Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Why is Trudeau keeping his list of media subsidy recipients secret？

00:00:00.000 Hello, my rebels. News from Black Locks. A $61 million emergency payment to the media was rushed

00:00:08.640 out by Trudeau and Stephen Gilboa right before the election. Isn't that incredible? They paid a

00:00:14.680 $61 million bribe to reporters, but that's not even the story. The story is they're keeping the

00:00:19.880 names of the reporters secret. They made a secret payment to reporters on the eve of the election.

00:00:26.580 What do you think about that? I'll tell you what I think. That's a hat. Let me invite you to become

00:00:31.640 a subscriber to Rebel News Plus first, though. It's $8 a month. No big deal. Go to rebelnews.com,

00:00:36.660 click subscribe. Get the video version of this podcast every day, plus weekly videos from

00:00:42.440 Sheila Gunn-Reed, David Menzies, Andrew Chapados, and the satisfaction of knowing you're supporting

00:00:48.100 one of the few media outlets in the country that does not take money from Trudeau. All right,

00:00:52.720 here's today's podcast.

00:00:56.580 Tonight, why is Trudeau keeping his list of media subsidy recipients a secret? It's August

00:01:14.720 12th, and this is The Answer of Events Show.

00:01:18.720 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:22.220 Well, there's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:01:26.560 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's

00:01:30.960 my bloody right to do so.

00:01:37.220 Things are upside down these days, a moral inversion. It's a kind of madness. I saw a story about

00:01:43.880 someone who freaked out in a store because they were pressured to put a mask on and they didn't

00:01:48.520 want to. It's just some random story. I don't know the facts, but I can guess it's the stress.

00:01:54.940 It's the shocking, demoralizing stress of not recognizing not only your own country, but your

00:02:00.560 own city, your own neighborhood, your own stores you go to, your own friends, your own family,

00:02:05.260 your whole world, what it is to be a person anymore. A couple of years ago, I visited Tommy

00:02:11.540 Robinson in prison a few times. And as a visitor to a prison, I had to follow rules. It was a very

00:02:16.740 strict prison. I had to be inspected and handled and have my privacy violated. And that's just as

00:02:23.000 a visitor, obviously. They looked in my mouth. They had dogs sniff me just for a few hours while 0.99

00:02:29.060 I was a visitor. It was alienating and destabilizing for a few hours. A small taste of what it would be

00:02:35.000 like to be a prisoner all the time. But I knew I would be out for sure in an hour or so. So it's

00:02:41.440 more of a curiosity and uncomfortable but rare and anomalous experience that I could talk about

00:02:46.840 later from comfort and safety. I knew it had an end date, an end time. I feel like that prison

00:02:53.180 experience all the time now, and of course, mine was very mild and very short just as a visitor. I

00:02:59.440 feel like what I saw and what I experienced in those hours has been extrapolated to the whole world,

00:03:05.320 to all of our lives. And we did nothing wrong. And we had no due process. We had no court,

00:03:09.440 no parliament, no debate, no vote. And then suddenly we're ruled by people we never heard of

00:03:13.940 before. Public health high priests with bizarre demands of us that are instantly law, like some

00:03:20.900 mad king issuing edicts. And they seem to change their views about things without explanation or

00:03:27.580 logic and expect us to forget that. Like in the novel 1984, where Winston Smith, the hero, would simply

00:03:32.800 change an old headline in a newspaper and throw out the original so you never could check what actually

00:03:38.500 did happen before. It's madness. It's so psychologically shocking that many weaker

00:03:44.720 people have embraced it as a form of Stockholm Syndrome. They can't make sense of it. They know

00:03:49.660 they can't defeat it or make it stop. So they cast their lot in with it, like a hostage realizing that

00:03:55.300 their only hope is to side with the hostage taker as everything else is doomed. So perhaps joining the

00:04:00.540 devil will save you from him. I never watched that anti-Trump show called The Handmaid's Tale. It was meant to be

00:04:06.820 a commentary on Trump. The show's creator said so, which is odd because there's a lot of misogyny

00:04:12.800 that really is in the world. But I can't think of any that came from Trump during his time as

00:04:18.100 president. I see it coming from Iran, for example. I can actually see it coming from radical 0.93

00:04:24.780 transgender activists, too, if you want to talk about women's rights and women's bases. But not

00:04:29.100 from the Christian right. You know that Margaret Atwood, who wrote the original novel some 40-odd years ago,

00:04:35.380 she said she was actually basing the concept loosely on the revolution in Iran and its anti-women

00:04:42.840 Islamic tenets. But she lacked the courage to criticize Islam, so she made the tyrants American 1.00

00:04:49.940 conservative Christians. I didn't watch the show, but I saw a few clips of it online here and there.

00:04:54.740 And one theme, and I appreciated this, was how the Puritans who ran this diabolical world 1.00

00:05:00.180 never believed in it themselves and were hypocrites in every way. Everything they banned for ordinary

00:05:05.200 people, they indulged in for themselves. Sex, liquor, drugs, banned books, whatever. I think

00:05:10.460 that's a commentary on any Puritan society, any authoritarian society, the Communist Party, the

00:05:14.980 Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party. They don't follow the rules they impose on the little 0.99

00:05:19.340 people. Saudi billionaire princes love liquor that's banned officially in the country. I mention this

00:05:26.480 because in our new tyranny, our new authoritarian world that happened so quickly, that happened

00:05:31.240 without a battle, without a vote, without a choice, without a question, it just happened from within.

00:05:36.740 But strangely, it happened from within everywhere at the same time. That's odd, isn't it? And it was

00:05:41.120 just done. And at first, people signed up for the hygiene revolution. They wore their masks and

00:05:46.680 socially distanced, and they followed the rules. But two weeks to flatten the curve, like my very short

00:05:51.640 prison visit, you'll be done very soon, just stay with it. Two weeks to flatten the curve,

00:05:55.660 it's now almost two years. To do what? The curve is more than flat, and it's over. How did the goal

00:06:00.420 move from flatten the curve, which just means stop hospitals from being overwhelmed at once? And

00:06:05.300 they never were. How do we move from that to mask rules, to travel quarantines, and COVID jails, to

00:06:12.740 forced vaccines, which is where we are now, all without a question, without asking us, without our

00:06:18.520 consent? And more and more to see, like in The Handmaid's Tale, like in the Soviet or Islamic 0.98

00:06:23.920 tyrannies, to see the ruling classes, the elites, break their rules with impunity and laugh about it.

00:06:28.880 We all saw the elite of the elite partying with Barack Obama for his 60th birthday. No masks, no social

00:06:34.840 distancing. John Kerry, the climate czar, flew in on his private jet. Of course he did. Less cool, less elite,

00:06:41.800 less stylish, less impressive, but just as authoritarian, a Canadian cabinet minister, Catherine McKenna, used

00:06:47.700 taxpayers' dollars to jet to Nineveh last week. That's quite a flight, to take photo ops of herself.

00:06:53.540 But look at that. No masks, no quarantines, no social distancing, even though Nineveh, the territory,

00:06:59.660 has special rules for people flying in from the south. A liberal cabinet minister flies in for

00:07:06.720 pre-campaign photo ops and breaks the 14-day quarantine and mask rules, and publishes photos of

00:07:15.140 herself breaking the rules, just to let you know she's in the ruling class and you're not. 0.89

00:07:22.800 So here we are, an upside-down world, and they'll tell you that you're crazy, that you're the

00:07:26.920 conspiracy theorist, that you shouldn't be asking any questions. You'll be banned if you do.

00:07:32.900 It's upside-down. It's that moral inversion. Why do we rely? Who do we rely on to tell us the truth

00:07:40.140 about it? We used to rely on reporters. We still have a few good reporters in Canada. Sometimes

00:07:46.800 Evan Solomon of CTV asks surprising questions of cabinet ministers. Steve Chase of the Globe and

00:07:52.420 Mail is strong on covering China's evil. Don't ever let me say that reporters are 100% corrupt.

00:07:57.900 But I'll say that 90% of them don't dare challenge power. They don't dare color outside the lines,

00:08:04.020 challenge the powers to be. They're incurious, or they've taught themselves nothing good comes

00:08:08.880 from curiosity. It killed the cat. And they're not brave lions. They're more little house cats.

00:08:14.720 And what little curiosity or skepticism or sense of speaking truth to power there is, well,

00:08:19.780 it's being drummed out of them by plain old cash. Just money. Look at this. Here's Andrew Coyne of the

00:08:28.740 National Post at the time, ripping the proposed media bailout. Back in 2019, he wrote this. Of course,

00:08:34.460 he took the bailout. So did the Globe and Mail, where he now works. What a laugh to see this

00:08:41.260 criticism in the CBC again from a couple years ago. They received $1.5 billion a year from the

00:08:46.900 government. They were saying, we don't like the media bailout. Look at this one here. Journalists

00:08:51.820 question it. Yeah. Then they all took it. Every journalist in that story took the bailout.

00:08:58.120 Here's Bob Cox from the Winnipeg Free Press who lied. Sorry, pardon me, who led the charge for the

00:09:03.800 bailout and was first in line at the trough. Cox said, revenue in the Winnipeg Free Press had

00:09:10.600 fallen over 30% since mid-March. And he's heard revenue dropping 40% elsewhere in the industry.

00:09:15.200 Unless you're a company that relies entirely on readers for your revenue, you're in a lot of

00:09:18.360 trouble, he said. Yeah. If your readers don't like you anymore, they don't trust you anymore.

00:09:25.740 That's a sign that maybe you're doing things wrong. How about listen to your readers and respect

00:09:29.920 them instead of just asking Trudeau for a bailout because your own readers don't like you anymore.

00:09:33.800 Well, here we are two years later and it's the eve of the next election where a key issue is

00:09:39.300 Trudeau's banned, planned censorship of the internet. I say it's a key issue because it is for me, but

00:09:45.360 the Conservative Party of Canada hasn't mentioned it once. Neither Aaron O'Toole nor his spokesman

00:09:51.020 on the issue, Alain Reyes. Come to think of it, I haven't heard O'Toole oppose a vaccine passport

00:09:55.320 either. Have you? Or come to think of it, the lockdowns. Have you? In fact, O'Toole sounds more

00:10:01.600 terrified of the virus than anyone else these days. Canadians are worried about a fourth wave of COVID-19.

00:10:07.100 The dangerous Delta variant is here and we have to be ready. Now is not the time for an election. We can 1.00

00:10:13.460 all wait and go to the polls when it's safe. We need to focus on health and well-being, securing our

00:10:20.200 economic future and fighting COVID-19 together. My wife and I had COVID. Like many families, we want to

00:10:26.440 get past this pandemic. But let's pull together for one more fight. Let's beat COVID-19 and have an

00:10:32.660 election when it's safe.

00:10:38.420 Yeah, not sure what O'Toole thinks the key issue in this campaign is at all.

00:10:42.940 But Trudeau's taking no chances. He's bribing the media again right before the election.

00:10:47.000 But this time he's making it secret. Not even kidding. Take a look at this from Blacklock's reporter.

00:10:52.840 Now the subsidies are secret. Heritage Minister Stephen Gilboa's department refuses to name

00:10:58.800 publishers awarded nearly $61 million in pre-election emergency relief. The grants were

00:11:05.080 to ensure readers receive timely information they require from the government. Gilboa wrote

00:11:09.540 in a letter to MPs, quote, these measures demonstrate the government's commitment to both

00:11:13.460 a robust, diverse and sustainable news ecosystem and ensuring Canadians can receive the timely

00:11:18.940 information they require from the government. Gilboa wrote in a July 21 letter to

00:11:22.820 the Commons Heritage Committee. The letter did not elaborate on links between subsidies and

00:11:26.900 coverage of cabinet announcements. Did you get that? If Trudeau didn't pay reporters a $61 million

00:11:34.640 payout, they might not report on what the government's doing. So it's an emergency. Better get them that

00:11:41.960 money quick before the election or they might not cover the news. Really? Do you mean they might not

00:11:49.080 report friendly enough? Is that what you meant to say? Or they might not report pro-liberal enough?

00:11:53.000 Is that what you meant to say? You really think that reporters who are working right now, writing

00:11:57.260 stories for the news right now, you really think they wouldn't cover this election, cover the news

00:12:00.900 right now, unless you gave them a $61 million bonus right now before the election? Is that what you're

00:12:05.320 saying? But here's the most interesting part. Staff would not answer repeated requests for names of

00:12:12.040 publishers and the amounts they received under the ad hoc program called Emergency Support for Cultural

00:12:17.100 Industries. Why is it secret? Well, because we're in upside down times. In the before times, the media

00:12:25.760 rooted out government secrets. Today, media bailouts by government are the secret. So why would the media

00:12:32.380 expose themselves? In the past, corrupt businessmen would secretly pay politicians to get their way.

00:12:39.420 Now, politicians secretly pay money to corrupt businessmen to get their way because those

00:12:45.220 businessmen are the owners of the mainstream media. It's the government paying the bribes now. That's

00:12:48.880 upside down. This article in Black's Locks does name some names, no newspapers, but a list of magazines

00:12:56.660 that took other cash. It includes children's magazines like Chickadee, which got $1.35 million.

00:13:04.980 I wonder how that will politicize that children's mag. I bet it will. It's quite something. Pacific

00:13:10.660 Yachting Magazine got $250,000. I have to say it like that. Because if you got a yacht, you probably need

00:13:17.220 working men and women to subsidize your yachting magazine. I'm serious. The gossip rag, Frank Magazine,

00:13:24.240 got $110,000. Let me guess. Fewer gossip items about Trudeau, more about his opponents. Just going

00:13:30.720 to guess. $1.5 million to the publisher of Reader's Digest. $1.2 million to McLean's Magazine. $1 million

00:13:37.200 to Chatelaine. $570,000 to Toronto Life. That explains a lot, doesn't it? But that's chicken feed

00:13:43.920 compared to $61 million in emergency pre-election spending to reporters covering the election. You

00:13:52.880 know, in the past, this would be a scandal and a dozen journalists would have dug into this story,

00:13:58.960 but they're the ones who are being hidden here. The only way we found out about this was through

00:14:04.640 Black Locks Reporter, one of the few companies that's not on the take. We're in upside down times,

00:14:11.040 aren't we? Stay with us for more. Hey, welcome back. I thought my prediction was pretty solid

00:14:29.120 last week when I said Andrew Cuomo will brazen it out. He will not resign. I mean, look around.

00:14:36.320 The Democrat governor of Virginia was caught in blackface, or was it a Klan outfit, or both,

00:14:44.960 and he just said, no, I'm not resigning. What are you going to do about it? The media huffed and

00:14:49.360 puffed for a day or so, and he's still governor. I mean, look at Bill Clinton, incredibly accused of

00:14:55.120 rape. But put that aside, he was on Jeffrey Epstein's plane to Lolita Island. Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile

00:15:02.160 procurer. He's still a grand old man of the Democrat Party. I thought for sure Andrew Cuomo would survive.

00:15:11.680 But alas, shortly after I said that, he announced he was going to resign when even Joe Biden, the

00:15:18.880 president, started to raise an eyebrow. How is it that he didn't survive? What did the media who defended

00:15:26.640 him for so long say about it? Joining us to talk about these things is Drew Holden,

00:15:31.280 a freelance columnist, including in places like the Washington Post and New York Times and the

00:15:34.400 former congressional staff. We're great to meet you, Drew. It's nice to meet you. I follow you on

00:15:38.480 Twitter. Tell us a little bit about yourself before we talk about Andrew Cuomo. Where did you come from?

00:15:44.000 I follow you on Twitter. I find it very interesting. How would you describe yourself to our viewers?

00:15:49.600 Yeah, I appreciate that, Ezra, and happy to hear that you enjoy it. I, you know, I've been doing this thing

00:15:55.760 now for maybe about a year and a half where I've been trying to chronicle the things that people

00:15:59.520 generally, but particularly Democrats and folks in the media, say that just isn't true, right?

00:16:04.240 Other things that we knew at the time weren't true or things that are hypocritical or maybe look

00:16:08.720 on serious in retrospect. As you mentioned, I used to work in Congress. I've been doing some freelance

00:16:15.440 writing since then, and it's picked up a little bit of steam, right? I think folks are,

00:16:18.960 there wasn't really anyone who was kind of going back and digging up the old takes. The media has this ability

00:16:22.880 since they're kind of, they're the fact checkers. They're the first draft of history, right? And so

00:16:27.760 they have this ability, I think, to kind of say whatever they'd like. The news moves on and no one

00:16:31.760 kind of digs and picks up the pieces of where things were. And so I've been putting those things

00:16:35.680 out there. I've been doing it in columns. I've been doing it on Twitter with some threads. And yeah, I mean,

00:16:40.800 I think folks are interested to know what was said back then. And I basically have a ton of receipts

00:16:45.600 kicking around on my phone and on my computer that are bad takes or takes that I think will

00:16:50.000 eventually go bad. And unfortunately, everything that happened with Cuomo is a kind of a masterclass

00:16:55.600 in how to talk about someone when he's flying high. That looks really bad when a lot of the truth that

00:17:01.120 we probably should have known in advance starts to come to light. Yeah. Well, I think there's a

00:17:05.360 difference because occasionally Republicans are stars for a moment. They're having a great week,

00:17:12.080 great month. And I don't see the same erotic affection as, and I say erotic on purpose. I mean,

00:17:20.720 the phrase Cuomo sexual, how ironic that is in retrospect. You had main, you have serious

00:17:28.080 journalists from, from serious news outlets talking in romantic terms about Cuomo. You had

00:17:37.920 lesser serious journalists like Trevor Noah of late night TV, calling himself a Cuomo sexual,

00:17:44.000 talking about Tinder. But even if the language wasn't erotic, they gave this guy an Emmy for

00:17:49.760 crying out loud. No Republican, even on his best day, gets this kind of slavish treatment. It seems 0.90

00:17:57.760 pretty obviously one sided to me. What do you think? Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I think some of

00:18:02.880 it with Cuomo, it really was outlandish, right? And that obviously he has since come under a lot

00:18:08.160 of scrutiny and a lot of criticism, even from voices within his own party about the way he

00:18:12.080 handled coronavirus. But I think when the sexual harassment allegations started to come up,

00:18:16.560 you look back at some of this language and you're right. I mean, the LA Times had a serious,

00:18:20.480 earnest piece about Cuomo himself embracing the term Cuomo sexual, that he thought it was great and

00:18:26.880 valuable and good. It wasn't just late night hosts who were bantering this kind of language around.

00:18:31.200 And I just, I can't even in, you know, plumbing the depths of history, I can't find examples

00:18:36.640 of where anything close to that comes up for Republicans. There are certainly Republicans

00:18:40.560 who are cheered among the Republican base, right? We saw this with Trump, I think in terms that were

00:18:44.880 certainly pretty outlandish from time to time. But to have these reputable news outlets talking with

00:18:51.360 just such glowing, unbelievable affection about someone who their primary job, right? This is one of the

00:18:56.560 most powerful men in America that they're covering. Their primary job is to be an accountability

00:19:01.920 mechanism. And rather than even pretending to try and be an accountability mechanism for this guy,

00:19:07.440 it's the sort of things that I'm sure his own press team would have been embarrassed to put out there.

00:19:11.440 Yeah. You know, you mentioned a couple of things that I think are important. The first is

00:19:15.760 Cuomo made a move early in coronavirus to send people with the virus into long-term care homes,

00:19:22.240 nursing homes, that absolutely and inextricably led to the death of thousands of people.

00:19:28.480 And that was not a secret. That was known. It was public information for a year.

00:19:34.560 That was never picked up. I mean, look at the war on Ron DeSantis now.

00:19:41.440 So it, I think that people knew there were weaknesses in Andrew Cuomo. I even think that his

00:19:47.920 approach to women hitting on them all the time. I think that was an open secret in Albany,

00:19:55.600 just like with Harvey Weinstein. Everyone knew that he was handsy and gropey and that he had the casting

00:20:02.240 couch. I don't think these things were secret. I think it's just the Democrat powers that be decided

00:20:09.120 they could no longer be a dam holding back this river because they weren't, these weren't sudden

00:20:16.080 revelations, were they? No, they weren't at all. And so to break them out a little bit,

00:20:20.800 you know, I'm reminded of an interview that are, I guess, a press pool that Cuomo did back in 2017.

00:20:26.960 This is right when the Me Too movement is starting to gather steam. All of the allegations of Weinstein

00:20:31.920 have just come out. And a female reporter asks if Cuomo is going to do anything to try and clean up 1.00

00:20:36.880 Albany, to try and clean up these, Albany or New York City, right? These men who hold positions of power

00:20:41.360 are in government and beyond who are abusing women. And he said to her that her question was

00:20:45.440 an insult to women. And this is 2017, right? And then I think that the real kicker for me,

00:20:51.600 though, the thing that really gets me is shortly thereafter, a lot of Democrats started to return

00:20:56.720 money that had been given by Harvey Weinstein, right? He's this big Democrat bundler. He's raised

00:21:00.560 a lot of money for a lot of candidates running for president all the way on down. And the last

00:21:05.920 national level figure to return that money is Andrew Cuomo. He had received $110,000 from Harvey

00:21:13.040 Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein's company. And he balked when originally the allegations came out. He said,

00:21:17.760 No, I'm keeping the money. He was the last one with any kind of national profile to give back that

00:21:22.800 money. And so you would think, right, these stories we've known, we've known about Cuomo's personal

00:21:27.920 antics. We've known about how awful of an office environment he's run for years, right? This is an open

00:21:32.640 secret. And people, when everything was breaking out with the coronavirus, this was part of the

00:21:36.800 coverage, right? The Washington Post had a story about how Cuomo's kind of domineering personality

00:21:42.320 is finally coming to benefit the people of New York. NPR had a piece that said that his micromanagement

00:21:50.160 and his open hostility to some of his employees, these are actually really good things in a moment of

00:21:54.720 crisis. Everyone knew who Andrew Cuomo was. We might be able to dither a little bit about the

00:21:59.520 specifics. But I don't think any of these revelations are out of, you know, out of being in line with his

00:22:04.640 character. Yeah. What's interesting is how he co-opted so many feminist advocates, like the leader of the

00:22:10.240 Time's Up Me Too movement, actually came to his aid. I mean, they knew who he was, and they went into defense

00:22:19.280 mode for him knowing who he was. I'm not accusing him of rape. I mean, his defense was, I've always been

00:22:26.640 handsy, everybody knows. But the fact that the absolute social arbiters of what you can and can't

00:22:34.800 do to women, the most puritan, don't touch me two times up folks, they went to battle for him to 0.92

00:22:41.520 discredit his accusers. That says more than anything, I think. I think so, too. And you make a really

00:22:47.120 important point there. It wasn't just that they came to Cuomo's defense and said, ah, you know, this guy,

00:22:51.840 he's touchy, he's Italian, I think was some of the defense. Anna Navarro from CNN, when these

00:22:57.680 allegations first surfaced, had said, you know, I've met him many times. And like many people in

00:23:01.900 Miami, he greets you with a hug and a kiss. There was some of that defense. But I think what's really

00:23:05.840 egregious about the Time's Up defense was they went out of their way to work with Andrew Cuomo and his

00:23:11.240 team to smear his accusers, to drag her name through the mud, to discredit her, right? The Cuomo team

00:23:16.760 leaked her personnel file, both to members of the media and to the team at Time's Up, and said,

00:23:22.640 have at it. I mean, it's picturesque of the sorts of things that these organizations, they purport to

00:23:29.020 be fighting against. And yet they were guarding the ramparts for a guy like Cuomo after he had been

00:23:35.020 credibly accused and using all of the tactics of all of the people they're saying that they've been

00:23:39.040 fighting against all this time from Harvey Weinstein on down. I got one last question for you, Drew.

00:23:43.780 It's nice to talk with you. And I really recommend your Twitter feed to folks watching. It's

00:23:48.500 Drew Holden 360. Is that where you are on Twitter? That's right, sir. Yep. All my writing finds its

00:23:53.980 way there. It's a great feed to follow for those who like, especially American political, cultural

00:23:59.560 commentary. I have the same feeling about free speech activists on the left as with anti-misogyny

00:24:08.080 activists on the left. The left really made a name for itself, you know, in Berkeley and in the

00:24:13.160 60s and 70s as the free speech people. But now that there is censorship of conservatives,

00:24:20.020 whether it's big tech or activists like Rand Paul, the U.S. senator had his YouTube account

00:24:25.320 suspended the other day. The left is silent. And again, with the Me Too feminist movement,

00:24:32.420 the left is silent or even helping Cuomo. And I don't know. Did the left ever really believe

00:24:40.440 in those things? Or was it just a tactical tool to put Republicans on the back foot? I'd like to think

00:24:46.700 that some liberals actually hold those values dear. But it seems to me that it's really just a trick or

00:24:54.080 a tool to use in a particular transaction against Republicans. You know, I think I want to have that

00:25:01.280 same hope that you do. I want to be able to say that, yes, there are earnest and committed

00:25:05.740 traditional liberals who are still fighting these sorts of fights. There certainly are some of them.

00:25:10.160 But when you look at the institution of the Democratic Party, and then particularly in the

00:25:13.660 American press, right, that the corporate media, you do see this real rush and drive to censorship.

00:25:19.160 I mean, I think that probably the most egregious example that I can remember is the story about

00:25:24.000 Hunter Biden's laptop, right? Originally, we're told there are all these kind of NATSEC folks who come

00:25:28.780 out of the woodwork to say, it's Russian disinformation. Don't touch it. Don't touch it.

00:25:32.160 And it becomes kind of a media rights issue, right? The post is saying, no, no, we verified this. This

00:25:35.740 is important information. We need to get it out there to people. And you saw and then they get

00:25:39.980 taken off of Twitter, they get taken off of Facebook, can't even share the link on DMs and

00:25:44.160 Twitter. And rather than guard this, this sacred notion of the press and their ability to reach

00:25:49.020 the people, the rest of corporate media attacked the post, right? There's an NPR piece. NPR didn't

00:25:55.700 cover it. And I get a bunch of questions about why they weren't talking about Hunter Biden's laptop.

00:25:59.340 Their PR office actually put out an article about why they didn't want to be telling information

00:26:06.160 that wasn't actual news, that weren't real stories to their listeners and to their viewers.

00:26:10.420 They had a piece explaining why they were engaging in censorship. I mean, it really does boggle the

00:26:14.980 mind, I think, when you think about the ideals of free speech. And unfortunately, I think what

00:26:19.420 we've seen in the last couple of years, certainly in the 2020 election, it's a huge cudgel. It's a

00:26:24.180 really, really effective weapon to be able to take and use against your enemies. And unfortunately,

00:26:29.160 I think a lot of the powerful voices on the left are waking up to that.

00:26:32.240 Yeah. Drew Holden, great to talk with you. Thanks for your time.

00:26:35.580 Yes, sir. Pleasure's mine, sir. Thank you.

00:26:37.140 Right on. There you have it. Stay with us. More ahead.

00:26:38.980 Hey, welcome back on my show last night. Josie writes, I'm so grateful for all Rebel News has

00:26:54.380 done during this time of COVID madness. I cannot watch six o'clock news on TV or listen to talk

00:26:59.200 radio anymore. I think people are waking up to their misinformation. I hope they're tuning in

00:27:03.540 to your show. And it's always intelligent and thought provoking. Well, that's a very nice

00:27:07.460 compliment. Thank you very much. You know, I was just working on another video and I should have

00:27:11.640 it out tomorrow. We have doubled the number of number of journalists working for us in the past

00:27:16.520 year. It's incredible. There's so many stories to tell on any given day. There's so much news out

00:27:22.760 there. And I'm just so glad that our viewers support it. Remember I said earlier, Bob Cox of the

00:27:27.880 Linnepeg Free Press said, our viewers don't support us anymore. Trudeau, give us money. You know, he

00:27:33.380 didn't even think of fixing his broken relationship with his viewers and readers. We are 100% viewer

00:27:38.820 and reader supported. So it's very encouraging that we've had what success we have. That's our show for

00:27:44.740 today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night

00:27:49.480 and keep fighting for freedom.

00:27:57.880 Thank you.

Rebel News Podcast - August 13, 2021

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Why is Trudeau keeping his list of media subsidy recipients secret？

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