Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ World leaders and sleepers： A sobering assessment of Joe Biden's presidency

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends, a special full episode interview with Ben Weingarten,

00:00:04.540 one of the most depressing guys I know because he's one of the smartest guys I know,

00:00:08.700 and he observes things, and he just calls it like he sees it. We're going to talk about Joe Biden

00:00:12.480 today. Joe Biden and his visit with Xi Jinping, Joe Biden and his deal with Iran. Joe Biden and

00:00:20.440 his plan to derail Donald Trump's candidacy. That's why I'm so depressed. That's ahead,

00:00:26.240 but first let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of

00:00:31.080 this podcast. I do the show every weekday, and my friend Sheila Gunn-Reed does the show every week,

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00:00:55.980 here's today's podcast. Tonight, from Russia to Israel to Taiwan, the world burns as Joe Biden

00:01:16.540 staggers his way through his presidency. It's November 20th, and this is The Ezra Levant Show.

00:01:22.100 He's ready for freedom. Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:36.760 I don't know if it's true. I don't know if it's wishful thinking, but I hear a lot of people

00:01:40.720 in conservative circles, and I suppose in America that would be in Republican circles, saying

00:01:46.240 that if Donald Trump were president, none of this would be happening, and by none of this,

00:01:52.480 I mean all of it. I mean the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I mean the Iran-backed terrorist group,

00:02:00.600 Hamas, having such an audacious invasion of Israel. They called it the Al-Aqsa flood. I understand that 0.83

00:02:07.720 4,000 terrorists and actually civilian hangers-on invaded Israel. It was truly tantamount to a war.

00:02:16.700 So many crises around the world. I see that Yemeni Houthis released a video of them hijacking

00:02:26.080 a civilian cargo ship because it was apparently in some way connected to Israel. The world

00:02:34.020 is on fire, and a lot of Republicans wistfully say it wasn't that way under Donald Trump. It was four

00:02:41.000 years apiece, no new wars, the ending of old wars. Is that just comforting thoughts by supporters of

00:02:50.360 Donald Trump? Is that just Republicans being wistful, or is it true? And is Joe Biden as bad as he seems,

00:02:58.220 or are there people in the background sort of puppeteering things? Will America be okay? Well,

00:03:04.360 I know one guy who can help us sort through this, and his name is Benjamin Weingarten. He's with the

00:03:10.160 Federalist, and my favorite thing about him, he's a columnist at Newsweek magazine, and he's going to

00:03:15.060 join us now to tackle these big questions. Ben, great to see you again. Is it too easy for Republicans

00:03:20.540 to say, oh, this would never happen under Trump? Would this have happened under Trump?

00:03:25.020 Well, we had the real-world experiment in real time, 40 years of peace through strength,

00:03:33.040 prudently applied. For example, the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the strike in Syria on the eve

00:03:42.180 of a meeting with Xi Jinping and President Trump. We cultivated relationships with our allies and

00:03:51.540 partners. We threatened our adversaries. That led to a world in which America did not start new wars.

00:03:59.280 It ended wars. It put the Middle East on what should have been a firmer footing with an Israeli, 0.99

00:04:06.720 Sunni Arab, bulwark sort of defense condominium against Iran. With China not on the march and 0.95

00:04:15.760 challenged by America, really for the first time since the opening, going back to Richard Nixon,

00:04:21.560 in almost every single dimension, our borders were not overrun. In almost every dimension,

00:04:27.380 U.S. national security and foreign policy was well-served. That redounded to the benefit of the

00:04:33.620 world. And predictably, the Biden administration, whose personnel are essentially the leftovers of the

00:04:41.140 Obama-Biden administration, has executed a policy that is diametrically opposite. And consequently,

00:04:48.440 the world is aflame. And the reason I don't say it's just wishful and obviously we can look at

00:04:54.160 the four years that we had under Donald Trump, this was all very predictable. I wrote a column at Newsweek,

00:05:01.520 several columns on the contrast in the foreign policy of Donald Trump versus what we could expect

00:05:06.600 under Joe Biden. And I wrote a column prior to the election pointing out the clear chasms that would

00:05:14.420 exist and the clear flip-flopping that would exist on virtually every single significant national

00:05:20.440 security and foreign policy issue. It's happened in spades. Most, I guess, salient today is the notion

00:05:27.980 that the Trump administration imposed a maximum pressure campaign on Iran. In contrast,

00:05:34.360 the Biden administration has imposed a maximum pressure campaign on Israel. That flies in the

00:05:40.700 face of the rhetoric of the Biden administration today about how it has Israel's back. But if you

00:05:46.620 look at the substance of the policies, it has been all about aiding, abetting, and enabling Iran and its 0.99

00:05:52.020 proxies and putting the screws to Israel. That created the conditions for this intifada in a single day, 0.85

00:05:59.680 this worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. And it potentially may have unleashed jihadist forces

00:06:06.660 globally because they've never seen a potentially better time than under a compromised, weak Joe Biden

00:06:15.520 overseeing a party where the progressive wing, which in large part is the pro-Hamas and sympathetic to

00:06:23.320 the Islamic supremacist wing of the Democrat Party, has the power that it has. So why is the world in such chaos? 0.95

00:06:31.040 Because this administration has created the opportunity for our worst adversaries, the worst adversaries of

00:06:38.760 Western civilization to rise up. And in an election year now coming up, there's the political pressure as well. And the

00:06:46.740 political pressure most disturbingly and disastrously from those elements that I mentioned in the Democrat

00:06:53.300 Party who are pushing Joe Biden to pursue policies that the vast majority of Americans disagree with

00:07:01.200 because he needs the marginal voter in Dearborn, Michigan, or on college campuses across the United

00:07:08.320 States not to withhold their vote.

00:07:10.560 Hmm. You know, it's funny. We started talking about foreign affairs and other countries and other

00:07:16.000 militaries, but we came back to the home front. And, and, you know, there was a TV drama a few years

00:07:22.740 back called The Americans. And it was about the, the premise was a young man and a young woman were sent

00:07:30.940 over during the Cold War by the Soviet Union. They were taught English perfectly. They were taught English

00:07:36.220 pop culture, American pop culture. And they were embedded in the United States, in the Washington,

00:07:41.320 D.C. area. They were like a sleeper cell to the public. They held themselves out as, you know,

00:07:46.900 Joe and Jane, average American, but they were working for the KGB. It was, it was an exciting,

00:07:50.740 uh, fictional, it, like it wasn't superhero movies. You didn't have to have an enormous suspension of

00:07:58.040 disbelief to enjoy it. And I can't help but think that we have had sleeper cells in the West,

00:08:05.880 who were anti-American and in some cases, anti-Semitic. And I think they were sort of

00:08:11.500 holding their tongue in a way during the Trump years. I mean, listen, campuses were always a

00:08:16.120 little bit radical and woke-ism, but I think since October 7th, those sleeper cells have dropped

00:08:22.600 the pretense and they have gone full, you know, I mean, they say it, intifada revolution. There's,

00:08:28.660 it's across the United States. It's even worse in Canada and the United Kingdom.

00:08:32.980 They've been granted some sort of moral permission, I think, to go fully anti-Semitic and full

00:08:40.800 decolonize, by which they mean tear down America, Canada, and the United Kingdom. So I think it's 0.99

00:08:47.200 not just foreign leaders who realize they can get away with anything. I think on the home front,

00:08:52.500 you, you see people just drop the facade. The sleeper cells aren't just the KGB agents in the 80s,

00:09:00.160 it's universities, and I hate to say it, it's large swaths of immigration from countries where

00:09:08.040 anti-Semitism is endemic. They had to keep it quiet in recent years, but now no one is scolding

00:09:16.140 them. They're in Congress, they're in Parliament. What do you make of all that?

00:09:20.440 Well, it's a great point, and I appreciate the Americans analogy, a show that I enjoyed

00:09:27.800 as well. And maybe what's most disturbing is there didn't have to be sleepers who were seated in the

00:09:35.460 country from the Soviet Union. There are native-born Americans and Canadians and others across the West

00:09:42.700 West who have absorbed this worldview. They've imbibed the toxic ideology, really a Marxian

00:09:50.160 ideology of the West as the oppressor and the rest of the world as the oppressed, and that we somehow

00:09:57.040 are the imperialists and the colonializers, etc. And therefore, we're getting our just comeuppance

00:10:03.600 right now, and there needs to be essentially affirmative action for the world's most evil regimes

00:10:09.280 and organizations, which, by the way, I think this manifests itself, for example, in let's have

00:10:15.540 a resupply of Hamas for X number of days. Let's give them every single advantage when they ought to 0.99

00:10:21.260 be destroyed, when they have declared war on Israel, by the way, have killed Americans and people from 0.89

00:10:27.100 many other nations as well. But to your point, it does appear that there's been a safe space in the

00:10:34.060 West now created for all the anti-Western forces, and they've never been as overt and open about it

00:10:40.600 as they are now. Why is that the case? It may well be that you have cowed Western leaders that we did

00:10:48.440 not have, certainly in America, for the last four years. Perhaps most disturbingly of all, from my

00:10:54.240 vantage point in America, is that you have the upper rungs of an administration that essentially

00:10:59.260 subscribe to the same worldview. That's maybe the most disturbing thing of all. It's not just campus

00:11:04.980 radicals. Those campus radicals have matriculated to the heights of political power, to the heights

00:11:10.840 of cultural power, certainly corporate power in certain instances as well. But if you look,

00:11:16.560 the National Security Council in America, which is the chief national security advisory arm to the

00:11:24.080 president, the head of intelligence at NSC here, was a pro-BDS activist in college. We've probably

00:11:32.900 talked about Rob Malley in the past before, but Rob Malley was the senior State Department envoy

00:11:37.520 to Iran trying to execute an Iran deal 2.0. It appears Rob Malley led an Iranian spy ring. One of the people

00:11:43.760 we brought in that spy ring still works in a senior position at the Department of Defense. So more

00:11:50.820 disturbing is that the campus radicals have all graduated in or been brought into the heights of

00:11:57.780 political power. Obviously, you mentioned, of course, the likes of the squad, and we've talked

00:12:01.960 about Ilhan Omar before, and my book on Ilhan Omar, American Ingrid, foretold all of this. It suggested

00:12:08.880 that this was the future, if not the presence of the Democrat Party. It certainly played out that way.

00:12:14.020 But to your point, when you take already the virulent Jew hatred and anti-Western views that

00:12:20.460 prevailed on college campuses, and then you have mass immigration from Islamic countries to the West,

00:12:26.780 and all you have to do is look at the polling in those countries to show that the Jew hatred is

00:12:31.880 disproportionate in virtually every country in the Middle East and beyond. And we can talk about what

00:12:38.280 the roots of the Jew hatred are, and is it based in the Islamic canon or not? It doesn't really matter.

00:12:43.560 We don't have to have that academic argument. The fact of the matter is, disproportionately,

00:12:49.060 among, in the Muslim world, there is Jew hatred. And if you are going to import wide swaths of the 0.89

00:12:54.540 Muslim world, while you would hope that a decent percentage of those people would be those trying 1.00

00:12:58.660 to flee the maladies and the pathologies of that world, of course, enemies are going to take advantage

00:13:05.500 of our liberalism when it comes to immigration, and people are going to come over with the beliefs

00:13:10.460 that they held there. There's a reason why the Middle East looks the way the Middle East does, 1.00

00:13:15.220 and there's a reason that Switzerland looks the way Switzerland does, or Mexico looks the way it

00:13:18.980 does. Different peoples are different. We hold deep and dear different ideas. We're animated by

00:13:25.860 different drives. And so, consequently, you add it all up, and it's a very poisonous and toxic mix

00:13:31.780 here in the West. The US, and probably to an extent as well, Canada, we're blessed by our geography

00:13:38.720 that we haven't necessarily had as big mass immigration from the Islamic world as you've

00:13:45.260 had wars throughout the Middle East. But certainly, Western Europe is not the Western Europe that it

00:13:51.120 was. It is a different place today. And in some cases, the irony here is that we hear about

00:13:57.060 occupation, occupation. Well, in some ways, it's the West that's really increasingly occupied.

00:14:02.120 Yeah. Well, I mean, if you look at the map of Islam itself, by decade, by century, Islam is a 1.00

00:14:09.280 colonizing... I mean, it's a religion. It's a political way of life, but it's also a military

00:14:15.180 doctrine. The Koran is a military document, as well as other things. Let me just ask you one question.

00:14:22.220 You mentioned Joe Biden. In some ways, he said the right things. I remember his first visit to Israel

00:14:28.580 shortly after the October 7th attacks, and I was extremely nervous because you could see he was

00:14:34.420 wobbly and sleepy and who knows how much... But he managed to get through it without saying something

00:14:41.840 disastrous, I think. On the one hand, I look at the two aircraft carrier groups in the region,

00:14:47.980 and I think, okay, that's to make sure Turkey or Iran don't start something, I guess. But I also

00:14:53.840 thought, well, maybe that's there to keep Israel tamped down. I don't know. Can you help me understand?

00:14:59.480 You say that Joe Biden has said one thing and done another thing. What has Joe Biden done that has

00:15:05.400 been... I mean, other than his support for Iran, I understand they released billions of dollars more

00:15:09.840 for Iran, actually, in recent weeks. What has Joe Biden done that has undermined Israel? Because at least

00:15:16.840 rhetorically, there have been some moments that I thought, well, that's better than I thought it

00:15:22.340 would be. What has he done to undermine Israel in actions? Yeah, so I've long suggested that 0.93

00:15:30.080 there is something of a bear hug going on, which was something that Barack Obama tried to do. He said,

00:15:35.500 well, we have military relations with Israel, and we're going to provide Israel aid, and we're going to

00:15:40.960 basically suffocate Israel with that aid to force it into accepting an Iran deal. We're going to leak 0.79

00:15:47.680 information to undermine Israel's military operations to try and neutralize Iran, but we're going to cover

00:15:54.540 it up by saying, we're best friends, and we have massive aid, and the Iron Dome, you can see, has a

00:15:59.320 testament to it, etc. There's a similar ruse that's being played with Joe Biden. As you note, the rhetoric at

00:16:06.600 times suggests stalwart support. On the other hand, there was a $14 billion military aid bill,

00:16:14.000 which Republicans passed through the House, to de-link spending associated with the war in Israel,

00:16:22.240 military spending, from Ukrainian spending and a whole amalgam of other appropriations. Biden said he

00:16:31.300 would veto it outright. The Republicans were being political by trying to do this, $14 billion, which

00:16:38.500 would be taken away from IRS agents harassing Americans, essentially. Democrats shot it down in

00:16:45.120 the Senate, wouldn't vote on it. Joe Biden won't even have a chance to veto it. But if you want to

00:16:51.200 talk broad strokes, here are the real distinctive items, in my view. I agree, by the way, that carriers

00:16:57.240 being brought in is actually made to deter Israel, not to deter Iran and other powers in the region. By the

00:17:04.020 way, you can see that because Iran and its proxies have executed dozens of attacks on U.S. military

00:17:11.360 facilities and personnel in the region, with barely a response from this administration. But the micromanaging

00:17:18.220 of Israel's response is really the proof in the pudding, as I see it. The Biden administration has really,

00:17:24.520 from the start, whispered about ceasefires, continues to try and push so-called ceasefires,

00:17:30.260 and for Israel to permit, quote-unquote, humanitarian aid, which in reality, of course,

00:17:35.300 means resupplying and refueling Hamas, providing it cover and time to recuperate, to strengthen, 0.52

00:17:44.540 so that it can withstand Israel's attack. Let's not forget, Israel was not allowed, not permitted, 0.84

00:17:49.860 essentially by the U.S., to engage in any sort of ground offensive. For weeks, it gave Hamas time 0.84

00:17:57.100 to prepare. The Biden administration has said explicitly, Israel, you are not to ultimately

00:18:02.700 annex parts of or otherwise control Gaza. There needs to be an international force the day after 0.51

00:18:09.280 the war ends. The Biden administration has been very tough on Israel in terms of,

00:18:14.820 you ought not to strike Hezbollah or other Iranian proxies in the region outside of Gaza.

00:18:22.620 Also, the Biden administration continues to talk about the imperative for a two-state solution,

00:18:26.720 which should be a laughable and a laughably offensive proposition. After you're talking about

00:18:32.840 the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, then you want to give the Palestinian authority 0.91

00:18:37.800 control over Gaza, a Palestinian authority, by the way, which itself has excused the attacks,

00:18:44.560 and denies, essentially, the attacks that Hamas committed. And then, if you look at the

00:18:50.080 polling of Palestinian Arabs, overwhelmingly, three-quarters plus were overjoyed by Hamas's 0.79

00:18:57.620 disgusting raping, jihadism, massacring of people, etc., hostage-taking, etc. So, you add these

00:19:06.520 points up, the micromanaging of the effort, the seeking to restrain Israel and force it to comport 0.66

00:19:12.980 itself the way the U.S. wants. Constantly invoking the fact that Israel has to abide by the laws of

00:19:19.520 war. We're talking about a force that provides its enemies with more protections, the civilians

00:19:25.520 around enemies, with more protections than any fighting force probably in the history of mankind,

00:19:29.940 and has done so, by the way, in Gaza in trying to allow the Palestinian Arabs to leave northern

00:19:35.540 Gaza and go south before the offensive really took off. In every single dimension, there's been

00:19:41.820 pressure. Last but not least, and obviously, we can talk about the fact that the U.S. continues to

00:19:47.020 cultivate these friendly relations with Qatar when Qatar is harboring Hamas's leaders. We can talk 0.96

00:19:53.580 about the unfreezing of the billions of dollars to Iran. We can talk about the Biden administrations

00:19:58.420 delinking explicitly of Iran from Hamas's attacks, essentially serving as mouthpieces for Iran,

00:20:05.280 protecting it, and its public relations image. Beyond all that, there's a whispering campaign,

00:20:11.520 and it's come out, of course, in major publications, major U.S. publications, of the Biden administration

00:20:16.460 talking about how they're really looking towards the next Israeli leader to execute this effort. And

00:20:22.640 maybe Bibi isn't long for this effort. In the middle of wartime, after an existential crisis,

00:20:28.860 you're going to have a whispering campaign where you're going to try to shove aside Benjamin

00:20:33.780 Nanyahu, the wartime leader there. Is that something that an ally and a friend does?

00:20:40.020 Then we could talk on the home front about the fact that the Biden administration,

00:20:44.560 when you have the biggest rise in anti-Semitism, in Jew hatred that we've seen probably in modern era

00:20:51.540 in America, and what's the focus of the administration? They call for a working group or something even more

00:20:57.660 formal than that on Islamophobia. That's the real issue at hand in America. So you put all of these

00:21:04.200 pieces together. Last but not least, just before we came to record this, over the weekend, the Biden

00:21:10.300 administration put out a memo to its cabinet talking about how they would like to impose sanctions on

00:21:16.740 quote-unquote settlers in the West Bank, i.e. Judea and Samaria. Part of those sanctions on quote-unquote

00:21:22.900 the violent Israeli extremists there is that sanctions can be slapped on you and no visa

00:21:29.000 permitted for an individual to the extent they are an impediment essentially to a quote-unquote

00:21:35.060 two-state solution. So if you're an Israeli wrong thinker now, essentially the Biden administration

00:21:40.440 wants to criminalize your wrong think. Add all of these pieces up and the notion that this

00:21:47.460 administration has Israel's back falls by the wayside. We will see what kinds of strings become 0.55

00:21:53.260 attached when it comes to weapons sales and other military support as Israel's operation goes on,

00:21:59.720 but there's already been word that there are serious strings attached. All of this points to

00:22:04.880 not a friend, but someone seeking to restrain Israel to maintain the status quo of making Iran the strong 0.87

00:22:12.100 course in the Middle East to the detriment of the Western world. Yeah, it's so bizarre. I don't 1.00

00:22:17.740 understand it. So you've disabused me of the notion that things are better than they appear. I suppose

00:22:25.940 perhaps I'm too focused on public statements. I mean, or gestures. I mean, at least Biden went there.

00:22:32.320 So did Rishi Sunak of the UK, Emmanuel Macron of France, Georgia Maloney of Italy, Germany's

00:22:38.460 Chancellor Scholz. I noticed that Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has not gone to Israel.

00:22:44.340 He, I think he's gone the furthest of any G7 leader to actually parrot Hamas talking points.

00:22:52.800 But I suppose on the plus side, no one cares about Justin Trudeau anymore. Here he is the other day

00:22:59.580 meeting with Gavin Newsom, two men who are trying to out-peacock each other. I could imagine a quarrel if

00:23:06.160 there was only one hand mirror between the two of them. It would just be like such a scratching

00:23:10.260 fight. Take a look at the two of them when they sat down together. And I don't know if you know

00:23:16.240 this, Ben, but Justin Trudeau is a bit of a hollow man. But he had this shtick, this gag. When he was

00:23:23.000 first elected, he would wear socks with different pictures on them, like sort of funny socks, Star Wars

00:23:29.320 socks. He has some halal Islam socks or something that the Muslim cabinet minister gave him. So

00:23:36.520 apparently, like when he first met Gavin Newsom years and years ago, he made a sock joke. And

00:23:42.040 apparently Gavin Newsom's staff sent him some California socks because they thought, oh, okay,

00:23:47.880 this guy's into funny socks. So here he is. He's in office eight years. The sock thing is a little bit

00:23:55.680 tired. But he sits down with Gavin Newsom. And the first thing out of his mouth is showing off his

00:24:01.760 socks. And Gavin Newsom, who's the who's a clothes horse, a hair gel aficionado and a mirror lover,

00:24:10.400 too, even he thought it's getting a bit old. Here, take a look at this back and forth.

00:24:16.160 It's good to see you. Good to see you. When did you get in, by the way? I got in a few hours ago.

00:24:24.240 Yeah. Literally. Yeah. I was in Vancouver last night. Well, let me be the first to welcome you. You

00:24:30.240 are the first to welcome me. What a pleasure to be back. It's always so good to see you. We got a lot

00:24:36.320 to talk about. Obviously, I'm just being in the Golden Gate. I think you gave me these socks last night.

00:24:39.760 Unbelievable. So, you know, maybe, maybe someone did. You're still doing those socks. Well, you know what?

00:24:44.480 Have you ever been caught with black socks on? I mean, is that just too embarrassing?

00:24:50.240 Listen, so much, so much to talk about on climate. That's Justin Trudeau. Like he's,

00:24:55.760 he's a hollow man. He's an empty suit. And, and his jokes from 2015 and 16 are a little bit stale. 0.96

00:25:03.920 But I just wanted to show the two of them together, because I think that Gavin Newsom

00:25:09.040 as president would be very similar to Justin Trudeau. Nothing but messaging disastrous all

00:25:16.400 around. And a friend of China. Help me understand what's going on with Gavin Newsom. He went to China.

00:25:23.840 He had a, a one-on-one meeting with Xi Jinping. That's got to be arranged with the assistance of

00:25:29.840 the State Department. And then Xi Jinping and Joe Biden get together. Tell me, I want to talk more

00:25:35.520 about Gavin Newsom in a minute, but tell me about what looks like a, a, a warm spring this fall

00:25:43.600 for the Chinese dictatorship in the eyes of Joe Biden. What's going on with Xi Jinping? Uh, there,

00:25:49.280 don't mind me on my Gavin McInnes and Trudeau socks story. I just wanted to wedge that in there.

00:25:53.280 But, but what's going on with, with Xi Jinping? Is he being welcomed back into America's good books or

00:25:58.720 something? Well, it certainly appears that way. The Gavin Newsom trip to China, and then of course,

00:26:06.880 Xi Jinping coming to the Bay Area, uh, Gavin Newsom's territory, the, the China trip itself to me

00:26:15.200 smacks of a shadow campaign. And the fact that Gavin Newsom also met with Prime Minister Trudeau,

00:26:22.000 I think is further indicative of the fact that beyond, you know, he would argue, well, look,

00:26:26.400 California is a massive state. It's a powerful state. So of course I'm going to meet with heads

00:26:31.440 of other nations. The reality is that Gavin Newsom is positioning himself as one of the

00:26:37.920 alternates to Joe Biden. I also think Governor Gretchen Whitmer thinks of herself probably

00:26:43.680 as another potential fill-in. I've long held that I believe that a compromised, cognitively

00:26:51.680 compromised as well. Joe Biden is potentially not long for this race. It doesn't mean that this

00:26:59.440 switcheroo is going to happen necessarily now. I've seen those reports and indicating that in the

00:27:07.200 DNC's rules, essentially, that in smoke filled rooms, effectively the party can replace the leader.

00:27:15.200 Should he step aside? You could have a brokered Democrat convention. Certainly wouldn't put it

00:27:22.160 past it. The Democrats to do that. Who the figure is, we'll have to see. There's some identity politics

00:27:27.520 issues to be worked out. How are they going to sidestep Kamala Harris, for example, another California

00:27:34.000 figure there? That's ought to be worked out and we'll see what happens with the palace intrigue in

00:27:38.560 the months ahead. But as for China, Xi Jinping himself, by all accounts, communist China's economy

00:27:46.080 is struggling. They have real issues. So naturally, what are America's leaders doing? Well, they're

00:27:52.400 trying to potentially provide China a lifeboat. You had many members of major corporations come and speak

00:28:00.000 with Xi Jinping and impress upon him that American business leaders are souring on China. We need to

00:28:05.440 reopen this relationship. Business leaders have always been the preeminent agents of influence,

00:28:10.720 essentially, and mouthpieces for the Chinese Communist Party. It's how they impact U.S. policy,

00:28:17.040 in large part historically. The Biden administration desperately, it seems, wants to reopen relations

00:28:24.960 with communist China and try to find different areas in which we can somehow work together because we

00:28:31.200 need to cool down the temperature is the rationale. And so, of course, ironically, the green agenda is

00:28:39.680 probably the most important agenda from the Biden administration's perspective next to, I guess, reopening

00:28:45.520 military to military communications as if those communications won't be exploited by communist China. The

00:28:51.280 first sort of leg of this new romance between Xi and Biden was this so-called fentanyl deal, whereby

00:28:58.960 supposedly China, which I would argue is engaged in a new opium war, essentially chemical or biological

00:29:05.760 warfare against the West by being the key producer of the chemicals behind fentanyl then actually created

00:29:16.160 in Mexico and exported to the U.S. and elsewhere. China says it's going to clamp down on these

00:29:23.840 essentially death factories that have been killing tens of thousands of Americans a year. In effect, 0.55

00:29:31.040 it's going to shut down those companies, the factories in exchange for the U.S. pulling off of a commerce

00:29:37.520 department blacklist, an entity of China's domestic national security and intelligence apparatus,

00:29:45.120 which had been blacklisted for its complicity allegedly in Xinjiang Uyghur repression. So this is a gulag

00:29:55.280 focused entity of the Chinese Communist Party. And so turning off the killing machines, this national 0.84

00:30:02.080 security apparatus entity gets the benefit of being able to import U.S. technologies once again is

00:30:07.600 reportedly the deal that shows you that blackmail and extortion works if you're communist China.

00:30:15.200 And this is being presented as the first step in a thaw in relations and that this is imperative

00:30:22.560 to end the rockiness between the two powers from the U.S. perspective and I guess

00:30:26.880 forestall an invasion of Taiwan. But there's zero sign that Xi Jinping will not invade Taiwan. There's every

00:30:33.280 sign that, as always, China will use the West's burning desire to want to negotiate and come to

00:30:39.280 some deals to exploit them, lie, cheat and steal in connection with those deals, and ultimately

00:30:44.640 ruthlessly pursue its perceived interests. That is where we stand right now. Maybe there's also an

00:30:51.520 election year element to this of Joe Biden realizes how weak he looks on communist China. So he's looking

00:30:57.360 for some kind of out here, but I don't think it's going to be met. And instead, unfortunately,

00:31:01.760 you're going to have China likely trying to play a much bigger role, for example, in the Middle East

00:31:06.880 and with Iran as well, and maybe try to serve as a quote unquote mediator. So all of this will be

00:31:13.120 disastrous for the West. And again, you know, if you're in Taiwan, I have to think you're praying

00:31:18.800 that there's no invasion over the next year. But there are many signals to indicate to me that there might

00:31:25.280 never be a better time from the CCP's perspective to do something really provocative and seize

00:31:31.440 Taiwan, which has always been, I think, Xi Jinping's desired crowning achievement.

00:31:37.840 Yeah. You know, there's a lot of things you've said there. I mean, I think that

00:31:43.120 Joe Biden, and in particular, when he was vice president and Obama was president,

00:31:47.600 I really think that they were the worst international negotiators in American history.

00:31:52.480 I mean, I, I, they just, the deals that they signed, the things they gave away to Iran and

00:31:58.880 China were astonishing. And to have them replaced by literally the man who wrote the art of the deal, 0.97

00:32:05.840 Donald Trump, who it was in one of the most challenging and difficult businesses in America,

00:32:10.480 New York real estate, uh, taking over distressed companies and flipping them around. I mean, he,

00:32:16.720 and you had to deal with the unions and, and regulators and bureaucrats and like, like a very

00:32:23.440 complex thing. He, he understood how to make a deal. And the way you're describing the deal that

00:32:30.400 Biden just cut with, uh, China and the deal Biden is forcing Israel to do with Iran and Hamas, it's,

00:32:37.840 it's just so heartbreaking. And it's incredible how the world reads, takes the measure of a man in the

00:32:44.560 country behind them. I think you're right. The United States is so overly, so obviously overstretched

00:32:50.880 with its commitment to Ukraine, whatever its commitment is to the Middle East right now.

00:32:57.040 I don't even understand why, I mean, America can't do a two front war, let alone a three front war.

00:33:02.240 I think absolutely. And, and what the scariest thing about the negotiation is, I think if China were to

00:33:09.680 invade Taiwan just on its own right now, I think it would militarily succeed, I regret to say. I don't 0.98

00:33:17.520 think America would trigger World War Three over it, but I think China would have an enormous 0.99

00:33:24.720 consequence to it economically, commercially, financially, reputationally, tourism, uh, social

00:33:32.160 exchange. There would be a soft power disaster for China, I think. Um, I think made in China would, 1.00

00:33:39.760 I think there would be a consumer revolt. There would be a, like those industrialists you mentioned

00:33:44.080 before who all do business in China, Apple, which has enormous, uh, manufacturing in China. I think

00:33:49.680 there would be a shock in many ways, except, except, except, except if Biden gave them a form of, um,

00:34:00.160 absolution in advance. If Biden said to China, well, we're gonna, we're not, we're gonna,

00:34:06.960 we'll telegraph to you now that we're gonna go easy on you and we'll find a way to make sure it's

00:34:11.440 fine. You could have a two systems, one country situation like Hong Kong was. Like you just,

00:34:16.960 I can just feel into my bones now that I think maybe the one thing that was holding China back

00:34:23.680 wasn't a military reason, but was, it would lose its place in the, in the pantheon of nations. It

00:34:30.240 would lose its place as a first rank superpower that is, that's getting its respect through the

00:34:35.200 Olympics, through trade deals, through, because it would be seen as a belligerent rogue violent place.

00:34:41.200 But if Biden pre-excuses them, if Biden says, no, no, we, we'll smooth it over, don't you worry about it,

00:34:48.720 that maybe removes the last obstacle to China invading Taiwan. I don't know, I'm just freelancing

00:34:54.320 here. But, but I think that with Biden's approval, Taiwan would be absorbed and China would win it.

00:35:01.600 I think that that would certainly be an accelerant to the extent the Biden administration gives any

00:35:06.800 signals direct or indirect that such an accommodation so-called would be acceptable.

00:35:14.400 However, I will say I am skeptical about the West response, even absent any sort of green light,

00:35:22.240 tacit or overt and strong. I mean, I've done the thought experiment before of, for example, after the

00:35:30.080 Russian invasion of Ukraine, if you drove around elite enclaves in America, everyone had their 0.63

00:35:36.560 Ukraine flags out. Many of them probably couldn't even identify where it lands on a map, but they

00:35:42.160 had their flags out and they changed their social media profile, bios, et cetera. You certainly don't

00:35:48.960 see that today when it comes to Israel, with the exception of maybe a small percentage of our elites

00:35:54.160 here in the West. Would that happen with an invasion of Taiwan or would we in the West be cowed?

00:36:02.080 I'm not sure at this point. The fact that you had CEO after CEO out in California kissing the ring,

00:36:08.400 essentially, to sit at a dinner with Xi Jinping, to me speaks volumes. So I hope you're right. I hope

00:36:14.960 that if China did try such an operation, that it would make the Chinese Communist Party an absolute pariah,

00:36:22.400 that there would be total decoupling. I certainly agree that from a strategic perspective,

00:36:26.960 this is the calculus that communist China is weighing. If China thinks it has military

00:36:33.280 superiority to execute such an attack successfully, what does the world look like the day after and

00:36:40.320 do they end up weaker than they would otherwise be? But I'm sure they're also looking at the war

00:36:45.360 weariness in the West. They're looking at our elites. They're looking at, as you note, an overstretched

00:36:52.080 U.S. government that doesn't have its priorities right, that in many of these instances appears to

00:36:56.720 be on the side of the adversaries. And Xi Jinping's not getting any younger. And to me, my view has

00:37:03.440 always been that this has sort of been his ultimate legacy move. And so the question is, when would he do

00:37:11.280 it if not now? And that's a question that I think the world ought to be considering very closely.

00:37:18.640 Let's not forget, by the way, of course, that Russia is the junior partner to China as the senior

00:37:24.640 partner in a strategic relationship. China and Iran, and obviously Russia as well, are also incredibly

00:37:31.200 closely linked. China has relations, I believe a strategic partnership as well, with the Palestinian

00:37:38.640 authority. So they are involved here in all of these other proxy engagements. Essentially,

00:37:45.520 they have their quote unquote equities in them and they are causing the West great harm, 0.67

00:37:52.800 great costs in blood and treasure. And despite whatever issues China has economically,

00:37:59.440 despite whatever fallout, and there was significant fallout from the pandemic that they foisted on the

00:38:06.240 world, still, you have to ask yourself, if not now, when from the Chinese Communist Party perspective?

00:38:12.320 And maybe that's, maybe that's alarmist. Maybe that's too aggressive a view. But I think we ought

00:38:18.240 to be preparing for worst case scenario and hoping to achieve the best rather than expecting the best

00:38:23.760 and then having catastrophe befall us. Well, let me end as I began, which is

00:38:30.320 this hope that I feel, or not hope is the wrong word, this feeling that had Trump been around,

00:38:37.920 America's enemies would not have taken liberties. They would, they would have been afraid.

00:38:41.840 The very things that upset the liberal media elite, his whimsicalness, his meanness, the fact that he was

00:38:48.240 such a bully, the fact that he was somehow unpredictable, the fact that he would lash out,

00:38:52.800 the fact that he took insults and disrespect personally, all of those personality traits that

00:38:59.280 made him impolite company to the New Yorker, or the Atlantic, were precisely what got through to

00:39:05.200 Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and the Ayatollahs. The very things that, that made polite company 0.99

00:39:14.960 despise him in New York and L.A. is what made him stop the hostility, not stop the, check the hostility

00:39:22.800 around the world. And we are less than one year away from the U.S. elections. Less than a year,

00:39:28.080 it's incredible how fast time flies. And Donald Trump, according to the last poll I saw, would win

00:39:35.360 in an election today, would win in a two-way race against Joe Biden, and would win in a three-way race if

00:39:41.360 Biden and RFK Jr. are on the ballot. And I mean, listen, they're not done with him yet. He, for all

00:39:48.800 we know, he might be campaigning from jail with the number of lawfare prosecutions against him, and

00:39:55.600 there's, there's many of them. Do you think Donald Trump will be on the ballot in 2024? Sometimes I think

00:40:04.480 that they might even assassinate him, and that's not a conspiracy theory, that's just me looking at the

00:40:08.800 enormous lengths they're going to to stop him by any other means they can. It's not unthinkable. I

00:40:14.480 mean, American presidents, it may never happen again, but it has happened. American presidents

00:40:18.880 have been assassinated, and there have been attempts on others. And I don't want to put too much faith

00:40:25.680 in one man, but I think that Donald Trump was an indispensable man as president. He was a man

00:40:33.360 who achieved historic things, even if the Nobel Peace Prize Committee doesn't recognize it.

00:40:38.080 By God, that guy made peace between Israel and half a dozen Arab states, and Saudi Arabia was,

00:40:43.600 was going to be next. Do you think Donald Trump will be on the ballot? Do you think they will let

00:40:48.560 him win? I do believe he will be on the ballot. The rhetoric and the actions from the left suggest,

00:40:56.480 obviously, they will do anything and everything they can to eliminate him from the ballot. And that

00:41:01.600 word eliminate, by the way, that was a word used by Congressman Dan Goldman from New York,

00:41:06.800 a prominent Democrat who was, I believe, the chief lawyer, chief counsel in the first impeachment

00:41:12.400 effort of Donald Trump. He's now a Democrat congressman from New York. He said that Trump

00:41:18.080 had to be eliminated. But his rhetoric is really getting dangerous, more and more dangerous. And

00:41:24.320 we saw what happened on January 6th when he uses inflammatory rhetoric. Now, and his recent true social

00:41:31.280 post is incredibly, incredibly scary for anyone that might be trying to work in government. And

00:41:42.160 it is just unquestionable at this point that that man cannot see public office again. He is not only

00:41:50.480 unfit, he is destructive to our democracy. And he has to be, he has to be eliminated. 0.99

00:41:57.760 There is an effort to get Trump off the ballot and ineligible to run. So far, those efforts have

00:42:03.760 failed in the courts, thankfully. However, as you note, he's literally being gagged in courts of law.

00:42:11.040 They are trying to eviscerate his business empire and obviously the financing that comes from that.

00:42:18.560 They ultimately want him to be convicted in one or several cases or at minimum be dealing with the

00:42:23.680 headaches, the time constraints, the resources, and the massive diversion essentially of energy and

00:42:31.440 effort to combating the law fair instead of campaigning. Could he be campaigning from a jail

00:42:37.920 cell? Certainly not out of the question at all. Do they want to convict him before the election?

00:42:43.840 Absolutely they do. Then does that hit an appeals process? How long does the appeals process take?

00:42:49.280 Does it end up at the Supreme Court? What is the pressure like on the Supreme Court? I've long

00:42:54.080 theorized that this was actually the strategy. Savage him with a law fair effort. At the same time,

00:43:00.000 seek to de-legitimize and impose maximum pressure on the Supreme Court so that a case comes before the

00:43:06.400 Supreme Court where by all rights, Donald Trump should be absolved of any wrongdoing, malfeasance,

00:43:13.200 but the court itself will be pressured into either one or several members recusing or members otherwise

00:43:20.320 going wobbly or sending it back to a lower court and that leading to a catastrophe for the rule of

00:43:27.120 law in this country and a nuclear bomb essentially to our political system as well. Who knows what kind

00:43:36.400 of chaos is going to come over the next year? I can only imagine that there are going to be unimaginable

00:43:41.600 things, stratagems employed to try and destroy Donald Trump. About winning the election or how

00:43:48.400 the election goes, I won't make any predictions on it except to say that Democrats have done everything

00:43:54.000 possible they can to undermine the integrity of the election system and create the conditions that

00:44:01.040 they are best prepared to maximally exploit. And I'm not confident that on the Republican side,

00:44:06.880 there's the same legal apparatus ready, there's the same ballot harvesting. When an election becomes

00:44:13.280 about collecting the most ballots, not winning the most votes, that favors the Democrats. Democrats are

00:44:19.120 made to win a machine election like that. So it's in God's hands how this ultimately plays out. I do think

00:44:27.280 there will be every effort to try and destroy Donald Trump. I do believe he will be on the ballot and

00:44:32.400 hopefully the American people are able to speak freely. And I should also add, of course,

00:44:36.720 that I imagine the censorship regime is going to ratchet up between now and election day as well,

00:44:41.360 beyond the gag order on Donald Trump himself. So all bets are off in terms of how this plays out,

00:44:46.640 but we've never seen the kind of assault that is going to befall and has already started, obviously,

00:44:52.640 to befall Trump. But that's really a proxy for the ruling elites' desire to do anything and everything

00:44:59.520 possible to crush their political opposition in the name of defending, quote-unquote, our democracy.

00:45:08.480 Ben, you always depress me because you have a clear vision of the facts. And I'm sure I quote

00:45:15.600 this poem every time you're on because I think of it every time. It's W.B. Yates' The Second Coming.

00:45:21.520 He said, the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. And that,

00:45:30.000 I fear, is the state of the world right now. But we'll know soon enough as we enter the final

00:45:37.360 stretch in the American election and, God willing, an election soon in Canada too, where the prospects,

00:45:43.040 according to the polls, are actually more favorable. But of course,

00:45:46.400 our media party gets up to dirty tricks too. Ben, great to see you again. Thank you so much for

00:45:50.800 your time and wisdom. And keep fighting for freedom. I know you always do.

00:45:55.440 Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

00:45:57.040 All right. There you have it. Ben Weingarten from newsweek.com, as well as The Federalist.

00:46:03.040 That's our show for today. Thank you so much for joining us. Until tomorrow,

00:46:06.720 on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.

00:46:10.320 And you keep fighting for freedom too.

Rebel News Podcast - November 21, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ World leaders and sleepers： A sobering assessment of Joe Biden's presidency

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