers bringing migrants to Roxham Road to cross the Canada-U.S.

00:32:31.220 border. According to information obtained by Radio Canada, that's the French CBC,

00:32:35.860 American customs agents would also be involved in such transport. Some even reportedly made a

00:32:43.700 business out of it, off duty, picking up these people in Plattsburgh, New York. It is in this city,

00:32:50.980 located about 30 minutes from the border on Roxham Road, that most of these migrants arrive by means

00:32:55.700 of a regular bus line. It's been known for a few months, told one of our sources. Incredibly,

00:33:02.740 the Americans are shipping their illegal migrants to us, and Trudeau, only too happy to receive them. 0.99

00:33:10.420 Joining us now via Skype from La Belle Provence of Quebec is our friend Alexa Lavois. Alexa, great to see

00:33:17.540 you. I love the fact that you have covered Roxham Road many times, and you're able to report both in

00:33:23.700 English and in French. Tell me more about this story. Do you share my view that if the CBC is covering

00:33:29.860 this? It's probably because it's really, really bad. Yeah, it is bad, and if they are reporting on it,

00:33:39.860 it's because they cannot close their eyes on it. They have no choice to tell it, and that means

00:33:46.260 that it's really, really a bad news. Yeah. Well, what do we know about this? Because,

00:33:51.700 of course, there have always been traffickers, if you want to use that word. We've,

00:33:55.540 you know, sometimes they're buses, sometimes they're just taxi drivers who just know where

00:34:00.100 to go. I mean, if you've never been to Roxham Road, you might find it hard to get to, but,

00:34:04.900 you know, these taxi drivers know it well. They charge people, I don't know, 100 bucks a pop.

00:34:10.020 They're not making millions, but if you've had 100,000 people go through, this is a large industry,

00:34:15.780 and there are some serious organized traffickers behind this because they know that the Canadians

00:34:22.260 will simply take them. Who really is behind this latest wave? Is this a political decision by,

00:34:28.980 I don't know, the mayor of New York City or the governor of New York or Joe Biden himself? All of

00:34:33.700 them are Democrats. Well, at the same time, Justin Trudeau is not doing anything to solve the problem

00:34:42.180 here in Canada. And we know that the US have already some problems too, and in the south border. So,

00:34:50.500 probably they just say, why not shipping them to Canada? They can, like, take more to see, like,

00:34:57.220 how many we receive. They can, like, probably take some of us. But the thing is, what we know so far,

00:35:04.660 we know that some van and bus is starting from Florida in the south, bringing them up. We know that

00:35:15.300 some people arrive by flight, some people arrive by private van, some people take some taxi from

00:35:22.580 not only Plattsburgh, but in New York directly to Roxham Road. We know that now the taxi is

00:35:30.340 advertising it. Now we know that New York City mayor say that he's tax-funded the bus ticket to the

00:35:39.060 migrant to go on the north. And now we heard that same like the federal agent is driving them to our

00:35:47.220 border. So, when we look at it, every single person is involved to bring us more migrants to cross

00:35:56.180 illegally. But I want to show, like, to read a part of the article. Anyone is prohibited from

00:36:04.740 organizing or encouraging the entry of one or more people into Canada. But all these people 0.99

00:36:13.940 are guilty to do so. That's a great point. You have lawmakers or law enforcers becoming law

00:36:22.260 breakers. It's so weird they're doing this. And I really have to think, Alexa, that they're doing this

00:36:27.300 with the approval, if not the direction of the authority. Like, the idea that you would have

00:36:35.220 border guards on the U.S. side, that you have police on the U.S. side, engage in human trafficking

00:36:40.180 like this is so shocking. And it's, I don't know, I mean, I suppose it could just be corruption.

00:36:47.460 There is such a thing as corrupt cops on the take or whatever. But I would have to think this is being

00:36:53.940 done with the approval of the big bosses. And if you say that there is tax money being used to take

00:36:59.460 buses all the way from Florida to Canada, that's crazy. But like you say, where's Trudeau? Let me ask

00:37:04.900 you this. This is getting some play in Quebec, en France, on Radio Canada. Have any spokesmen for

00:37:12.660 the Canadian federal government? Because this isn't, of course, the problem is faced by the cities and by

00:37:17.700 the province, but the responsibility for the border lies clearly with the federal government.

00:37:23.140 Has Justin Trudeau or any other cabinet minister or federal MP addressed this issue yet? Because this

00:37:31.140 has got to be a huge story. But Mr. Legault has already said that we need to close Ruxham Road. And

00:37:38.740 afterwards, he came back after having a meeting with Justin Trudeau saying that they will just

00:37:45.700 probably deport the migrant to other provinces instead of closing it. And now we have all these different 1.00

00:37:55.140 leaders of the party who put a new project of law at the National Assembly saying that they want to use

00:38:08.980 the police of Quebec to arrest the immigrant. But we have already the RCMP who do the same job, 0.99

00:38:18.740 what they will do more like the police of Quebec, arresting them and bringing them to immigration. And

00:38:23.940 after that, driving them to hotel room, it would be the same thing because the federal need to act,

00:38:32.740 but the federal doesn't want to. And it seems like they will not touch Ruxham Road until like someone

00:38:40.420 else is, is, uh, elect at the, uh, for being a leader of this country. Yeah. It's incredible because

00:38:46.580 of course, uh, the police literally meet these border crossers. Like if, and you've been there and

00:38:54.660 some of our other reporters have been there, the very first people who meet these border

00:38:59.380 crosses are the police. It's not like the police don't know about this. The police have set up

00:39:04.260 what used to be temporary structures, permanent structures. They immediately, they, they literally

00:39:09.940 help these people bring their luggage over that little ditch. So the idea of more, the police are

00:39:15.700 not the problem. The police are instructed to do the paperwork and then set these people go,

00:39:21.460 let these people go. So in 2017, 18, it was just tent. And now it's a big infrastructure

00:39:30.740 been built there. And I would say when these migrants cross into Canada, they are not like 0.96

00:39:38.820 aggressively arrest. They have been brain and just tell them like, show us your passport, bring your

00:39:46.260 belongings with you, and please make sure your money, uh, your paper money is come with your passport.

00:39:53.380 And now on the door, what is the most outrageous is they have now a paper. I was not, wasn't there

00:40:00.260 before in all language to tell the migrant what to do when they arrive. Huh? I find this incredible.

00:40:08.260 And it'll be interesting to see if the federal opposition leader, Pierre Polyev remarks on it.

00:40:14.260 They have said they are against Roxham Road being an open wound like that. But Pierre Polyev has not

00:40:20.180 spoken out against Trudeau's mass immigration policy in general. Has Polyev talked about this

00:40:25.780 latest news or is it too fresh for him to have commented on yet?

00:40:28.820 I didn't see anything in the news from Pierre Polyev comment.

00:40:33.860 Well, we'll keep our eyes on that. Of course, uh, you're based in Quebec, I think, and you've been

00:40:39.220 to Roxham Road before. I think it sounds like a fascinating thing and let's make sure we keep

00:40:43.700 covering it because although the, the CBC has done a good job here, I know that they will be doing their

00:40:50.580 best to minimize this and to keep that flow of illegal migrants going. Alexa, keep up the great work in Quebec. 1.00

00:40:56.260 Thank you. All right. There you have it. Alexa Lavoie, one of our favorite people. Stay with us. More ahead.

00:41:02.340 Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me on the Manny Montadegrino interview. Don Hussey says,

00:41:18.580 congratulations, Ezra, on an excellent and timely debate of national importance. Please take this

00:41:23.620 outside the paywall in its entirety so it can be shared widely. My old vet friends and I have never

00:41:29.540 been more concerned about the future of Canada and Canadians as we have been since Trudeau was first

00:41:33.860 elected prime minister. Thank you for your consideration. Hey, that's not a bad idea. As you

00:41:37.540 know, about once a month, I like to take a show out from the paywall in full just to show it to the world.

00:41:44.900 And this is a good contender. So thanks for the suggestion.

00:41:48.420 Hal Lisnick says,

00:41:49.700 Fake news was mentioned, brought back thoughts of my father's stories of his experiences after World

00:41:54.980 War II. I asked when I was a youngster, did the bad guys get punished? I was perplexed when he got to

00:42:00.900 Joseph Goebbels punishment for death for lying media. He told me the lying was most responsible

00:42:06.900 for all the deaths on both sides. I sure understand now we are infiltrated with the same lies.

00:42:11.620 Love the rebel. Thanks very much. We'll keep up the fight. Of course, you have to be careful about

00:42:16.900 criminalizing lies because sometimes a lie is later found out to have been the truth.

00:42:22.500 And of course, we learn things all the time. We have to be able to challenge what is regarded as

00:42:28.340 a fact. We have to constantly subject our understanding of the world to acid tests,

00:42:33.220 to criticism, to skepticism. That's the way forward to progress. As they say, let truth

00:42:38.020 and falsehood grapple. So I'm very cautious about banning a lie. A lie suggests someone deliberately

00:42:46.740 said something false. But most of the time, what we call lies in politics is just someone else's

00:42:51.700 opinion. Salty B says, When does the C-15 bill go into effect where they monitor you online? I'm not

00:43:00.980 really brushed up on what's going on with that, but it doesn't sound good at all. Well, you know what?

00:43:06.660 I have to look up C-15 because I'm not familiar with it off the top of my head. I've been more

00:43:10.500 focused on C-11, which is the regulation of social media. Perhaps that's what you mean. But I'll dig

00:43:16.580 up C-15 and make sure I get smarter on that. C-18 is another. There's three bills that the government

00:43:23.460 is looking at to censor the internet. And there's a fourth one they haven't introduced yet called the

00:43:27.940 Online Harms Act. Like I always say, there are four laws or proposed laws to censor the internet.

00:43:33.620 That's more laws than they have on, you know, proposals to fix the cost of living or deal with

00:43:40.660 inflation or anything substantive. If you want to know what Justin Trudeau cares about, look at his

00:43:45.860 legislation. And numerically, by far, what he cares about the most is censoring you and me.

00:43:52.100 Well, that's the show for today. Until tomorrow, or actually, rather, until Monday.

00:43:56.260 On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

00:44:09.780 At Rebel World Headquarters 0.76

Rebel News Podcast - February 11, 2023

EZRA LEVANT： Social media censors grilled in the US, why does it never happen in Canada？

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