Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Zohran Mamdani's push to punish the rich will punish New York City instead

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. I want to expand on that crazy attack ad that the New York mayor directed at a

00:00:06.100 particular New York City billionaire, totally catching him off guard. And I want to show you

00:00:11.260 his reaction. And I want to ask you if we have that same hatred for builders and creators in

00:00:18.680 Canada. I'll take you through it. I'll show you some video clips. I want you to see the videos.

00:00:22.960 There's some very touching videos, including, believe it or not, from this billionaire who

00:00:26.960 comes across so sympathetically at least to me he did to see the video version of this program go

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00:01:20.780 Tonight, let me show you a video clip of a city about to stumble.

00:01:36.340 It's May 6th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:38.700 Shame on you, you sensorism bug.

00:01:50.780 I talked a little bit about this on the live stream yesterday, but it really got my noggin

00:01:58.200 jogging. So I want to expand on it in a monologue. I'm talking about New York City, but really

00:02:03.180 I'm also talking about Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal, and a lot of smaller cities

00:02:08.640 in Canada too. But I'm also talking about young people and support for capitalism, support for

00:02:15.320 free enterprise is ebbing. It's in retreat. And I think one of the reasons for that, I heard this

00:02:22.280 explained by Mark Andreessen, who's a Silicon Valley tycoon. He said that anyone under 30

00:02:29.040 knows only two things about capitalism. One is that they cannot afford to buy a house and perhaps

00:02:36.580 never will. So capitalism is locking them out of capital. They won't own a home, which is

00:02:42.540 not only a place to live but it's a place to save and to perhaps build up your value and the second

00:02:49.080 thing they know is that they have student debt that they do have to pay for and that isn't

00:02:55.700 typically wiped out in a bankruptcy let's say and that student debt that they incurred to get

00:03:01.600 a university degree especially in the United States where schools can be very expensive

00:03:05.800 those university degrees don't pay off so on the one hand you can't get in on the rising tide of

00:03:12.140 property values. On the other hand, you were trapped by your student debt that you were sold

00:03:16.960 by the academic and social community. Oh, you got to have a university degree and it turned out to

00:03:24.020 be useless. And now it's a stone around your neck. There are some jobs for people who get those 0.93

00:03:31.120 degrees, some government jobs, some corporate HR departments, soft them up. But even those people,

00:03:37.140 they're not going to be rich and it's going to be hard for them to pay down a hundred thousand

00:03:40.700 dollar student loan um and for some of them artificial intelligence is a real risk uh so

00:03:48.560 is automation i mean i think i told you that a few months ago i i ordered an uber i was in austin

00:03:54.640 texas and a robot car showed up a driverless car i didn't know that on the uber app i guess

00:04:00.600 they're connected to these these driverless cars and it was a little disorienting at first but

00:04:05.380 by the time the ride was over it almost felt normal i guess sort of like a an elevator that

00:04:10.740 didn't have an operator i don't know if you remember the old-timey elevators had a person

00:04:14.760 in them operating them it must have been very weird at first to switch to a operator-less

00:04:20.560 elevator but now the opposite is weird by the way the trades are doing well and will continue to do

00:04:27.120 well you can't dig a ditch with ai you can't work on an oil rig with ai anyways back to new york

00:04:34.620 City. But like I say, it's an identical story for Toronto. It's very similar even for London,

00:04:40.760 England. A lot of big cities, especially in the States, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington.

00:04:48.500 Let me show you the new mayor of New York City. You know who I'm talking about, Zoran Mamdani.

00:04:53.840 um he's a muslim immigrant to america his uh and he beat he replaced an african-american

00:05:04.820 mayor the mayor of new york city was a ex-cop uh black man and he also beat and and partly he won

00:05:13.160 because they split the vote an italian-american former governor so you had uh the black former

00:05:19.420 former mayor italian american former governor you had an anti-crime candidate siphoning a few

00:05:25.100 percent and zoran mamdani came up the middle on the marxist vote and on the foreign born vote

00:05:33.480 mamdani speaks the language of the poor of the working class but he's actually rich his parents

00:05:41.260 were not typical immigrants his dad is a professor at columbia university his mom

00:05:48.280 is a Disney filmmaker. I think you may know that. So his whole working classness

00:05:52.820 is a shtick. It's an act. He tried being a rapper once. He tries different things. He 1.00

00:05:59.880 switches accents around depending where he is. He's more like a theater kid than a working class 0.96

00:06:06.240 kid. He's never done anything working class in his life. But he was able to win because there

00:06:09.960 is a big enough coalition now in New York to propel him ahead of Italian Americans or Black

00:06:16.080 americans or he just won by cobbling it together new york city is 37 percent foreign born 37 i

00:06:24.820 checked this morning those numbers are 51 in toronto 60 in brampton montreal 34 vancouver

00:06:34.260 is more than 50 of foreign born people and so yeah you're going to have foreign born champions who

00:06:41.480 do not carry with them a free market heritage i mean if you're coming from uh places in the world

00:06:48.260 that are totalitarian or communist or islamist regime and you come to america and a few years

00:06:53.700 later you're running for office you are probably still inculcated or you could be in those foreign

00:07:00.200 ways i it reminds me the other day of mps who voted to shut down the cameras in parliament

00:07:07.900 included salma zahid and maggie chi who were born in dictatorships where freedom of speech and

00:07:17.660 political freedom was not only not important it was it was hated and so you have two they're

00:07:24.740 canadian citizens now and they're mps now and they're voting to shut down media access to

00:07:31.020 parliamentary committees because it's about power to them it's not about being part of a liberal

00:07:36.600 democracy they've only been here quite recently they're from places without freedom traditions

00:07:43.100 anyways back to what the islamist communist coalition mayor in new york said the other day

00:07:50.180 and i played this on the live stream yesterday but let me show you zoran mamdani's economic policy

00:07:55.920 he announced it outside the particular residence of a particular billionaire and i'll just play

00:08:03.800 it for you because I want you to get the real tone of it. Take a look.

00:08:33.800 the richest of the rich,

00:08:35.140 those who store their wealth in New York City real estate,

00:08:37.280 but who don't actually live here.

00:08:38.700 But even so, they're able to reap

00:08:40.140 the huge financial rewards of owning property

00:08:42.340 in, dare I say, the greatest city in the world.

00:08:44.700 And most of the time, these units are sitting empty,

00:08:46.600 since again, they don't actually live here.

00:08:49.300 This is a fundamentally unfair system

00:08:51.500 that hurts working New Yorkers.

00:08:53.060 Now, it's coming to an end.

00:08:54.940 This tax will raise at least $500 million directly

00:08:58.420 for the city.

00:08:59.200 It'll help fund things like free childcare,

00:09:01.140 cleaner streets, and safer neighborhoods.

00:09:02.980 As mayor, I believe everyone has a role to play in contributing to our city, and some a little bit more than others.

00:09:09.720 Happy Tax Day, New York.

00:09:13.020 Now, he's mayor already, and he's in office and he has the levers of power, so he doesn't need to do this.

00:09:21.420 He wants to do this. And to do what?

00:09:24.160 he's putting in a new tax on the very wealthy but it's not going to raise enough money to actually

00:09:30.200 do things to help him keep his promises to abolish fares on transit or to open government grocery

00:09:38.220 stores or all his cockamamie schemes it'll raise millions of dollars but new york city's budget

00:09:42.840 is in the tens of billions of dollars and as you could see that ad i'm sort of an attack ad

00:09:50.040 demonizing a private citizen like he's not going you'll notice he's not going after the republicans

00:09:54.960 he's not going after the former mayor or the governor he's just decided to pick on some guy

00:10:02.400 who was rich and do a campaign ad right outside his building the purpose of this tax just like

00:10:09.260 the purpose of this attack ad is not to raise funds for a project it's punishment demonization

00:10:17.580 and jealousy. It's a sop to those people I was talking about, young people who think capitalism

00:10:25.480 is not for them, hasn't given them anything. It's a demonization of someone who made it in this

00:10:33.300 capitalist way. Weird personal attack on naming Ken Griffin, naming his house. Griffin is a hedge

00:10:41.140 fund manager, and obviously he's in Wall Street. By the way, he's also a philanthropist who has

00:10:47.080 given away more than two billion dollars to various charities i won't go through here now

00:10:52.620 mam danny thought that griffin could be recruited uh into some sort of central casting villain he's

00:11:01.020 a billionaire hey everybody i found this billionaire let's all hate him together and

00:11:05.620 i'm gonna sock it to him by giving him a special tax for him and his buddies and i suppose that

00:11:12.260 works to the kind of people who voted for mam danny uh griffin is a central casting villain

00:11:18.060 i mean he's rich right but i actually think that mam danny comes across as the central casting

00:11:24.900 villain i think it's part of a wave that is particularly strong in new york city

00:11:31.300 it's part of the kill the rich wave kill kill the rich i don't know if you remember a few months ago

00:11:39.320 an activist, a Marxist-communist activist, very much like Zora Mamdani, named Luigi Mangione,

00:11:47.960 assassinated the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, just killed him, and has become a cult classic. He's

00:11:55.640 become a star. There's graffiti and posters above him. Young women send him love letters. Luigi

00:12:00.800 Mangione allegedly murdered a millionaire and became a hero and that kind of violence is no

00:12:09.800 longer forbidden in social circuses. It's no longer marginalized. Charlie Kirk was murdered and

00:12:16.440 although that was shocking to people on the right it was a source of glee on the left and to this

00:12:21.340 day it's a threat wished upon enemies of the left. Donald Trump of course has had various

00:12:28.060 assassination attempts and whenever it happens the left celebrates the attack and laments its

00:12:34.160 lack of success there's a rising star in the democrat left his name is hassan piker and

00:12:40.960 he's doing the circuit calling for violence like just that's his shtick he's and again he's 0.78

00:12:49.340 uh part of an immigrant family to america bringing foreign values of violence where once it was 0.95

00:12:57.380 a high trust society where we figured things out peacefully here's some of hassan piker if you 0.99

00:13:03.060 don't know who he is regardless of your background any kind of fucking uh zionist tendency should be 0.97

00:13:08.060 treated in the same way as as being a fucking rabid neo-nazi and you couldn't even you shouldn't 0.99

00:13:14.740 even let someone be the fucking local dog catcher as uh as as felix was posting if they've ever 0.99

00:13:21.880 exhibited any sort of fucking any sort of like positive feelings about the state of israel 0.98

00:13:28.860 i'm so serious about this i mean jimmy kimmel is gross he's born in america he's not a migrant but 0.98

00:13:36.760 he's part of that violent theme here he is uh talking about in his own fake coverage of the

00:13:44.040 press correspondence dinner where trump had an assassination here he is saying that melania has

00:13:50.600 a look of a glowing would-be widow. Take a look at this super gross comment by Jimmy Kimmel.

00:13:56.960 Of course, our first lady Melania is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, 0.98

00:14:02.040 you have a glow like an expectant widow. Yeah, so violence is back. Violence is cool.

00:14:08.600 Violence is on the talk shows. Of course, violence, real violence, is on the rise against Jews, 1.00

00:14:14.200 which Mamdani's wife supports. You may recall that all her social media accounts came out after 0.99

00:14:19.900 of the election, which is a strange time to come out. They should have come out beforehand,

00:14:24.320 showing that she was a supporter of the Hamas massacre of Jews. She's a vicious anti-Semite, 0.99

00:14:29.960 not as clever as her husband who keeps it behind euphemisms. So yeah, we're in the era of violence 0.99

00:14:36.340 again. And then there's the ongoing violence in America of Antifa and foreign terrorists,

00:14:42.340 which brings me back to Zoran Mamdani's targeting of Ken Griffin naming him showing his house

00:14:51.180 demonizing him and saying we're going to raise money not to pay for things but we're going to

00:14:56.240 raise money to get these guys well Ken Griffin um thought about it a bit and I want to play for you

00:15:04.960 a fairly lengthy response that he gave to CNBC and I really I was going to cut this down

00:15:12.620 but it's so good almost every word is meaningful Ken Griffin obviously a very thoughtful man

00:15:20.420 a builder a man who thinks about the future thinks about jobs thinks about investing thinks about

00:15:26.220 risk he's a thinker a doer and I think he was genuinely stunned that he was targeted in this

00:15:33.740 personal way. And I just want you to listen to him talk about it. And I'll come right back on

00:15:38.840 the other side. Take a look at his answer when he was asked by CNBC about this personal attack.

00:15:42.980 You posted that video outside your apartment, one of your apartments in New York City, and

00:15:48.460 demonized you advertising his bea de terre attacks. How did you react to that when you

00:15:53.300 first saw it? I actually had to see it a second time because the first time I couldn't believe

00:15:57.060 what I was watching. And I'll tell you, it took a moment to digest what I was watching. What really

00:16:05.020 upset me about the video was the fact that he put me in harm's way. He seems to have forgotten

00:16:12.800 that the CEO of another American company was assassinated just blocks from where I live in

00:16:17.840 New York. And to put any citizen in harm's way is just inappropriate for one of our political

00:16:23.280 leaders. I have no longstanding fights or issues or dynamics between Mandami and me. To turn me

00:16:30.480 into a political puppet was just in poor taste, really poor taste. The tax itself is a tax that

00:16:37.500 discriminates against a narrow group of people is also disconcerting. You know, our company's

00:16:42.620 thinking about making a $6 billion investment in New York City. 350 Park. Right. Are they going to

00:16:48.320 now have a special tax rate for those that own office buildings who live out of state.

00:16:54.240 Like, where's this stop in New York? New York's got a problem. New York has to put the spending

00:16:59.540 back in control. They've got to show the people of New York City and New York State that the

00:17:05.760 enormously expensive and large government that they have created over the last 30 years

00:17:10.160 actually delivers value to the taxpayers. Are you going to go through with that building?

00:17:15.200 We probably will go through the building when it's all said and done.

00:17:19.460 But I got to tell you, it's a real topic of debate.

00:17:22.460 The only decision that we've made with no regrets in the last few days

00:17:26.200 is to expand the size of our office footprint in our new Miami headquarters.

00:17:30.680 Just in the last few days you made that?

00:17:32.060 Yes.

00:17:32.360 In reaction to New York?

00:17:33.420 In reaction to New York.

00:17:34.280 We filed the permit with the city of Miami.

00:17:36.700 We've added several hundred thousand square feet of new space in our new building.

00:17:39.920 We will add far more jobs in Miami over the next decade

00:17:43.860 as an immediate and direct consequence of the mayor's poor decision here

00:17:48.440 with respect to his posting of that video.

00:17:51.580 I believe you met with Governor Hochul afterwards as well.

00:17:56.000 What was that like?

00:17:57.760 That was...

00:17:58.580 I'll sum it up as no comment.

00:18:06.780 Sum it up as no comment.

00:18:09.260 Okay.

00:18:10.260 Sum it up as no comment.

00:18:11.320 But you'll probably go through with the building.

00:18:12.740 I guess the question is, you know, you...

00:18:15.100 I mean, here's what's disappointing, right?

00:18:17.320 The comments from the governor's office after this

00:18:19.640 was that Mondami scored political points.

00:18:22.000 The spokesperson said that, yes.

00:18:23.300 Wow, like, that's real leadership, Governor Hopewell.

00:18:26.280 They're playing both sides, right?

00:18:27.880 I'm being as sarcastic as I could be here.

00:18:30.900 You know, what New York City needs

00:18:32.360 and what New York State needs right now

00:18:33.860 is a government who takes on the bloated, wasteful government

00:18:36.880 that puts an incredible burden upon the lives of all New Yorkers.

00:18:41.620 And with 1% of New York taxpayers paying 45% of all the taxes,

00:18:47.740 the city's in a precarious position if they make those who create value

00:18:51.160 feel like they're best off moving their businesses and their lives to other jurisdictions.

00:18:56.480 Is New York City different?

00:18:57.620 New York, we have best talent.

00:18:59.160 We have the best everything.

00:19:00.160 I mean, I know you left Chicago with some of this stuff.

00:19:02.760 I used to hand politicians a photo album of Detroit.

00:19:07.920 Why Detroit?

00:19:08.860 Detroit was the most wealthy city in America per capita in the 1950s.

00:19:17.760 Detroit was the powerhouse of our country.

00:19:21.800 And then?

00:19:22.820 And then a photographer a few years ago did a phenomenal photo book of the carnage of New York City.

00:19:31.160 The rotting buildings, the empty stages, the vacant and dilapidated homes.

00:19:36.380 It's an absolutely heartbreaking book to see.

00:19:40.520 How is it that the most successful city in America wound up in bankruptcy and despair in just 50 years?

00:19:48.280 I don't think any city should be so arrogant as to believe that it is immune to economic realities

00:19:56.120 and to the hard, cold fact that when people that drive success are told they're not welcome or invited, that they will leave.

00:20:05.200 I mean, we're in California.

00:20:06.900 Yeah.

00:20:07.220 They have a proposed bail initiative to create a wealth tax here in California.

00:20:13.420 Yeah.

00:20:14.100 Larry Page's child is now a classmate of my children in Miami.

00:20:20.720 And a substantial number of the business leaders in California have fled to Texas and to Florida and to other states in just a few months.

00:20:29.960 Now, people go, well, like, you know, the progressive left goes good riddance.

00:20:34.200 but who's going to pay the bills? And with them goes jobs. With them goes

00:20:41.420 management experience. You know, what we forget is that very few people have the gifts to run

00:20:47.920 these large, complicated businesses. He said so many interesting things. First of all, he said

00:20:52.800 he's glad he's moving his offices to Miami. It sounds like he was in Chicago, had similar

00:20:59.020 anti-capitalist attacks there and he's moving to miami which has really become a freedom capital

00:21:05.760 a business capital has the political culture of freedom and free enterprise uh not just at the

00:21:11.360 mayor's level but at the governor's level that's ronda sanus's state um i thought it was very

00:21:17.140 interesting that he said he was being doxxed and put in harm's way and he he alluded to the united

00:21:24.180 healthcare assassination. I think he believes it. I think he means it. I think he was actually hurt

00:21:29.600 by this. Now, you'll notice that the question, the journalist from CNBC talked about 350 Park

00:21:37.280 Avenue. That's this huge project that Ken Griffin is building in New York. Park Avenue, you've

00:21:43.140 probably heard of it. It's a big street. 350 Park Avenue, it's going to be a $6 billion

00:21:48.140 dollar redevelopment that will have 6 000 construction jobs and when it's done we'll

00:21:54.660 have 15 000 permanent jobs in the offices and shops like this is huge think about 15 000

00:22:02.680 permanent jobs that's 15 000 families that's like you know 60 000 people if you have a wife and two

00:22:11.320 kids like it's it's the size of city he's building that in new york but now he's thinking well maybe

00:22:18.040 I shouldn't. And it was very interesting that he thought, perhaps they'll be targeted too,

00:22:24.900 because they're on the wrong side of this vengeful mayor. He said he literally chose Miami

00:22:30.260 as, quote, an immediate and direct consequence of the mayor's vicious attack. And he says,

00:22:37.060 you know, states like Texas, Tennessee, Florida, these are places where people move to.

00:22:45.160 he was asked about his conversation with the governor of new york who's supposedly a bit

00:22:54.020 more of a grown-up but he wouldn't get into it and said that the governor was sort of impressed

00:22:58.620 that mamdani scored political points again it's all about theater like i say zoran mamdani has

00:23:04.760 actually never employed anybody he's never run anything other than his mouth he tried being a

00:23:11.420 rapper, it didn't quite work out. Running for mayor was a role to play. Rudy Giuliani was a

00:23:18.040 successful prosecutor who broke the mob. And then he, as mayor, he cleaned up the streets.

00:23:23.720 Michael Bloomberg was a billionaire and an innovator who became mayor. Like all these

00:23:28.140 people were successful at life at something before becoming mayor. They were real life

00:23:34.080 successes. Zoran Mamdani accomplished nothing before being mayor. He's reading a script,

00:23:40.100 he's playing, he's acting as a mayor, but he doesn't really know how to do it because he

00:23:44.500 doesn't really know how to do anything. So he's still campaigning. But instead of attacking

00:23:48.940 Republicans, he's attacking business people, investors, builders, and they're just saying

00:23:55.500 they're moving away. Did you catch that point that the top 1% in New York City pay 45% of all

00:24:03.020 taxes? The 1%, oh, you're a 1%er. Yeah, you know, the 1%ers are the 45%ers. And the thing is, 0.64

00:24:09.960 if you drive away Ken Griffin, and if you drive away those like him, you're not going to have

00:24:16.380 people paying the 45%. You're going to run out of other people's money. And when he said that

00:24:23.420 he used to hand people a photo album of Detroit before and after, something I think about a lot

00:24:30.860 is how Detroit was the leading city in America. And now it is basically a burned out husk. And

00:24:37.180 it's all because of politics and he made one more allusion to to how billionaires are losing are

00:24:43.760 leaving california california brought in this billionaire's tax just like zora and danny's

00:24:49.120 doing that would target uh startup companies where the ceo and the management team had a lot

00:24:56.900 of money on paper because the stock was growing in value but they didn't have a lot of cash flow

00:25:01.740 they were maybe working just for stock they were actually it looked like they were poor because

00:25:06.400 they didn't have a lot of cash they were just getting paid with a percentage of the company

00:25:10.260 they were building the classic pull yourself up from the bootstraps entrepreneur but they would

00:25:15.640 be taxed on the value of their assets which haven't been sold yet i won't get into the technical

00:25:21.760 maybe i'm not explaining it clearly enough but they actually don't have the cash to pay these

00:25:27.860 huge billionaire taxes without selling their companies and liquidating it so instead they're

00:25:33.300 moving out of california but a hundred billion dollars worth of wealth has left california

00:25:38.860 to avoid this get the billionaires tax i thought that response by the billionaire that ma'am danny

00:25:46.280 was targeting was heartbreaking was genuine was thoughtful and you know i it'll it's what has

00:25:56.180 happened around the world i mean zoran mam danny and his family come from east africa and as you

00:26:02.100 can see he's brown he's not black and there was a large community of uh south asians in places like

00:26:10.220 uganda and then one day uh a black supremacist named ed amin said to all the brown people it 0.96

00:26:17.960 was a racist thing he said you have two weeks to get out or i'm going to kill you all and that was 0.96

00:26:23.420 about 55 years ago and a number of them came to canada that's the ismiley muslims who fled ed 0.88

00:26:29.620 Amin and Pierre Trudeau let them in. That's followers of the Aga Khan. And all the professionals 0.98

00:26:36.900 and all the educated people and all the business people were kicked out. And then, of course,

00:26:41.680 the place fell down. It didn't have the economic backbone. And they've started to beg them to come

00:26:46.900 back. Same thing with other parts of Africa that kicked out their rich people and then realized 0.81

00:26:52.920 what they had done themselves that third worldism is what's happening in new york and it's also 0.57

00:26:59.940 happening in toronto we're just a little bit i suppose less explicit about it our rich simply

00:27:08.340 leave to the united states and they don't make a big fuss about i mean mark carney himself

00:27:12.320 moved his company's headquarters from toronto to new york it was the last thing he did

00:27:16.920 at Brookfield. Those rich who stay in Canada, they carefully keep a low profile and they actually

00:27:26.300 pay off the critics, like Loblaws, who raised the price of bread illegally on the poor, or

00:27:31.760 the richest family in Canada. Do you even know their name? I mean, we all know Elon Musk and

00:27:36.620 Jeffrey Bezos and other gazillionaires, but do you even know the name of the richest family in

00:27:41.640 Canada? I bet you don't without prompting, not because you don't follow the news, but because

00:27:45.520 the news is silent on it because the richest billionaires in canada manage to keep criticism

00:27:51.160 of themselves tamped down the loblaws the thompson's family is the answer they actually

00:27:56.560 own the global mail which is part of the explanation um the irving family in new

00:28:01.000 brunswick they basically own the politicians they manage to avoid scrutiny because they simply

00:28:07.060 buy off press coverage in canada we have wealth envy it's targeted more at the entire province

00:28:13.400 of Alberta and any Albertan than it is a billionaire's condominium in New York City

00:28:20.880 most of the billionaires in Alberta's oil patch they have moved on to greener pastures or at

00:28:27.240 least moved their assets there they're not really investing a lot more in Alberta they're into lower

00:28:32.300 risk places these days like Venezuela I mean there's really nothing more mobile than oil

00:28:37.420 producers oils found in more than 100 countries in the world if you're not allowed to drill forward

00:28:42.080 if you're taxed too much for drilling in Alberta, you can find somewhere else. I don't know. I find

00:28:46.800 it very depressing. Zoran Mamdani is going to ruin New York City. In this case, it's not even 1.00

00:28:53.280 the tax itself. It's the fact that he signaled to the wealthy job creators, builders, investors,

00:29:00.880 developers. He said, I hate you. I don't just disagree with you. I don't just want some of

00:29:07.120 your money. I hate you. I'm going to demonize you. I'm going to get you. And that was all 0.99

00:29:14.140 they needed to hear. And they took it to heart. And they're going to leave. And New York, I mean,

00:29:20.120 it's a great city. But as that photo book of Detroit shows, even great cities can fall into

00:29:27.440 ruin. Stay with us for more.

00:29:37.120 Well, I read the National Post.

00:29:40.140 I call it the mainstream media because by many measurements it is.

00:29:43.540 But it is, I think, the last bastion of independent critical commentary.

00:29:47.840 And one of my favorite parts to read is called First Reading.

00:29:51.860 It's sort of a summary of what's going on there, curated by Tristan Hopper.

00:29:56.800 And I was just chatting with him before we turned on the cameras about his coverage of that so-called spaceport in Canso, Nova Scotia.

00:30:04.440 What a scandal that is.

00:30:06.120 But he had an interesting story today. The headline is, Ottawa has no idea how many temporary migrants are still here. While Canada has asked millions of migrants to leave, there's no way to track whether they're doing so.

00:30:19.400 Here's an exchange in Parliament between Conservative Senator Costas Madagakis and Lina Diab, just absolutely priceless. Take a quick look.

00:30:30.080 Admittedly, the Auditor General Report found big-time problems in screening within your department.

00:30:35.500 So we've talked a little bit this morning about the 153,000 flagged applications.

00:30:40.560 How many in those had ties to terrorist organizations like the IRGC?

00:30:50.880 To my understanding, none.

00:30:53.780 You know that? You've met with them? You've gone through the process? You've done the background checks?

00:30:58.420 Well, again, as I said, of the 153,000, 78% were already eliminated because we know who they are

00:31:09.780 and whether they have status or the 14% that have claimed asylum.

00:31:14.320 So, yes, the department would know.

00:31:16.340 And of the 22%, work is ongoing to determine how many have left the country.

00:31:22.940 Yeah, it's a little hard to believe that on March 23rd,

00:31:26.380 The auditor general found 153,000 people, and then, boom, magically, within a month or so, you know, the problem seems to have been resolved on your end.

00:31:35.400 Still, there are 21,420 people that you're looking into, and there's concern about people being in our communities.

00:31:43.600 Astoundingly, Mr. Gallivan.

00:31:45.500 Mr. Gallivan, I think, has a response for you.

00:31:47.980 Well, I'm not, I'm not, I'm still have another question now.

00:31:49.940 Okay.

00:31:50.160 So, Mr. Gallivan astoundingly testified that there was no entry or exit system in place.

00:31:56.380 In your department, so the question is why the government has been in power for 11 years now. This is the 11th year

00:32:03.940 Canadians want to know we want to know why

00:32:07.600 There would be no entry or exit system in place

00:32:12.580 Well, that's a good question. I I wondered the same thing as a as a but it's that's how Canada has been throughout its history

00:32:20.620 This is nothing new Canada's never ever had that ever since Canada was created

00:32:26.040 So the issue now, and I agree with you, we should have it, and we are working towards it.

00:32:32.780 That is the good news.

00:32:34.200 So I agree with you.

00:32:35.740 But you let in record numbers of people, millions and millions of people over the past 11 years,

00:32:41.440 with no control, no record, no way of having an entry or an exit system.

00:32:47.120 So I'm glad that you agree with me because it's obviously a major failure of the government over the past 11 years,

00:32:52.340 and that's who you're representing.

00:32:53.700 I agree with you.

00:32:56.040 We should have it, and we are working towards it.

00:33:00.040 That is the good news.

00:33:01.980 Hey, guys, the good, you want to,

00:33:03.780 I got some really good news on foreign migrants 1.00

00:33:06.920 who have to leave. 1.00

00:33:08.420 Here's the good news.

00:33:09.440 Are you ready?

00:33:10.020 We've been in power for 11 years,

00:33:11.440 but the good news is we're working towards it.

00:33:14.940 All right?

00:33:15.580 All right.

00:33:16.920 Well, there you have it,

00:33:17.660 the state of Canadian politics and immigration.

00:33:20.800 Joining us now to talk about it is Tristan Hopper,

00:33:22.820 the author of First Reading.

00:33:24.160 just in um am i missing something is that really good news that they're working towards it i mean

00:33:29.020 i suppose it is i guess acknowledging that uh yeah something is a problem but it's sort of like

00:33:35.760 uh you know if your your crappy boyfriend says he's working on his problems uh that doesn't mean

00:33:41.420 he's actually going to fix those problems he's working on them well you know there's a saying 0.53

00:33:46.580 that you hear sometimes that's not a bug that's a feature which means this problem that you're

00:33:52.400 talking about it's actually not considered a problem it's the whole point of things and i

00:33:58.060 would put it to you that our excessively incredibly libertine immigration system that's not an accident

00:34:07.080 that's on purpose so it's working as planned i mean there's a there's a saying in computer science

00:34:13.420 of the purpose of a system is what it does so if you want to know what is the purpose of our

00:34:18.220 immigration system. It brings in maximum people with minimum scrutiny. That is what it does.

00:34:24.940 That is its purpose. And anything that Lena Diab says, that's actually the anomaly. I mean,

00:34:31.340 I think that they want to bring in absolute masses of people for economic reasons. You know,

00:34:38.000 this is that century club idea of 100 million people. If you're the banks, you love it. If

00:34:44.560 you're a cell phone company you love it if you're a landlord you love it um if you're a an employer

00:34:50.540 you love driving down wages there are a lot of people who love maximum population migration i

00:34:56.660 think that's the purpose of it uh i mean there is uh there's definitely a pattern i've seen uh

00:35:02.920 certain areas of the government in which uh you'll have sort of a conspicuous lack of data on something

00:35:09.160 that the government wants to do i mean the classic example i can think of is is harm reduction so

00:35:13.460 when you you're opening sort of safe injection sites um the usual scientific rigor you would

00:35:18.580 apply to such experiments if you were legitimately trying to see if they were having a net good is

00:35:22.640 you would do long-term five ten-year studies of you know the overall health of the community

00:35:26.740 instead you had very limited you know within six months here's what happens to uh you know crime

00:35:32.760 within the several blocks around the safe injection site so it's it's so limited it's so patchy

00:35:39.280 It's almost you're intentionally trying to avoid the bigger picture.

00:35:43.000 In this case, I mean, there's lots of areas in which the government actually has been transparent about figures on migration that, you know, if your theory was to hold, they wouldn't want those figures coming out.

00:35:55.900 There was actually pretty good numbers on when we had just thousands of illegal border crossers starting in 2017 crossing over the border.

00:36:03.040 We actually had, you know, per up to the person, pretty regular updates on how many of those were coming in.

00:36:09.600 So on this particular metric, I would be more inclined to say it's one of those many things within the Canadian system because Lena Diab was saying, well, you know, there's never been a way to track who is actually leaving.

00:36:22.060 You know, all the way back to 1867, there hasn't been a system like this.

00:36:26.000 So I think that just speaks to there's a lot of things in the Canadian system that we didn't need to have this kind of rigor simply because it hadn't been stress tested to this point.

00:36:36.520 There's never been a prior example in Canadian history of you just bring in one to two million temporary migrants within the space of a few months and you expect them all to just voluntarily leave because you asked them politely and you didn't screen them when they came in.

00:36:50.480 You have no idea who any of these people are. So you have a system that worked for the first 150 years. But then when you have, hey, you million and a half people we didn't screen and many, some of you came in here under false pretenses. Can you please leave? And we'll just assume you did. That worked under the prior system. But now, you know, we're discovering it may be lacking. 0.67

00:37:10.520 you know um over the last 11 years they've pretty much phased out any meetings any appointments with

00:37:17.660 a human being to immigrate to canada it's all just done online i mean um even your citizenship

00:37:23.320 ceremony is is remote if if you're even yeah i mean and that's that's just the icing on the cake

00:37:28.740 but a a foreign national does not have to actually meet with a canadian in an embassy or a consulate

00:37:34.660 it's just like going on a Facebook page or something and and I think that all of these

00:37:40.780 things taken together they all point one way reduce barriers to entry but if you're not even 0.97

00:37:46.000 having a person look at uh it would be migrant when they come in of course they're not looking

00:37:53.500 to kick them out I mean it's sort of obvious what the the point of the system is if you were to

00:37:59.540 acknowledge that there were a problem if you were to count if you were to say well we actually know

00:38:04.640 know how many people are here that shouldn't be then you might actually have to do something if

00:38:09.320 you acknowledge the problem that's why you see no evil and hear no evil because if you did

00:38:13.900 you you know it's like the saying for a criminal accused do not tell your lawyer you're guilty

00:38:20.000 um don't give it away i think that they're deliberately not acknowledging a problem so

00:38:25.360 they don't have to deal with it yeah i mean the state of the immigration department right now is

00:38:30.660 absolutely everything is on fire uh you know asylum seekers is on fire screening of temporary

00:38:37.400 migrants is on fire um all of the things they were supposed to be doing they've all collapsed 1.00

00:38:43.600 and they're all kind of a disaster uh so even if lena dia was was approaching this with completely 1.00

00:38:49.360 good intentions and she actually wanted to rein things in and bring it back to the sustainable

00:38:53.220 immigration system we used to have uh you could even under you could even sympathize with uh okay

00:38:59.040 you know we're gonna open this door and that's just gonna be a backdraft and fire so maybe we'll

00:39:03.840 just wait to deal with all these other fires first um i've asked this question to uh the

00:39:11.520 conservative party's immigration critic and i was sort of surprised with the fortitude of her answer

00:39:17.080 i said would you support mass deportations because it's more than a million people whose

00:39:23.900 tenure here has expired either students or temporary workers or they're here in some other

00:39:28.920 way um like that would be a lot of planes getting filled up and flying back to countries far away

00:39:36.980 if you were going to enforce the law it would be an enormous challenge we can see how big a

00:39:42.180 challenge it is in the united states when you have a fully funded and aggressively supported

00:39:46.880 ice i mean america has barely deported a million people it's called nice now yeah that's good which

00:39:53.140 is hilarious um so even the cons i mean the conservatives are very timidly saying yeah i

00:39:58.880 guess i guess that's the logical conclusion it's because it's not tremendously controversial so

00:40:03.980 post media uh we we commissioned a poll two years ago so 2024 and it's been a long two years so

00:40:10.260 immigration sentiments among the canadian population were not nearly as radicalized uh

00:40:16.400 you know then as as they are now and even then we had a poll i think it was it was either a

00:40:20.980 huge plurality or a majority of canadians when asked point blank would you favor mass deportations

00:40:26.420 uh they said yes so if i think that's why the conservative party is taking this on because

00:40:32.500 although you can look at poll numbers you can look at outside support for the liberal party

00:40:36.500 uh you can think that you are surrounded by canadians who have lost touch with reality and

00:40:42.500 they don't see the things you do a lot sometimes on these specific issues uh you'll find very

00:40:47.880 radical sentiments even not radical sentiments but on mass deportation specifically um i think

00:40:53.560 the average canadian they're looking at day after day after day just reporting about things that 0.89

00:40:58.600 didn't used to happen you know an entire uh city in you know surrey taken over by punjabi gangsters 0.79

00:41:04.420 uh constant court cases in which uh someone has come from another country immediately starts 0.99

00:41:10.220 breaking the law scamming the system and they're kept in the judge decides they they cannot be

00:41:14.640 deported. So I think your average Canadian, regardless of their political affiliation,

00:41:19.980 sees that and determines that some sort of action needs to be taken about it. So when

00:41:24.380 you see that majority of Canadians saying we need some sort of mass deportations,

00:41:28.980 I don't know what that looks like. But people like the idea of a plane filled with foreign 1.00

00:41:35.300 criminals who are not respecting the system, not being here anymore. And I think that's how the U.S. 0.98

00:41:40.800 try to start it go after the absolute worst cases that have no personal sympathy go after

00:41:46.240 the criminals go after the people who committed horrific offenses um and i think the timidness

00:41:52.780 is because it's we have this strange dynamic in canada i think i think the majority we're i think

00:41:58.700 we're still among the most pro-immigration countries on earth uh but that's balanced with

00:42:03.620 if you are pro-immigration and you like the idea of people coming from all over the world 0.88

00:42:07.740 you're almost more pissed off than the average at abuses of the immigration system so that's sort 0.94

00:42:14.160 of the dynamic i see my inbox personally if if it's an you know conspicuously african or indian

00:42:19.060 name it's always something about how my immigration's out of control and then it's a bunch of

00:42:23.320 white people calling me racist um so it's a very unique immigration dynamic we have in canada 0.97

00:42:28.620 versus say like european country which is just like you know get rid of all the immigrants

00:42:32.080 ours is a bit more nuanced you know in the united kingdom the head of the point person on this stuff

00:42:38.820 in in the most anti-immigration party that's got a chance it's called reform uk it's nigel farage's

00:42:45.800 party his name is zia yusuf and he's a he's a muslim man if i'm not mistaken originally from

00:42:52.600 pakistan and i think he needs that bulletproofiness for him to say mass deportations and they just

00:42:59.600 announced a policy i don't know if they would ever implement it where they're going to have

00:43:03.140 detention centers of migrants and they're going to put those centers in the districts that vote

00:43:08.300 green that vote for you know uh yeah yeah sanctuary cities but but going back to mass deportations i

00:43:15.780 mean when you're thinking you know who do you want to mass deport uh there was that figure just a

00:43:19.480 couple years ago uh when you had several thousand foreign students they'd come here as foreign

00:43:25.880 students studied and as their permits came to an end they applied for asylum uh so we've just had

00:43:30.500 these really egregious obviously fake asylum claims and given the metrics in the asylum system

00:43:35.660 you know chances are likely they will get some sort of permanent status so uh i struggle to think

00:43:42.620 of anybody who would look at those specific asylum claims and not say oh just get out get out of

00:43:47.460 country uh i mean you'll even see that among the liberal party going all the way back to 2018 i

00:43:52.960 I mean, you had has his name. He was like five, five immigration ministers ago.

00:43:59.120 But at the time he was publicly saying with the illegal border crossers, you know, Nigerians are scamming us. 1.00

00:44:04.020 We know we have to we have to stop this. So it's very strange how often you will see the very people overseeing these broken systems will occasionally admit how broken it is in a public forum. 1.00

00:44:16.980 Yeah, accidentally, maybe. Hey, I got a last question for you. In the system, we have an auditor general that's generally focused on accounting, corruption, fraud, waste. But they also track effectiveness. The best auditor general reports go beyond just money and say, look, we did not achieve our policy objectives here. And here's why.

00:44:39.420 In the States, they have a similar thing. I think they generally call them inspector generals, and they seem very aggressive down there. Has there been, as far as you know, that sort of independent audit of what's going on? Because it sounds like the minister-

00:44:54.420 Well, I mean, that clip you played earlier from the House of Commons Committee, all the proceedings of that particular committee were involving a March report by the Auditor General looking into, and so the Auditor General did very much what an investigative journalist would do, said, okay, you know, everything's on fire.

00:45:14.100 We're just going to pick one very specific part of the immigration system, and then we're going to see if people are doing their job.

00:45:19.280 So they picked two years of student visas, and we're going to look at how many of these were flagged as being potentially non-compliant, how many of these were flagged as being fraudulent, and how many of those, that subset, was actually investigated by the department.

00:45:34.600 And you probably covered this back when the report came out in March, but they found that basically no investigation is being done.

00:45:40.200 So they said, according to internal data, 153,000 foreign students during that two year period were flagged as being potentially noncompliant.

00:45:50.800 So they agreed to come to students. They're not showing up to classes. They're not reporting to their visa, whatever the terms were, they weren't being followed.

00:45:57.300 And they said, well, how many of those 153,000 did you investigate? And they said, 4,000. We only had funding for 4,000.

00:46:02.980 So, OK, 149,000 just got off scot-free. And then they said, well, how did those 4,000 investigations go?

00:46:09.920 And they said, well, half of them we couldn't do because they just didn't call us back. We we called them and asked them if they're, hey, are you breaking the law and staying in the country illegally? And they didn't get back to us. So we couldn't we couldn't. So I mean, that that is a very good example of the Auditor General taking just one small part and finding just shocking dysfunction.

00:46:28.920 dysfunction and there's no reason to think and every time you see some some close examination

00:46:35.160 of one section you know actually are you doing any sort of immigration screening that wasn't

00:46:39.880 an investigation that was a that was a report by a former ircc official i think it was published in

00:46:44.920 hub or by the mcdonald laurie institute but every time you find some new aspect of the immigration

00:46:51.400 system and you would you know are you doing any screening you know what what is actually happening

00:46:56.280 to asylum seekers um i mean the dysfunction is way higher than even i imagined in my in my worst

00:47:03.500 nightmares and that just keeps happening so there is a role yeah for inspector general etc looking 0.95

00:47:09.840 well i did i didn't actually read that auditor general's report a couple months ago and maybe

00:47:14.540 someone else on our team covered it but you have certainly piqued my interest and i'm glad that

00:47:18.700 there is an auditor general who is at least sampling some of the work of this department

00:47:24.180 Great time to be an Auditor General.

00:47:25.960 Just a lot of failure to pick up.

00:47:28.500 You know what I mean?

00:47:29.680 You can see that the government doesn't perhaps want the scrutiny they voted the other day to turn cameras off in one of the committee meetings.

00:47:36.320 So I think there's a battle on to tell the truth.

00:47:38.540 Tristan Hopper, great to have you on the show.

00:47:40.280 I'm really grateful for your time.

00:47:41.900 And I would like to recommend to everyone here, even if you're a skeptic of the mainstream media, which I certainly am, I do recommend First Reading.

00:47:49.040 That's Tristan's regular feature in post media.

00:47:52.580 and it has just some great stories,

00:47:54.780 including some that we cover on our show.

00:47:56.540 Once again, Tristan Hopper, thanks for your time.

00:47:58.760 Thank you.

00:47:59.440 All right, stay with us.

00:48:00.520 Your Letters to Me next.

00:48:10.740 Hey, welcome back.

00:48:11.760 Your Letters to Me on Louise Arbour,

00:48:14.180 the former Supreme Court judge

00:48:16.060 and then former UN Human Rights Commissioner

00:48:18.440 and now Governor General.

00:48:21.000 Raging Canuck says, 0.94

00:48:22.580 My spouse mused that Carney always manages to pick people who are totally unsuitable for their appointments.

00:48:27.680 I responded that suitability was not his criterion.

00:48:30.180 Instead, he chose those who would do his bidding, promote elitism, and not be above a good palm greasing if they were faced with any moral conundrums in the exercise of his wishes.

00:48:41.660 You know, there was this incredible clip where she was asked if she's a monarchist.

00:48:46.280 And she basically says, nah, but I like the perks and the prestige.

00:48:49.940 you should take a look at this video. Yeah, am I a monarchy? Well, I started by saying that

00:48:54.380 this term is unfortunately very often used in a pejorative way. What I can say is that

00:49:03.700 I will accede to a function in which I will be the representative of the crown

00:49:09.320 in a constitutional arrangement that I think has served Canada extremely well throughout our

00:49:15.700 history, but even more in recent decades, I think a system that will continue to provide

00:49:22.840 continuity in our institutions and our form of government. Marilyn Haley says, liberal appointed

00:49:29.340 governor general, liberal appointed senators, liberal appointed RCMP, liberal appointed Chinese

00:49:33.880 police stations, liberal appointed judges. Yep, Canada is done. Rest in peace. I tell you one

00:49:38.960 thing, the past is a different country, isn't it, the case? And our media has been colonized and

00:49:45.120 house-trained, so they're not squawking. A few are, but 99% of journalists are just

00:49:50.860 stenographers asking for their next bailout.

00:49:55.640 Jerwin Tiberius says, can we just kick out the remnants of the British Empire and be a free,

00:50:00.920 independent, and sovereign nation like the U.S.? You know, I hear what you're saying. I mean,

00:50:05.540 there's some people who say, well, the Governor General's whole office and that whole position

00:50:09.480 is a relic of the past well listen something is going to be uh in power nature abhors a vacuum

00:50:18.140 in the states they have a very regal presidency don't they i mean look at the air force one and

00:50:24.540 the and the presidential uh you know the entourage and the white house and everything and i'm not

00:50:31.020 criticizing i'm just saying something needs to fill that role of pomp and circumstance donald

00:50:36.360 trump is putting his face on the passport putting a signature on the money so something or someone

00:50:42.740 will always fill those positions of prestige and authority having the king fill that role and the

00:50:48.980 governor general and having some modesty some non-partisanship some sense of reserve i think

00:50:57.440 displaces a presidential uh over overreach and one of the problems is mark carney is putting into

00:51:05.300 place just like trudeau did before him partisan troublemakers instead of dutiful servants of the

00:51:13.360 king i am a monarchist because if you don't have that family that goes back century with their

00:51:21.520 sense of duty and reserve you're going to have something else fill that void and i'd much rather

00:51:26.280 have the king and a governor general than an all-powerful president so to me it's the lesser

00:51:31.940 of two evils who can we have there that's not going to get too big for the britches ironically

00:51:36.000 a royal king is probably less ostentatious than what would replace it in canada let me know if

00:51:43.980 you disagree that's the show for today until tomorrow on behalf of all of us here at rebel

00:51:49.880 world headquarters to you at home good night and keep fighting for freedom

Rebel News Podcast - May 07, 2026

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Zohran Mamdani's push to punish the rich will punish New York City instead

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