Rebel News Podcast - Learn how much you REALLY paid for Trudeau's India trip

00:00:00.000 Tonight, shocking details of how much of your money Justin Trudeau spent on his lavish India

00:00:05.380 vacation, but why is it only being reported in a Quebec newspaper? It's June 20th and you're

00:00:11.680 watching The Ezra Levant Show. Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer

00:00:21.800 I know? There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer. You come here once a year

00:00:27.120 with a sign and you feel morally superior. The only thing I have to say to the government

00:00:31.520 about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:00:39.780 How much did Justin Trudeau's trip to India cost? Well, that's the crazy thing. The bills are in,

00:00:45.400 partial bills, more are yet to come, and it's over 1.5 million dollars, but not a peep about it in

00:00:54.620 any English language media. The Québécois newspaper called Journal de Montréal published it today.

00:01:02.420 You can see it here. Le voyage de Justin Trudeau en Inde a coûté au moins 1.5 million dollars. Sorry,

00:01:10.760 my French accent's there, but you don't need to understand French to understand that headline,

00:01:14.340 am I right? The voyage of Justin Trudeau to India has cost at least 1.5 million dollars.

00:01:18.940 But the spending information was made public. This is not a scoop that some reporter at Journal

00:01:25.800 de Montréal managed to dig out. It wasn't even through an access to information document that

00:01:29.960 they got first. It was an order paper question filed in Parliament. That's when a member of

00:01:35.820 Parliament writes a detailed question in Parliament and various departments have to give detailed

00:01:42.340 answers. It's like a written version of question period, but it actually generally gets some answers.

00:01:46.560 So this was not a secret or a scoop or an exclusive. That written report came out two days ago,

00:01:52.380 June 18th. But every single media outlet in English Canada, including, of course, the CBC,

00:01:58.620 simply declined to do a story. But I note that late this afternoon, CTV did a quick follow on it,

00:02:04.360 but the only newspaper in the country was Journal de Montréal. I mean, who cares, right? It's not like

00:02:09.660 anything newsworthy happened in India. Yeah, actually, just as a reminder, in case you were in outer

00:02:15.680 space or in a coma at the time or worked for the CBC and have deliberately forgotten about it,

00:02:21.340 Trudeau's trip to India was the greatest train wreck of his prime ministership so far. It was a fiasco,

00:02:26.900 a disaster, literally the definition of an international incident. Not just the cringeworthy,

00:02:32.040 embarrassing moments like this when Trudeau insisted on dancing. Oh my God, dancing at the end. This one

00:02:39.000 here again and again, dancing, dancing at official events. I mean, Donald Trump's foreign trips are

00:02:44.780 about trade and military matters. He's also wearing a suit. Justin Trudeau really doesn't have any

00:02:50.220 serious matters that he likes to talk about. He passed his marijuana legislation. That's pretty

00:02:54.340 much the only policy he cares about in his bones. So the rest of being prime minister to him is about

00:02:59.560 selfies and parties and showing off his dance moves. I mean, he went to Bollywood, that's the India

00:03:04.800 equivalent of Hollywood. And he dressed up in a costume. And look at the Bollywood star there.

00:03:11.520 They didn't, he didn't dress up as, you know, in a costume. That's weird. It'd be like if someone

00:03:19.400 from India came to Canada and walked around, everyone dressed up as a Mountie or something.

00:03:24.960 They all thought he was a shallow clothes horse. The India newspapers were devastating. Of course,

00:03:32.280 he is a clothes horse. That's pretty much all he does. Eight day trip, seven days of which was a

00:03:39.660 family vacation. One day of which was work and you paid for it all. But it wasn't just the cringy

00:03:47.000 selfie stuff. Like when Trudeau had the entire Taj Mahal cleared out of people for entire hour,

00:03:51.760 look at that. There's no one else there. 10,000 pilgrims and tourists were kicked out for an hour

00:03:58.960 so he could have just the perfect family vacation shot taken with his high maintenance wife. It was

00:04:04.980 substantive disasters too, not just stylish disasters. Like the bizarre and shocking fact

00:04:12.040 that Trudeau actually invited Jaspal Atwal, a convicted terrorist, to an official event. Here's a copy of

00:04:17.980 that invitation. Jaspal Atwal is not just any terrorist. That's him with Sophie Trudeau. He was convicted of

00:04:24.920 trying to murder a cabinet minister from India. A cabinet minister from India who was visiting

00:04:30.140 Canada for a wedding. Trudeau invited a convicted assassin to India with him as an honored guest.

00:04:37.020 The guy who tried to kill an Indian cabinet minister. That is shocking. That is bizarre. That

00:04:40.700 is so weird. But even weirder was the excuse that Justin Trudeau finally came up with. It wasn't his

00:04:46.060 fault, people. But rather, you see, it was a conspiracy to make him look bad. A conspiracy by

00:04:52.460 rogue elements of the Indian government who set Trudeau up. I know that is nuts, but that's what 0.91

00:05:00.900 Trudeau said. It was so nuts that the Indian government, which is a bit more serious than our 0.99

00:05:06.260 lad, well, they issued a statement saying that accusation was unacceptable. Oh, and then they

00:05:13.780 promptly nuked a trade deal they had for various Canadian agricultural crops. So yeah, thanks,

00:05:18.980 Justin, you dancing fool. Oh, by the way, we here, the rebels submitted an access to information

00:05:25.120 request for all of Trudeau's costumes. Do you see that there? Provide copies of all documents

00:05:30.160 regarding the planning for Prime Minister's trip to India, anything to do with the clothing and the

00:05:34.120 wardrobe. And look at what we have heard back in response. I mean, we asked how many outfits did he

00:05:39.400 bring, who paid for them, that sort of thing. Can imagine how embarrassing that would be to Trudeau.

00:05:42.580 So he did what he always does. He stonewalled. Look at the reply. The government says they will not

00:05:47.840 answer that question in the 30 days required by law. They want a 300-day extension. They will not

00:05:56.120 answer until 2019 because they say that telling us how much money they spent on costumes for his

00:06:03.280 dress-up party would disrupt the government's operations. Yeah, no, you liars. But really,

00:06:10.900 why does Trudeau need to lie and hide his costume expenses? As we've seen today, $1.5 million in

00:06:18.180 other expenses has been revealed in public, and only one newspaper in the entire country bothered to

00:06:23.740 write about it. And it was in French. So really, no need to censor Trudeau's costume expenses. It's

00:06:29.040 not like the media party's going to report on it. They're too well-trained to even run with it when

00:06:32.840 they have the facts in front of them. Back to the order paper question that started the Journal de

00:06:36.820 Montréal story. Let me read a bit from the Journal de Montréal. Let's give them some credit for their

00:06:41.160 work. I put their website through Google Translate, if you know what I mean. So this is a machine

00:06:46.660 translation. It's not perfect, but you get the point. So this is a website translated. Justin Trudeau's

00:06:53.060 trip to India cost at least $1.5 million. The stay was qualified as a total failure because of PM's

00:06:59.500 clothes. Well, that's not quite true. It was a total failure because of the terrorist incident and

00:07:04.380 Trudeau's general vanity, and then the excuses he made for the terrorist incident. The clothes just

00:07:09.100 made everything extra cringeworthy, but still. All right. Let me read from the translation. Again,

00:07:15.300 this is a Google translation of Journal de Montréal. During a nine-day stay last February, the government

00:07:20.180 paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the rental of rooms and meeting rooms in hotels, nearly $60,000

00:07:25.860 for chauffeur-driven car rentals, and even $17,000 for a Canadian chef's trip to India to prepare a meal

00:07:32.900 at a party. Isn't that crazy? He literally spent $17,000 to bring an Indian chef with him to India

00:07:43.340 from Canada because I guess Indians don't know how to make Indian food, as well as Trudeau's liberal

00:07:50.900 party chef friend. So drop $16,000 on him for that. I've got an idea for Canada's wounded military vets.

00:08:00.560 They should retrain as Indian chefs. Maybe Trudeau would have a few more bucks for them then.

00:08:08.640 First of all, why are we still fighting against certain veterans groups in court? Because

00:08:15.840 they're asking for more than we are able to give right now. But nothing is too luxurious for Prince

00:08:22.260 Justin. Let me read some of the facts of how we spent your money. I'm reading from Journal de Montréal.

00:08:26.680 The most expensive bill, excluding the price of the plane of the Prime Minister, is definitely that

00:08:31.660 of $89,147 paid to the Taj Palace Hotel for the accommodation rental. Canadian wines. Ottawa spent

00:08:40.960 $5,100 for the purchase of Canadian wines for official use. Fruits and vegetables, $6,754 for the

00:08:49.020 reception at the official residence. Meat, chicken and fish, $5,635 for the reception at the official

00:08:55.400 residence. Mumbai, $38,713 for the business networking reception. Gifts, $3,581 in official

00:09:05.460 presence. Impression, $4,273 for the printing costs of the official program. That's that fancy

00:09:12.940 invitation that the terrorists got. Chef, the government has invited all expenses paid at a cost

00:09:19.620 of $17,044 Indian-Canadian chef Vikram Vij to come and cook a meal at the Canadian High Commission

00:09:26.340 in India. That's a hell of a pricey meal. Just to remind you, this was an eight-day trip, but seven days

00:09:31.840 of it were a family vacation forum, one day of which was work. So $1.5 million for one day of work

00:09:37.780 and a lot of selfies and a lot of footage that the liberals can use for ethnic advertising in the next

00:09:43.080 election. You paid for that. And if we happen to nuke our diplomatic relations with India, the world's 0.95

00:09:48.540 largest democracy in the process by inviting a terrorist. Well, do you think Trudeau even knows

00:09:53.320 or cares about that? But here's the thing. Like I say, this is a public document. It's not actually

00:09:58.300 a Journal de Montréal scoop. It's a public document released to the world by Parliament. It was just

00:10:03.040 ignored by everyone else in the media party. So take a look on page 25, all right? It's the item-by-item

00:10:09.840 breakdown of the $1.5 million. Now, you can see the chef in there. You can see the printing in there.

00:10:15.240 The wine's in there. But look, what's this? What's this? Eric Mazinet, $14,898 to fly from Los Angeles

00:10:24.620 to India. And look at this, $9,649 to fly Benoit Cloutier to India. Mario Lemire, $12,813 for a flight

00:10:37.880 from LA. Eric Tremblay, $10,547 for a flight. Who are these guys? Now, that's first-class luxury travel.

00:10:46.700 $10,000, $12,000 for one flight. I don't know if you remember a few years ago, we sent four

00:10:54.400 rebel staff to India in 2016 to cover a UN conference in New Delhi. We spent $1,200 each on the flights.

00:11:01.900 And they were fine. I mean, our staff got up and stretched a little bit. $1,200 to fly from Toronto to New Delhi.

00:11:11.620 Who are these people spending 10 times that on a luxury suite? They are junior staff.

00:11:20.900 They're tour staff of the Privy Council. Look at that at the bottom. You see that? Privy Council office, tour at the bottom.

00:11:26.680 They're with the tour group. They're assistants. This is the government's phone director. They're assistants.

00:11:32.060 Since when do junior assistants fly first-class to India for $12,000 for a plane ticket? Who on earth

00:11:43.680 approved that? Is there any private sector company in the world that would send a junior assistant

00:11:49.960 first-class to India? They're asking for more than we are able to give right now.

00:11:57.920 Yeah, maybe Canada's wounded veterans should apply to work as travel assistants and bellhops for Trudeau.

00:12:03.420 Then he'd have enough money for them. But there are even higher airfares there. Look at this.

00:12:07.720 This is a flight for $18,202. Here's some flights for $20,242 to India. Because I guess there's two

00:12:21.960 flights there. Because I guess one flight isn't enough. But you'll see there, you see the names.

00:12:26.720 I don't know. You see it says CNote 2. You see CNote 2 doesn't have a name there. And if you read

00:12:33.100 note 2 at the bottom, it says that it's a secret to protect the privacy of who was flying,

00:12:39.380 they're not telling you who it was. Okay, hang on. So it's a private thing? Who was billing

00:12:45.840 Canadian taxpayers $12,000, $20,000 to fly to India with Trudeau? So it's private enough

00:12:51.000 that we can't know who went to India, but it's public enough that we have to pay $20,000.

00:12:59.060 $20,000. $20,000. Did you just rent the seat on the plane? I mean, you didn't actually buy

00:13:04.460 a plane, did you? And sorry to be dumb, but I mean, I don't come from a world where you fly your

00:13:11.080 own chef in for $17,000. So I just got to ask, why didn't these people just come on Trudeau's

00:13:17.180 own jet? Why did they have to book their own flights for $10,000, $15,000, $20,000? Even if they were

00:13:23.600 in another city like LA, well, why not fly from LA to Ottawa for what, like $500?

00:13:28.280 And then get on Trudeau's plane there. This is gross. This is shocking. This is unacceptable

00:13:35.040 from a government that is telling the rest of us to live smaller, telling veterans they're

00:13:39.040 just asking for too much, telling the rest of us when it comes to carbon, like flying

00:13:43.180 in a jet, to make better choices about energy and travel, telling veterans, no, no, too much

00:13:48.680 for you. But really, really, really. Given how the CBC and the rest of the Canadian media

00:13:53.840 is just fine with it, what possible incentive does Justin Trudeau have to stop this? The

00:14:00.780 media party wrote a thousand stories about Bev Oda, the Harper cabinet minister who expensed

00:14:06.640 a $16 orange juice. She was fired. A $16,000 flight, though, in a $1.5 million vacation? Yeah, 0.92

00:14:16.660 not a peep. I say again, you just can't believe a word the mainstream media tells you. Stay

00:14:26.900 with us for more.

00:14:43.900 What's going on in the United States is Rome. I can't imagine what the families living through

00:14:51.900 this are enduring. Obviously, this is not the way we do things in Canada.

00:14:56.900 Well, that is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doing his best dramatic act or passionate

00:15:02.100 explanation that we simply, simply don't treat people in the manner that the evil Donald Trump

00:15:08.480 does. This is an interesting approach to take during heated NAFTA negotiations. Of course,

00:15:13.340 Trudeau is referring to the separation of minor children from their parents if they make an

00:15:18.760 illegal entry into the United States. But is Justin Trudeau right? Do we not separate

00:15:25.280 children from their parents if they're illegal immigrants who are detained? Well, I went to 1.00

00:15:31.060 the state broadcaster to find out. Here's a story published just today. Canada aims to avoid detaining

00:15:38.180 migrant children, but it happens. Well, it happens, people. What are you going to do? 0.94

00:15:43.660 McGill's study on Canadian practice finds psychiatric and academic difficulties long after detention.

00:15:48.860 Let me read the first sentence in it. The U.S. is the focus of international outrage for its policy

00:15:55.000 of separating children from their parents and detaining them after they crossed the border in

00:15:58.760 search of asylum. But Canada has also detained migrant children and in some cases has restricted

00:16:04.620 access to their asylum-seeking parents despite its stated policy to do whatever possible to avoid it.

00:16:11.140 Last year, 151 minors were detained with their parents in Canadian immigration holding centers.

00:16:18.920 Joining us now to talk about this is our friend Giddy Mammon, an immigration and refugee expert.

00:16:24.480 He's with the law firm of Mammon, Sandaluk, and Kingwell. He joins us now via Skype. So,

00:16:30.020 Giddy, which is it? Is Justin Trudeau right? We simply don't do that in Canada? Or is the state

00:16:35.560 broadcaster right? We do that more than 100 times. Well, we do that quite often and we've been doing

00:16:42.280 it for as long as I've been practicing, which is over 30 years. In fact, my particular area of

00:16:48.720 specialty is detention work. So, I spend a lot of time at the immigration detention centers

00:16:53.000 and the provincial holding facilities. The truth is that not only do we detain

00:17:00.700 migrant children, that is children who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents,

00:17:07.200 but we actually do house Canadian children. And you say, how can that be? The immigration 0.98

00:17:14.060 authorities have no jurisdiction over Canadian citizens. That's true. But the practical reality

00:17:18.880 is that when you arrest a couple that are here without its status, there's no one, quite often,

00:17:26.000 there's no one to look after the kids. And so, the kids are held in the detention center just like

00:17:33.120 their parents. And of course, children without status are held in our immigration, in our holding

00:17:39.380 centers with their parents all the time. Now, about a year ago or so, there was some litigation that led

00:17:48.700 to the court ruling that the IRB, the Immigration and Refugee Board, has to be more sensitive to the

00:17:57.020 best interests of the children in the context of detention hearings. They can't just simply decide

00:18:03.740 that the family or the child or whatever is a flight risk or a danger to the public. They also have to

00:18:10.340 give attention to whether or not this is going to somehow impact on the best interests of the children.

00:18:17.640 The other thing is that in another context, we separate children from their parents all the time.

00:18:24.320 How many stories have you read in the Canadian media where we deport parents and their Canadian

00:18:32.820 children are here? And we say to them, well, we don't care that your spouse can file a sponsorship

00:18:40.720 or something and bring you back, but you're going to have to go nonetheless. And those sponsorships

00:18:46.960 can take a year or two years. And we separate children from their parents all of the time,

00:18:51.800 let alone in the criminal context where, you know, somebody commits a crime and they're put in jail

00:18:56.880 and they're separated from their children as well. So I'm not so sure that Justin Trudeau

00:19:03.100 is speaking factually in this context.

00:19:07.520 You know, listen, it's such an emotional thing to see pictures of kids crying away from their parents.

00:19:12.460 Nothing tugs at the heartstrings more. I understand the extremely strong temptation to virtue signal and

00:19:20.840 chime in. It's just odd coming from a prime minister who oversees our own detention of young people.

00:19:29.300 It's like for a pundit, that's fine. A pundit could say, well, if Canada does it, it's wrong too.

00:19:34.940 It's so odd to me, Giddy, that Trudeau is saying this while he is doing it. And by the way,

00:19:42.360 I think it's okay to separate kids from parents in some instances. You don't want kids being in

00:19:47.740 jail. You don't want kids being in a prison with grownups. So, I mean, it's not an ideal

00:19:53.700 situation, but in some cases the alternative is worse. We don't put kids in jail with their parents.

00:19:58.840 It's just weird to me that the prime minister gave in to his instinct to take a jab at Trump

00:20:04.860 when he's doing the same thing. I don't know if you want to talk about the politics of it,

00:20:08.620 but that just seems gratuitous.

00:20:12.460 There is no question that there's a bit of mass hysteria going on right now over this issue.

00:20:17.940 And believe me, it's not that I'm insensitive to children crying, but I've heard all kinds of

00:20:24.200 stuff that just sounds like nonsense to me, that the American government is now in the business of

00:20:29.660 ripping children away from their parents and putting them in cages. This kind of rhetoric is

00:20:35.840 not helping anybody. So let's really talk about what is actually going on. And it's nowhere near

00:20:41.320 as interesting as the rhetoric, in my opinion, but these are the facts. The Homeland Security Secretary

00:20:47.660 and the Attorney General in April said that we are now going to be enforcing the right to prosecute

00:20:56.960 people criminally for entering our country. When you cross the border without proper authorization,

00:21:02.540 you try to sneak across the border. That is not only an immigration offense, it is a criminal offense,

00:21:07.320 and we are going to charge you and we are going to detain you. So this became known in April

00:21:13.640 and that became enforced in May. And now we're two thirds of the way through June. So everybody knew

00:21:21.540 that if you come to the border with a child, as of May, you could be arrested and detained. Now,

00:21:30.860 the fact is you cannot have children in a federal prison or a federal jail. So obviously, the parent is

00:21:40.500 going to be put in jail and the children are not. Now, according to the Attorney General and the

00:21:48.020 Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security said that they are not going to be separating children

00:21:54.780 from their parents if, in fact, they can establish the relationship. But if they cannot establish the

00:22:03.060 relationship and they need to make sure that these children are not being the victims of human smuggling,

00:22:08.280 obviously, the authorities should and do take those children until parentage can be established.

00:22:16.200 Now, imagine if you are trying to run the border and you hear that if you are arrested,

00:22:24.320 if you cross the border illegally and you are alone, you're going to go to jail. And if you come with 0.52

00:22:32.180 a child, you're not going to be detained. So what do you think people are going to do? People are

00:22:39.440 going to simply use children to accompany them to cross the border in hopes that they will not

00:22:46.140 be detained. And of course, when they're released, whether or not they show up for any immigration

00:22:52.780 proceedings or not is another question. Now, this idea of children being held in cages. Children are not

00:23:01.200 being held in cages. There is apparently this Walmart that was empty. It's a massive cavernous place. And

00:23:09.000 what they did is they created sections of areas where people are confined. Now, I have seen children

00:23:17.940 detained and it's never pretty. But whether it's a chain link fence or cinder block or metal bars,

00:23:25.960 it's all the same to me. Detention is detention and it never looks pretty. And at the end of the day,

00:23:32.580 what we have here is a president with a real problem. The real problem is that he has 11 million

00:23:39.220 people who have no status, who came into the country and remain there without status. On the other 0.96

00:23:45.200 hand, 38,000 people are entering the United States from the southern border every single month.

00:23:52.880 If that keeps up, you're looking at about over 450,000 people per year. So instead of that number

00:24:00.760 being held at 11 million, it's going to go up by almost half a million every single year. And what

00:24:05.360 he is simply saying, the same way he said to the Democrats when the DACA program was under consideration

00:24:13.460 and the temporary protected status, the TPS program was being renewed for the Haitians and

00:24:19.860 the Salvadorans, et cetera, et cetera. He said, we have to have comprehensive immigration reform

00:24:25.160 and which must include the sealing of the border. The Democrats will not entertain that discussion.

00:24:33.180 And so what he's doing is he's cranking up the pressure and saying, I'm going to make it very

00:24:37.280 uncomfortable for people to cross that border in order to deter them. And this is the place where

00:24:44.640 we're at. So is he holding children hostage? According to the attorney general and according

00:24:51.500 to the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, they're only doing that to establish

00:24:56.660 identity and relationship of the kids. And I think that that should be okay.

00:25:01.500 Yeah. Well, I read that about 80% of the kids in those detention centers were not with their

00:25:10.140 biological parents. They were with traffickers. And I've also read other studies getting,

00:25:15.900 maybe you've seen them, that 40 to 60% of people who, of women or children who cross the border

00:25:23.080 are sexually assaulted either as some payment to the human traffickers or that that is why they are

00:25:29.860 being sent across. I can't imagine sending a minor child, especially God forbid, a girl along with 0.99

00:25:36.660 some gangs. God forbid. I mean, in some ways, I think these, some of these kids are actually being

00:25:42.320 rescued, not ripped away from parents. Very interesting times. I got to tell you, Giddy,

00:25:48.940 I hope Donald Trump is distracted by the chorus of voices shouting at him and does not notice that

00:25:56.480 Canada's prime minister was one of them, because I don't think he's going to take kindly to us

00:26:00.700 criticizing him for something we do too. Last word to you, my friend.

00:26:05.180 Look, we have a problem here in Canada also. Some people may look at it as okay. And some people

00:26:10.880 may think that, you know, it's not sustainable. You and I have talked about this many, many times.

00:26:16.440 Last year, we received 50,000 people making claims at our border. And our immigration refugee board

00:26:23.140 is simply overwhelmed. A system that was put into place to deal with refugees expeditiously

00:26:30.100 is now almost grinding to a halt. Instead of a few months, it's taking a couple of years. And that

00:26:37.420 delay is producing even a greater incentive for people to come to Canada. Not only do you get to

00:26:45.300 escape the enforcement of American immigration law, now you come to Canada, you have this guaranteed 0.96

00:26:50.500 extended period of time in Canada where you can collect all kinds of benefits while waiting for

00:26:57.520 your refugee claim to be heard, whether it's meritorious or whether it's completely without

00:27:01.920 any foundation whatsoever. Our government may think it's being cute by bringing attention to the

00:27:11.460 American crisis. But all it's doing is really taking the eye of the Canadian voter and taxpayer

00:27:17.360 off of the ball in our court, which is we also have a border problem. And, you know, somebody has

00:27:25.860 to deal with it. But if our prime minister would rather talk about the American difficulties, that's

00:27:32.360 terrific. But me as a practitioner, he can't play with me that way. He has to understand that I know

00:27:38.240 the numbers, and I know those numbers are increasing, and there is no way that our infrastructure is

00:27:43.420 going to be able to support it. So, you know, I would strongly recommend that he worry about what's

00:27:52.940 happening in our backyard before he's, he becomes too obsessed, making political mileage on the ills of the

00:28:01.280 U.S. crisis. Isn't that the truth? Well, Giddy, as always, we learn so much from you because this,

00:28:06.340 of course, has been your lifetime's career. So, you know far more about it than most, including,

00:28:11.340 obviously, our own prime minister. Great to see you again, my friend. Thank you for having me.

00:28:15.360 That's right. What a pleasure. That's our friend Giddy Mammon, an immigration and refugee lawyer.

00:28:20.880 He's with the firm Mammon, Sandaluk, and Kingwell. Stay with us. More Ahead on the Rebel.

00:28:31.280 Another of our goals was to stop the council from protecting the world's worst human rights abusers.

00:28:43.320 What happened? The council would not even have a meeting on the human rights conditions in Venezuela.

00:28:49.820 Why? Because Venezuela is a member of the Human Rights Council, as is Cuba, as is China.

00:28:57.060 Similarly, the council failed to respond in December and January, when the Iranian regime

00:29:03.860 killed and arrested hundreds of citizens simply for expressing their views.

00:29:10.460 When a so-called human rights council cannot bring itself to address the massive abuses in Venezuela and

00:29:17.180 Iran, and it welcomes the Democratic Republic of Congo as a new member, the council ceases to be worthy 0.98

00:29:24.860 of its name. That is the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, Donald Trump's ambassador,

00:29:33.780 explaining why the U.S. is pulling out of the U.N. Human Rights Council. I couldn't help but think,

00:29:41.140 when I was listening to her saying, well, why didn't they investigate Venezuela? Because Venezuela is on 0.78

00:29:45.240 the Human Rights Council. It made me think of Robert Conquest's third law of politics, which is the best

00:29:50.800 way to understand any bureaucracy, is that it is being colonized by a cabal of its enemies. And isn't

00:29:57.640 that incredible, the way she lists the violators of human rights that have actually infiltrated the

00:30:05.000 Human Rights Council? Well, that's not news to our next guest, our friend Claudia Rosette. She's a

00:30:12.400 foreign policy fellow for the Independent Women's Forum, and she joins us now via Skype. Claudia,

00:30:17.080 I know that you have known these things about the Human Rights Council for ages. It's sort of exciting

00:30:23.240 to see the U.N. ambassador from the United States say the same things, isn't it? Oh, it's refreshing.

00:30:30.140 It's bracing. And you know something? I think it's actually quite good worldwide for the cause of human

00:30:35.040 rights. I think so, too. Now, here's a question. The United States has allies of different degrees of

00:30:43.380 ardor. Do you think that this will spread to anyone else? Do you think any other countries that are more

00:30:48.960 on the democratic side of the spectrum will say, yeah, you know what, we're out of here, too. We

00:30:53.200 don't need to give this place any dignity? I certainly hope so, although that's really not

00:30:59.140 the record. In fact, one of the things that Ambassador Haley mentioned in her terrific remarks,

00:31:03.860 along with Secretary of State Pompeo, who also was really clear and excellent on this,

00:31:10.220 is that America's allies who share our values refuse to stand up for them in public at the Human Rights

00:31:17.600 Council. Behind closed doors, they may agree, but they won't. They just sit there and go along with

00:31:23.900 it. She didn't actually name any individual countries, but if you look down the list of

00:31:28.480 members, you'll find countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, countries that share our values.

00:31:36.260 But again, America really fights this alone, and I think it's right to withdraw.

00:31:41.840 Well, I know the argument for staying in, which is, well, if we're in, we can have some influence. If

00:31:46.540 we're in, we're part of the discussion. If we're in, we can maybe make some minor adjustments to their

00:31:53.000 trajectory. Doesn't sound like that's working. I don't know. I think there's a real peer pressure,

00:32:01.160 and it reminds me of other Donald Trump decisions. Like when Trump removed the United States from the

00:32:08.640 Paris Agreement on global warming, and this was something, oh, you can't do that. The earth will

00:32:15.620 fall. The sky will fall, rather. And nothing happened. Like Trump withdrew America from this UN

00:32:21.440 process that makes the UN Human Rights Council look, you know, it's so dysfunctional. The climate change

00:32:29.540 panel. It's so much larger, too. And nothing happened. The sky didn't fall. And I think that

00:32:35.060 there's this peer pressure, you can't leave these institutions. No one's ever left these institutions.

00:32:41.540 It's the jungle out there if we leave these institutions. No, you can leave these institutions

00:32:46.460 and try something else, and it's not going to be a calamity.

00:32:50.360 No. In fact, there's this huge vested interest by these worst abusers in many cases. But the U.S.,

00:32:58.320 remember, the Human Rights Council is particularly bad at the UN. It's a magnet for the worst abusers,

00:33:05.120 because they exploit it to try and actually warp the definition of human rights. You get them

00:33:10.020 arguing all sorts of things that are really out of Orwell. And they try to then sort of

00:33:14.620 institutionalize that under the UN. And it got so bad. It was previously the Commission on Human Rights,

00:33:20.840 you might remember, which ended up being chaired by Qaddafi's Libya in 2003. And the U.S. finally

00:33:27.900 said, enough. The UN actually agreed and said, OK, we'll reform this. Then they produced the current

00:33:32.920 Human Rights Council. The Bush administration said, in fact, with John Bolton as the ambassador who was

00:33:38.640 there for part of this, said, no, we're not joining this. It's going to turn into the same collection of

00:33:43.880 abusers. All the incentives are the same. And didn't join. President Obama then joined in 2009.

00:33:51.380 And here we are finally, thank goodness, with President Trump saying, no, this isn't working.

00:33:56.720 The incremental bits, the occasional good moment is not worth effectively endorsing the complete

00:34:03.680 perversion of any definition of human rights.

00:34:06.780 Yeah. Well, I remember the last time I visited the United Nations building myself, and I was shown

00:34:12.720 this absolutely exquisite lounge that faced the river. And it would have been, like, if those were

00:34:20.440 condominiums, they would have been, like, $10 million. Like, that property is so amazing. And it was the

00:34:27.780 most luxurious room I think I've ever been in in my life. And I'm trying to remember if it was Qatar

00:34:32.400 or the United Arab Emirates that had sponsored this room. Like, it was a plaque brought to you by,

00:34:40.460 I forget which, OPEC dictatorship. And what I learned then was, in the past, America says,

00:34:47.240 well, we're footing the bill. We get to call the shots. But I realize now that if America pulls up,

00:34:52.360 like, when Donald Trump threatened to pull his funding away from the PLO, well, that's nothing for

00:34:58.460 some OPEC dictator to come in with $10 million, $100 million. So it's not even the money anymore.

00:35:05.080 And that's another worry, though, is that Trump could say, well, we're paying three quarters of

00:35:09.660 the bill or a quarter of the bill or whatever it is. I don't think there's any shortage of bad guys

00:35:14.380 that would take over. And that would be the only one thing on my mind, is if America were to pull out

00:35:21.120 of certain things, that America would be replaced by an odious force, does that apply here?

00:35:29.580 Yeah. And at the same time, what America is also withdrawing is credibility. You know,

00:35:35.680 if the UN, even with its current budget, were operating out of, say, you know, Novosibirsk,

00:35:41.860 Russia, it simply wouldn't have the effect that it does today. It's the US backing. I mean,

00:35:47.940 democracies carry credibility. They're legitimate governments. And when we withdraw that, that's

00:35:53.620 important. Now, we still fund the base UN where even if we don't fund, they say, the Human Rights

00:36:00.220 Council, we're paying for the brand, if you like. We're paying billions, we the US, billions every

00:36:06.140 year to keep the entire enterprise going and attached to it are all these agencies where whether

00:36:11.600 we fund them or not, they thrive on the UN label. But when the US starts pulling out, it says,

00:36:17.940 we're taking our business elsewhere. You know, we want to promote human rights. We're not going

00:36:22.360 to do it through this complete charade and mockery at the United Nations. We take away some of the

00:36:30.260 legitimacy that is falsely attached to a thing, an outfit like the Human Rights Council. And I think

00:36:36.180 that's, although you are certainly correct. Yeah. OPEC dictatorships, sure. They could afford to

00:36:42.840 bankroll most UN agencies. But what they want is the US in there, not only paying for it, but blessing

00:36:48.500 it. Yeah. You know what? I sometimes daydream what would happen if the UN was actually physically

00:36:54.780 moved from New York. I mean, I'm sure Putin would want it in Moscow. I'm sure, you know, any Gulf, 1.00

00:37:03.880 I'm sure they'd want to move it to Doha or Qatar. But I think taking it out of that wonderful city,

00:37:09.160 New York would knock it down prestige-wise. But that's, we should rejoice in this one baby step

00:37:15.240 today. Hey, before we go, I want to ask you a little bit about North Korea, because you and I

00:37:19.640 have talked about North Korea half a dozen times. And we were so perplexed, and we were so, and I've

00:37:23.820 talked to Gordon Chang about it too. And we all thought it was such an intransigent, insoluble problem.

00:37:29.360 And then look at Donald Trump and what he's done. I don't want to, I don't want to say that the

00:37:36.780 deed is done. But I want to ask you, if you believe that what is happening so far is real

00:37:45.360 enough that we can at least have half a candle of celebration. I'm incredibly wary. I don't think

00:37:52.660 that Kim Jong-un has changed his ways. And I don't think that his great concern is developing a thriving

00:37:58.360 North Korea where people are free. What I am hoping is that the real agenda here or the real effect

00:38:05.000 will be a change of regime. Ideally, Kim Jong-un just goes. Perhaps that he is forced in some way

00:38:12.840 to alter things to an extent where it basically is regime change. I think it would mean his downfall.

00:38:18.380 But one of the big, I think there are pieces of the puzzle we may not be seeing. And one of the big

00:38:23.780 questions I have is, did President Trump find a credible way to threaten Kim Jong-un to such an extent,

00:38:31.440 I mean, directly, perhaps through some message, perhaps through some set of targeting coordinates,

00:38:37.060 I don't know, I'm guessing, I'm asking, that Kim Jong-un has a real incentive to comply with some of this.

00:38:44.880 I don't think that Kim is going to cheerfully give up his entire nuclear arsenal and production

00:38:51.320 facilities. I do think there's a chance here of maneuvering in some way to basically bring him

00:38:58.260 down. And if that happens, we have the real, real start of a solution.

00:39:02.880 Yeah. Let me throw one thing at you. I mean, Donald Trump is criticized, certainly by the left and

00:39:08.460 even some on the right, for his style, his braggadocio, his occasional vulgarity. And there's

00:39:18.600 a theory out there, and some say it with respect, some say it with a grudging respect. He's such a

00:39:24.660 bruiser, Trump. And he comes from New York real estate, where you're dealing with unions and corrupt

00:39:31.840 regulators, and sometimes even in the past, I guess, the mafia. It's such a voracious, rapacious

00:39:39.620 world that maybe his battle scars and his bully style that people criticize, maybe that's, he's the

00:39:48.640 first guy who has the temperament to take on a Kim. And I mean, the thing about Trump is you flick his

00:39:55.680 nose, he flicks you back 10 times harder, as our own Justin Trudeau is discovering. And so maybe it

00:40:01.820 takes the biggest, baddest, braggingest bully around to finally know how to deal with Kim. Maybe I'm

00:40:10.260 saying the obvious here, but I think it takes, I think a guy who's a nice guy, like George W. Bush

00:40:17.600 was, and I think Obama sometimes was, I don't think they had a chance. Maybe it takes a killer

00:40:23.640 like Trump. I'm using that phrase metaphorically. What do you think of that? Oh, I think so. In fact,

00:40:30.040 I wondered, was this sort of the godfather summit, a sit down in which a threat had been issued when

00:40:34.920 President Trump said, we understand each other, was he sort of talked the way the godfather would,

00:40:39.500 you know, we understand each other because we left a horse head in his bed before he came to

00:40:43.380 have his chocolate cake. But, but we don't know, we're really guessing on a lot of this. The thing

00:40:49.440 I see is that it's, I have thought for years that it's very likely that the only real solution to North 0.96

00:40:55.740 Korea requires military action. No American president wants to do that. There's no appetite for another 0.94

00:41:01.520 war in Korea. So they default to trying what they can with diplomacy. And what you just described with 0.82

00:41:08.080 President Trump style, I think has a far better chance at succeeding than all the polished, refined Ivy League

00:41:15.900 fancy diplomats who have paraded through the negotiations with North Korea over decades and failed

00:41:22.420 catastrophically. Yeah. I just don't think there's any person in the world who's older than like maybe grade

00:41:28.960 two that John Kerry has ever scared. Like former Secretary of State John, like who would be afraid

00:41:35.480 of John Kerry other than... That's the problem. And whereas Donald Trump, I think, I think he could

00:41:42.080 scare someone. And we're all sort of counting on that. Well, we'll keep in touch with you on this

00:41:49.040 too. But it was nice to have a little bit of a victory to talk about together, namely Nikki Haley

00:41:52.960 pulling out of the UN Human Rights Council. So it's great to talk to you about that. And I just had

00:41:57.580 to throw in some North Korea questions. It's nice to see you again, Claudia. I appreciate your time

00:42:00.540 today. Great to see you. Thanks, Ezra. All right. You too. Well, there you have it. Claudio Rosette,

00:42:06.020 a lot going on in foreign affairs. And Donald Trump is certainly at the center of all of it. Stay with

00:42:11.000 us. More ahead on The Rebel.

00:42:22.820 Hey, welcome back. Your viewer feedback on my monologue yesterday about the Southern Poverty

00:42:26.740 Law Center having to apologize to Majid Nawaz and pay out a settlement of more than $3 million. Bruce

00:42:32.580 writes, the SPLC feels entitled to back their hate speech by stifling dissent. Fortunately, someone fought

00:42:39.980 back. Yeah, isn't that the truth? I'm shocked how quickly they surrendered. They must have had

00:42:44.980 something awful they were hiding. On my interview with Ian Lee on the NAFTA trade negotiations, Ron

00:42:50.380 writes, Ezra, your interview with Professor Ian Lee on NAFTA problems was one of the rebels' best ever.

00:42:55.640 Too bad Trudeau or Freeland will never see it and therefore learn something. Well, I'm glad you think

00:43:00.040 so. I think we put the whole video on YouTube. You know, we did that with Manny Montenegrino's

00:43:05.200 conversation. And so far, Manny's... I mean, it's a 17-minute conversation with Manny. I don't

00:43:09.900 remember if you remember that a couple of weeks ago. Over 100,000 people have watched that. 100,000

00:43:14.900 people are watching a 17-minute discussion about foreign trade barriers. Like, this isn't the new

00:43:20.780 Beyonce video. This is me and Manny talking trade policy for 17 minutes. Yeah, 100,000 people have

00:43:27.220 viewed it. People are craving the other side of the story because all you get from the CBC is

00:43:31.540 cheerleading. On my interview with Candace Malcolm about Al-Quds Day, Liza writes,

00:43:37.820 Al-Quds is a celebration of hatred and also has no place here. Why have we allowed this poison into 1.00

00:43:42.200 our peaceful nation? And why do we tolerate this celebration every year? It is an insult.

00:43:47.560 Those are good questions. I guess at base, the answer is because we have freedom of speech, right?

00:43:54.800 But these folks are foreigners. They're either foreigners, the Iran government sponsoring this,

00:44:00.280 or their immigrants to Canada who brought their hateful anti-Semitic ideas with them. I think we

00:44:06.480 need to have a values test for Canadians, not a racial test, not a religious test even. There are

00:44:13.100 plenty of liberal Muslims, our friend Raheel Reza, Majid Nawaz we talked about, progressive Muslims,

00:44:18.780 people who believe in the separation of mosque and state, people who believe in pluralism,

00:44:22.700 not Muslim preachers calling for the eradication, that was the word he used, of the Jews. He used

00:44:31.820 the code word Zionist. Yeah. I think we need to close the border to people who hate us. And that's

00:44:38.680 got nothing to do with race, does it? That's our show for today, folks. Until tomorrow, on behalf of

00:44:43.520 all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - June 21, 2018

Learn how much you REALLY paid for Trudeau's India trip

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