Rebel News Podcast - Stephen Harper on populism, trade and immigration： A refreshing change from Trudeau (and a few Conservatives, too)

00:00:00.000 Tonight, Stephen Harper gives a significant interview to a U.S. conservative blogger,

00:00:05.340 and it's great. We'll show you the highlights. It's November 19th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:16.740 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:00:20.520 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:00:24.260 You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.

00:00:27.240 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:00:37.800 I like the fact that Stephen Harper has a new book out, and he's on a bit of a book tour,

00:00:43.360 but he is not meeting with all the Canadian mainstream media.

00:00:47.560 The Media Party, as I call it, or as I call them now, the Unifor Media.

00:00:52.300 You know why. They're the journalists who are spending their own money in their own journalists' union

00:00:58.000 in an official campaign to defeat Andrew Scheer.

00:01:00.920 I mean, that's literally reporters who claim to be neutral and objective in their reports on political leaders,

00:01:06.020 then taking their own personal money in the form of union dues deducted from their paychecks

00:01:10.660 and handing it to those union bosses to campaign for or against the same political leaders about whom they report.

00:01:17.240 And obviously, they're against conservatives and for Trudeau,

00:01:21.060 but I don't think it would be better if they were the other way around.

00:01:24.500 I just can't believe it's allowed.

00:01:26.620 The journalists of the Globe and Mail and CTV and Global and the Toronto Star

00:01:30.040 and a dozen other media outlets are literally allowed to campaign against the people they cover.

00:01:35.680 I don't know how their editors can accept that gross conflict of interest.

00:01:39.380 It would be like a financial columnist advising people to buy certain stocks in the stock market

00:01:45.900 or sell other stocks without disclosing that they had a stake in those companies.

00:01:51.000 Here's a Unifor journalist, by the way, named Don Martin at the Unifor company called CTV,

00:01:58.280 complaining about Stephen Harper.

00:01:59.800 He says,

00:02:00.140 It's strange how a former Canadian prime minister is plugging his Right Here, Right Now book

00:02:05.160 almost exclusively in U.S. media.

00:02:07.720 Wrong country, wrong market.

00:02:10.660 Yeah, is it really strange, Don?

00:02:12.100 Or is it strange that Don Martin can give his own money to campaign against Stephen Harper

00:02:17.420 and his successor, Andrew Scheer,

00:02:19.280 without an asterisk on everything he says that has a disclaimer right on the screen?

00:02:25.340 Anyways, Harper sat down with an American conservative pundit named Ben Shapiro.

00:02:29.420 We've interviewed him before.

00:02:31.500 He sat down for a full hour.

00:02:32.920 I watched it, and it was great.

00:02:34.820 And what a surprising and refreshing change from Justin Trudeau's banalities.

00:02:40.180 I mean, Trudeau really can't go for more than a few moments

00:02:43.460 before he runs out of script that he had just memorized.

00:02:46.960 He never allows himself to be interviewed at any length by anyone who is firm or independent

00:02:51.540 or could ask him tough follow-up questions.

00:02:53.600 He either does student events or he talks to his own state broadcaster.

00:02:58.060 And you can see just how tough they are on him.

00:03:01.360 That's Rosemary Barton there, just grilling the guy. 0.65

00:03:04.620 I love you.

00:03:05.520 Can you sign my chest?

00:03:07.260 Anyways, McLean's magazine is just as bad, really.

00:03:10.340 They get $1.5 million a year from Justin Trudeau.

00:03:13.700 Boy, are they tough on him.

00:03:14.980 Look at all these covers.

00:03:16.440 Oh, yeah.

00:03:18.260 Oh, look at that.

00:03:20.260 Once in a while, Justin Trudeau, who was a substitute drama teacher before he got into politics,

00:03:24.840 once in a while he manages to memorize a few lines to sound super smart.

00:03:30.340 Remember when he rattled this off?

00:03:32.620 When we get to the media questions later, I'm really hoping people ask me how quantum computing works.

00:03:37.580 I was going to ask you to explain quantum computing, but...

00:03:40.040 When do you expect Canada's ISIL mission to begin again?

00:03:46.540 And are we not doing anything in the interim while we prepare?

00:03:51.800 Okay.

00:03:53.280 Very simply, normal computers work by...

00:03:58.540 Hang on.

00:04:00.540 Don't interrupt me.

00:04:02.500 When you walk out of here, you will know more.

00:04:04.220 No, some of you will know far less about quantum computing, but most of you.

00:04:08.120 Normal computers work either there's power going through a wire or not.

00:04:11.720 It's one or a zero.

00:04:13.340 They're binary systems.

00:04:14.960 What quantum states allow for is much more complex information to be encoded into a single bit.

00:04:22.020 Regular computer bit is either a one or a zero, on or off.

00:04:25.480 A quantum state can be much more complex than that because, as we know,

00:04:29.020 things can be both particle and wave at the same times, and the uncertainty around quantum states

00:04:34.220 allows us to encode more information into a much smaller computer.

00:04:39.640 So that's what's exciting about quantum computing.

00:04:43.360 Yeah, that was sort of embarrassing.

00:04:45.180 Did you hear how he sort of asked for the question and begged a reporter to ask him

00:04:50.700 because he had been practicing all morning that little line,

00:04:54.600 and he just had to spit it out before he just plain forgot it?

00:04:58.020 But try asking him to regurgitate that now,

00:05:01.200 and I don't think he's going to sound quite as smart as he normally does.

00:05:07.740 Remember this?

00:05:09.060 Favorite Baltic nation, that's not a thing.

00:05:13.140 Yeah, the Baltic nations, they are a thing, actually, Justin.

00:05:18.180 See, that's what happens when he gets asked a question that he's not prepared for.

00:05:21.680 Anyways, enough about the dummy in the prime minister's office today.

00:05:24.780 And by dummy, I mean like a ventriloquist dummy.

00:05:28.580 He says whatever Gerald Butts tells him to say, and it's sort of embarrassing.

00:05:32.460 Trudeau doesn't have any core beliefs of his own other than the legalization of marijuana

00:05:36.400 and his own sense of entitlement.

00:05:39.220 The rest, he just sort of shows up and smiles, and sometimes he dances.

00:05:42.460 So yeah, I guess both meanings of the word dummy come to think of it.

00:05:46.360 Listening to Stephen Harper is a startling contrast. 0.76

00:05:48.520 After three years of being dumbed down by Trudeau, you really should watch the whole thing if you've gone an hour.

00:05:54.700 I think I'm a pretty busy guy, and I didn't want to take a whole hour to watch it.

00:05:58.980 But once I clicked on the video, the time flew right by.

00:06:02.160 It was great.

00:06:03.260 Now I'm going to show you a few excerpts from this interview Ben Shapiro did with Stephen Harper.

00:06:09.180 The questions weren't bad.

00:06:10.160 Frankly, I was a bit disappointed in some of Ben Shapiro's points, to be honest.

00:06:13.520 He was surprisingly pro-globalist on the questions of China and open borders immigration to the States.

00:06:21.600 But his questions were fair enough, and he certainly let Harper answer them.

00:06:25.420 And Harper did answer them very well, by the way.

00:06:28.040 That's the thing.

00:06:28.800 You know that Don Martin would disagree with everything Harper says, but it wouldn't be a genuine interview.

00:06:34.220 It would be Don Martin reading a series of gotcha questions written by some other uniform media activist.

00:06:39.800 Why would Harper even waste time on that? 0.99

00:06:41.720 So without further ado, here's Stephen Harper and Ben Shapiro on populism, and how if there's too many people on the fringe, well, then maybe it's not a fringe anymore, is it?

00:06:53.140 Yeah, this is a fight that I had with a lot of people who considered themselves populists, is that I looked at Europe, and I said,

00:06:59.060 I don't want the American Republican Party turning into a European far-right party, because it seems like there is actually a distinction.

00:07:04.120 And you obviously being from Canada, maybe you can either tell me whether this is correct or not, that American conservatism is of a slightly different brand than conservatism in Europe or in other countries.

00:07:15.260 In that, based on the idea of God-given rights protected by a limited government, the essential assumption is that if something comes up, it is not the government's job.

00:07:23.280 And populism sort of suggests there's a problem, and now it is the government's job.

00:07:26.860 And so if there's a problem in your town and you've lost jobs in that town, now it's the government's job to step in and fix it.

00:07:34.400 Well, if the government caused it, it is, particularly.

00:07:37.940 And look, so we can debate whether certain movements in Europe are far-right or they're just kind of populist conservatives, or are they actually far-right?

00:07:45.160 I think it's the wrong question.

00:07:46.840 The question is, are they being fueled by legitimate grievances?

00:07:50.660 And I guess I would argue, and I say I argue this as someone who ran the largest per capita immigration program in the world, I would argue that when you are letting hundreds of thousands of people illegally or irregularly overrun your borders, that is a legitimate grievance.

00:08:04.160 And if you get any kind of a movement out of that, including a far-right one, don't point the finger at the people for voting for it.

00:08:10.120 Point the finger at the policymakers who allowed such a crazy policy to bring about that outcome and fix the policy.

00:08:16.880 You know, the one thing I would say that when people, you know, it's easy to condemn.

00:08:22.280 In fact, I had a rule in my, you know, I united the conservative movement in Canada.

00:08:26.360 I've been divided into historically two parties and various factions.

00:08:29.880 But I always said, you know, if I got 1% or 2% on the right of me, that's fine.

00:08:33.740 But when you get 5% or 10% or 20% or infamously with Hillary Clinton, 45%, 46%, and you're calling them fringe, there's something wrong with you.

00:08:42.840 We live in a democratic society. You can't start condemning large segments of the population as fringe.

00:08:48.460 If they're voting for that, you've got to address their concerns, and especially, as I say, if their concerns are legitimate.

00:08:53.600 So you can complain about the policies of those, quote, far-right parties, but offer an alternative.

00:08:59.040 Don't pretend they don't have a legitimate issue.

00:09:01.300 I thought that was fascinating.

00:09:04.780 And what a contrast to how Andrew Scheer and even Jason Kenney are running their conservative parties.

00:09:10.220 They're throwing conservatives overboard.

00:09:12.140 They're avoiding tough questions about things like immigration.

00:09:15.000 And they're even occasionally mimicking the language of the leftist media in criticizing the far right,

00:09:20.640 when in fact it's not far right at all to be worried about such things.

00:09:24.860 Ben Shapiro had a bad response.

00:09:26.560 He said essentially, well, what if really smart people like me know better than the unwashed masses?

00:09:32.280 It was a little bit Hillary Clintonian of them.

00:09:34.800 It's arrogance, of course.

00:09:36.500 Watch how he compares the unwashed masses to his own young child.

00:09:42.860 But watch Stephen Harford's great answer.

00:09:45.160 There are some times where my kids have a completely illegitimate grievance.

00:09:48.240 In fact, it happens on a fairly regular basis.

00:09:50.540 Their grievance is that, you know, they want candy and they can't have it,

00:09:53.780 or they don't want to brush their teeth, as my daughter did not last night,

00:09:56.180 and she needs to brush her teeth or she's going to get cavities. 1.00

00:09:58.880 Yeah, there's certain, when is it possible to give people.

00:10:01.320 Well, so like you, like you, I'm a man of faith.

00:10:04.240 So, you know, as a man of faith, you believe there are certain things.

00:10:06.320 Right, and God is constantly telling people.

00:10:07.580 There are certain things that are morally right and certain things that are morally wrong.

00:10:10.200 But I guess what I'd argue as a more pragmatic politician

00:10:13.360 is that most things that are morally wrong are actually pragmatically bad for you over time.

00:10:19.600 And that's why we as conservatives don't advocate them.

00:10:21.920 We advocate instead solutions that may not always be what people want to hear,

00:10:25.920 but they've got to be things that at least address their concerns.

00:10:28.340 When somebody says, let me give a practical example from the last campaign of why Donald Trump won.

00:10:33.600 When somebody says, you know, we've had de-industrialization of my entire region.

00:10:39.200 My kids have no economic opportunities, no jobs, etc.

00:10:42.420 And your response to them is, well, I'll cut the high marginal rate on taxes.

00:10:46.880 That doesn't really address anything they're worried about.

00:10:49.380 So you've got to come up with policies that address their concerns.

00:10:52.720 And that's where I talk about the pragmatism.

00:10:56.420 Yeah, that's a good point.

00:10:58.840 It also is a bit condescending to compare an infant child to a grown-up adult voter.

00:11:04.460 Now, one of the best points Harper made was on trade, especially trade with China.

00:11:08.800 And Harper doesn't need to take lessons from anyone on free trade. 0.91

00:11:11.740 I think he signed more free trade deals in his term in office than every other Canadian prime minister combined in history.

00:11:19.340 But he knows what Trump knows, that there is such a thing as a bad trade deal.

00:11:25.080 Watch this exchange.

00:11:26.020 I'll let it run a bit.

00:11:27.220 Again, I don't want to focus on Ben Shapiro's aggravating point that,

00:11:31.040 well, sure, all the factories are gone, but now our cell phones are $25 cheaper.

00:11:35.920 At least Ben let Harper answer, unlike a uniform journalist would.

00:11:41.300 Take a look.

00:11:42.100 President Trump came along.

00:11:43.260 I remember when we had this debate in the election, he came along and he started talking about good deals and bad deals.

00:11:48.200 And people went, oh, you know, some, quote, economist started saying, oh, wow, he's a protectionist.

00:11:53.640 Bad deals.

00:11:55.080 He could be a protectionist.

00:11:56.980 But can you have a bad trade deal?

00:11:59.120 Absolutely you can have a bad trade deal.

00:12:00.720 I mean, when companies, let's forget about governments, when companies do a commercial deal with another company,

00:12:06.440 why do they have dozens of analysts and lawyers and accountants working over these deals?

00:12:10.800 Because any deal would be a good deal?

00:12:13.040 I mean, seriously, you have to really know what you're talking about when you negotiate something as complex as a trade deal.

00:12:19.660 The United States, when the United States allowed China to enter the WTO, we set up a situation,

00:12:25.720 Canada's in the same boat, where the Chinese have wide-ranging, unfettered access to almost all of our economy. 1.00

00:12:32.980 And we can only sell to the Chinese when, where, and in what quantity and for how long they say we can. 1.00

00:12:39.620 And obviously, in that kind of situation, what have we seen?

00:12:43.240 We have seen massive imbalances.

00:12:46.040 Imbalances, by the way, yeah, you know, economists will say a poor country like China is bound to have a trade surplus with the United States.

00:12:51.880 But it's not bound to get bigger as China gets more wealthy, which is what is happening.

00:12:57.120 This is because you have a bad deal that provides grossly unequal access.

00:13:02.060 And the consequence has been the outflow of millions of jobs from the United States, from Canada to China,

00:13:07.900 with no discernible benefits to our working population.

00:13:10.980 So as a populist conservative, or frankly, I would say as a conservative, you don't sign deals like that.

00:13:15.320 You sign deals where you know that, overall, your economy is going to benefit and that lots of people in your economy are going to benefit.

00:13:22.060 The countervailing case that's been made by particularly libertarians on trade has been,

00:13:26.440 why would you tax your own citizens by essentially tariffing Chinese products in order to punish the Chinese?

00:13:32.520 I mean, is the goal to have them lower their own tariffs, or is the goal to cut them out of the market because they're, quote-unquote, sucking our jobs out?

00:13:39.500 The fact is that we've gotten a lot of cheap products out of China, and people tend to see that as a bad thing.

00:13:44.320 But the fact is that consumer prices have been going down in the United States consistently on a variety of levels.

00:13:48.120 But that's a terrible argument.

00:13:49.960 You know, it's a terrible argument.

00:13:51.420 First of all, the question of whether the tariff policy is effective is a different question.

00:13:55.740 But the argument made by the apologists for the current Chinese trade relationship is,

00:14:00.280 look, yeah, so we've lost all these jobs, so we've lost, you know, all these factories and everything that moved to China,

00:14:07.260 but we get cheap products.

00:14:08.820 But you know what?

00:14:10.500 I get to sell stuff to you and you get to buy it.

00:14:13.520 That's not a trade relationship.

00:14:15.660 That's a purchase.

00:14:17.180 And that's not the justification for trade.

00:14:19.500 You know, even people, these libertarians will jump up and quote David Ricardo and classical economists.

00:14:24.700 David Ricardo didn't say it would be a good idea for Britain to open its markets if it couldn't sell its goods anywhere else.

00:14:30.780 He made the argument for reciprocal trade.

00:14:32.880 And that is the core of the argument for reciprocal trade.

00:14:36.540 And the idea that a trade relationship, no matter how badly structured, is somehow good for you, losing jobs, losing well-paying jobs by the millions to get cheap products,

00:14:47.680 which, by the way, in most cases you could get from places other than China, is not an argument for the kind of trade imbalance we have seen and the kind of economic outflows we've seen.

00:14:56.160 And that's, by the way, you know, obviously there's a separate question about China being a geopolitical and strategic rival.

00:15:02.220 But even leaving that aside, that's not a good economic relationship.

00:15:06.240 And the president, my view, the president not only is right, the president deserves a lot of credit as the first president willing to take on this.

00:15:13.900 The current trade relationship with China is beneficial to a few well-connected American corporations who get to operate in China.

00:15:22.320 But it's not beneficial to the economy as a whole, and something has to be done about that.

00:15:26.500 Or we are going to see a situation where the Chinese is the largest, China's economy is the largest in the world, 0.68

00:15:32.420 with a grossly unequal trade access to the United States, and that's not in anybody's interest.

00:15:37.380 Wow. I tell you, every word there.

00:15:40.240 I mean, Justin Trudeau couldn't even understand that, let alone possibly say that, let alone think it.

00:15:46.080 I really, really feel the lack of Harper's smarts, don't you?

00:15:50.820 I mean, it's just such a reminder of what we lost.

00:15:54.860 Now, one of the things that's toughest for Canadian conservatives to talk about is immigration.

00:15:59.840 Scratch that, actually.

00:16:00.820 Canadians talk about it all the time, especially Canadian conservatives.

00:16:05.120 According to Angus Reid, 49% of Canadians say immigration is too high.

00:16:11.560 That's the red line there.

00:16:13.180 31% say it's okay where it is.

00:16:15.740 And the line at the bottom there, 6%, say it's not high enough, only 6%.

00:16:19.700 Yet Trudeau is jacking it up even more.

00:16:22.740 What I really should say is that Canadian conservative politicians don't have the courage to say even the most basic things about this crisis,

00:16:29.560 even though 80% of Canadians say that immigration is fine or too high, and yet Trudeau is raising it in the face of their views.

00:16:38.400 So Andrew Scheer, Michelle Rempel, they're AWOL on this subject.

00:16:41.780 Only the new premier of Quebec, Francois Legault, has come close to criticizing immigration levels, and Maxime Bernier, too.

00:16:50.400 Harper notes what they know, that it's not fringe to be concerned about these culture-changing shocks brought about by unelected elites.

00:16:58.740 And even if Ben Shapiro gets cheap Mexican labor to do his gardening and housekeeping, it's still not a justification. 0.68

00:17:04.900 Watch this.

00:17:06.000 Where do you stand on immigration?

00:17:07.640 So in the United States, obviously, this has become a massive question, considering President Trump's position on the border.

00:17:13.060 And there are a variety of positions.

00:17:14.260 We've got sort of the libertarian position that says, you want to come in and work, come on in and work, but you don't necessarily get citizenship.

00:17:19.500 You've got the kind of far left and now mainstream left position.

00:17:22.540 Come on in no matter what.

00:17:23.900 We'll try and give you citizenship.

00:17:25.240 You don't have to assimilate.

00:17:26.020 You've got the hard right restrictionist position, which is you're undercutting our labor base.

00:17:30.320 Don't come in at all.

00:17:31.520 We don't want you here.

00:17:32.640 Where do you come down on that?

00:17:33.620 What do you think conservatives want to come down on that?

00:17:34.500 Well, elements of a couple of those things.

00:17:36.860 First of all, the Conservative Party of Canada is one of the few right-of-center parties in the world that gets a large percentage and sometimes an outright majority of the immigrant vote.

00:17:45.660 So we're very distinct that way in a way that's very positive.

00:17:48.320 I'm fundamentally pro-immigration.

00:17:50.940 I think one of the things that has made Canada, the United States, and our society successful is that we embrace newcomers who often, frankly, are often conservatives.

00:18:00.480 They're entrepreneurial.

00:18:01.620 They're ambitious.

00:18:02.380 They're aspirational.

00:18:03.360 They believe in family.

00:18:04.280 They believe in faith.

00:18:05.300 They're opposed to crime, et cetera.

00:18:07.180 So I actually think, properly done, immigrants should be a really great base for a Conservative Party.

00:18:14.920 But first and foremost, immigration has to be legal.

00:18:17.740 Immigration is not a right. 1.00

00:18:19.360 Immigration is something granted by the citizens of the country through law.

00:18:23.300 I have no time for illegal immigration.

00:18:25.560 And as I've told other leaders in other countries, no illegal immigration system or phenomenon will ever be popular with a mass of people.

00:18:32.840 It just will not.

00:18:33.660 Obviously, in modern day and age, the immigration system should be scoped primarily around the country's economic needs.

00:18:40.900 There can be humanitarian and family considerations, but it's fundamentally about the economy and about building our society.

00:18:46.820 So, look, I'm fundamentally – it's what I say about so much in the book.

00:18:49.940 I'm fundamentally pro-immigration, just like I'm fundamentally pro-trade, pro-markets.

00:18:54.480 But that doesn't mean that immigration is good no matter what. 0.73

00:18:58.460 That having, you know, caravans of people invading the country would be a good thing. 1.00

00:19:03.340 Or that you can live, frankly, what I would consider the libertarian delusion that people will come into the country, but somehow they will have no access to social services.

00:19:12.280 It's just never going to happen.

00:19:14.000 So, you know, it's got to be a policy rooted in what we have seen to be successful over the decades.

00:19:19.780 A lot of smarts there.

00:19:23.120 I wish Andrew Scheer spoke like that.

00:19:25.600 Stephen Harper also weighed in on nationalism and patriotism, things that Trudeau and France's Emmanuel Macron both denounced together in the same day in Europe this month.

00:19:36.060 I'm sure they cooperated on that timing.

00:19:39.320 Here's Harper. 1.00

00:19:40.160 Lots of common sense here.

00:19:41.240 Take a look.

00:19:42.420 Let's start with sort of the perspective on nationalism.

00:19:44.800 So there's been a big debate in the wake of President Trump about nationalism on the right.

00:19:48.560 So there are some folks like Jonah Goldberg, I think I would count myself in this camp, who are very attached to the idea of patriotism but not nationalism.

00:19:56.000 There are a lot of folks like Rich Lowry at National Review, again, one of our colleagues there, who's very attached to nationalism as distinct from patriotism.

00:20:03.040 Do you see a distinction between nationalism and patriotism?

00:20:05.440 Not really.

00:20:06.220 So I argue in the book that a healthy nationalism is part of a healthy society.

00:20:11.820 You know, I think the kind of the Germanys of the world where nationalism for historical reasons become kind of inherently suspicious is just, is frankly just wrong and wrong for conservatives. 0.82

00:20:23.160 Now, in that sense, as I say, I'm using patriotism and nationalism as virtually interchangeable.

00:20:27.900 I would agree that if you get kind of far-right nationalism that's essentially ethnic or racial in character, it could become a different kind of beast.

00:20:36.700 But frankly, conservatives don't advocate that kind of nationalism.

00:20:41.280 I learned a lot from Harper.

00:20:43.240 Frankly, my esteem for him went up.

00:20:45.200 I think he's clearly warmed to Donald Trump, not necessarily Trump's personality, but his achievements.

00:20:50.860 It's tough not to, especially if you're an economic expert like Harper.

00:20:54.060 I think Harper has overcome the Canadian snobbery about Trump.

00:20:59.120 I'm guessing Harper has also spent a lot of time recently with grown-ups and not a lot of time with the Unifor media and pundits in the past two years.

00:21:07.500 I still like Ben Shapiro, but more for his campus battles against political correctness, taking on cultural Marxism and identity politics,

00:21:15.260 than for his views on foreign trade, immigration, or Trump, which I regard as sort of never Trump and a little bit globalist.

00:21:22.540 That said, would you agree with me that he's a better interviewer, as in he lets Harper answer, and he's smarter than anyone in the Canadian media party would be?

00:21:34.160 I think I might get a copy of Harper's new book.

00:21:36.540 It sounds better than I thought it would be, less risk-averse than I thought it would be, maybe even more Trumpy.

00:21:42.220 I might see if Harper would agree to be interviewed by me about his book, but who knows?

00:21:46.820 Maybe he's not quite that bold and populist, but I'll check.

00:21:50.400 Stay with us for more.

00:21:52.540 Stay with us for more.

00:22:22.540 Call in the last life.

00:22:26.360 Don't escape from reality.

00:22:33.980 Enjoyed the show.

00:22:40.520 I also write songs, lead singer just quit, then you'll need someone new.

00:22:47.520 I love the way you move on stage. The whole room belongs to you.

00:22:54.520 Don't you see what you could be?

00:22:57.520 No one will play us on the radio. We need to get experimental.

00:23:01.520 Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening me.

00:23:04.520 Galileo!

00:23:05.520 Do it again.

00:23:06.520 Galileo!

00:23:07.520 One more. How many more Galileos do you want?

00:23:09.520 Roger, there's only room in this band for one hysterical queen. 1.00

00:23:16.520 Mark these words.

00:23:17.520 No one will play a queen.

00:23:19.520 Fortune favours the bold.

00:23:23.520 Freddie, concerning your private life.

00:23:24.520 What more do you need to know?

00:23:26.520 I make music.

00:23:28.520 I want to give the audience a song that they can perform.

00:23:33.520 What's the lyric?

00:23:34.520 Sing it.

00:23:35.520 We will, we will rock you.

00:23:43.520 Ready, Freddie?

00:23:44.520 Let's do it.

00:23:46.520 We are the champions, my friends.

00:23:51.520 Well, that is a movie about Freddie Mercury, a larger-than-life rock singer with the band Queen.

00:23:59.520 You may not know his story well, but you cannot have missed his songs from We Are the Champions to Another One Bites the Dust to his rock opera, Bohemian Rhapsody.

00:24:10.520 It's an interesting story for those who love music, but it's got a bit of a politic to it.

00:24:17.520 And joining us now to talk about this is our friend Joe Wormington, a columnist with the Toronto Sun.

00:24:22.520 Joe, great to see you.

00:24:23.520 Great to see you too, Ezra.

00:24:25.520 And it's interesting that we're talking about this subject because you wouldn't think that a movie about an entertainer would cross over into that nasty kind of Trump-like politics, but it has.

00:24:36.520 Well, yeah, I mean, I have never gotten deep into Queen, but you've got to love the brio, the energy, the charisma of Freddie Mercury.

00:24:46.520 I mean, he was over the top, but he had a style that was really like no other.

00:24:52.520 And those songs, the reason they click is they have a sustainability to them.

00:24:59.520 Well, the audience is a big part of the song.

00:25:01.520 You know, we will rock you.

00:25:03.520 Yeah.

00:25:04.520 And he was a bigger-than-life performer.

00:25:06.520 And, you know, you say the names Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Prince, and Freddie Mercury's right there with him.

00:25:11.520 I think you're right.

00:25:12.520 Normally we don't go into a general movie review on the show.

00:25:16.520 I mean, I talk about cultural issues.

00:25:18.520 But you raised this with me, and you said, if I can paraphrase what you told me before we turned the cameras on, that you had heard bad reviews about this, and you didn't want to prejudge it.

00:25:29.520 You didn't want to get the spoiler.

00:25:31.520 But you went in there with low expectations.

00:25:34.520 Tell me a little bit about, first of all, how is the movie, and then what was it about those reviews?

00:25:40.520 What do you think is going on here?

00:25:42.520 Well, I think something's going on for sure, because I went into the movie thinking it was bad.

00:25:46.520 And then after I saw the movie, I heard how bad it was.

00:25:49.520 But I loved it.

00:25:50.520 And I was with my 18-year-old son, who's a, you know, guy who plays guitar and all that.

00:25:54.520 He loved it.

00:25:55.520 And the audience was full of people with their teenage kids that were coming out going, wow, this guy, Mercury, who the heck, you know.

00:26:03.520 And it was one of the best rock and roll movies I've ever seen.

00:26:06.520 I think the only one that I liked as much, I guess, was La Bamba.

00:26:10.520 I loved that.

00:26:11.520 And I also liked Almost Famous.

00:26:13.520 It's right there with those movies.

00:26:15.520 And, you know, the audience has decided.

00:26:18.520 I mean, it made $100 million over the last two weeks.

00:26:21.520 In fact, it won the first weekend, even though it was getting trashed by everybody.

00:26:25.520 Now, the politics of it, I guess, you know, trying to figure it out, but there's a few things in there.

00:26:30.520 There's political things about where he was from.

00:26:33.520 Obviously, the whole business of, you know, his sexuality, which his whole life was an injury. 0.58

00:26:38.520 He did not want to talk about that.

00:26:40.520 And, you know, I think that perhaps he wasn't, the story wasn't enough about the gay part of his life that maybe the critics would have liked.

00:26:48.520 I don't know, but that's kind of what I'm reading into it.

00:26:50.520 Well, that's the thing.

00:26:51.520 I mean, everyone in, everyone who's a success has to be grabbed politically.

00:26:58.520 Look at Taylor Swift.

00:26:59.520 For so many years, she stayed quiet about politics.

00:27:02.520 Right.

00:27:03.520 And she was practically bullied into saying, fine, fine, go Democrats. 0.64

00:27:07.520 And can there be someone who can just be about the music?

00:27:11.520 I mean, there was a little clip in the trailer there.

00:27:14.520 I make music.

00:27:15.520 What more do you need to know?

00:27:16.520 The criticisms in the movie reviews you mentioned, were they angry that the play was not more about gay politics and gay action?

00:27:29.520 It was too much a musician's movie?

00:27:31.520 Well, I read one piece in Vanity Fair talking about Sacha Baron Cohen, who was originally signed on to play Freddie Mercury.

00:27:38.520 Right.

00:27:39.520 And I think would have been great at it.

00:27:40.520 And it quoted him, and he was on Howard Stern Show talking about how, you know, he wanted to go more into the gay lifestyle, into the clubs in Berlin, and talk about Freddie's life there.

00:27:50.520 This was in the movie.

00:27:52.520 They alluded to it.

00:27:53.520 They did not hide it.

00:27:54.520 And, you know, we all know that that was a different time.

00:27:59.520 I mean, if Freddie Mercury were alive today, he would be okay to be married, have a family, and all those things.

00:28:05.520 At that time, there was shame to it, and it wasn't very fair.

00:28:08.520 And he was really conflicted because of his background.

00:28:11.520 But he would not have liked, and the Queen guys have said this, the focus of his life being in the bathhouses and all that stuff.

00:28:20.520 That was recreational Freddie, but he was about the work.

00:28:23.520 He was about performing in the audience.

00:28:25.520 And, you know, there's clips in the movie, even in that trailer, where the press are really hounding him.

00:28:30.520 And there's some great lines that are saying, tell us about your sexuality, look at the reporter, let's talk about your sexuality.

00:28:35.520 He'd throw it right back in their face.

00:28:37.520 He was very private about that.

00:28:39.520 And so today's critics wanted to, they were sort of echoing those reporters of the day.

00:28:45.520 Come on, talk about sex.

00:28:46.520 Come on, talk about your lifestyle.

00:28:47.520 He said, no, I'd like to talk about my...

00:28:49.520 There's a line in the movie where he told the members of Queen that he had AIDS.

00:28:54.520 And he said in there that he wasn't going to be the poster boy for AIDS.

00:28:59.520 Well, I'm sure that that rankled some people.

00:29:02.520 So, you know, I don't think that there's anything wrong with that.

00:29:06.520 Maybe at that time it was, he thought of it differently, but he did not announce that he had AIDS.

00:29:10.520 He probably didn't want to be defined by that.

00:29:12.520 He didn't announce he had it until the day before he died.

00:29:14.520 Now, you mentioned the members of Queen.

00:29:17.520 What, from their point of view, were they involved in the movie?

00:29:21.520 They were.

00:29:22.520 And so obviously this has their okay.

00:29:25.520 This is kosher by them.

00:29:27.520 Sasha Bear Cohen said that the Queen guys wanted to kill Freddie off halfway through the movie. 0.94

00:29:32.520 And they thought that was ridiculous.

00:29:34.520 Now, I don't know if that's true or not.

00:29:36.520 But if that is true, what Queen was trying to say was that Freddie was about Queen and Queen was about Freddie.

00:29:43.520 And it was an interesting story.

00:29:45.520 There was three...

00:29:46.520 The three guys in Queen were all these kind of guys that...

00:29:49.520 Two of them later became PhDs.

00:29:51.520 You know, they were really smart guys.

00:29:54.520 One guy was a dental student.

00:29:55.520 The other guy was in the astronomy and all that kind of stuff.

00:29:59.520 And the other guy was an electrical engineer, the bass player.

00:30:02.520 And Freddie was this kind of interesting guy who...

00:30:05.520 He was born in Zanzibar.

00:30:06.520 Where is Zanzibar?

00:30:07.520 I don't know, but it's an island here.

00:30:09.520 Very exotic.

00:30:10.520 Yeah.

00:30:11.520 Very exotic.

00:30:12.520 He was a Parsi background.

00:30:13.520 That's sort of a Persian background?

00:30:14.520 Yeah.

00:30:15.520 Persian background.

00:30:16.520 I mean, Freddie Mercury is obviously a stage name.

00:30:18.520 He looks a little bit different, doesn't he?

00:30:20.520 His name is Farouk Bolsera.

00:30:22.520 That's his name.

00:30:23.520 Hmm.

00:30:24.520 And he was raised in a very strict Parsi family, a really good mom and dad.

00:30:28.520 His dad got a job in England working for the government.

00:30:31.520 That's why they moved to London.

00:30:32.520 And he had real hang-ups about all this stuff, including his teeth, his name.

00:30:37.520 And they used the P word to describe him.

00:30:39.520 And, you know, that's a theme in the movie as well.

00:30:42.520 You know, the P word, I won't say it, but it's a racial thing towards somebody, say, from

00:30:46.520 Pakistan.

00:30:47.520 Oh, yeah, okay.

00:30:48.520 But he would always yell back, he's not from Pakistan. 0.99

00:30:51.520 And interesting, you know, this guy, the reason that, you know, he's most famous, I

00:30:57.520 think, crossed over to everywhere was July 13th, 1985.

00:31:02.520 We have to talk about that.

00:31:03.520 Live Aid at Wembley.

00:31:04.520 He almost didn't do that concert for a number of reasons, including being sick.

00:31:09.520 He had, it sort of suggests that he already knew that he had HIV before that.

00:31:13.520 But, I mean, you know, it could be some poetic license in the movie.

00:31:17.520 I don't know.

00:31:18.520 But it certainly looked like that he knew about it.

00:31:21.520 He gave the performance of the ages.

00:31:23.520 It's, most people say it's the greatest live performance ever.

00:31:26.520 You know, it's on most people's list as number one.

00:31:29.520 But it almost didn't happen because they didn't tell him about it.

00:31:33.520 He was in Berlin doing a solo project in the studio working away at that.

00:31:37.520 And everyone was trying to get a hold of him.

00:31:39.520 And it wasn't until the woman in his life, which is another reason I think that this movie,

00:31:43.520 the love of his life, that's a song that he did, was a woman named Mary Austin.

00:31:48.520 Beautiful woman around, just a little younger than he was, who helped him with his style.

00:31:53.520 You saw in the clip where she's sort of putting on the clothes and this kind of stuff. 0.93

00:31:56.520 She went to him and said, why aren't you answering about Live Aid?

00:31:59.520 He didn't even know what it was.

00:32:00.520 Yeah.

00:32:01.520 And once he realized that the people had kept him out of that,

00:32:06.520 he was so upset.

00:32:08.520 Don't forget, he was born in Africa.

00:32:09.520 Oh, yeah.

00:32:10.520 It meant a lot to him.

00:32:12.520 And the Queen guys were all very reluctant to do that too,

00:32:15.520 because they had not played in a few years together.

00:32:18.520 And they knew there was going to be 2 billion people watching.

00:32:21.520 And he had this line in the movie, which I think is pretty accurate.

00:32:25.520 He said to the other guys, we've got to put our personal stuff aside,

00:32:28.520 because if we don't do our part for those kids,

00:32:33.520 we will never, ever be able to live with ourselves.

00:32:36.520 We'll look back and regret it.

00:32:38.520 Well, now here we are, you and me, 33 years later.

00:32:41.520 And I watched that day.

00:32:42.520 I was, you know, 21 years old.

00:32:44.520 And we're talking about that Live Aid concert and the importance that all those artists, you know, brought.

00:32:50.520 And I think that they really did help there.

00:32:52.520 That was a telethon that worked.

00:32:53.520 Yeah.

00:32:54.520 Now, you mentioned Mary Austin, the love of his life.

00:32:57.520 Maybe that's what rankled some of the reviewers too, is that the movie treated that.

00:33:02.520 And because...

00:33:03.520 His soulmate was her.

00:33:04.520 He said in the movie that there's no man that he could meet anywhere that could ever touch his heart like Mary Austin.

00:33:10.520 And, you know, to this day, Ezra, you know where she lives?

00:33:13.520 She lives in that mansion in London.

00:33:15.520 He left it to her.

00:33:16.520 She lives there.

00:33:17.520 You know what, and again, if this were just a movie about his biography and his music, critics wouldn't care about that, but they want him to be a political weapon.

00:33:26.520 Now, you touched upon the racial epithet.

00:33:31.520 He would say, no, I'm not from Pakistan.

00:33:34.520 Did he ever deal with some racial or religious issues?

00:33:38.520 Is there a political correctness there also?

00:33:40.520 Well, you know, the movie addresses that, which I think is another reason why.

00:33:44.520 His family and the people that, you know, the Parsi people were forced out of Zanzibar.

00:33:49.520 And it says in the movie that it was by Muslim aggression that moved them out. 0.67

00:33:53.520 That's why they laughed.

00:33:54.520 I don't, I haven't read up on it.

00:33:55.520 I don't think you have.

00:33:56.520 I'm not saying that I'm an expert in that.

00:33:58.520 The movie says that.

00:34:00.520 His father was very, very, very good man, but he did not understand this rock and roll stuff.

00:34:07.520 He did not understand it.

00:34:08.520 But the one thing that he did understand was when his kid went to Wembley Stadium.

00:34:13.520 He went to Wembley Stadium July 13, 1985 to raise money for kids that are starving in Africa.

00:34:18.520 That part he got about his kid.

00:34:20.520 Well, it sounds very interesting.

00:34:21.520 I mean, I don't have any Queen albums, but of course, like everybody, I've enjoyed watching the clips on YouTube.

00:34:26.520 Watch for Mike Myers in this.

00:34:27.520 Oh, he's in there too.

00:34:28.520 Mike Myers is in this and you won't even know it's him.

00:34:31.520 And ironically, he plays the guy in the movie who said, what's this Bohemian Rhapsody?

00:34:36.520 We're not putting that out.

00:34:37.520 Oh, isn't that funny?

00:34:39.520 Well, listen, Joe, I really appreciate you talking about this.

00:34:41.520 I don't think I would have gone to see the movie on my own.

00:34:44.520 You have to go see it.

00:34:45.520 I think I want to now because if it's a good musical movie, and the box office suggests it is, the clips suggest that the actor here hit it out of the park musically.

00:34:56.520 I mean, imagine trying to walk in his shoes.

00:35:00.520 Yeah, pretty tough.

00:35:01.520 But the fact that all these leftist social justice reviewers are mad at the movie because it wasn't leftist enough.

00:35:07.520 They're telling you not to go to it.

00:35:08.520 Well, that's a reason.

00:35:09.520 That's why I think it's important what we're doing here.

00:35:11.520 Go to the movie.

00:35:12.520 Bohemian Rhapsody.

00:35:13.520 Well, I'm going to do that.

00:35:14.520 I'm going to do that.

00:35:15.520 And you know, I know your audience is around the world.

00:35:17.520 And I just want to say that because I'll say it again.

00:35:20.520 Bohemian Rhapsody, it's a great movie.

00:35:23.520 You will enjoy it.

00:35:24.520 You'll have fun.

00:35:25.520 You will have tears in your eyes because there's some sad moments and there's some dark moments.

00:35:29.520 But mostly, it's a celebration of one of the greatest artists in the world and one of the people that helped raise a lot of money for a lot of people.

00:35:36.520 He was a good guy.

00:35:37.520 Well, you've convinced me.

00:35:39.520 I know that he had a certain look.

00:35:42.520 I mean, he had the extra teeth.

00:35:43.520 Well, the teeth.

00:35:44.520 You were saying he had an extra set of teeth.

00:35:45.520 He had money to get the teeth out later, but he was told that if you do that, you might not be able to sing as well.

00:35:51.520 He kept the teeth.

00:35:52.520 Well, it was a trademark look.

00:35:53.520 Yeah.

00:35:54.520 A trademark look.

00:35:55.520 And a trademark sound.

00:35:56.520 And the fact that all these lefty critics don't like the movie, but the people do, that's convinced me to go see you.

00:36:00.520 Joe, great to see you.

00:36:01.520 All right, Ezra.

00:36:02.520 Thanks for having me.

00:36:03.520 All right, there you have it.

00:36:04.520 Joe Warmington, the scrawler.

00:36:05.520 He writes for the Toronto Sun on a variety of beats, political beat, crime beat.

00:36:09.520 But today, he was talking to us about a movie that I am going to go see.

00:36:13.520 Stay with us.

00:36:14.520 More ahead on The Rebel.

00:36:15.520 Hey, welcome back on my monologue last Friday about Unifor announcing they will campaign against the conservatives in the next federal election.

00:36:34.520 Betty writes, shouldn't Jerry Diaz be looking out for the rights of his union members on their jobs?

00:36:40.520 Who asked him to meddle in political elections?

00:36:42.520 How can Canadians ever expect objective reporting now?

00:36:45.520 Yeah, well, not just now, but I remind you that in the last election, the Canadian Media Guild had a massive quarter million dollar campaign against Harper, too.

00:36:57.520 And I'm sure Unifor did.

00:36:58.520 I'd have to check just off the top of my head.

00:37:01.520 I can't remember.

00:37:02.520 But, yeah, it's not new.

00:37:04.520 I think the only thing that's new here is the brazenness with which they're showing their anti-conservative stripes.

00:37:12.520 And I think Jerry Diaz, like so many union bosses, wants to be a political boss, but doesn't want to actually have to run and be subject to the will of the people, am I right?

00:37:24.520 Nicholas writes, the memes are hilarious.

00:37:27.520 This McLean's cover has been endlessly mocked all over social media.

00:37:33.520 Yeah, I mean, listen, who knows?

00:37:35.520 I mean, you can't measure the public's pulse by checking Twitter because it's too easily gamed and trolled.

00:37:44.520 There's too many robots and think-alikes on there.

00:37:48.520 But it was mocked on there, but that doesn't really say anything.

00:37:52.520 I just think it didn't look that compelling, a cover for the five conservatives on it.

00:37:58.520 Who knows? Maybe I'm wrong.

00:38:00.520 On my interview with Jack Buckby, Paul writes, Brexit in name only.

00:38:05.520 May leads an establishment globalist party that calls itself conservative.

00:38:10.520 Well, you got to remember that the conservatives only reluctantly put the referendum to the British people to take the wind out of the sails of the UKIP party.

00:38:19.520 They were shocked when it went yes to Brexit. They were shocked.

00:38:24.520 And they didn't want to carry it out.

00:38:26.520 Just the same way we saw Democrats in Florida try and slow walk the certification of the election of Republicans

00:38:34.520 and have recounts and come up with every excuse.

00:38:37.520 Frankly, how the 2016 presidential election was disputed.

00:38:41.520 And all those tricks and delays by reluctant work-to-rule type bureaucrats still being done for Brexit too. 0.92

00:38:50.520 I've always said that the difference between Brexit being mauled by the deep state for two years and Trump

00:38:58.520 is that at least in the person of Trump, you have someone fighting back for his own sake.

00:39:03.520 Brexit, I mean, Nigel Farage got the win and he's sort of been semi-retired since then.

00:39:08.520 And so there was no institutional champion for Brexit.

00:39:12.520 Certainly not Theresa May, not the party that didn't want Brexit in the first place. 0.98

00:39:16.520 So, yeah, it's tough. It's interesting to see.

00:39:18.520 Let me just throw one last comment to you about it.

00:39:20.520 I see that Andrew Scheer is digging in.

00:39:22.520 In fact, he put this little tweet up.

00:39:25.520 We'll put it on the screen here for you to see.

00:39:27.520 He put up this tweet saying he's strongly for Brexit.

00:39:31.520 And he did this now.

00:39:33.520 This isn't even something he did two years ago.

00:39:35.520 And I'm thinking, well, of course, I'm for Brexit too because I'm a conservative

00:39:39.520 and I believe in national sovereignty and I'm against the European Union.

00:39:42.520 But I'm a pundit.

00:39:44.520 Like, my job is to be mouthy and to mouth off about everything.

00:39:47.520 And I have no limits on me other than my own taste.

00:39:50.520 But why is the leader of the opposition of Canada weighing into a domestic matter in the United Kingdom?

00:39:58.520 What business is it of his?

00:40:01.520 Would we like it if a British politician, especially an opposition leader,

00:40:07.520 I guess it would be worse if the Prime Minister weighed in on a Canadian referendum?

00:40:10.520 How would Canadians like it if Theresa May, in the middle of a dispute over a referendum matter 0.99

00:40:15.520 that goes to the essence of our democracy, if Theresa May weighed in? 0.99

00:40:19.520 We'd tell her to buzz off. 0.58

00:40:21.520 It's so weird that Andrew Scheer is picking that battle.

00:40:26.520 There are no votes for Andrew Scheer in the United Kingdom.

00:40:30.520 The votes for him are in this country.

00:40:32.520 All he's doing is meddling in a Trudeopian kind of way.

00:40:36.520 Trudeau meddled in Brexit too. 0.99

00:40:38.520 But, you know, Trudeau's a bonehead, we all agree. 0.98

00:40:40.520 What's Scheer doing? 0.98

00:40:42.520 And Scheer's late conversion to national sovereignty against supranational organizations,

00:40:48.520 yeah, it's nice to see.

00:40:49.520 But how about we see some of that here in Canada?

00:40:52.520 I remind you that Andrew Scheer whipped his entire caucus

00:40:55.520 to support the Paris global warming scheme coming out of the UN.

00:41:00.520 We don't yet know what Andrew Scheer is going to do about the Marrakesh migrant scheme

00:41:05.520 that the UN is cooking up.

00:41:06.520 I think Andrew Scheer should cork it about British domestic politics

00:41:10.520 and maybe fight a little more for Canadian sovereignty.

00:41:13.520 Leave the punditing on other countries to pundits.

00:41:16.520 It's just weird.

00:41:17.520 Well, that's our show for today.

00:41:19.520 Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,

00:41:22.520 to you at home, goodnight and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - November 20, 2018

Stephen Harper on populism, trade and immigration： A refreshing change from Trudeau (and a few Conservatives, too)

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