Rebel News Podcast - June 21, 2018


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


Episode Stats


Length

44 minutes

Words per minute

162.35704

Word count

7,273

Sentence count

520

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

17

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

How much did Justin Trudeau's trip to India cost? $1.5 million, but no one in the English-language media reported it. Is it a secret? Or is it a scandal? And why is it only being reported in a Quebec newspaper?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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.