Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trump's first month： Ben Weingarten on a bold new dawn for America

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. What a great conversation with my buddy Ben Weingarten today.

00:00:04.140 You might remember that Ben spent a very long night with us on election night in the U.S. on 2020,

00:00:10.720 when Donald Trump was leading until, oh, about 1 a.m., when all sorts of ballots were found and

00:00:16.380 the Democrats pulled ahead. Well, that was a terrible night. How is Ben feeling about the

00:00:22.440 world now? We'll go through Trump's many achievements and see what Ben thinks about it.

00:00:27.960 I think it's going to be a great conversation. Let me invite you to get the video version of this

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00:01:50.040 Tonight, a recap of the amazing first month of Donald Trump. We'll talk to Ben Weingarten,

00:01:56.560 who was with us the night Trump lost in 2020. We'll ask how he's doing in 2025. It's February 17th,

00:02:03.960 and this is the Ezra LeVance Show. Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:02:20.500 Well, absence makes a heart grow fonder. Donald Trump was not the president between 2020 and 2024.

00:02:27.000 Many people said it was rigged or even stolen. I tend to agree with my friend, Joel Pollack,

00:02:31.960 who said the rules were changed, quote, legally just to make it unfair, including ballot harvesting

00:02:38.680 and mail-in ballots. Well, that absence worked both ways. I think Americans realized what they had lost

00:02:45.160 looking every day at Joe Biden or whoever was actually running things behind the scenes. And I

00:02:50.560 think Trump himself used his four years in exile to think about what he would have done differently,

00:02:57.080 what he would do if he had a second chance. And indeed, he hasn't even been president for a month.

00:03:03.960 And I put it to you, it's been the most consequential few weeks in American history since,

00:03:10.100 oh, I don't know, the Vietnam War, maybe even more than, I'd say, other than 9-11. I mean,

00:03:16.980 more has been done by the president on every front. It's astonishing. I remember election night

00:03:24.380 2020 when Trump seemed to be leading. And then very late at night, new ballots were discovered,

00:03:30.860 and what looked like a win was turning into a loss. And I remember it because live with our

00:03:36.860 program all night was our friend Ben Weingarten, a senior contributor to The Federalist. And we both

00:03:42.700 had that sinking feeling that we were watching a bank robbery. Well, Trump is back, and is he ever?

00:03:50.060 And you know who's back, too, is our friend Ben to catch up on the last three weeks. He joins us

00:03:55.020 now via Skype. Ben, great to see you again. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me. A few more

00:04:00.000 gray hairs than that 2020 election night. But it feels like we're operating in a different

00:04:06.760 civilization, quite frankly, today than we were then. You're so right. And I'm not saying that

00:04:14.280 having a four-year hiatus was good, but it certainly allowed Trump to think very clearly

00:04:20.180 about what exactly he would do. I've had some people say Trump is a better president because

00:04:26.440 of the four-year absence. I think he's, whatever the reason, I think he is a better president.

00:04:31.340 I think opinion polls show the American people like what they're seeing. And I've just never

00:04:36.320 seen so much action. Give me your sense of things. Even before the inauguration, he was having sort of

00:04:43.960 a mini de facto White House out of Mar-a-Lago. He was calling the shots even before January 20th.

00:04:51.040 Give us your summary of what the most important things have been the last few weeks.

00:04:56.640 Well, gosh, it's tough to even know where to begin there. But let me just comment before

00:05:01.360 I do on some of the substance. The other thing about the last four years is that our ruling regime,

00:05:10.460 or maybe former ruling regime, let's say, thought that when they sidelined Donald Trump in 2020,

00:05:18.760 that they had won the war. And Donald Trump continued to battle after that war was finalized.

00:05:28.660 And it became very clear that our ruling elites thought that they could run roughshod over the

00:05:34.280 opposition in America. They could violate our rights. They could abrogate liberty and justice

00:05:42.280 to ensure a permanent majority, a permanent ruling elite majority, essentially. And that includes,

00:05:50.800 you know, the lawfare efforts, the censorship efforts, the open borders, and all manner of rot

00:05:56.680 and corruption, hyper politicization and weaponization from the entirety of our administrative state,

00:06:03.840 plus their adjuncts in the quote unquote, private sector. And we're not when we're finding out not so

00:06:09.180 private NGO oligarchy, or oligopoly, or maybe we call it an NGO archipelago. Donald Trump and his

00:06:20.220 supporters were targeted to the nth degree. And that also revealed, I think, the tyranny of the regime

00:06:26.920 and the imperative that if we're going to have a country, a thousand front war has to be fought

00:06:32.840 against it. And so I think it steeled the resolve of millions of Americans. It exposed just how rotted

00:06:39.820 and corrupted a ruling regime was. And that created a scenario, an opportunity and an imperative

00:06:45.700 to go with full force into a dramatic agenda, the likes of which in terms of speed, size, scope,

00:06:55.920 and frankly, the revolutionary nature or counter-revolutionary nature that we've seen in

00:07:00.920 the first few weeks of Donald Trump. And add to it, of course, the fact that the man almost got

00:07:04.900 killed. The man almost got imprisoned. He had the full weight of the regime against him.

00:07:11.480 And now he is a lame duck, effectively. The gloves are completely off. And so what we're seeing is a

00:07:20.160 war on a thousand fronts that the left's never seen and the left's never expected. And in some ways,

00:07:24.300 they seem more rudderless and ineffective than I can remember in my lifetime because they've never

00:07:31.980 been so under siege. I mean, Donald Trump has gone at the administrative state from every single

00:07:38.360 angle. Freeze the funding, freeze the regulations, freeze and try to reduce the personnel, bring in people

00:07:46.300 who actually know how to try and take command over an administrative state that has been aimed directly

00:07:52.300 at Donald Trump in the past and actually make it work for him. Impose or execute, rather, a raft of

00:08:00.240 executive orders firing a nuclear missile at the censorship industrial complex day one. There's an

00:08:08.160 executive order on ending the weaponization of the federal government. There's a whole slew of other

00:08:12.400 executive orders essentially around making the government once again responsive to the people, the

00:08:18.020 mandate that Donald Trump won, restoring our liberties and justice in this country, and also

00:08:24.080 bringing to light with full transparency all of the misconduct over the last four plus years

00:08:31.240 and threatening to hold people accountable for it. And that's not retribution at the end of the day.

00:08:37.720 That's what's required to restore justice and to have reconciliation in this country. So we can talk

00:08:44.020 about what's going on with the FBI and DOJ, getting the intelligence community under control. We can

00:08:49.700 talk about the censorship industrial complex. We can talk about the national security and foreign

00:08:54.340 policy measures. Of course, the border and unleashing energy were agenda items one and one A for the

00:09:00.840 president. Because obviously, first of all, if you don't have control over your borders, you don't have

00:09:05.940 a homeland and you're going to be insecure. And that's required before you deal with all the foreign

00:09:11.660 contributors to it. And then, of course, the unleashing of the energy. Energy literally underpins

00:09:16.920 our entire civilization. When you unleash American energy, it undermines all of our worst adversaries

00:09:24.460 who are reliant on energy revenues or purchasing energy from adversaries. And so consequently, from a

00:09:32.280 national security perspective, as well as an economic perspective, that's integral. And then we can go into

00:09:38.640 the president's obviously a targeting of our worst adversaries trying to restore truly free, fair and

00:09:46.680 open trade and beyond. It's been a marvel to witness. And again, I would note that the flood the zone

00:09:54.140 kind of strategy involved here has proven to be brilliant. There are definitely lessons learned from

00:09:59.840 Trump one where the resistance gummed up the works literally from the minute of inauguration,

00:10:05.480 essentially. And now we see the media and we'll see ultimately as Congress tries to codify many of

00:10:13.060 these policies, what the Democrat resistance looks like, how wobbly Republicans are. I think it's

00:10:18.580 notable that so far the whipping operation has been effective enough to even steal the spines of the

00:10:23.840 wobbliest of Republicans with rare exceptions. And it seems like even those nominees who are on shakiest

00:10:31.020 ground are all going to be confirmed, which is a real change for the Republican Party, quite frankly, in terms of

00:10:37.700 backing up the president. But obviously, there's the lawfare effort. And that seems to be the primary venue for how

00:10:44.320 Democrats and the left are trying to obstruct the agenda. They don't have a Supreme Court. That's one of the reasons why

00:10:51.360 they're trying to de-legitimize for the last X years the Supreme Court and threaten and cow the justices. Some of those

00:10:58.700 purportedly conservative or originalist Supreme Court justices themselves have proven to be unreliable in

00:11:05.040 defending the Constitution in certain realms. But essentially, what you have are random federal judges. There's forum

00:11:12.560 shopping from the left, and they're trying to target random federal judges who will issue these nationwide asinine and

00:11:21.180 dubious universal injunctions to prevent the president from making the most basic decisions that he's entitled to on the

00:11:28.680 hiring and firing on how to faithfully execute his office on reviewing programs that, again, he's supposed to

00:11:34.380 faithfully execute. Any one of those federal judges, if they want, they can run for president if they want to make

00:11:39.080 those decisions. They can't do it from the bench. And I think ultimately, these cases, many of them will be on the

00:11:44.880 fast track to the Supreme Court. And I do expect the Supreme Court to smack them down. But right now, that seems like the

00:11:51.000 only game in town for the left. It's that and trying to attack Elon Musk. And by the way, I think that whole effort is

00:11:56.620 going to completely backfire as well, because the American people are going to love Doge at the end of

00:12:01.600 the day. They're going to love the fact that finally someone is going into the machine and saying, here's

00:12:07.120 where all the rot and corruption is. Here are all the asinine things you've been funding for years. Here are all the

00:12:11.840 people whose pockets you've been lining. Here are all the nefarious and sinister things that you've been

00:12:17.000 funding. And this guy, the richest man in the world, is going in there and serving as the ultimate management

00:12:22.220 consultant for the US government on behalf of the taxpayer for free. And the left thinks that

00:12:28.100 that's going to be unpopular. So I think ultimately, it's been remarkable to witness the energy, the

00:12:34.540 dynamism, the thoughtfulness with which the incoming president and now the president prepared for attack

00:12:43.440 on all of these different fronts on day one, and how tightly the executive orders have been written to

00:12:49.400 try and implement the agenda. It's been remarkable to witness. And it's been a boon for liberty and

00:12:55.420 justice here. And I also believe for liberty and justice around the world. And I think it has sent

00:13:00.020 a shiver down the spine of our adversaries. And I went there by saying, we've seen the Trump effect

00:13:05.340 in a whole slew of realms, with adversaries essentially making concessions at no cost to the US government and

00:13:13.280 America. We've had hostages returned. We've had essentially a reduction in hostilities from our

00:13:19.920 adversaries, a willingness to come to the table and want to negotiate because America is coming at it

00:13:25.200 from a position of strength, of resolve, of putting our interests first. And that redounds to the rest of

00:13:30.960 the free world or what remains of it. You are so right. Every word you've just said, I tell you, I've got

00:13:35.560 so many thoughts. Let me start with this one. I remember when it was Ron DeSantis versus Donald Trump

00:13:40.960 in the presidential primary. And Trump made short work of DeSantis. And my one regret was that DeSantis

00:13:47.760 was such an effective governor. And it was because, in my view, he used all the levers he had. If there

00:13:53.500 was a problem, he would do on a state level what Trump's doing now. He would fire people. He would

00:14:01.780 put loyalists in a position. He would remove, like he was an action-oriented guy who would say, I've got

00:14:07.760 about 20 levers and dials I can operate. How could I use all 20 of them today? Like, that was my

00:14:15.140 favorite thing about Ron DeSantis, the governor, is he used every power and tool and lever of the

00:14:21.140 state, whereas most Republicans never do. They never think of it, or they're too shy, or there's

00:14:26.120 some Marcus of Queensbury rules they don't want. Trump has done that times a hundred. And, you know,

00:14:34.600 there's so many things you said I want to respond to. But I think one of them is how remarkable it is

00:14:42.640 that quite spicy nominees like Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence and RFK Jr.,

00:14:50.160 because he's quite radical on some of his views. I like the guy. I love the guy. In fact, I was very

00:14:55.220 touched by his speech the other day. But to get those across the finish line in the Senate,

00:15:01.860 that tells me that Trump isn't just working above the radar. There's a lot going on behind the scenes.

00:15:09.700 I have no idea what. But like you said, to whip the Senate, and senators are hard to whip. What do

00:15:15.340 you do to a senator? How are you going to get a senator? They're around for six years. Something's

00:15:20.240 going on. And I guess my last point, Ben, would be, because every single day there are huge

00:15:28.980 announcements. The bad guys are on the back foot. By the time they respond to issue number 24,

00:15:36.740 there's issue number 25. And one last thing that Trump did is he went after the ringleaders. He took

00:15:45.440 away Fauci's security detail. He took away security clearance for the 51 or however many people who said

00:15:52.400 Hunter Biden's laptop or whatever. Like all these deep state liars. He banned them. Like he took away

00:15:59.240 Samantha Power's huge slush fund in USAID. So the bad guys are worried about how do I pay my bills?

00:16:07.440 The bad guys are having privileges taken away. And every single day Trump starts, as you say,

00:16:13.900 a thousand front war. He launched at five more fronts. And he's doing it all so entertainingly in

00:16:20.580 that Trump way. I mean, I don't know if you saw his announcement on plastic straws. He's talking

00:16:25.860 about the sharks munching their way through the ocean. Like this guy is at his best and he's almost

00:16:32.100 80. And I'm a Canadian, as you know, Ben. It's been the best thing to happen to Canada,

00:16:38.960 other than this tariff battle, which we got to figure our way out of. But I think that's on Trudeau's

00:16:45.260 side, not Trump's fault. It's amazing to see. I think the entire world is riveted.

00:16:50.220 And frankly, a lot of the entire world is jealous. I'm jealous of Doge. I'll tell you that right now.

00:16:55.700 Well, hopefully it will inspire similar movements throughout the West and around the world.

00:17:01.540 Let me note also that Vice President Vance has said it's going to be the policy of this

00:17:06.880 administration to go at a million miles an hour for four years. So this isn't going to stop. I don't

00:17:12.520 expect the momentum to stop, although I'm sure that the resistance in the US, to the extent it

00:17:18.120 still exists, is going to do everything in its power to try and gum up the works. I think to your

00:17:24.120 point, it's worth noting with respect to the nominees. First of all, on the one hand, it would

00:17:28.940 really be against norms, so-called, for Republicans to have voted against their own nominees, particularly

00:17:38.080 at the cabinet level. And sometimes we forget that. And maybe that's because now everything

00:17:45.140 is on partisan lines, essentially. But obviously, Republicans have voted en masse for Democrat

00:17:50.640 nominees for cabinet positions. They certainly did it during Joe Biden. So it's a remarkable

00:17:55.400 commentary that requires a serious whipping operation. But nevertheless, Republicans have

00:18:01.040 often proven intransigent. They haven't known what time it is. That's what I've argued in the past.

00:18:06.720 And I think these nomination fights, where President Trump has ultimately prevailed over

00:18:13.320 the senators, illustrates that they know what time it is and or they understand that this MAGA movement

00:18:19.980 is as big as Donald Trump, if not bigger than Donald Trump, and that there is a real realignment

00:18:25.620 happening. And basically, they are being responsive to the voters. That's what a democracy is supposed to

00:18:31.300 be. And of course, the other side uses the word democracy. What they really mean is oligarchy or

00:18:37.400 ruling elite dominance, tyranny. That's how they define democracy. But because democracy has a veneer

00:18:44.180 of legitimacy, they throw that word around, even though they actually mean something entirely the

00:18:49.860 opposite. I mean, what's more democratic than a president having control over his agencies, who works in

00:18:56.460 them what the programs are, knowing what each line item looks like, because the American people voted

00:19:01.460 for him to do that. It would be the opposite of democracy for the agencies to run wild and do

00:19:06.880 whatever they want. Let me just make one last brief point on the nominees. I'll just say

00:19:11.500 RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. RFK Jr. was the scourge of the public health establishment,

00:19:17.460 of big pharma, of everything that prevailed as the draconian COVID-19 COVIDian regime was imposed over

00:19:27.900 the U.S. and eviscerated liberty and justice here and signaled to the rest of the world that it was

00:19:32.720 okay to pursue those policies as well. He was censored by the censorship industrial complex,

00:19:37.940 targeted by the public health establishment arm of that censorship regime. Now he's the person

00:19:43.820 in charge at HHS. Same goes for Tulsi Gabbard. Tulsi Gabbard is someone who has fought for our

00:19:51.240 country, who's an ardent counter-jihadist. She has heterodox views. She's taken on the foreign

00:19:56.840 policy establishment, the foreign policy blob. She's called out the foreign policy establishment

00:20:01.880 in the deep state for weaponizing their powers against the American people and abusing our civil

00:20:08.920 liberties. Tulsi Gabbard found herself on the TSA's Quiet Skies program, where she was pursued

00:20:15.640 essentially as a high-risk passenger when she flies, as if she was a domestic terrorist. She's been

00:20:21.380 targeted by that regime, and now she's put in the position of overseeing the entirety of the

00:20:26.400 intelligence community and ensuring that it's not politicized and weaponized against the American

00:20:30.800 people. The turnabout here, the turnaround here, is remarkable. Those who were targeted by the

00:20:36.820 institutions have now been put atop the institutions, and no one would know better or be more determined

00:20:43.460 to fight, to wring out the rot and corruption, politicization and weaponization than those

00:20:49.140 who have been targeted by it. That goes for Kash Patel and many others as well. And of course,

00:20:54.120 it starts with Donald Trump, the most targeted man in America.

00:20:57.100 And it includes Elon Musk as well, who, I mean, we know him as the spaceman and the Tesla man,

00:21:03.980 and now we know him as the Doge waste finder. But let us not forget that he was targeted and his

00:21:10.560 companies were targeted by the Biden administration on everything from the SEC to some coastal commission

00:21:16.920 saying you can't launch more rockets out here. So, you know, the Wall Street Journal the other day

00:21:21.780 called Elon Musk an avenging angel, as in he's, but there's some truth to it. Because every person

00:21:29.220 you just said was harassed, and I would say unfairly and perhaps illegally, by the institutions

00:21:35.160 they now run. So I can tell you two things. Number one, they will not be co-opted by them.

00:21:40.600 And number two, they probably learned a thing or two by the lawfare against them, especially RFK Jr.,

00:21:46.980 who is a litigator, a public interest litigator himself. It's just incredible to see it.

00:21:53.560 And I saw a stat, maybe you saw it too, Ben, that it was revealed that more than one third

00:21:59.160 of all FBI officers were dispatched to the January 6 insurrection file. Did you see that statistic as

00:22:07.160 well? I did. And 5,000 FBI officials apparently were involved in January 6 probes.

00:22:16.980 Wow. And that's an astonishing number. I mean, as you know, Trump has basically invited every

00:22:25.600 single person in the public service to quit, even in the CIA and the FBI. I mean, that is such a huge

00:22:33.980 diversion of a public resource and the integrity and reputational capital of the FBI. I think most

00:22:40.720 Americans still like the FBI. They think of them as the good guys. I think most do. I mean,

00:22:46.700 you would know better than me. But to have it revealed as such a partisan errand boy is astonishing.

00:22:52.840 It's going to be incredible to watch, especially if Kash Patel is confirmed as FBI director. When is that

00:23:04.180 expected?

00:23:05.660 So he was voted out of committee yesterday. He'd have to be voted out of committee out of the Senate

00:23:11.400 Judiciary Committee, along party lines, of course, because that's the way it goes these days. And then

00:23:18.040 unfortunately, there's a little bit of a lag, but it's expected that late next week, he will get his

00:23:24.560 vote on the Senate floor. Fully expect him to be confirmed. And let's note as well, Kash Patel was

00:23:32.480 targeted by this regime himself. Now, if your audience isn't familiar with all the nitty gritty of

00:23:38.040 this, Kash Patel has held a lot of senior positions across the national security and law enforcement

00:23:43.600 apparatus. He's a federal prosecutor. He was on staff at DOJ. He worked at the National Security

00:23:49.120 Council on counterterrorism. He worked under the acting DNI, Rick Grenell, at the end of last

00:23:55.340 administration. He was the chief of staff, I believe, for the Defense Department last time around

00:24:03.120 as well. But Kash Patel really made a name for himself with the public when he served as a chief

00:24:09.300 investigator for Devin Nunes on the House Intelligence Community during the Russiagate hoax.

00:24:14.820 And he was largely responsible for unearthing, first, the FISA fraud perpetrated on the FISA court

00:24:22.700 and abuse. And FISA, that's the foreign intelligence, that's the spy court. That's the secret

00:24:28.140 intelligence court that basically launched the warrants against Trump. Am I right?

00:24:33.860 Exactly. And Carter Page was sort of the tip of the spear there. And they got these FISA warrant

00:24:40.500 applications to surveil him as a window into the entirety of Trump world. Kash Patel revealed

00:24:46.320 the fraud perpetrated on the FISA court to secure those warrants on him and spy on Trump world.

00:24:53.800 And he exposed much of the other fraud, corruption and illegality, arguably, from the FBI and DOJ.

00:25:01.160 At the very same time, he was engaging in that investigatory effort. And Devin Nunes himself

00:25:06.800 got savaged by the entirety of the regime, essentially. Patel's own communications were

00:25:13.320 being subpoenaed by the DOJ. They were surveilling his communications dating back to December of 2016.

00:25:21.340 At the very time he was investigating the DOJ and the FBI for their abuses. So he has been targeted

00:25:30.100 relentlessly as well. And now he's being put atop that very FBI you talked about. And the FBI,

00:25:37.020 many of the senior officials there under Christopher Wray, and let's note the FBI,

00:25:41.280 you know, was not only weaponized against J6ers, but also against faithful Catholics,

00:25:46.240 against parents engaged at school board meetings, against pro-lifers. We've seen many of those cases

00:25:53.160 reversed, dropped, arguably clemency or pardons given to those targeted. But we've also seen some

00:25:59.860 of the top FBI officials themselves forced out of the agency. And they themselves, in part, even though

00:26:07.640 the story hasn't been reported, I reported a real clear investigation. So several of those individuals

00:26:12.200 weaponized security clearances against whistleblowers within the FBI. Whistleblowers came

00:26:19.140 forward with claims of malfeasance, including around January 6th, around COVIDian policies and

00:26:25.680 beyond at FBI. They had their security clearances suspended. Their lives were wrecked while these

00:26:32.140 investigations went on. And in some instances, you had people who had essentially no closure on their

00:26:38.460 cases for well over two years while they were held, suspended security clearances and unable to work

00:26:45.700 for the FBI and therefore not receiving pay. And there were people who blew the whistle on the

00:26:51.700 fact that these whistleblowers were being targeted internally and they faced retaliation in the form

00:26:56.220 of their security clearances being pulled too. So it hasn't been reported why some of these very

00:27:01.420 senior officials at the FBI were forced out. You have Democrats here, particularly on the Senate

00:27:07.360 Judiciary Committee, saying that Trump is imperiling national security by pushing out the senior

00:27:12.240 leadership. But the whole point is this is consistent with the Trump administration policy

00:27:16.860 to root out those who weaponize their powers and not only subvert our liberties, but also to your

00:27:23.420 point, at great opportunity costs to the actual threats facing us when you target Americans like

00:27:29.260 we're domestic terrorists or enemies. Kash Patel has been a champion of those whistleblowers. He's been

00:27:35.040 targeted himself. And that's why it's another vital appointee that we have, nominee that we have.

00:27:41.200 And I do expect him to be confirmed next week.

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00:28:32.400 patriots and support our independent journalism. Well, I appreciate the background on him. And I have

00:28:39.800 to say, of all the cabinet-level picks, he's the one I'm least familiar with. Now I know a little bit

00:28:44.660 more about him. I do know this. His eyes have a piercing stare. He's got sort of a wildness in his

00:28:53.980 eyes. And you know, there's a saying, if you go for the king, you better not miss. Well, they literally

00:29:00.480 missed on Donald Trump by one inch with a bullet. They missed with their endless lawfare against him.

00:29:06.820 Now he's in charge, and he's putting in all of these people that the deep state tried to knock

00:29:12.360 off, whether it's Tulsi Gabbard and the fake no-fly list, RFK Jr. It really is something to behold. And

00:29:19.460 let me say this. It is not ideologically partisan. Many of the names we've just discussed, Tulsi Gabbard,

00:29:26.420 RFK Jr., even Elon Musk himself, were until fairly recently Democrats. In fact, Tulsi Gabbard

00:29:33.180 was a staunch Bernie Sanders booster, or at least she was appalled by the way he was barred from

00:29:42.360 running, I think it was in 2016, in the primary by Hillary Clinton's people. And even if you looked

00:29:50.880 at RFK Jr.'s swearing in moment with his sort of family, they were Democrats. I mean, he's from the

00:29:57.140 great Democrat family. I think it's to Trump's credit that a man who loves being in the center

00:30:04.500 of attention, who loves the spotlight, who's a natural entertainer, has within his bosom big

00:30:12.780 personalities who attract attention on their own right, who are on side with them, but not maybe

00:30:18.860 perfectly on side rhetorically, for example. And Elon Musk is an example. I mean, the fact that Trump

00:30:25.800 can abide world-class leaders in his cabinet, I think speaks to his, I think shows a side of his

00:30:35.300 character that people might not have expected. What do you think about that?

00:30:38.500 Surrounding yourself with exceptional people in a variety of different ways, it's right on the

00:30:46.520 politics, it's right on the merits. And I do think it illustrates, to some extent, again,

00:30:52.280 lessons learned from Trump one, but then also to your point, the character and the nature of how he

00:30:58.140 thinks of running a business, or if you were applying business principles to how you would run

00:31:03.960 government. I mean, I've likened Elon Musk sitting in the position he is at Doge to basically bringing

00:31:10.260 in the world's greatest entrepreneur, arguably, certainly of our time, or greatest management

00:31:17.000 consultant, essentially, into the federal government with the Silicon Valley ethos of move fast, break

00:31:23.660 things. And the same goes for lots of other heterodox thinkers who, as you note, are very formidable

00:31:30.280 figures in their own right. I think what it in part reflects is that this isn't about Republican

00:31:37.240 versus Democrat and partisanship. It's sort of about the machine versus everyone else, or the ruling

00:31:45.640 elites versus the scourges of the ruling elites. Or another way of thinking about it is it's those

00:31:53.000 who are against concentrated power centers, whether in the public sector or the private sector versus

00:32:01.140 those power centers themselves. And this can be defined as populism, nationalism, putting America

00:32:09.300 first, the national interest first, standing with the little guy, standing with the forgotten

00:32:12.880 Americans. But I do think one thing that unites most of these forces is this belief that there's been

00:32:20.340 these concentrated power centers. They're rotted, corrupted. They're turned against the American

00:32:24.800 people. They've been failures. And so this is like a turnaround artist being brought in

00:32:30.600 with full power and with the greatest minds and intellects and people with experience to come in

00:32:37.040 and radically reorganize and restructure the government and put it in alignment with America's

00:32:42.480 national interest. And that's going to be a winner way beyond Republicans. And I think it's going to

00:32:48.100 down to the benefit, not just of Americans, but the rest of the world as well, to the extent it's

00:32:53.280 able to fulfill this highly ambitious vision. Yeah. I keep coming back to Mark Zuckerberg's

00:33:00.020 statement where he basically jettisons political correctness, says he'll lay off 40,000 fact checkers.

00:33:08.640 I'll believe it when it's actually done. But the most important thing in his comment, in my mind,

00:33:16.740 was when he said he intends to lean into freedom of speech outside America, too, including in Europe

00:33:22.500 and South America. And he specifically said, and this is what caught my ear, with the support of

00:33:27.940 the State Department, because there's no way that a company can beat a government anywhere.

00:33:34.700 When you're operating in Brazil or France, you have to follow Brazilian or French laws.

00:33:39.340 And you can say we're going to have First Amendment style freedom of speech.

00:33:42.360 But if that's not the way it is in Brazil or France, you can't do it unless you've got Trump

00:33:48.340 going to pick up the phone to Lula or to Macron and say, don't you touch my company or I'm going

00:33:54.120 to tariff you. So and J.D. Vance and his speech at the Munich Security Conference going right into the

00:34:01.940 heart of Europe, not just Europe, but the EU collectivist Europe and saying, you guys are falling

00:34:09.720 apart on free speech. You're falling apart on respecting democratic elections, like in Romania,

00:34:15.300 where they voted for conservative populace. And the authorities just said, we're going to not

00:34:20.280 acknowledge that. Like it was a very interesting speech. It was a little bit about security,

00:34:25.140 but it was mainly America saying, we're going to reassert our American values around the world.

00:34:30.280 Not so much as an empire with colonies, but they're just going to speak out more.

00:34:35.840 And if American companies are punished in some way, Trump will clap back. I think there's a

00:34:42.940 toughness to it. Some critics would say it's bullying, but I can't get over a few visual images,

00:34:50.800 like when the head of SoftBank came and promised to invest, I think he said $200 billion or something.

00:34:59.040 And the Japanese prime minister came and said he was going to invest, I think he said a trillion

00:35:04.920 dollars. And that one after the other, all these foreign leaders come and bend the knee. And it's

00:35:10.960 almost like they're going to kiss his ring if he had one. And some of them are in awe. The Japanese

00:35:17.460 prime minister said, well, I always saw the president on TV. And frankly, I found him a little bit

00:35:22.640 frightening. He literally said he was in awe. But you might say, well, that's Trump. He's over the top.

00:35:30.520 But I think any member of any nation wants to feel like their nation is great. And if their leader earns

00:35:38.560 that respect from a foreign place, it trickles down to them too. To see the leader of Japan say he finds

00:35:45.960 America awesome, how does that not make 350 million Americans feel just a little bit more awesome? And

00:35:53.900 that's okay to have national pride. I don't know. I think there's something masculine and strong and

00:35:59.380 great. And I look at what the Democrats have always put up, Tim Walz, David Hogg, that's not masculine and

00:36:07.760 strong and great. And they've had sort of a war against masculinity on the personal level, but also on

00:36:13.760 the global level. Like the idea of telling Panama, change your ways or we're going to reconquer the

00:36:20.360 canal. That may sound like a lot of tough guy swagger, but it sort of works. I think that's

00:36:26.460 part of it too. The emasculation of America happened at the micro level, but also at the global level.

00:36:35.320 Everyone thought they could walk over America. And I think that in less than a month, that has been

00:36:40.540 absolutely undone. What do you think?

00:36:42.580 I agree wholeheartedly. And I would say that the emasculation, which is probably something that's

00:36:51.180 occurred across almost all of the West and has been a long project to do so, goes along with a slew of

00:36:59.380 other policies, you know, the radical gender ideology, trying to pit kids against their parents,

00:37:05.140 trying to essentially create and stir up tribal warfare among different groups throughout the

00:37:13.720 West. All of it in some measure is about, first of all, obviously fighting against the underpinnings

00:37:21.500 of our civilization and trying to pit us against each other and divide us. But it's also about

00:37:26.600 suppressing and trying to get us to reject human nature and what we know to be true. You know,

00:37:33.540 we could have a great academic debate about, does every culture aspire to greatness, excellence,

00:37:38.940 and achievement? And how do we define that? But certainly in the West, and certainly speaking for

00:37:43.820 Americans, this beats within the hearts of all Americans. And we've been told that America is a

00:37:49.920 bad place and that we shouldn't be proud of ourselves and that we haven't achieved great things and that

00:37:54.900 our ideals are rotten or we never live up to them and that we were conceived in sin, et cetera, that men can

00:38:02.280 be women if they want to be women, that, you know, chemical castration for kids is okay. It's all about

00:38:09.240 respecting and doing whatever you want and the like. And essentially, this is just a repudiation or rejection

00:38:15.400 of all of it, which is really just a return to normalcy, to tradition. And again, a recognition of human

00:38:22.920 nature and pursuing greatness, pursuing excellence, trying to achieve great things, having very high

00:38:30.520 aspirations. You know, that's who we are. That's what we learned when I was a kid in grade school,

00:38:36.440 at least before it was wholly corrupted. That's how it had been here. And we do have things to be proud

00:38:42.520 of and we do have things to aspire to. And why should we set our sights low? And why should we reject

00:38:49.480 the things that on a relative basis and an absolute basis ought to be celebrated? So I definitely see

00:38:57.160 that as a part of it. Like it's okay to actually love your nation again and want your nation to achieve

00:39:03.880 great things. And there's sort of an elation and there's sort of a rational exuberance and you can

00:39:08.680 finally take a deep breath and you're not walking on eggshells. And of course, you know, a footnote to this,

00:39:14.680 but a massive aspect of this, as you noted, is sort of the fighting against the censorship and also

00:39:20.920 that governments, as J.D. Vance emphasized in that Munich speech, particularly in Europe, are

00:39:27.400 effectively operating like they're afraid of their people, like their people can't be allowed to speak openly

00:39:32.040 and honestly about the ills of open borders and the invasion policy that's plagued the West.

00:39:38.920 About the ills of progressive policies, about the crackdowns on free speech. It's been very

00:39:47.000 interesting advance, not only in the Munich speech, but also in his first foreign speech on artificial

00:39:52.840 intelligence was emphasizing the imperative that there be no censorship in AI development.

00:39:58.600 You noted Mark Zuckerberg talking about how he's going to work with the US government to fight against

00:40:03.480 censorship regimes abroad. And it's worth noting, and I've reported on this,

00:40:07.560 that the censorship regimes abroad, like the Digital Services Act in the EU, threatens to destroy

00:40:14.440 big tech companies that don't impose the content moderation standards, which are anti-free speech,

00:40:20.440 I put content moderation in air quotes, from the EU and other places as well. And there's a boomerang

00:40:26.040 effect, which is that if you have to adhere to those standards abroad, you're going to squelch

00:40:30.360 American free American speech on the speech and other places that have free speech.

00:40:36.120 It's notable that Zuckerberg and others want to get on the right side of the administration. They

00:40:41.080 want to partner with the administration against those regimes. You have the administration going

00:40:45.400 out and telling the world, you should have free speech. You shouldn't try to impose these

00:40:49.480 standards on the big tech companies. The State Department itself has said it's going to be laser

00:40:54.280 focused in putting out its earliest kind of mission statement. It was only a few paragraphs. One of the

00:40:59.880 paragraphs was on combating censorship, and we're not going to use the State Department to go after

00:41:04.520 American speech, certainly, even if we're going to combat foreign foes. And on the first day,

00:41:10.120 the president put forth an executive order combating the censorship industrial complex,

00:41:15.560 prohibiting federal officials from engaging in censorship themselves or indirectly, and prohibiting

00:41:22.440 them from using federal resources, i.e. federal money, grants, et cetera, towards censorship as well.

00:41:29.080 And then also engaging in a review of the censorship activities that the Biden administration engaged in

00:41:35.480 for the last 40 years. So this is a laser focus of the administration. And now we're seeing it play out

00:41:41.080 in the world stage. And again, to your point, I think it redounds to all these other people who

00:41:45.480 feel alienated because their ruling elites rule over them like subjects instead of like citizens and

00:41:54.280 instead of operating with their consent. And I think the nationalist view, populist nationalist

00:42:00.760 view of this administration is that peoples will be better off if their governments are responsive to

00:42:06.200 them. And that in a world of nations each pursuing their national interests, that's far better than the

00:42:13.000 sort of globalist progressive rule that many of these regimes have been trying to impose in recent

00:42:19.400 decades. We'll all be better off if each nation pursues its own interests, pursues greatness as it

00:42:25.160 understands greatness. There's going to be differences. There's going to be areas of commonality, but that

00:42:29.720 makes for a much better, more stable, more peaceful, more prosperous world than the kind of ruling elites versus

00:42:37.000 the broad masses dichotomy that we've seen play out in recent years. And that increasingly is being

00:42:42.680 rejected across the West. You know, you make me think of a tweet by JK Rowling, the author of the Harry

00:42:48.760 Potter series, who is very focused on the trans issue. She's a feminist. She's pro lesbian. She's all of that.

00:42:56.120 But she finds that transgenderism is anti-feminist. It's a war on women and women's spaces. And because

00:43:02.360 she's so big, she's been hard to cancel. She lives in the United Kingdom, whereas a lot of people with

00:43:08.760 lower profile have been easier. I don't think the police would dare go after JK Rowling.

00:43:16.120 But when Donald Trump signed an executive order ending biological men and women's sports and women's

00:43:22.280 change rooms, he had this wonderful gathering of all sorts of women athletes, including some who had

00:43:28.600 been punished for speaking out. And it was 100 young women in the Oval Office, I think it was.

00:43:36.760 And he was signing the order and he said, come on, girls. And they all sort of closed right in.

00:43:42.520 And it was actually a very beautiful photo of Donald Trump looking sort of like a secular Santa Claus and

00:43:48.600 a hundred lovely kids around him smiling. It was an amazing photo. And JK Rowling tweeted,

00:43:54.440 I'm going from memory here, what a photo. The Democrats could have had this. As she was saying,

00:44:03.560 that's her way of saying, I find it odd that I'm cheering for Donald Trump, someone I've been

00:44:08.120 programmed to dislike when he's done an amazing thing for all these girls. But she was a little bit

00:44:13.560 wrong because it wasn't all the Democrats had to do to get this photo op. No, no. The photo op is the

00:44:20.440 cherry on the cake. It's the footnote. It's a side effect. The hard part was doing it. The hard

00:44:29.480 part was standing up to the hurricane of censorship and defamation that you're anti-trans. And I saw a

00:44:37.720 number of lefties who sort of said, oh, what a shame we couldn't have had that moment. That's the

00:44:43.000 victory lap. You only get that once you have the victory. And that is something that Trump spent some

00:44:51.240 personal capital. And by the way, I think it really resonated with a lot of minority voters. I keep

00:44:55.640 hearing that the ads that Trump ran, especially on black and Latino media about the Democrat obsession

00:45:03.560 with transgenderism really moved the needle there. But I don't know, my message about JK Rowling is

00:45:09.560 Trump didn't do it for the photo op. He did it for its own sake. The photo op was an after effect.

00:45:16.760 But maybe it'll give courage to people around the world like JK Rowling.

00:45:22.440 And maybe J.D. Vance going to speak in Munich and others, maybe there will be a revival of populist

00:45:29.400 conservative political leaders around the world. Who knows? Last word to you, Ben. The first hasn't

00:45:35.880 even been a month. It's been a sprint. Donald Trump has a lot of energy. I mean,

00:45:40.040 he campaigned every single day during the election for really 18 plus hours a day. I don't know how

00:45:46.200 he did it. He seems like he's in good health. Thank God. How do you see things a year from now?

00:45:56.040 It's hard to think that far ahead, given the pace of things. But how do you think things will look

00:46:00.680 a year from now when America's attention starts to turn towards the midterm elections?

00:46:08.520 Well, first of all, I think to your point, we are witnessing a world historic figure in a world

00:46:17.000 historic moment where many of us on the conservative side of things sort of felt that we were in an

00:46:26.200 inevitable decline. And you have all of these massive forces against you and the game kind of

00:46:32.200 rigged against what you believe and the chances of overcoming it. And Donald Trump has essentially said,

00:46:39.640 no, we will act. We will bring in the personnel and implement the policies we said we're going to do.

00:46:46.920 We'll take the war to an administrative state that we were told a war can never be taken to it,

00:46:53.080 that it's a fourth branch of government that really sits above the rest of the government and is

00:46:57.400 tyrannical almost by its very definition in usurping the powers of the legislative, the judiciary and

00:47:04.520 executive branch all in itself. And he said no. And he's shown by example that it can be fought.

00:47:11.720 And to your point, example, acting courageously can inspire courage in others. It also has positive

00:47:20.520 political effects and effects on the merits as well. And so I think if you want to be bullish

00:47:26.280 about where things are headed, if this program and if these acts look as popular with the American

00:47:33.320 people as it appears right now, politicians are going to want to be on the right side of history.

00:47:38.840 They're not going to want to oppose it. And this is going to be an agenda that's going to be

00:47:44.520 a winning agenda on the politics and the merits. And as a function of that, it's going to lead to

00:47:51.400 codification in legislation. I think on the merits, obviously the things that go before the courts,

00:47:57.960 ultimately I think the Supreme Court is going to smack down a lot of the lunacy that's going on right

00:48:02.920 now. And I think ultimately what you're going to see if things proceed down this path is everyone's

00:48:09.400 going to want to be on this administration's side. It's going to be a massive popular winner.

00:48:15.640 And as a consequence, that momentum is going to lead, create basically a virtuous cycle

00:48:21.400 of more and more policy victories. And those policy victories are ultimately going to redound

00:48:27.800 to the American people in the form of peace and prosperity here, and also the spread of peace and

00:48:33.640 prosperity around the world. So I don't mean to be Pollyannish in my outlook, but it's very hard

00:48:41.000 to look at the first few weeks and think anything other than that. This administration will not let

00:48:48.840 the momentum be stopped. It has the policy and it has the personnel to implement it. It has the other

00:48:58.920 side to your point on its back foot, which is something I can't remember in modern American

00:49:04.280 political history. And consequently, the Trump effect is reverberating around the world. And it's

00:49:12.280 again, to the peace and prosperity of America, to the West, to people who desire freedom everywhere.

00:49:19.240 So I have to say that I think the outlook has to look very positive. That's not to say that this

00:49:24.840 isn't going to be a knock down, drag out war and that the losing side right now in this is not going

00:49:32.040 to marshal all of its resources and more to try and overcome it. But you have to look at things more

00:49:38.280 positively and optimistically probably than at any time in my lifetime for the chance that the core

00:49:45.880 principles that we believe ought to govern our administration are going to prevail and that

00:49:51.560 America is going to have a better future than it looked like we were going to have

00:49:56.280 as recently as a few weeks ago. Yeah. You know, I can't help but think of Ronald Reagan

00:50:02.120 and he had many of these themes riding tall in the saddle, deregulation, a strong foreign policy,

00:50:08.040 strong military. Ronald Reagan did a lot of wonderful things, but on almost every measurement,

00:50:14.040 Trump is going farther, faster, harder, deeper.

00:50:18.280 However, I think Reagan, if he's looking down from heaven, would be deeply impressed and pleased

00:50:25.480 with what he would see. Totally different style. I mean, Reagan, of course, a TV actor,

00:50:30.840 film actor, a showman in his own way, but genial and never a hard word. I think he'd probably be

00:50:37.640 appalled by Trump's sharp tongue. But when he would see what's actually being done and realize how brutal

00:50:44.840 the political landscape is, I think Ronald Reagan would be absolutely thrilled by what he sees. Ben,

00:50:51.080 it's great to catch up with you. Thanks for joining us again. And it feels a lot better than four years

00:50:56.120 and four months ago when you and I both had sinking hearts as we saw the ballot boxes being discovered

00:51:04.040 and counted and giving the win to Joe Biden. But the pendulum swings back. Great to see you.

00:51:08.920 You too. Thanks for having me. There you have it. Ben Weingarten,

00:51:13.000 senior editor at The Federalist. Well, that's our show for today. Until next time,

00:51:18.040 on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night,

00:51:22.280 and keep fighting for freedom.

00:51:23.560 Thanks for tuning in to this podcast. If you appreciate the news that Rebel brings you,

00:51:33.000 consider being a part of what makes it possible. You can do so by subscribing to our exclusive

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Rebel News Podcast - February 17, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trump's first month： Ben Weingarten on a bold new dawn for America

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