Rebel News Podcast - August 18, 2026


EZRA LEVANT ｜ Tariff deadline hits following Carney’s luxury holiday in Tuscany – plus Joe Warmington on the state of journalism in Canada


Episode Stats


Length

47 minutes

Words per minute

186.46

Word count

8,948

Sentence count

417

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

21

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.080 Hello, my friends. Do you think that Mark Carney, the Trump whisperer, will be able to get a trade
00:00:06.060 deal before tonight at midnight? I myself am a skeptic. I don't think he actually wants one.
00:00:11.260 I'll make the case for that. But later, a feature interview with Joe Warmington, the shoe leather
00:00:16.380 journalist of the Toronto Sun. We'll talk about his career as an independent journalist and what
00:00:21.720 makes the old school reporters different from the computer desk jockeys of today. That's ahead.
00:00:28.420 But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
00:00:31.500 It's the video version of this podcast.
00:00:33.460 Just go to rebelnewsplus.com.
00:00:35.340 Click subscribe.
00:00:36.620 Not only will you get the great video content, but you'll keep Rebel News strong because we get no money from the government.
00:00:42.900 And it shows.
00:00:58.420 Mark Carney campaigned saying he alone could be the Trump whisperer and get the
00:01:05.060 terrorists taken down. Well, tonight's the deadline. Did he do it? It's August 18th,
00:01:09.940 and this is the Ezra LeVant Show. Shame on you, you censorious bug.
00:01:17.720 how's your summer going mark carney's is going just delightful thanks for asking
00:01:31.080 he was in tuscany italy no one knows where he stayed who he met with who paid for it or any
00:01:37.360 of those details silly citizen know your place mark carney watched as justin trudeau tried to
00:01:44.280 hide his visit to Billionaire Island, 0.97
00:01:46.900 courtesy of the Aga Khan.
00:01:48.260 Remember that free $100,000 vacation?
00:01:51.380 Well, no reporters who have access
00:01:54.540 to the prime minister bothered to ask him where he was.
00:01:57.920 It's not just that he's taking a luxury vacation in Europe.
00:02:01.160 He would never take a vacation in Canada.
00:02:03.900 He has always said he's European.
00:02:06.140 But it's been on the eve of tonight's big decision
00:02:09.600 by Donald Trump, which is his self-imposed deadline
00:02:12.720 to bring in high tariffs to Canada if the trade agreement couldn't be renewed.
00:02:17.540 I guess a vacation in Italy was timed just right.
00:02:20.900 Now, who knows? Maybe they will come up with a deal.
00:02:23.180 As I record this just before 5 p.m., there's still seven hours to get a deal done.
00:02:28.300 And I think both Trump and Carney are different in private than they are in public.
00:02:33.120 Of course, that's true.
00:02:35.040 But I think there's a real chance that it won't happen.
00:02:38.280 You can already see the regime media trying to lower expectations.
00:02:42.100 The Globe and Mail publishing items that absurdly, you know, I've seen in the press over the last few weeks, one newspaper article claiming that Canada is stronger than America in this negotiation.
00:02:57.640 Others saying it won't make much of a difference at all if we don't have a free trade agreement.
00:03:02.100 And I'm thinking those are, on the face of it, absurd arguments.
00:03:07.420 The United States is five times more important than all of our trading partners combined.
00:03:12.860 And there is no way of transposing someone else there.
00:03:15.920 It's our geographical location, our cultural similarity, our easy border.
00:03:21.300 There is no alternative to that.
00:03:23.520 And no one in the world would be foolish enough to want an alternative to America as an economic market.
00:03:28.840 But you have the Toronto Star and the CBC and the Globe and Mail all preparing the groundwork for failure.
00:03:35.340 But it was Mark Carney who said not only could he get the deal done, but he could do even better.
00:03:40.320 Here's a clip of him in Parliament last October.
00:03:44.220 We have the best deal already with the Americans and it will be even better.
00:03:50.020 Yeah, he's got to not only get the trade deal renewed, he's going to make it even better.
00:03:55.960 Well, I hope he does, but I don't know if that's going to happen because some of the things that
00:04:00.440 the United States has asked to be reformed, and I think they're quite reasonable requests,
00:04:05.580 are things that no politician in Canada would dare to do. Well, one thing is the dairy cartel
00:04:11.320 in Canada. It bans competition within Canada. That's outrageous enough, but it bans foreign
00:04:17.820 competition. It makes it so that we have to buy overpriced Quebec dairy. I'm a fan of Quebec. I'm 0.63
00:04:24.240 fan of Quebec dairy, but not at twice the world price. And the thing is, I'm a Calgarian who lives
00:04:31.160 in Toronto. I can grumble about it, but Donald Trump actually represents the various U.S. states
00:04:37.920 that are competitors. And the free trade agreement says you just can't do that without some sort of
00:04:44.000 penalty. If we're not willing to reduce the price of dairy and allow Americans in, don't be surprised 1.00
00:04:49.540 if Donald Trump fights over that. Don't be surprised if the tit for tat pushback by 1.00
00:04:55.900 David Eby and Doug Ford stick in Trump's craw. And if they don't stand down first over their
00:05:03.560 liquor ban, don't be surprised if Trump won't go ahead with his tariffs. You know, there's 200
00:05:09.380 countries in the world approximately. And as Trump and others like to point out, only two
00:05:14.820 have not been able to work together with America, China, and Canada. That's not a good company to
00:05:21.740 keep, but maybe it's a bit of a giveaway as to why we're in the situation. It wasn't long ago
00:05:26.340 that Mark Carney went to China, not his first trip, that's for sure, to meet Xi Jinping,
00:05:31.920 not his first meeting, that's for sure. But this time, rather than just being chairman of Brookfield,
00:05:36.500 he was also prime minister of Canada, but he was just as slavish as anyone. Here he is,
00:05:42.180 just as a reminder, pledging his loyalty to a China-led New World Order. 0.99
00:05:48.100 I believe the progress that we have made in the partnership 0.93
00:05:51.520 sets us up well for the New World Order.
00:06:00.140 I'll never stop enjoying Scott Moe's face,
00:06:04.160 the Saskatchewan Premier, when he hears that phrase, New World Order.
00:06:07.260 He did not want to be in that shot, I can assure you.
00:06:10.080 So tonight's the night. Do you think Mark Carney's going to get a deal? I don't, because I actually don't think he wants one. I think he wants to be able to blame someone for the economic recession we're in. You can tell that the media is happy to go along with that. They won't even call it a recession. They call it a technical recession, whatever that means.
00:06:31.700 I think that there was a bit of a giveaway the other day in Doug Ford's speech about AI data centers.
00:06:38.560 We've talked a lot about data centers over the last week or so.
00:06:41.660 And I think that the data centers should be built.
00:06:44.000 I think they're basically just big warehouses with computers in them.
00:06:47.620 And they're very big.
00:06:49.100 I mean, some of them have 100,000 processors in them, for sure.
00:06:51.860 They're billions of dollars in construction and hundreds of millions of dollars in operation.
00:06:56.760 um but there is opposition to them not because of the data centers themselves but because of what
00:07:04.100 what is being done in computing these days namely artificial intelligence and people are worried
00:07:08.900 that they will be made redundant by the machines so if they can't stop the machines maybe they can
00:07:14.920 smash the factories the data centers that run the machines i i think that there are challenges with
00:07:21.220 ai that we have to solve together but banning the data centers is not part of it anyways back to
00:07:26.740 my poem here's doug ford letting a rip on data centers and explaining why he wants them built
00:07:33.940 in ontario take a listen to this yeah you know something that that's up to the uh the cities no
00:07:40.580 matter if it's old well i i think honestly i think people have to learn a lot more about data centers
00:07:47.040 it's ironic if a municipality says i don't want a data center but all my businesses need a data
00:07:54.560 center. They need AI. My hospital needs AI. And everyone that lives in that community
00:08:01.540 uses social media, uses computers. It doesn't add up. You can't say I don't want it in my backyard.
00:08:12.780 But by the way, we're going to use all that power and all the information and the data centers
00:08:17.980 to run my community. It just doesn't add up. This is the way of the future.
00:08:23.480 either we do it or donald trump's gonna do it and i'm not giving donald trump nothing absolutely
00:08:30.320 nothing did you catch that we need to build data centers in ontario he said because donald trump
00:08:37.160 is bad and donald trump shouldn't have the data centers and you can't trust trump and you don't
00:08:41.960 want them in america do you trump trump trump trump trump trump it's a universal way to excuse
00:08:49.240 any situation. Mark Carney wants it, so he wants the trade deal to fail so he can blame
00:08:56.200 Trump for it. Doug Ford likes to have Trump as an enemy so he can say, you don't want
00:09:02.180 data centers somewhere else, do you? Don't play into Trump's hands. I'm going to use
00:09:05.400 this myself. When my wife asks me to take out the garbage, I'll say, don't play into
00:09:09.480 Trump's hands. Or, officer, sure, I was speeding, but it would make Trump's day if I had to
00:09:15.200 give a, it's a universal excuse. Like what about the climate was 10 years ago, or it's for the
00:09:22.000 children 20 years ago, or COVID, I guess had its own. So yeah, I predict that two things are most
00:09:29.300 likely to happen. I think it's a 50, 50 chance that Trump gives Canada a reprieve. But I also
00:09:35.060 think that it's a very strong possibility that Canada simply wants a trade war. It'll be terrible
00:09:43.180 for the people of this country i pity anyone in the ontario auto industry because that will
00:09:48.960 absolutely be punished here's the head of unifor union saying if this trade deal isn't fixed expect
00:09:55.260 these factories to shut down when they're done their current manufacture of the current models
00:09:59.380 take a look at that but on wednesday of this week our union received information from stellantis
00:10:05.320 that it is now seriously considering the closure and sale of the brampton assembly plant yeah i
00:10:13.040 would be terrified if i was a canadian auto worker thinking that doug ford and bc's premier eb and
00:10:19.340 manitoba's premier canoe were the ones in charge of messaging and obviously mark carney hasn't told
00:10:25.620 them to shut up i would be terrified because you can't stop buying alberta oil sands if you need
00:10:31.880 oil you can't stop buying saskatchewan potash or uranium those places come from there and that can't
00:10:38.540 be changed, but you can stop buying American cars that are made in Ottawa, excuse me, in Ontario,
00:10:46.540 and you can replace them with American-made cars. That will be the price Canada pays for the
00:10:53.260 anti-Americanism of our leaders, and I feel terrible about it. Stay with us when we come
00:10:58.560 back, a feature interview with my friend, Joe Warmington.
00:11:08.540 Joe Warmington has been a newspaper reporter for almost half a century, starting in Calgary,
00:11:16.320 working in Toronto. A general politics beat, a crime beat. I think he's one of the best
00:11:21.440 shoe leather journalists in the country. And he's about to be given an award, his work recognized
00:11:28.040 by the Independent Press Gallery, an alternative press gallery to the Government Parliamentary
00:11:33.560 Press Gallery. I'm delighted to say that there are about 60 members of the Independent Press
00:11:39.660 Gallery, and they are independent and independent-minded. Up next, a feature interview with
00:11:45.160 our good friend, Joe. Joe, great to see you in studio. And you're an alum of the Sun News Network
00:11:54.480 and Sun Media. Boy, things are different. When Sun News came on the scene, we were the vanguard.
00:12:00.300 we were the revolution in a way,
00:12:03.020 but even that looks sort of old school now, doesn't it?
00:12:06.820 Well, it sure does.
00:12:07.780 First of all, thanks for having me. 1.00
00:12:08.780 The reason I come in studio is I get one of these Rebel Nogs here. 1.00
00:12:11.780 You betcha, yeah. 1.00
00:12:12.420 I'm keeping this one.
00:12:13.640 I don't know if anyone will oppose that.
00:12:16.280 But, no, look, when Sun News Network started,
00:12:22.460 there was actually a Sun TV before that,
00:12:25.840 which I was on panels and different things,
00:12:28.440 and then in comes sun news network i'd never seen anything quite like that at the time i was a big
00:12:35.640 fan of it you know i appeared on it here or there i never had a regular spot although i filled in a
00:12:41.260 few times and did shows and different things for people but the guy that really stood up to me was
00:12:47.060 you and i knew knew that you know i knew who you were i followed all your work at the western
00:12:51.780 senate and i go all the way back to the calgary sun right with you you don't remember me there
00:12:56.060 but I remember you, you were a lot younger and you came in and I thought, wow, this guy's going
00:13:01.280 places. But the work you did in revolutionizing how things were covered in the writing that you
00:13:09.000 did, it was all something I'd never seen before. And it's interesting because I've always been a
00:13:13.340 fan of Rebel. Your very first interview that you did when you started Rebel was on my show on
00:13:18.480 Newstalk 1010. And I remember you had your phone and you were showing me, I had no idea what you
00:13:23.300 were talking about i didn't know you know that you could do what you were doing and so here it
00:13:27.540 is here we are full circle back here now the technologies changed the barriers to entry are
00:13:32.840 lower i mean anyone with a phone can be a journalist and really who's to decide what is a
00:13:38.280 journalist and we've been in court battles over that question most of the time we win twice we
00:13:44.080 beat the federal government in their election debates decisions twice they said rebel news
00:13:49.660 and they said it about true north also they're not real journalists twice the courts have
00:13:54.400 rejected that and said yes they are but uh on tax questions we've lost in court we're appealing that
00:14:01.780 my point is it's sort of audacious that any politician gets to decide who is or isn't a
00:14:08.580 journalist in my mind journalism is an activity you do it or you don't it's not like a status
00:14:14.320 or a guild, you know, with its own barriers to entry.
00:14:18.880 And I think that's one of the reasons why some journalists
00:14:22.280 are so snobby about citizen journalists
00:14:24.960 is they want to keep out the competition.
00:14:27.920 Well, a good example is the trip that Prime Minister Carney
00:14:31.000 just took to Tuscany.
00:14:32.040 So back in the day at the Toronto Sun,
00:14:34.680 when there was more money flowing through,
00:14:36.340 the newsroom had a $17 million budget.
00:14:39.500 Wow.
00:14:39.820 So we would go out there and, you know,
00:14:42.420 try to find him and tell people get as close as you can and often we would even find the person
00:14:47.300 we're looking for most of the time but this time the media doesn't cover it at all the prime
00:14:53.060 ministers put out a office puts out a tweet or a or a an email actually to the people on the
00:15:00.420 you know that work out of parliament hill and that's the end of it and they don't question it
00:15:04.700 and so then what you're doing is advocating to the public to say well are you interested in this and
00:15:11.420 there's lots of people that are independent, sometimes just themselves that look into it,
00:15:15.700 and they come up with things. It was the same thing 10 years before when Trudeau, the prime
00:15:21.000 minister, went over to the Agri-Con island. I was involved with funding him originally in the
00:15:25.780 Bahamas, and it developed from there. It's not sinister. It's not even some sort of a partisan
00:15:33.320 thing. It's our job. Our job is to tell the public what they need to know, what they don't know.
00:15:38.760 And the other thing I just want to say about that is the press conference approach, whether, you know, you've gone to court to be able to question people in a debate or, you know, attend a press conference.
00:15:50.480 But press conferences are still in the control of these governments.
00:15:53.680 That's not journalism.
00:15:55.260 That's repeating, you know, that kind of thing.
00:15:58.020 It can be a good chance to ask a question, but they love to have control of it.
00:16:03.780 But it's not all about that, what happens in a press conference.
00:16:06.940 You're so right. Because, I mean, sometimes you can ask a great, tough accountability question in a press conference. It can happen. And sometimes an answer is accidentally given. But we've been locked out of Parliament for 11 years now, since Justin Trudeau took over. And that hasn't stopped us from talking about him or about Mark Carney. The irony is we used to bump into Mark Carney on the streets of the World Economic Forum.
00:16:30.720 Those were good interviews.
00:16:31.580 And he would chat with us quite comfortably.
00:16:33.960 But now that he's PM, either he or the people around him refuse to let us get near him.
00:16:39.840 And that's frustrating.
00:16:42.440 But like you say, attending these official parliamentary scrums is not really a source of new information.
00:16:50.660 You're only going to hear what their official message is.
00:16:53.260 Well, you change it because you ask real questions and tough questions.
00:16:56.560 And there's others that do as well.
00:16:58.380 And they want to stop you.
00:17:00.100 Look at all the people that try to stop you are all getting paid a lot of money from the taxpayers.
00:17:04.660 But I think that a leader like, you know, even Justin Trudeau before you at Sun News Network would have some fun with them, whether it was the boxing event or even I remember sometimes he was at a surf shop or something on one of the reporters.
00:17:18.000 You know, I think that that can be fun.
00:17:20.160 It's also a very bad idea to say to, you know, a journalist like yourself or obviously all your journalists, you know, whether it's Menzoid or Alexa or any of them, Drea, all of them, you can't come in here.
00:17:33.060 The minute you say that to people like that, they're going to go in there.
00:17:36.340 And so you're better to say, come on in, ask the questions. 0.68
00:17:38.920 And if you, you know, if you get too crazy or whatever, they can cut it off. 0.82
00:17:42.380 But they're not smart enough to do that.
00:17:44.480 And they've got a lot of people that will get really physical with people like yourself where the rules don't apply to them.
00:17:50.780 They'll actually assault.
00:17:52.580 Yeah, they would attack David Menzies.
00:17:54.460 Let me tell you a moment in time that I don't know if we'll ever see again.
00:17:59.860 Almost 10 years ago, there was, if you can believe it, a conference sponsored jointly between Canada and the UK.
00:18:06.660 Those two countries had a big meeting in London about freedom of the press or free media.
00:18:14.480 And the whole theme was freedom in the press.
00:18:16.320 So I thought, wow.
00:18:17.180 So I went there and Sheila Gunn-Reed went there
00:18:19.640 and we had a cameraman or two.
00:18:21.780 And Chrystia Freeland was the point person on this bio.
00:18:25.960 And so she attended and there were a handful of Canadians
00:18:28.980 who came to her scrum, including Sheila.
00:18:32.560 And remember, we had a free speech conference.
00:18:36.980 Right.
00:18:37.960 So then Chrystia Freeland says, all right,
00:18:40.840 We're going to go into a room for a proper Q&A, but the room is limited in space.
00:18:49.180 So Rebel News, you can't come.
00:18:52.320 Yeah.
00:18:53.980 Oh, is that what is that?
00:18:55.520 First of all, it was an enormous venue.
00:18:57.240 There was no shortage of space.
00:18:58.620 I want to show you that clip because it was so shocking.
00:19:02.380 But the even more shocking part about it was the other mainstream media journalists who were there.
00:19:08.820 They balked.
00:19:09.980 They refused. They said,
00:19:12.980 if Sheila can't come, then we are not going.
00:19:17.980 It was, I think, the only moment of solidarity we had,
00:19:20.980 and in my mind, it's because those were European journalists.
00:19:24.980 They weren't part of the Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal group thing.
00:19:27.980 Let me just show you this.
00:19:28.980 Let's see.
00:19:29.980 About 10 years ago, take a look at this.
00:19:31.980 So, um, GloverMail, um, Wobble, um, CTD, Altazira, CDC, and the National Economic
00:19:41.480 Games, please.
00:19:42.480 And the others?
00:19:43.480 What about the rest?
00:19:44.480 The rest of us?
00:19:45.480 The rest of us have to stay back.
00:19:46.480 No, I think we all go.
00:19:47.480 No, that's nonsense.
00:19:48.480 No, no, no, no.
00:19:49.480 We all go.
00:19:50.480 That's, let's take us to the room and we can see if we can go.
00:19:53.480 No, we're not going, we're just not.
00:19:54.480 We're all going to the room.
00:19:55.480 This is a media freedom conference. 0.97
00:19:56.480 Yeah, this is ridiculous. 0.75
00:19:57.480 We just don't do that. 0.92
00:19:58.480 No.
00:19:59.480 Yes, friends, those are mainstream media journalists defending my right to ask Freeland questions.
00:20:07.900 They're defending Andrew Lawton's right to be in a press conference.
00:20:11.780 Those are our competitors. Those are our critics.
00:20:14.500 Those are people we are routinely critical of.
00:20:17.080 And yet here today, they stood with us on the side of press freedom
00:20:22.260 while the minister who is co-hosting this press freedom conference,
00:20:28.100 A former journalist herself tried to block two of her loudest critics from her press conference.
00:20:35.200 Shocking, I know, but credit where it's due.
00:20:38.200 We made some allies, at least in the fight for press freedom, here today.
00:20:43.260 Well, yeah, on that clip, you'll notice it never happened again.
00:20:47.580 I think about that a lot, about how they stood up there and how they don't do it more often.
00:20:52.900 And I think you're right.
00:20:53.700 Those reasons that you gave are probably part of it.
00:20:56.180 but also they didn't get the memo yet.
00:20:58.440 Yeah, because they weren't part of the clique.
00:21:00.740 And now I turn on TV, CBC, CTV Global,
00:21:04.580 it's all the same on all three networks.
00:21:07.080 And I see these, they're not journalists.
00:21:09.940 They're not even pundits.
00:21:11.500 They are lobbyists with clients they don't disclose, 0.93
00:21:15.740 just bitching about politics all day 0.99
00:21:18.260 with their hidden agendas.
00:21:19.640 And it's so shallow.
00:21:21.780 They're not reporters.
00:21:23.780 they're not even opinion reporters they are paid lobbyists who have these shows and that's what
00:21:30.580 counts as journalism in Ottawa well they don't cover things either like they didn't cover the
00:21:35.680 the trip to Tuscany they didn't cover the Sean Chen story you know there's nothing wrong with
00:21:41.120 asking questions about the story you don't have to go in with an agenda and even when you mention
00:21:45.520 Chrystia Freeland that's a name from the past you know what's she doing now well she's involved
00:21:50.040 with Ukraine huh like isn't she supposed to be our deputy prime minister before while she was
00:21:55.420 still elected she was actually doing that job yeah and we're not allowed to question it or you
00:22:00.660 know no one will question it except for you and and independent journalists like yourself about it
00:22:06.100 within about 30 seconds her reflex was to call me a Russian agent and you know here let me show
00:22:14.020 you that that and again I bumped into her in the world economic forum the crazy thing is
00:22:17.480 I've interviewed more Canadian cabinet ministers at the World Economic Forum than I have in 10 years in Canada because over there the Swiss police won't arrest me for doing so. Here's me accosting Chrystia Freeland and her calling me a Russian spy.
00:22:33.480 That's the charter you broke, ma'am. That's not just any old law. Four judges in a row have agreed you broke the law. You're a lawbreaker. That's weird.
00:22:47.480 I've answered your questions at some length, and I think you should be ashamed of yourself
00:22:57.560 for what?
00:22:58.560 For doing Putin's work.
00:22:59.940 You froze Canadians' bank accounts. 0.55
00:23:02.480 You're still a lawbreaker, and you're still four to zero judges saying you're a lawbreaker.
00:23:09.200 Your legacy is a lawbreaker.
00:23:14.380 legacy is someone who turned our banking system into a third world system a banana republic 0.83
00:23:26.300 you have no compunction you're fine with what you did you don't regret it as i said i've spoken to
00:23:34.060 you and we're finished but you haven't answered the fact that four judges say you broke the law
00:23:38.540 you don't think you need any public statement on that
00:23:40.620 i've spoken at length about the issues that i need not since the court of appeal ruled
00:23:47.280 the court of appeal said you're a lawbreaker you haven't said anything since then that this
00:23:51.940 constitutes harassment by people who are doing putin's job for him you're a censor aren't you
00:23:57.720 you would love to take my bank account wouldn't you extremely embarrassed and ashamed of them
00:24:03.200 not embarrassed at all i didn't break the law like you did you should be ashamed of yourself
00:24:06.520 I'm neither shamed or embarrassed because I'm not a lawbreaker like you.
00:24:10.760 I'm not a Russian spy.
00:24:11.880 In fact, I can't go to Russia because I've been so supercritical of Vladimir Putin.
00:24:16.200 I've sort of made fun of him.
00:24:17.640 And I have warned against Europe relying on Russian oil and gas.
00:24:22.560 In fact, I did a speaking tour, if you can believe it, in Germany about 10 years ago 0.50
00:24:25.680 where I basically said, you're nuts to get 40% of your energy from a country that would invade you if they could.
00:24:32.920 So I'm... 0.90
00:24:33.520 I'm so relieved that you're not a Russian spy.
00:24:35.480 I didn't know. 0.73
00:24:35.900 I never, it never even entered my mind, but look, and I, but she now works for the Ukrainian
00:24:40.780 government, right? I was invited to go to some journalistic mission to Ukraine. And I said,
00:24:45.820 the guy who invited me, I'm not safe because this, because the, an advisor to Zelensky
00:24:52.380 has called me a Russian spy and Ukraine isn't exactly the most, you know, rule of law country.
00:24:58.220 I don't need to be, uh, offed because Chrystia Freeland was embarrassed by me one day.
00:25:03.900 So she called me a Russian spy.
00:25:05.980 Well, it's interesting how all these people are connected.
00:25:09.160 Chrystia Freeland is connected to Mark Carney.
00:25:12.060 Mark Carney's connected to the WEF.
00:25:14.820 And then they're all connected back to Soros.
00:25:17.540 You know, they're connected to Obama.
00:25:19.580 You know, back when Prime Minister Trudeau, the media missed the story.
00:25:24.540 But a year after it finally came out, they sort of covered it.
00:25:28.160 But when Trudeau was on that Aga Khan island, there was another person on the island.
00:25:33.740 Do you remember who it was?
00:25:35.540 I can't remember offhand.
00:25:36.720 Okay, well, I'm going to tell you.
00:25:37.840 It was the Secretary of State of the day, John Kerry.
00:25:41.260 It's not a big island.
00:25:42.960 And then it turned out that he and Trudeau did meet.
00:25:46.280 Well, they were there.
00:25:47.080 Of course they did.
00:25:47.840 They're on the island, but probably they were at dinners together or what have you.
00:25:52.020 But that was an international incident because that wasn't reported on by anybody.
00:25:56.460 It came out a year later.
00:25:57.860 We didn't know what he was doing on the island.
00:25:59.560 And now, remember, Trump was coming into office in about two or three weeks, or January 20th.
00:26:04.120 This was around the Christmas time.
00:26:06.500 So a couple weeks later, they had a new president.
00:26:09.440 But the person that kind of runs the agenda for the president, which was Obama at the time,
00:26:14.200 was meeting our prime minister, and no one covered it.
00:26:16.960 And no one knew about it.
00:26:18.180 They didn't tell us.
00:26:19.960 Sounds like the Tuscany trip.
00:26:21.720 Secret this, secret that.
00:26:23.060 We don't know who he met with.
00:26:24.500 We don't know who paid for it.
00:26:26.140 And I don't know why we're not entitled to know that.
00:26:28.960 they all work for us. And that's the point of what a journalist does. You're not just supposed
00:26:33.380 to be a press release and take what they do, and then that's the end of it. Now, maybe it's always
00:26:38.380 been like that. I've been a reporter since 1984. And when I came in the same time, El Rooney came
00:26:44.820 in. And of course, I was green. I didn't know how it worked. And I love telling stories. And I think 0.86
00:26:50.460 there was manipulation then too. But it wasn't as controlled. For one thing, the purse strings
00:26:55.640 were not controlled by the government the same way uh they've always had some control over the
00:27:00.240 broadcast back to your original point about you don't need a license these kinds of things
00:27:04.560 so far knock on wood this is a real desk by the way um and um but you know if you're watching
00:27:12.840 this you're wondering well what does this matter or why does this matter it does matter because
00:27:17.160 you've got to have somebody uh scrutinizing power you do you have the same with the police there's
00:27:24.100 nothing wrong to look at. It doesn't mean you hate the police, but you can say this. It doesn't mean
00:27:27.500 you're upset at the mayor or the premier or the prime minister. That's our system. It's got to
00:27:33.680 have checks and balances. And so reporters are supposed to do some element of that. A lot of 0.99
00:27:39.440 them aren't doing it now. In fact, there's really no reporters anymore. I mean, I've been at it for
00:27:44.260 40 years. I can't think of anybody sort of my junior that when I was coming up, I would talk
00:27:50.420 to Peter Worthington and Bob McDonald and Christy Blatchford and whoever I whoever was in the
00:27:55.140 business Rosie D'Amato and pick their brain just to be around them and get what you can no one's
00:28:00.800 interested in talking to a guy like me you had 40 years of doing it because there's no one it's all
00:28:05.600 online now they're comfortable online if they can't find it on Facebook it didn't happen and
00:28:11.300 and that's what's happened yeah you I mean you're famous for your shoe leather journalism and I know
00:28:16.640 sometimes that means you just wait at a crime scene for example you will wait four five six
00:28:22.700 hours not knowing what will happen but in your bones sensing something might happen who will
00:28:27.520 show up here will it be a family i mean doing that they call it shoe leather journalism is so
00:28:32.840 rare like you say everyone is well give a good example of one locally here not too far from this
00:28:38.320 office there was a jewish man that was murdered this this very year he was shot in a park and
00:28:43.400 that was all it is execution stuff yeah an ex-cop yeah exactly the but we didn't know any of that
00:28:49.500 but we went out to the scene and i actually went with my son joshua and he's the one i said like
00:28:55.460 we got to find some where this happened and he said well how would we do that i said well look
00:28:58.900 for something from the ambulance or whatever he found a glove and he found a bandage thing he found
00:29:03.880 those things but i was looking for them but he he you know his eyes are a little better and he and
00:29:08.240 i said well there this is it then we found one little candle and that's about all you know about
00:29:12.440 In fact, as I'm telling you this story and feeling good that I remembered it, I can't
00:29:15.940 even remember the guy's name, the victim, right now.
00:29:19.200 And hopefully you can look that up and put it here.
00:29:21.880 But that's a good example of why reporters, it doesn't mean we got to the bottom of that
00:29:28.120 story.
00:29:29.120 We don't know what the hell happened there.
00:29:30.480 But there was a Jewish man that was executed by an ex-cop right near here, and nobody knows
00:29:35.740 about it.
00:29:36.740 And no one's talking about it.
00:29:38.340 And that's the thing, you know the old saying, if a tree falls in the forest and no one's
00:29:41.040 around to here. It doesn't make a sense. Which is why they don't want you anywhere
00:29:44.800 near any of these things. And which is why they, A, want censorship
00:29:48.280 in social media and B, want to discredit citizen journalists. I mean, you can see the proliferation
00:29:53.980 of cell phone videos because everyone's got one. And by the way, I think it's almost always
00:29:59.280 a good thing, for example, if a cop pulls someone over in a car. I deeply believe in
00:30:06.400 cameras that cops wear and I deeply believe in the citizens right to film
00:30:10.360 their side of the interaction because that way no one can fib and no one can
00:30:14.020 lie and no one can get away with things. Stranger game. And by the way it's been
00:30:17.640 good for the cops because so often they're falsely accused these days but
00:30:22.020 so we all know how useful and amazing it is to have cell phone but extrapolate
00:30:26.800 that to other news. Let me give you an example. Our reporter Alexa Lavoie went
00:30:30.340 to Spain and northern Africa where there's a couple of Spanish enclaves in
00:30:34.720 Morocco, because about 50,000 Moroccan men stormed over the border into Spain.
00:30:41.740 And there was no reporter there from Canada, no one from the CBC, CTV, or Global.
00:30:45.760 Now, maybe they have other priorities, or maybe they thought, you know what?
00:30:50.260 We don't want to poke the bear on mass immigration, and we don't have a budget anyways, and it's
00:30:57.320 far away. 0.96
00:30:57.800 I don't know why, but we were the only people there.
00:31:00.140 And I'm not saying you had to be there, but so often-
00:31:04.040 Censorship.
00:31:04.940 Some of it. 0.58
00:31:05.600 They make stories up, like the Syrian one with the kid on the beach, and they make it up.
00:31:10.040 And you think about Alexa, just I think it was last summer or the summer before where Sean Foyt was here.
00:31:16.660 He was a Christian-American kind of like evangelist of some kind.
00:31:20.360 He's at a church.
00:31:21.240 They forced him into a church, and somebody came in and threw the smoke bombs in there.
00:31:27.620 And you reported all that.
00:31:29.920 I got involved as well.
00:31:31.120 and then later these people attacked her outside of a military base.
00:31:36.820 So you had the person that was involved with this smoke bomb attack
00:31:40.460 at this guy worked inside of our intelligence services on the military base.
00:31:45.360 You exposed all that. You did that.
00:31:47.460 Alexa, but Rebel News did it. Alexa did it. 0.97
00:31:51.220 And all of your reporters, Sheila and everybody else,
00:31:55.100 are doing that every day.
00:31:56.780 Well, you can imagine if you're trying to keep all these things a secret,
00:31:59.420 what a nuisance that you must be and that's kind of what uh the journalism that the era i came out
00:32:06.420 of where we did that all the time we always did that but you know we still try it for my vintage
00:32:11.580 we still try to do that but you know uh the fact that you do it and the other thing that you do is
00:32:16.820 you raise money from the public that allows you to do it you're not taking anything from the
00:32:21.860 taxpayers or from the corporate world uh so that's a big part of it well and it keeps you sharp in a
00:32:26.220 a couple ways. First of all, if we took 35 grand per capita in our company from the government,
00:32:33.100 which is around what the subsidy is, there's no way that even subconsciously you're not going
00:32:39.480 to start pulling your punches against the guy who's giving you that dough. Like if I had a donor,
00:32:44.520 like that would be for our company, that would be a million bucks a year. We don't have a donor a
00:32:49.020 million bucks a year. If I had a donor a million bucks a year, it would be bloody tough psychologically
00:32:53.820 to take a real go at him and and i see the dulling of curiosity being a journalist is about skepticism
00:33:01.260 curiosity taking a risk hunting for things having that appetite and there's a bit of a thrill to it
00:33:07.980 when you're going to take on a tough guy a big guy well what if the tough guy big guy is paying you
00:33:11.900 off well the thing is they the idea of it i agree with most what you said there look i'm not a
00:33:17.820 businessman so i don't know anything about what i make or how i get it or whatever i know that i
00:33:22.700 I get it, and everybody takes it, and then I get to survive.
00:33:26.680 And that's the extent of it.
00:33:27.680 And I remember Bob McDonald told me the same thing.
00:33:30.820 Legendary wrote the very first story in the Toronto Sun about the $10 million goof
00:33:35.520 where they bought airplanes, and they had the same airplanes, and the mothballed.
00:33:39.600 That was a good example of what the Sun would do.
00:33:42.040 But he said the same thing.
00:33:42.900 You want money.
00:33:44.100 Don't go anywhere near this business because it's not about money.
00:33:47.040 It's not about power, and it's not even about a thrill.
00:33:49.740 I do agree that there are times when I was younger when I was excited you know when I did the Sean
00:33:54.380 Chen story recently I knew that I kind of had a little bit of a feeling that I was kind of happy
00:34:00.840 that I was able to do that story and just raise those questions at the same time I never once
00:34:06.880 felt that you know I understand that Sean Chen's a person and we reached out to him and we'd like
00:34:13.280 to hear his story we don't I don't automatically assume that he's done anything wrong and I think
00:34:18.040 that that is the the way to go about it in the mainstream side is to make sure you're doing your
00:34:24.240 job question people at the same time when you see people piling on a rob ford or whatever well what
00:34:29.860 does he have to say let's hear what he has to say well it's the minute you start telling what he has
00:34:34.440 to say people say well you're on his side well you know what not really you just want to hear
00:34:39.240 what he has to say obviously we don't approve of different things that he's done wrong and we'll
00:34:43.580 report those things but you know everybody is still a human being at the end of the day so
00:34:48.280 you know um that's the independent journalist spirit that that you talk about but when you see
00:34:54.360 independent journalists uh are not are not angels either like they can't sit there and go well we're
00:34:59.240 you know you're all bad and we're all good that they all take money too here and there and they
00:35:04.340 all you know they can be uh flipped over we've seen that on social media where people that you
00:35:08.200 thought were independent are no longer independent yeah that kind of thing i mean let me tell you how
00:35:13.560 i think about it i'll give you the example of well about the trip that alexa and efron made to those
00:35:19.560 spanish enclaves that were overrun it was very expensive to get there it was like a couple grand
00:35:24.280 each uh to get there and then there was hotel and food and so i can't remember what the total cost
00:35:31.080 was i think it was like seven thousand dollars wow which is a lot of money and and and we have
00:35:37.960 obviously we have to pay that money out first before we go so my thinking is are our viewers
00:35:44.760 so interested in this that if i make the risk and if i basically take seven grand and
00:35:51.320 throw it on a bonfire will i get that back and maybe even make a few hundred or a few thousand
00:35:57.160 bucks on top of it because we are trying to run a company so i'm always thinking what are our
00:36:02.440 people interested in and that the other media won't cover so because we make our money in 58
00:36:09.240 increments that's the average and you're running you're running a company and you are a publisher
00:36:14.120 or a ceo kind of person as well as you know you're like a playing manager but your reporters don't
00:36:20.440 worry about that they might mention it right so the reality of it is that uh as you said originally
00:36:26.120 you've got one of these phones you've got everything on there you need and they're the
00:36:30.040 best journalists there that are going just like they're the best investigators for the police
00:36:34.520 i mean the police are always saying what do you got on your camera what do you got right
00:36:38.360 that they're the best investigators journalism is different because the public does the journalism
00:36:42.840 now and the you know i think the big challenge going forward will be the censorship and the
00:36:48.440 blocking of the internet right and and that kind of thing because they because it is it is a problem
00:36:53.880 for people with power. One last thing on that is that the separation of what is independent media
00:37:00.340 and what is mainstream media, the one thing the mainstream media still has is that you generally
00:37:05.960 trust it more. You still do, even you do. But what's happened with, say, with Rebel and Juno
00:37:13.560 and the different kind of independent media you see in the US as well, is it's becoming more and
00:37:19.480 more mainstream you've got bigger audiences than the mainstream media does you do in many cases
00:37:25.080 and so it's a big challenge for for for a company like yours because you don't want to get caught
00:37:32.440 called out or or get something really really wrong because now people are starting to trust you and
00:37:38.220 you know i know i do i mean those stories you mentioned i follow a lot of them because i see
00:37:42.780 them and i go well that's interesting what happened with alexa there so i interview her and i do that
00:37:47.500 story that makes you mainstream in a way you're not getting the money uh but but that money that
00:37:53.620 comes in from government for i mean i is nothing that i have no comment on it because i don't have
00:37:58.560 anything to do with it i make the same money as part of my i'm a unionized uh worker and i make
00:38:04.480 my my salary the same as i always did and i you know and i don't care when anybody tells me what
00:38:10.300 to do now that i don't have the power to publish something and i can't uh decide where it goes in
00:38:15.420 paper that kind of thing but i can cover it yeah and that's what i try to do i mean and that's the
00:38:20.140 thing when you're part of a team you have to follow the team's rules and the team leader
00:38:24.620 and it's not like being a total lone ranger which a lot of influencers online can be they can do
00:38:30.060 things because no one's there to veto them you know i want to give you a stat about three or
00:38:34.620 four years ago a liberal leaning pollster in ottawa called polar i don't know if that rings
00:38:39.500 a bell they started something called the trust in media pool every year they ask a ton of questions
00:38:44.940 about Canadian media habits and they started to include rebel news about three four years ago
00:38:49.580 and i i can tell they sort of did it as a joke because at the same time they
00:38:54.460 tracked the beaverton which is not a news source at all it's like a very lame
00:38:59.660 online comedy satire site right they don't call themselves it would be like putting this hour
00:39:05.660 actually even this hour's 22 minutes had more news on it so i think it was designed originally
00:39:10.860 to mock rebel news that we're in the category of the beaver gin well they made a mistake because
00:39:16.140 we've been zooming right every year i think the the stats are 22 percent of canadians
00:39:23.900 follow us either regularly or occasionally like we've just we we've like doubled in size in the
00:39:29.580 last couple of years and i think because we're part of their well you go places that the media
00:39:35.980 won't go like they they thought this would be a joke but it doesn't mean a joke let me spit out
00:39:39.660 one stat. I want to tell you one stat, and then I'll cork it on this. One of the questions they
00:39:44.120 ask, do you trust your news source? Globe and Mail readers, 74% of them say, I trust the Globe
00:39:52.580 and Mail. It's not bad. Rebel News viewers, 72% say, I trust them. Let me ask you a question.
00:39:59.860 Go ahead. A couple of thoughts, sort of mixing the thoughts together and kind of riffing off
00:40:05.340 of what you're saying but the global mail uh their their a washington correspondent put a
00:40:11.200 tweet out and it showed the white house on fire right back to the war of 1812 i think it was 1814
00:40:17.760 when that act i it was a long time ago but that was the reaction now if you had put that out
00:40:22.800 or something similar to that there would be yeah there was a whiff of a not quite a threat but like
00:40:28.060 maybe it will burn down your white house you know i don't know i mean i'm sure it was just a joke or
00:40:33.040 whatever but it seemed odd but uh but i'm not i'm not judging it mighty globe and mail you know 0.98
00:40:38.020 they've got trump derangement syndrome but if you'd done that and sit towards the obama white
00:40:42.040 house they would be closing it down but and you know the other thing to your point the reason why
00:40:46.200 people they come to rebel news i've always felt you cover stories and people will come and watch
00:40:51.580 them if they're the real stories it wasn't my favorite story but we actually had a bunch of
00:40:57.940 ostriches that were animals right they actually put sharpshooters up and did a mass murder of
00:41:04.500 them it was crazy i mean there's a million other things they could have done at night they did it
00:41:08.520 at night and in the morning they discovered dozens of them were still alive they had been in pain all
00:41:14.020 night and they went in and finished them off that's how cruel it was and and the prime minister
00:41:17.540 made a joke about it as if you're all crazy and the public just went on their day yet if that was
00:41:23.420 about any other animal you know whatever it is there's so many things that they would be upset
00:41:28.120 about but because uh rebel covered it and i covered it certainly um you know everything
00:41:36.000 is through a political lens and so but that did happen i mean and you predicted it would happen
00:41:42.060 about the kill boxes that they were setting up and all these kind of things i still can't believe
00:41:46.140 that that happened in this country yeah and the police they had dozens it was the largest police
00:41:51.080 operation in bc the rcmp spent millions blocking journalists they set up anti-drone machines
00:41:58.000 they had a no-fly order overhead none of that has anything to do with public health it was all
00:42:05.120 designed to stop publicity of what they were doing it was crazy and i'm not a big fan of ostriches
00:42:12.180 it's not what i think of when i think of a pet or a loving animal but it's an animal it's life
00:42:16.760 and there was no reason to kill in a brutal way hundreds of them but it showed it was designed
00:42:23.100 to send that message out i think the people saw it scared the hell of them they didn't know what
00:42:27.320 to do with it there's little things too that come up like i mean i have a great rapport with
00:42:32.360 peele regional police that's my beat and i do amazing things with them and they do amazing work
00:42:37.420 and i'm really excited all the time to work with them yesterday they put out a press release
00:42:41.420 and they say we made five arrests in two a double murder and this is the work we did and here's
00:42:47.780 who's charged some of them were young offenders and this kind of thing and so i'm reading it and
00:42:53.380 go okay that's a great story i want to do that one so i said well who who was murdered so i went
00:42:57.520 back and looked and they weren't identified so i went to the police and said well who are the
00:43:01.460 victims yeah and this we're not releasing that we're not releasing that i said well and you also
00:43:07.240 said that everybody that's charged had priors. What were those priors? And we can't tell you
00:43:11.840 that either. So I'm not mad at the police. They've made their decision. But it's a fact
00:43:18.320 that we've had a double murder of two people. One's a young person, one's an adult, right in
00:43:24.520 our city this year in April, outside of a school. And I can't tell you who those people are. What
00:43:30.960 does that say about it? And what happens is people's imaginations fill in the blanks. And
00:43:34.860 whatever they imagine could even be worse than the truth.
00:43:38.300 It's a bad approach by those police.
00:43:40.800 Joe, it's been great to catch up with you.
00:43:42.260 You are the winner, the recipient of the first Lifetime Achievement Award
00:43:48.620 to be handed out in a week and a half's time by the Independent Press Gallery
00:43:52.440 at a ceremony in Toronto, and I can think of no one more deserving of that award.
00:43:58.160 You are a role model for myself.
00:44:00.500 I know you talked to Lincoln Jay.
00:44:02.200 In fact, that's how we found him through you.
00:44:04.040 David Menzies so you really
00:44:06.160 are the kind of journalist who
00:44:08.020 helps young journalists up and coming
00:44:09.640 you speak truth to power and
00:44:12.020 I'll see you with that awards gala and I want to say
00:44:14.160 thanks and congratulations
00:44:15.360 you know I just want to say it's a real
00:44:18.060 honor to get this award
00:44:20.060 it sounds a little corny but I've had
00:44:22.220 three of these things I don't look for
00:44:24.320 awards and that kind of thing
00:44:26.080 but this one and getting the humanitarian
00:44:28.120 award from B'nai Brith
00:44:29.520 for covering that that meant a lot to me
00:44:31.780 because, again, and also the Hall of Fame Award
00:44:34.880 at my Canada College in North Bay
00:44:36.900 where I went to journalism school.
00:44:38.440 And all three of those awards, I didn't apply for.
00:44:40.580 And I'm not knocking the people that apply
00:44:43.000 for national newspaper awards,
00:44:44.180 but it feels a little different when someone comes along
00:44:46.320 and says, what you're doing is good
00:44:48.640 and we want to give you this award.
00:44:50.160 So thank you very much for that.
00:44:51.620 And I'm looking forward to the dinner.
00:44:53.520 And whenever I go to these dinners,
00:44:55.740 I don't eat too much when they handle quite the food
00:45:00.640 they used to.
00:45:01.140 but I never, I never touched the food that they're handing out.
00:45:04.040 But at this thing, I'm going to be having several, uh, several little helpings.
00:45:07.440 There he is, Joe Warmington, one of the best shoe leather reporter
00:45:10.580 and the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Independent Press Gallery.
00:45:14.400 Stay with us. Your letters to me next.
00:45:25.140 Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me about Brookfield Watch.
00:45:28.680 Just a reminder, that is our registered third-party campaign group for the federal by-elections.
00:45:35.880 Perry O'Connor says, Canada is more communist than Cuba right now. 0.64
00:45:39.680 It's a very interesting thing to say. 0.77
00:45:41.280 I truly believe that Cuba will fall this year.
00:45:43.700 I know it's almost September, but I just really think that it'll be like a light switch.
00:45:49.820 It'll be a very brief period of uncertainty, followed by massive investments and building, 0.98
00:45:55.200 And really, all the Cuban-American community will come not just to rescue, but to rebuild and reinvest and maybe move home. 0.91
00:46:02.920 It wouldn't surprise me if some of the leading business industrialists and developers in Miami make at least a second home in Cuba.
00:46:11.860 That little country that has suffered so long for the better part of a century is about to have the most incredible growth and revival.
00:46:19.500 Mark this, their life expectancy, I predict, will shoot up by five to ten years.
00:46:26.380 It will be the kindest moment in history that we can remember.
00:46:32.000 Another letter from George Cruz says,
00:46:34.440 The MSM won't expose his Brookfield portfolio conflicts of interest and under-the-table deals.
00:46:40.140 That is frustrating in itself.
00:46:42.040 The extra slap in the face to taxpayers said they received taxpayer dollars to carry his water.
00:46:46.960 Oh, it is crazy.
00:46:49.500 I mean, it is just I remember when Paul Martin was the liberal leader and there were some questions about Canada steamship lines, which is a longstanding company that that his family helped build up.
00:47:02.420 But it's just one thing. Canada steamship lines. I mean, he shouldn't have maintained the stock, but you could see how you could seal off conversations about ships.
00:47:13.300 I mean, it's it's not everything. The thing about Brookfield is it is it's in everything.
00:47:18.480 It has literally hundreds of subsidiary stocks.
00:47:22.440 It's an asset management firm.
00:47:23.820 They buy up companies in every possible area of interest, particularly transportation and
00:47:31.100 energy and nuclear and mining and green tech, like all the things that Mark Carney is working
00:47:37.360 on.
00:47:37.680 All of them are touched by his Brookfield investments.
00:47:41.380 And there is just no curiosity by our regime media, none at all.
00:47:45.260 It's really crazy. 0.57
00:47:46.040 It's very much a banana republic. 0.98
00:47:48.300 quite embarrassing for a democracy well that's our show for today until tomorrow on behalf of 0.88
00:47:54.340 all of us here at rebel world headquarters to you at home good night keep fighting for freedom