Rebel News Podcast - Kanye West finds Jesus — and the celebrity left doesn’t know what to do

00:00:00.000 Hello, my rebels. Today, I take you through some of Kanye West's new songs. I think they're

00:00:05.000 interesting songs. They're Christian songs. But I also show you some of the questions he's being

00:00:10.240 asked by the music media, including skeptics, liberals, or just people who don't think

00:00:17.340 you should be allowed to talk about Jesus and certainly not about Trump. So I hope you find

00:00:23.380 these selections interesting. Before I get out of the way, let me invite you to become

00:00:28.560 a premium subscriber. You go to premium.rebelnews.com. It's eight bucks a month, and you get the video

00:00:34.940 version of the podcast, plus access to other shows. I think we've got a coupon code. There's

00:00:39.900 actually a discount if you type in podcast, but eight bucks a month is not a lot, and it's great

00:00:45.880 video content every single day. All right, here's today's podcast.

00:00:58.560 Tonight, the biggest name in rap music finds Jesus, and the celebrity left doesn't know

00:01:10.180 what to do with it. It's October 31st, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:14.200 Do you know Kanye West? He's one of the best-selling musicians of all time. 140 million records sold,

00:01:42.380 if you measure it the old-fashioned way. 21 Grammy Awards. He's not just a musician. He's an

00:01:47.800 entrepreneur. He's a fashion designer. He's a polymath. Oh, and he married Kim Kardashian, too.

00:01:54.580 An interesting life. His dad was a Black Panther and a newspaper photographer, and then a pastor.

00:02:00.240 His mom was a professor. He spent some time growing up in China. Smart kid. He was offered a scholarship

00:02:07.820 to university, dropped out to pursue music. A celebrity who is so ubiquitous, he's in the news

00:02:15.000 whenever he says something interesting, including irritating or annoying things, or certainly political

00:02:20.880 things, or just being there. He famously denounced George Bush as a racist in the aftermath of Hurricane

00:02:29.020 Katrina. George Bush doesn't care about Black people. Sometimes he's tasteless, like when he grabbed 0.98

00:02:35.520 the microphone away from Taylor Swift when she was receiving an award to tell her she didn't deserve 0.99

00:02:40.840 it.

00:02:41.480 Yo, Taylor, I'm really happy for you. I'm going to let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the

00:02:47.620 best videos of all time.

00:02:49.900 But really, he's a celebrity, singer, songwriter, rapper, fashionista. Should we really pay too

00:02:58.140 much attention to what he says, though? My rule of thumb is no. Whenever I inquire too deeply

00:03:04.700 into the politics of musicians or actors, I'm usually grossed out, and it makes it hard for me to

00:03:09.440 enjoy their music or their movies anymore. I used to love Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross. What a

00:03:16.100 great movie. But I just can't watch him anymore without thinking of his insane Trump derangement 0.93

00:03:21.600 syndrome. But something interesting has happened to Kanye West. He went very Trumpy a few years back.

00:03:30.580 He wore that red Make America Great Again hat. He met Trump, started talking about how blacks are 0.72

00:03:38.780 still slaves to the Democrats. That ruffled a lot of feathers in the celebrity left, which is 99% of

00:03:46.300 showbiz. Kanye West's wife, who is also smarter than she looks, has worked with Trump on substantive

00:03:54.660 issues, including on prison reform, including getting commuted prison terms for some prisoners.

00:04:01.080 My message to President Trump is, thank you so much, President Trump, for taking the time to really

00:04:07.720 look at my case and to really look at me. And as I've said before, I will, I promise you, President

00:04:14.240 Trump, I will make you proud that you gave me that second chance. And I tell Kim, Kim, keep your

00:04:20.760 passion. I believe that what she is seeing happened for me is really stirred something even more up in

00:04:28.200 her, a desire to help people, as she said, one person at a time. Look, Kanye and Kim are interesting

00:04:34.940 artists and celebrities. There are a lot of interesting people, but I think they're smart.

00:04:40.320 They know what they're doing. They're billionaires. It's relevant that they are. But Kanye had a bit of a

00:04:45.400 mental breakdown. He checked into a hospital. It was tough taking on the whole world, being called a

00:04:51.040 race traitor for being an independent thinker. But then he started popping up again, not in massive

00:04:58.960 stadium concerts with rap music, but on the ground, church services. He called them Sunday service. He had

00:05:09.000 a choir of about 100 people with him. He would do a musical sort of church service with his choir,

00:05:14.860 gospel style, in his own neighborhood. He did one in Salt Lake City. He started going around the

00:05:20.060 country. And I got to say, it looked great.

00:05:22.700 Well, if this take away from my spins, would you probably take away from my ends? I hope it

00:05:27.740 take away from my sins. Bring the day that I'm dreaming about. Next time I'm in the club.

00:05:32.060 Everybody sing it out.

00:05:33.380 God, show me your way, because the devil's trying to break me down.

00:05:39.900 The only thing that I pray is that my feet don't fail me now.

00:05:43.880 A lot of black musicians get their start in church choirs and then go into pop music or even rap,

00:05:59.080 I suppose. But this was the opposite direction. And so it happened that this month, Kanye West,

00:06:04.400 who used to rap about sex and drugs and guns and conspicuous consumption, published his new album

00:06:10.640 called Jesus is King. I mean, if you thought that endorsing Trump would rock the boat, imagine

00:06:17.200 endorsing Jesus Christ. And he's done this celebrity circuit, promoting his new album. And most of the

00:06:24.320 music media don't quite know what to make of it. One guy is James Corden, a Hollywood liberal,

00:06:32.400 originally from the UK. He has a fun thing where he drives in a car with some musician, chats with them,

00:06:38.960 and then they sing their favorite songs together while they're driving. And they're listening

00:06:43.200 on an iPod. It's pretty fun. Well, James Corden did that with Kanye West. But instead of a carpool

00:06:48.560 with an iPod, they flew in a jet with more than 100 people from Kanye's choir. I saw a clip of it

00:06:57.520 there. It's a 20 minute video. You can find it on YouTube in a second. It's amazing. It's trending,

00:07:03.600 about 10 million views in a couple of days. And Corden was obviously a skeptic.

00:07:08.960 But he was respectful of Kanye West. And he enjoyed the music, I have to say. He did well

00:07:13.440 in the interview. And Kanye West did well, too. I want to show you a few clips from that,

00:07:19.280 especially of his political and religious comments, and a few clips from his songs sung

00:07:23.200 on the plane. And then I'll show you another interview he did with an old time rap music

00:07:27.840 journalist that's a bit tougher, a bit blacker than Corden. And it was even more interesting, 1.00

00:07:33.600 I think, because it was the people who came up with him in the rap scene saying,

00:07:39.920 are you still who you were? I'm going to show you a ton of clips. I like the music. I'm fascinated

00:07:45.520 by the religious and political comments. I think he genuinely was searching for something,

00:07:49.760 and I think he found it. I don't think he's perfected his understanding or even how to talk

00:07:55.280 about it. But I don't think you ever can. What's interesting is that while he's still learning,

00:08:00.720 still discovering, he's already teaching, it's always risky, because you might not quite have

00:08:05.760 things down pat. But he's obviously impatient in his life. But what I know, having watched a few hours

00:08:12.400 now of his interviews in recent days, I know he's genuine and authentic in an industry full of fakes.

00:08:19.360 And I truly believe that he is going to make a significant cultural difference, particularly

00:08:24.000 in black America. I think it's actually amazing. Let me start with Corden's airborne musical interview.

00:08:30.480 Instead of in his car, it's in a plane with the full choir. When did you go,

00:08:36.000 this is the thing I want to do? Actually, when I went to the hospital a few years ago,

00:08:42.400 I wrote in the hospital, start a church in Calabasas. It's something I had a feeling

00:08:47.440 that I needed to do that God put on my heart. And now he just keeps on taking me to new levels and

00:08:55.680 taking us to other levels that we didn't even imagine before. So correct me if I'm wrong. So

00:09:00.960 lots of people, I think, would be shocked to hear you talk like that. But me, as I think about it,

00:09:08.400 I feel like in a lot of your music, certainly earlier music, that message was always there.

00:09:14.560 Like even, you know, if you think about the last line of Jesus walks,

00:09:18.640 when you say, I need to talk to God, but I'm afraid because it's been so long.

00:09:23.040 Yes.

00:09:24.160 How long were you holding on to that feeling before you get to the, before you were in that

00:09:27.680 place where you were in hospital two years ago and you write down, I need to start a church,

00:09:31.920 and then this starts to come? Do you feel like that's always been there burning inside you?

00:09:36.160 I mean, yes. And God's always had a plan for me and he always wanted to use me. But I think he

00:09:44.560 wanted me to suffer more and wanted people to see my suffering and see my pain and put stigmas and

00:09:53.440 on me and have me go through all the experiences, the human experiences. So now when I talk about how

00:10:00.400 Jesus saved me, more people can relate to that experience. If it was just, oh, we grew up with

00:10:05.760 this guy's music and now he's a superstar. It's, it's less compelling than, oh, this guy had a mental 0.53

00:10:11.840 breakdown. This guy was in debt. This guy's been through, you know, not been through, but this guy

00:10:17.120 has a beautiful five years of marriage, which, you know, marriage years are different than human,

00:10:22.160 like, you know how dog years, what is it, seven years? See, yeah, why a marriage is different?

00:10:26.480 Every marriage is like 100 years. It's like 500 years of marriage. You know, there's a lot of

00:10:31.280 people that were praying for me when I was, you know, all the way gone, when I was on the,

00:10:36.800 you know, at the MTV Awards holding a Hennessy bottle, running on stage, when I was,

00:10:42.400 you know, doing creative direction for certain award shows. It was people in my family that were praying

00:10:49.520 for me, but they couldn't call me and scream at me. I'm a grown man. I made my own mind.

00:10:54.000 I actually made it this far by not listening to anybody, you know, so I don't want advice from

00:10:58.640 people, but it's God, you know, that came and put this thing on my heart and said, you know,

00:11:03.280 are you, are you ready to be in service to, to him? Do you look back on some of those things

00:11:10.000 that you mentioned there with regret or do you look at it and go, well, that's all a journey that got

00:11:14.560 me here. I have no regret and no shame. You know, that's the biggest thing, me being a perfectionist.

00:11:21.840 That's such a blasphemous statement to think that as a man, you could perfect anything. God is the

00:11:26.800 only thing that's perfect. So the only thing that can be perfect is God's plan. Have you had a Shake

00:11:32.800 Shack burger? Oh, because I will say that is pretty close to perfect as far as I'm concerned.

00:11:40.000 I don't know how those cows that live on my ranch feel about the Shake Shack burger. 0.98

00:11:44.720 I reckon they're very angry about it. Yes.

00:11:47.120 Jesus, walk, Jesus, walk, Jesus, walk with me, with me, with me, with me, with me, with me.

00:11:59.600 To the hustlers, killers, murderous drug dealers, even the strippers, Jesus walks with them.

00:12:04.640 To the victims of welfare, for we living in hell here, hell yeah. Jesus walks with them. 0.62

00:12:10.160 Now hear he, hear he, want to see thee more clearly. I know he hear me when my feet get weary.

00:12:15.680 Cause we're the almost nearly extinct. We rappers as role models, we rap, we don't think.

00:12:21.040 I ain't here to argue about his facial features. We're here to turn atheists into believers.

00:12:26.640 I'm just trying to say the way school need Jesus, the way Catherine needed Jesus. That's the way I need

00:12:31.280 Jesus. So here go my single dog, radio needs us. They said you could rap about anything except for

00:12:36.640 Jesus. That means guns, sex, lies, videotape. But if I talk about God, my record won't get played.

00:12:43.360 Well, if this take away from my spins, which will probably take away from my ends.

00:12:47.360 I know it take away from my sins. Bring the day that we dream about.

00:12:50.960 Next time we're on a plane, everybody's dreaming out.

00:12:55.120 God, show me the way. Cause the devil tried to break me down.

00:13:00.320 The only thing that I prayed is that my feet don't fail me now.

00:13:03.680 Jesus walk.

00:13:05.680 And I don't think there's nothing I could do now to right my wrong.

00:13:08.960 Jesus walk.

00:13:10.800 I want to talk to God. I ain't afraid.

00:13:22.160 Amazing. That's amazing. Hollywood is fine with anything. Sex, drugs, lies, violence.

00:13:28.560 Just not Jesus. Here's the next song they sang. And listen to James Corden after. 0.98

00:13:33.120 The beat box.

00:13:43.600 On time. On time. Every time. Every time. Always there. Always there.

00:13:50.320 Said you'll never leave us nor forsake us. Take us. So we stand. So we stand. On your word. On your word.

00:14:00.160 Brought us out of darkness into your life. Your life. By your power. By your power.

00:14:07.280 We're set free. We're set free. When two or three are gathered. You're there. You're there.

00:14:14.560 In the midst. In the midst. In the midst. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Here we go. So glad we know our

00:14:21.680 Our souls anchored. Every single day you're worthy. To you we give the glory. Cause our

00:14:31.600 Our souls anchored. When we think back where we started. Come on. We can't help but lift our hands up.

00:14:41.120 I don't know if it's the plane or the altitude. Or just cause we're in the sky. I am starting to feel

00:14:52.320 Closer to God. I'll be honest. I believe him. By the way. I mean. When was the last time Corden

00:15:02.320 Corden went to church. Do you think? In a positive way. And listen to this. Now marriage I think has

00:15:08.640 Been a real great stabler for you. Yeah. People thought it would be uncool to be married. Then I

00:15:13.480 Got married and people are like oh that looks cool. No one ever thought it would be uncool to marry Kim

00:15:18.180 Kardashian. Everybody thought it would be cool to marry Kim Kardashian. Well not Chris Uphries.

00:15:22.720 It's more than cool. It's more than cool as hell or something. It's heavenly. It's great. It's

00:15:31.360 Magnificent. And God is using me as a human being. You know as humbly as I can put it. He's using me to

00:15:41.460 Show off. Now what's a regular night in for you and Kim now? Kanye and Kim they got nothing to do

00:15:47.660 Tuesday night. What are they doing? I don't like going out at night time. I like being at home

00:15:53.620 with my family at night as much as possible. So what is that night? What do you do? We go

00:16:00.680 we'll eat dinner and we'll play with the kids and then we'll put the kids to bed and then we go to bed

00:16:07.220 and then my wife watches Dateline. So she watches Dateline and you're not really watching anything.

00:16:13.900 You're just straight straight to sleep. I read the Bible. For real? Yes. Seriously you sit and read

00:16:20.980 the Bible? Yes. What is telling me this? I've got three kids. You've got four kids. Would you

00:16:28.260 recommend my wife and I going for a fourth? Oh absolutely. Really? The richest thing that you

00:16:35.600 could have is as many children as possible. So are you saying you would roll for a fifth?

00:16:41.240 For seven. Shut up you want seven kids? Yes. And have you and Kim talked about this? This is 0.51

00:16:47.400 something that you'd like to do? Yes. Seven children? Yes. I need to talk to my wife.

00:16:54.620 After every little question and answer the choir sang another song and Corden joined in. I can't play the

00:17:00.460 whole thing for you it's 20 minutes long but Corden was clearly having a great time. But then he asked the

00:17:05.280 skeptics question and it's a fair question. And he asked it respectfully and then their interview

00:17:11.380 ends with a great version of hallelujah. What do you say to people who would say and there will be

00:17:17.160 people that will say I don't believe it. I don't believe the reawakening of the Kanye saying he's

00:17:24.820 having. I don't believe if I look at the last two, three, four, five years of his life. I don't believe

00:17:31.880 that this can be as night and day as it is. Do you know what I mean? That you would be one day

00:17:39.500 living your life in one way and now saying everything is for this. I'm not sure I believe

00:17:44.980 it. What would you say to those people? I'd say when you go to sleep would you agree

00:17:50.500 that you are asleep when you are asleep? And when you wake up would you agree that you are awake

00:17:57.100 when you are awake? Yeah. Would you agree that those are two different states? People who don't

00:18:02.600 believe are walking dead. They are asleep and this is the awakening.

00:18:10.040 that's it. We are down

00:18:11.640 Alleluiagrade

00:18:18.420 Yeah.

00:18:18.860 Alleluia. Alleluia.

00:18:23.080 Hallelujah! Hallelujah! He is wonderful!

00:18:50.080 I thought that was great.

00:18:58.880 A white liberal like James Corden was moved.

00:19:01.280 I believe he really was.

00:19:02.940 But I think the effect of this music by Kanye West himself

00:19:05.340 will reawaken the Christian tradition amongst African Americans.

00:19:09.860 Now, that's my thought.

00:19:11.360 But some of the hardest core rap personalities,

00:19:13.920 they're not thrilled with this.

00:19:15.600 Here's a longtime radio host, Kurt Alexander,

00:19:18.120 who goes by the nickname Big Boy.

00:19:20.460 And I think the conversation was a bit more real,

00:19:22.440 a bit more tough, a bit less sweet.

00:19:24.220 I mean, his choir wasn't there either.

00:19:26.500 Now, listen to this.

00:19:27.680 A bit more talk about Kanye West not doing what other people want him to do.

00:19:33.040 He starts by talking about James Corden.

00:19:35.620 I was, like, talking to James Corden earlier.

00:19:38.440 Same.

00:19:39.340 Yeah.

00:19:39.700 Okay, I wasn't.

00:19:40.400 I wasn't.

00:19:41.700 And I told him, I said, look, my father's a Black Panther.

00:19:46.560 My mother got arrested for the sit-ins at age six.

00:19:50.080 They were fighting for us to have the right to our opinion,

00:19:56.760 not the right to vote for whoever the white liberals said Black people are supposed to vote for.

00:20:04.140 You get what I'm saying?

00:20:04.980 Then James Corden went in and said, well, this president, you're Christian,

00:20:09.720 and this president, I don't see anything Christian about him.

00:20:12.800 I said, okay, so last year y'all tried to tell me who I'm supposed to vote for because I'm Black.

00:20:17.640 Now, this year, white liberals trying to tell me who I'm supposed to vote for because I'm Christian.

00:20:22.820 That would be like, I live in Calabasas, so everyone in my car has got to be a convertible, huh?

00:20:26.660 It's just all based on y'all vision of what I'm supposed to do.

00:20:31.180 And I understand, like, a lot of people, it's not a matter of whether you like it or who like it.

00:20:37.560 We are in a country where we're allowed to like whatever we like.

00:20:42.180 I love Jesus Christ.

00:20:45.060 I love Christianity.

00:20:48.340 I love the Sistine Chapel.

00:20:50.500 Well, don't you know, you can like anything else but not that.

00:20:54.940 Big Boy makes me laugh to use that nickname.

00:20:57.260 I'll call him Kurt Alexander.

00:20:58.960 Alexander presses Kanye West, implying that he's a race traitor because he's breaking the mold.

00:21:03.800 Here's Kanye's reply.

00:21:04.920 What do you say to people that say you turned your back on the culture or Black people?

00:21:09.900 Exactly, 100%.

00:21:11.980 I have turned my back on the idea of victimization mentality.

00:21:17.660 We are locked up.

00:21:19.120 We went from one and four.

00:21:20.680 We went from one and four to one and three. 0.51

00:21:23.020 But we're always pointing at the white people. 0.64

00:21:28.020 But yet, we want to spend all of our money on foreigns. 0.98

00:21:31.640 We want to spend all our money on luxury as opposed to going and buying some land.

00:21:37.260 America is for sale.

00:21:39.080 And there's a lot of barren land.

00:21:41.600 Disney bought a lot of it in Florida. 0.99

00:21:44.380 But the culture has you focused so much on fucking somebody bitch and pulling up in a foreign and rapping about things that could get you locked up and then saying you about prison reform. 0.99

00:21:56.880 Like, bro, we brainwashed out here, bro. 1.00

00:22:02.660 Come on, man.

00:22:03.460 This is a free man talking.

00:22:04.720 Democrats had us voting Democrats for food stamps for years, bro.

00:22:12.360 What is you talking about?

00:22:14.040 Guns in the 80s, taking the fathers out the home, plan B, lowering our votes, making us abort our children. 0.73

00:22:21.500 God should not kill.

00:22:22.520 You know, I can't tell y'all how to feel.

00:22:26.240 But what I can tell you honestly is how I feel.

00:22:29.340 And when I sat there seven years in, six years in, to the Obama administration, when I was sitting at the Met Balls, when I was sitting in front of white people and they thought, I wouldn't have thought you would like Trump because of the racism.

00:22:45.160 So you mean to tell me I make every decision based off my color.

00:22:49.480 The most racist thing a person could tell me is that I'm supposed to choose something based on my race.

00:22:56.300 I want to show you a few more clips.

00:22:57.640 Some are really short.

00:22:59.180 I'm not that interested in Kurt Alexander.

00:23:00.900 I think he didn't know how to handle Kanye West.

00:23:03.840 Look, Big Boy is a radio host, which means he's a professional suck up to rock stars to get them to come on his show.

00:23:10.840 And Kanye West is one of the biggest.

00:23:13.820 But Alexander also knows that he's supposed to be a good liberal, a good Democrat, and follow the corporate line, conventional wisdom.

00:23:19.560 He doesn't do it well.

00:23:20.540 He's passive aggressive in this interview.

00:23:22.420 He never really has the courage to challenge Kanye, but he signals to his viewers that he disagrees with them.

00:23:27.260 Who cares about him?

00:23:28.440 Instead, let me play a few clips of Kanye West's answers instead. 0.59

00:23:32.300 Here he is saying that he was one of the first rappers to speak out against using the word fag, the F word in this case, in rap. 0.93

00:23:41.920 But when he mentioned Chick-fil-A, he was called a homophobe. 0.98

00:23:46.000 Hip-hop was dropping F-bombs. 0.99

00:23:48.220 And I said, stop.

00:23:49.060 You can play the footage.

00:23:50.220 I said, stop it.

00:23:51.040 As soon as I said, close on Sunday, just like Chick-fil-A, there was LGBTQ articles saying they need to boycott my company. 0.97

00:24:04.060 I said, George Bush don't care about black people. 0.98

00:24:06.600 As soon as I wore a rare hat, I'm a coon. 0.94

00:24:09.120 You can't do enough for nobody out here.

00:24:11.580 So how about I stop?

00:24:15.080 You get what I'm saying?

00:24:16.360 People forget so quick.

00:24:17.700 Think about that.

00:24:18.520 I'm the one, I thought my career, you know, the funny thing is people are like, man, this is going to be harmful for your career.

00:24:24.000 This is going to be, I said.

00:24:24.900 Did you worry about that?

00:24:26.240 Man, I fear and love God.

00:24:31.220 When you remove the fear and love of God, you create the fear and love of everything else.

00:24:38.180 You talking to somebody right now that only fears God and Jesus has won the victory, bro.

00:24:44.640 Listen to this little clip about families.

00:24:46.640 Social media doing more to hurt families than it is to help families, and families are the key to health.

00:24:54.420 I love this line about pretending you're woke, but actually just sleepwalking and repeating what everyone else says.

00:25:01.660 Wake up!

00:25:02.840 Wake up, Mr. West.

00:25:04.120 Wake up, culture.

00:25:05.780 Wake up.

00:25:06.180 Everybody think they so woke, but they following the rules of what woke's supposed to be.

00:25:10.320 That's so true.

00:25:11.360 Here's Alexander who can't process all this.

00:25:13.880 Are you still our voice?

00:25:18.540 Absolutely.

00:25:19.600 Thank you.

00:25:20.540 Absolutely.

00:25:21.580 That's the thing.

00:25:23.560 You are quite easily controlled if they know everybody going to be blue.

00:25:28.780 If you go to a white bar, you're going to hear people talking about independent.

00:25:32.200 You're going to hear people talking Republican.

00:25:34.060 You're going to hear people talking Democrat.

00:25:35.840 But fair enough.

00:25:36.460 Does Kanye West regret what he used to sing about?

00:25:40.060 I heard you say with your pastor that you felt like you were making devil's music. 0.99

00:25:44.880 Yeah, because you're such a fucking, oh, I love it. 1.00

00:25:48.740 Excuse me, Christian scorecard down a little bit, cursing some more. 1.00

00:25:52.960 But I got to a point where I was always letting that Playboy magazine that I found when I was five years old have an effect on my music.

00:26:06.540 It couldn't ever be 100% everything it could be because I had to add that in always. 0.98

00:26:14.180 And it got to the point where literally I went from Jesus walks to you're such a fucking hoe, I love it. 1.00

00:26:21.280 Oh, I bet you the devil was happy on that day. 0.99

00:26:24.120 And where that record went, straight to what?

00:26:25.700 Number one, quick, this is exactly what we want.

00:26:30.240 This fit right in with whatever else we got.

00:26:32.660 This fit right in with everything we got to deal with opioids.

00:26:35.760 This fit right in with everything we got that promotes killing so that we can have more slaves in the mass incarceration.

00:26:42.740 Mass incarceration never ended slave system. 1.00

00:26:46.120 This fit right in.

00:26:47.380 Why did you make it?

00:26:48.140 Because I was asleep.

00:26:51.480 Mm-hmm.

00:26:53.420 Because I was drowned.

00:26:56.660 Because I was lost.

00:26:59.740 What do you want us to get from Jesus as King?

00:27:03.340 The title right there.

00:27:05.500 The fact that everyone says that is enough.

00:27:09.520 Well, can't he fix things?

00:27:11.220 What's his purpose?

00:27:12.780 There's an opportunity where people are coming for the music, but they may leave with salvation.

00:27:19.140 It's not easy doing what he's doing.

00:27:20.760 Neither side believes him.

00:27:22.420 And now I've given my life to Christ.

00:27:24.340 I got this rap to say, what have you been hearing from the Christians?

00:27:27.720 They'll be the first one to judge me.

00:27:29.880 Make it feel like nobody loved me.

00:27:31.820 Because, literally, the process of being delivered, you really be by yourself when it happens.

00:27:43.020 Because the Christians don't believe you.

00:27:45.800 And all the people that's not Christian is like, oh, you weird now. 0.93

00:27:50.340 You Christian.

00:27:51.180 Well, I don't know him, but I believe him.

00:27:52.980 And I believe that what he's doing, tackling the culture, leading by example,

00:27:56.600 is perhaps the most important non-partisan movement in America today. 0.94

00:28:00.020 They'd call him racist if he weren't black. 0.93

00:28:04.820 They actually do already, don't they? 0.95

00:28:07.980 But I don't think he cares.

00:28:09.980 He's not afraid anymore.

00:28:11.840 Is he?

00:28:13.340 Stay with us for more.

00:28:21.580 Welcome back.

00:28:27.200 Well, Wexit wouldn't be my choice of a nickname for a Western separatist movement.

00:28:34.040 But it seems to have stuck.

00:28:36.220 And, of course, it's not just Alberta, Saskatchewan, too.

00:28:40.240 Every day it seems to get worse.

00:28:41.640 I see in the news that Encana, which was once the largest Canadian company by market capitalization,

00:28:50.180 the largest, has announced that it is moving its headquarters to the United States and changing its name.

00:28:58.880 It claims that won't affect staffing in Canada, but I don't believe that.

00:29:03.700 I think it's just done with fighting with Justin Trudeau and an anti-oil mentality.

00:29:09.400 Why wouldn't it go to the place that loves drilling and fracking and mining and exporting and pipelines?

00:29:18.060 I think that things are only going to get worse in Alberta, and no one in the center of the country seems to give a damn.

00:29:24.260 I'd like to refer to a column in the Edmonton Sun by our friend, Lorne Gunter.

00:29:29.860 It's called, It Doesn't Matter That There's No One From the West in the Federal Cabinet.

00:29:35.000 And joining us to explain exactly what he means is our friend, Lorne Gunter.

00:29:39.260 Hey, Lorne, how are you doing?

00:29:40.800 I'm doing well.

00:29:41.820 How are you?

00:29:42.240 Well, I'm frustrated because the price of oil is strong, strong enough to create a boom across the United States, record exports.

00:29:54.640 In fact, the United States is now a net exporter of oil, not just of energy, but of oil itself.

00:30:02.060 Some of that oil goes to Quebec.

00:30:04.380 So we're selling the good stuff to America below market prices, and we're importing their oil at world prices.

00:30:10.320 It's getting worse in Alberta.

00:30:12.820 Well, and the more frustrating thing for me with that is that Quebec is quite happy to buy oil from the United States,

00:30:18.820 but it won't take oil, buy oil from Alberta, because it has to come in a pipeline.

00:30:24.480 Yeah.

00:30:24.700 And, you know, it's the symbolism of it.

00:30:27.520 It's the political mentality that's involved.

00:30:29.340 It has nothing to do with the environment or science or anything like that.

00:30:34.680 It's all political symbolism.

00:30:36.660 Yeah.

00:30:36.820 Well, I was just looking through the latest stats from the Canadian Energy Regulator,

00:30:42.660 and Quebec oil imports from America are skyrocketing.

00:30:46.620 That's from railroad cars full of oil.

00:30:50.280 And, of course, they take a lot of Saudi oil and Azeri oil, oil from Azerbaijan.

00:30:58.000 So whenever a Quebecer says they're against carbon or oil, they don't mean it.

00:31:02.160 They're just against Alberta, really.

00:31:03.720 But let's talk about your column.

00:31:05.140 You say, you know, we all know that the liberals were wiped out in the West, not a single seat in Alberta or Saskatchewan.

00:31:15.880 Ralph Goodale wasn't a particular advocate for the West in cabinet, but at least he felt some obligation, I think, to do so.

00:31:23.500 What do you mean by it doesn't matter that there's no one in cabinet from those two provinces?

00:31:28.300 Well, there was Goodale from Saskatchewan, and at one point there was Amarjeet Sohi from Edmonton and Kent Hare from Calgary.

00:31:38.580 There were five total members, liberal MPs in the caucus from Saskatchewan and Alberta from 2015 until 2019.

00:31:48.180 One of the Alberta liberal MPs was kicked out of caucus for sexually harassing employees.

00:31:54.960 But what I was saying is that there was lots of representation in the caucus and at the cabinet table from Alberta and Saskatchewan between 2015 and 2019.

00:32:07.360 It didn't do us any good.

00:32:08.400 Who cares whether we have a member there who's just going to come back to Alberta and Saskatchewan and explain Justin Trudeau's latest wisdom?

00:32:19.680 You know, we had an Edmonton MP, a guy named Randy Boissoneau, who thankfully was defeated, who led the charge at the Justice Committee in the House of Commons to have the SNC-Lavalin investigation killed.

00:32:32.680 What good did it do us to have liberals in the caucus and in the cabinet when they passed Bill C-48 and C-69, which killed pipelines, banned Alberta oil, specifically Alberta oil, from northern BC tankers?

00:32:50.660 So, it didn't do us any good.

00:32:53.920 And so, having more of those same sorts of people in Ottawa doing the same sorts of bowing and scraping to central Canadian bias isn't going to do us any good now either.

00:33:06.220 Yeah, I suppose it's better not to have those because they'd be a placebo.

00:33:09.880 They would be a fake, oh, well, they're representing us.

00:33:12.840 At least now the hoax is gone and the reality is revealed.

00:33:16.680 Let me ask you, does Justin Trudeau or the PMO, to the best of your knowledge, have someone in Alberta who's speaking the truth to them quietly, off the record, you know, just saying, hey, it's really this bad?

00:33:35.540 Or, hey, you know, like, someone who Trudeau or Gerald Butz knows and trusts enough that he can tell them what they don't want to hear.

00:33:46.900 I think Trudeau is surrounded by flatterers and hollow men, empty suits.

00:33:53.280 Do you know if he has anyone who can say, I want to tell you some hard truths now, boss, here's what it's like?

00:34:01.320 Do you know of anyone like that?

00:34:02.480 No, and I think the people who are talking to him from Alberta, I mean, former Premier Alison Redford, oh, my goodness, so glad she's back.

00:34:14.580 She's offered to give advice to Trudeau.

00:34:18.600 I once called her the first NDP Premier of Alberta before there was any inkling that there would be an NDP Premier of Alberta because she's so left-wing. 0.98

00:34:28.480 And she's so condescending to people who have what I would consider Alberta viewpoints or Western viewpoint.

00:34:36.100 She couldn't possibly represent the majority of people in Alberta if she was giving advice to Trudeau.

00:34:42.360 Then there was Nehat Henshi, the mayor of Calgary, who's as left as you can get.

00:34:47.620 He offered to help Trudeau.

00:34:49.420 And all those people would do is say, oh, listen, Mr. Prime Minister, I know that that nasty Mr. Kenny says X, Y, Z, or that there's a lot of Albertans around who are writing letters to the editor or speaking out online who say X, Y, Z.

00:35:04.660 But you know what, they're not speaking for all of Albertans.

00:35:08.340 There are lots of people who really do think that your environmental programs, which would be absolutely bogus.

00:35:15.460 But that's what he wants to hear.

00:35:17.100 And that's what they would tell him.

00:35:18.420 Well, and that's my point.

00:35:19.560 So maybe it wouldn't be someone who's in the political class, like the partisan class.

00:35:26.240 I've got to think that in the oil patch, I mean, there are senior oilmen who, for whatever reason, are liberal partisans.

00:35:36.660 I mean, I've never understood it, but I would call them good Albertans who just, they have this quirk, maybe they want to be different.

00:35:43.620 So they're partisan liberals, but they are living the Alberta way.

00:35:48.720 And there's even, there's even a kind of liberal, I think of a Lawrence Decor style liberal, who is not a conservative, loves Alberta.

00:36:01.160 I mean, there are liberals in Alberta who are not just Trudeau repeaters.

00:36:06.540 And there were in the mid-90s what they called the 3M liberals.

00:36:10.540 You had Manly, McLaren, and Martin, who were pro-business.

00:36:14.960 You know, they were liberal on social policy, liberal probably on immigration.

00:36:20.160 They didn't mind a little bit of deficit spending here and there, but they knew how to balance the books and they were pro-business.

00:36:26.560 They wouldn't have come in, for instance, with Bill Morneau's punitive tax on small business people of a couple of years ago.

00:36:35.320 They wouldn't have come in with a litmus test for women's reproductive rights for Christian summer camps the way that the latest group did.

00:36:47.700 They were moderate.

00:36:49.880 And there are some, perhaps still in the oil patch, who are like that.

00:36:53.880 When I was, and some of your viewers may be surprised to find this out, when I worked for a liberal cabinet minister from Alberta in the mid-1980s, Alberta, despite the national energy program, was still contributing about one quarter of all the annual operating funds for the Liberal Party of Canada.

00:37:16.280 And that was coming mostly from oil people who hoped that by contributing and being involved in the Liberal Party, it would help mitigate some of the worst parts of the national energy program.

00:37:29.720 It didn't work.

00:37:30.520 It's not going to work now.

00:37:31.860 Yeah.

00:37:32.040 And that's why I said I don't think it matters whether or not we have any representation at the cabinet table or any representation in the caucus.

00:37:38.840 They're not going to listen to us anyway.

00:37:40.520 Yeah.

00:37:40.680 This is not a group that is driven by business instincts.

00:37:45.540 It has no understanding of how you create wealth.

00:37:48.900 It has no understanding of where the money to run government comes from originally.

00:37:53.480 They just think it's – I saw it, for instance, in some of the Liberal campaign material during the election.

00:37:59.260 There was this idea that they would cut a loophole in the income tax, and that would save the federal government close to a billion dollars a year.

00:38:11.680 Save?

00:38:12.340 It's not their money.

00:38:13.740 Yeah.

00:38:13.860 It's not – this is like all the money that exists belongs to us, and you should be grateful for what we leave you.

00:38:21.000 Yeah.

00:38:21.180 And if we don't leave it to you, then we're saving – they're not saving that money.

00:38:26.100 They're taking less of it out of the pockets of people who originally earned it.

00:38:30.000 Yeah.

00:38:30.140 But that's the mentality that's involved.

00:38:32.160 There is no understanding that without pipelines, there is no money to tax to – but it's – to them, it's like, well, if there are no pipelines, we'll just all get barista jobs, and the money will come from the taxes we pay as baristas.

00:38:48.420 Yeah.

00:38:48.520 Oh, you know, it's just – it's cluelessness, and it's this magic – I keep calling it magic wand thinking when it comes to the environment.

00:38:55.600 There was a lot of excitement on Monday when a large accountancy firm, Ernst & Young, put out this report that said if Canada would be a rapid adopter of e-vehicles, electronic cars, we would reduce our oil dependency by 250,000 barrels a day.

00:39:18.640 Now, we consume about 2 million barrels a day, and we could reduce that by about 250,000 a day, so roughly 10%.

00:39:26.720 If we would simply go to 30% of our fleet as electric vehicles by 2030, to do that, we would have to buy 720,000 electric cars a year between now and 2030.

00:39:41.800 We buy a total of 1.5 million new cars a year, new light trucks, SUVs, CUVs.

00:39:50.720 We'd have to – half of our new fleet, half of all new vehicles bought in the country for the next 10 years would have to be electrical, and that would be half of the volume of all the electrical vehicles made in the world.

00:40:04.040 And so that's the kind of thinking that goes into this.

00:40:09.100 It's so easy to do.

00:40:11.040 We could – well, we're going to let a 16-year-old Swedish girl come and tell us. 0.82

00:40:15.320 You know, I was just thinking about that.

00:40:17.460 I mean, there were old hands in the Liberal Party, but a lot of them were thrown out.

00:40:24.800 It was almost a rule.

00:40:25.660 If you were over 40, you had to be thrown out because you didn't have that modern thinking.

00:40:33.180 And so if you look at Trudeau's cabinet, other than Ralph Goodale, really, I mean, he threw out anyone with gray hair.

00:40:40.680 Ralph was the only grown-up left.

00:40:42.640 And the staff – I mean, there's this one picture I show time and again.

00:40:47.680 It's a picture of Chrystia Freeland with her advisors, average age is like 22, looking so hipsterish and millennial. 0.78

00:40:59.060 And I'm thinking, you know, there's some things where you want young energy and people who don't know the word no,

00:41:06.580 but negotiating international trade deals is probably not one of them.

00:41:11.920 You probably want the oldest guy there is who hasn't yet lost his mental faculties because that's where –

00:41:18.380 You want Derek Birney.

00:41:19.520 Yeah, you want –

00:41:19.940 You know, that's the kind of person you want.

00:41:21.460 You want someone who's – they've done it before.

00:41:24.980 They know the people on the other side.

00:41:27.060 They have self-control of their mouth and their emotions, and they're not going to do weird things.

00:41:33.100 And they know that when the other side says A, that really means B.

00:41:38.620 And you don't really want B, so you've got to be smart about how to do all of this.

00:41:42.740 And there just isn't that kind of long-term institutional memory that's available to the cabinet.

00:41:50.080 And I mentioned foreign affairs because that's just been a string of disasters.

00:41:53.680 But anything touching business is too.

00:41:57.020 And I don't know.

00:41:58.260 I just – I'm sad because I –

00:42:00.860 Go ahead.

00:42:01.200 For instance, that Bill Morneau, who's the finance minister and is rumored to continue on as finance minister in the new cabinet,

00:42:08.620 that will be appointed in a couple of weeks.

00:42:10.520 You'd think having run one of the most successful pension fund management companies in North America would understand business very well.

00:42:19.540 He doesn't seem to.

00:42:20.780 No.

00:42:21.060 He doesn't seem to have any deep understanding.

00:42:23.400 And if he does have a deep understanding, he has no influence at the cabinet table to bring that to fruition.

00:42:29.080 So, you know, we're stumbling along based on like a 22-year-old pour-over coffee artist's view of how the economy should work.

00:42:41.540 You know, I acknowledge that Bill Morneau did run the firm Morneau Chappelle.

00:42:49.740 He also inherited it from his father.

00:42:52.640 And he had the good sense to marry a billionaire.

00:42:57.700 So I think his understanding of how wealth happens is a little bit different than how it happens for most people.

00:43:05.160 What makes me sad, Lorne, is that Alberta finally threw out the NDP and is slowly bringing back pro-business policies provincially.

00:43:15.440 But the fact that Husky laid off hundreds the next day after the federal election, the fact that Encana is moving.

00:43:23.980 Encana.

00:43:24.800 I mean, it used to be called the Alberta Energy Corporation.

00:43:27.860 Encana, Energy Canada.

00:43:30.000 Energy Canada.

00:43:30.720 It was the biggest Canadian company.

00:43:33.160 And it's just saying, yeah, good luck, you guys.

00:43:35.180 We're going to take our chances in Texas and Pennsylvania.

00:43:38.600 They did this sort of in two parts, right?

00:43:39.840 Last November, so just about a year ago, they said, well, yeah, we're moving a lot of our operations to the United States.

00:43:48.160 And we're not going to have a head office.

00:43:50.620 We're just going to have a lot of decisions made both in Canada and the United States.

00:43:56.020 No head office.

00:43:57.040 No, no, no, no, no.

00:43:57.900 And now, what do they call it?

00:43:59.920 They're going to have their business habitation in the United States, which means they're going to have a head office down there.

00:44:05.960 And they're changing their name to something I can't remember.

00:44:08.960 Yeah, it's OVINTUS.

00:44:10.640 I don't even know what that means.

00:44:12.660 It's a name designed to be forgotten, I think.

00:44:16.180 That's very sad to me.

00:44:18.440 Well, Exxon, for instance, was chosen by a marketing firm because it was a word that meant nothing in any language.

00:44:27.980 So this OVINTUS or whatever it is is probably something similar.

00:44:31.580 Yeah, well, but what's sad to me, in TransCanada Pipelines, same thing.

00:44:37.940 They're getting rid of the Canada part and Canada.

00:44:41.440 Because this is no longer a good place to do business.

00:44:44.340 That is so sad.

00:44:45.500 And I think of Detroit. 0.58

00:44:48.520 And people think, oh, you're crazy compared to Detroit.

00:44:51.680 Lauren, it wasn't even a century ago that Detroit was the highest industrial wage in America.

00:44:56.720 That's right.

00:44:57.000 It was Motor City.

00:44:59.000 It was, it attracted so many people because you want the best job in America, you go to Detroit.

00:45:06.820 And it was undone by politics.

00:45:09.900 People still drive cars.

00:45:11.720 But they just, the politics of that city destroyed it.

00:45:15.000 I just spent two days in downtown Calgary,

00:45:17.360 trying to get a feel for what people were thinking after the provincial election and after the federal election.

00:45:22.340 And it's, it's really disheartening to go to downtown Calgary.

00:45:29.160 Now, you know, a lot of people used to think that Calgarians were bombastic and braggadocio.

00:45:34.840 And, you know, they had big fancy cars and they were buying big houses and they were getting huge bonuses and, you know, spending, like the clothing stores were busy and the malls and the restaurants and everything.

00:45:48.200 And, you know, interior designers and caterers and everybody was just rushing back.

00:45:54.200 I so much preferred Calgary when it was like that.

00:45:59.260 Yeah.

00:45:59.960 Then to the dismal downtrodden, keep your head down and just do your job kind of place it is now.

00:46:08.100 It's lost a lot of its verb.

00:46:10.300 And that's sad for the whole country.

00:46:12.560 Yeah.

00:46:13.260 Well, let me ask you about what I started our conversation with, the word Wexit.

00:46:18.400 I see Jason Kenney, he has announced consultations with a predetermined outcome.

00:46:25.000 He says, how best to stay in Canada and be strong.

00:46:28.700 Well, Wexit means the opposite of stay.

00:46:31.540 And I think Jason Kenney's consultations will be interesting and I think he will listen.

00:46:38.900 But ultimately, I think he's impotent.

00:46:41.580 I mean, you want to hold a referendum on equalization.

00:46:45.040 Yeah, OK, you and what army?

00:46:46.700 There has to be an or else.

00:46:49.380 And if there's no or else, what are you going to do?

00:46:53.660 You already threw out all the liberals.

00:46:55.180 What are you going to do?

00:46:56.160 Not send the money?

00:46:57.200 What are you going to do?

00:46:57.840 Have a little protest?

00:46:58.900 Like, if there's no or else there, why would Justin Trudeau care?

00:47:03.420 I mean, I get that.

00:47:04.380 But I'd like to see what we can do with sort of a firewall kind of strategy, see if we can't wake up the voters in the GTA to the fact that they are going to be hurt if they continue to vote in a government that is destroying the number one export industry in the country.

00:47:28.440 Maybe that's never going to happen.

00:47:31.620 And I'm not prepared to wait very long to find out whether it would happen or not.

00:47:35.780 But I'm prepared to try a few things first.

00:47:39.340 But it may come to the fact that things are so stacked against us and always will be that we have to think about Wexit.

00:47:46.180 Yeah.

00:47:46.320 Well, if I was Justin Trudeau, I'd be laughing right now.

00:47:51.180 He just won when he shouldn't have won.

00:47:53.740 Andrew Scheer doesn't look like he's going anywhere.

00:47:55.600 And I don't see any pretending.

00:47:56.860 Best line about that, I'm not a big Peter McKay fan, but Peter McKay, who now is making noise about trying to replace Andrew Scheer, as a conservative leader, said,

00:48:05.820 the conservatives under Andrew Scheer failed to score on an open net.

00:48:10.720 And that's exactly what it was.

00:48:12.440 I think so.

00:48:13.780 Easy to win, couldn't do it.

00:48:15.880 And it's not going to get easier to win.

00:48:18.680 And I think Justin, go ahead.

00:48:22.940 No, no.

00:48:23.800 And what's he scared of?

00:48:25.240 What's Trudeau scared of?

00:48:27.160 And I don't know.

00:48:29.020 I think that this time, I mean, in 1980, the National Energy Program, the rise of the reformed party, rise of Western separatism back then,

00:48:36.600 it was, what was being done to Alberta was maybe unthinkable, although I suppose it had happened 50 years earlier.

00:48:43.760 But now people see the game is rigged.

00:48:48.080 It's more malicious this time because they really do want to shut down the oil.

00:48:52.460 I don't know.

00:48:52.800 I think that Jason Kenney wants to be a Federalist and wants to save, wants the West in, but I just don't think it's going to work.

00:49:02.280 And all of his huffing and puffing, Trudeau's going to laugh.

00:49:05.620 I don't know.

00:49:06.240 Last word to you.

00:49:06.820 That could be, I'm going to give it a couple, you know, six months, a year, two years to see how things work out.

00:49:14.040 But I'm not far away from saying, you know, let's at least threaten it because we're not losing anything by saying we'd leave.

00:49:23.540 Yeah.

00:49:24.400 All right, my friend.

00:49:25.140 Well, we'll keep in touch on this.

00:49:26.260 Thanks for being so candid.

00:49:27.580 You bet.

00:49:27.880 All right, there you have it, Lorne Gunter, senior columnist with the Edmonton Sun.

00:49:31.960 I encourage you to read his column called, It Doesn't Matter That There Is No One From the West in the Federal Cabinet.

00:49:38.560 Stay with us.

00:49:39.100 More ahead on the route.

00:49:48.560 Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about Quebec announcing a values test for immigrants. 0.93

00:49:53.060 Liz writes, I think Quebec having a prerequisite values test is awesome.

00:49:58.220 A precedent has been set.

00:49:59.780 We all must demand the same.

00:50:02.420 Yeah, it's so odd how no one is taking him on.

00:50:08.120 I haven't checked today's news, but yesterday at least, not a word of criticism from Justin Trudeau or Jagmeet Singh.

00:50:15.880 Isn't that odd?

00:50:17.840 Rick writes, as a Québécois, I say, bravo, le go.

00:50:21.040 Oh, other provinces need to follow suit.

00:50:24.220 Oh, I don't think you'll find any courage in the mainstream parties.

00:50:27.000 Certainly not in Andrew Scheer, will you?

00:50:30.540 Tom writes, if Alberta did that, they would be lighting their hair on fire. 1.00

00:50:35.620 Oh, you're so right.

00:50:36.760 I mean, I showed you the, I didn't even show you a tip of the iceberg of the rage and the insults targeted at Kelly Leach when she proposed a similar thing when she ran for the conservative leadership.

00:50:47.560 I wonder why it is.

00:50:48.800 I wonder if it's because, if it's because Quebecers are given a special pass to maintain their Quebecois nature, or if it's just because everyone knows if you fight against that in Quebec, you're going to be thrown in the dustbin of history.

00:51:02.300 Anyway, Francois Legault threw out the Liberals with his new party.

00:51:07.100 The Bloc Quebecois came roaring back on these cultural identity issues.

00:51:12.580 I think it's a combination of ideological fear of taking on anything Quebecois and pragmatic fear of being wiped out in Quebec.

00:51:21.140 They've had it out there.

00:51:23.080 Well, that's the show for today.

00:51:24.200 On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - November 01, 2019

Kanye West finds Jesus — and the celebrity left doesn’t know what to do

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