Rebel News Podcast - The media says that Trump has lost his mind. But what about Joe Biden？

00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. Today I ask the question that many of you ask. Is Joe Biden all there? I mean,

00:00:07.840 mentally? And I don't mean that in a name-calling kind of way. I mean, is he cognitively up for the

00:00:13.680 job? You've got to be tough and smart to be president. Is Joe all there? I'll go through

00:00:21.000 some of the facts with you. Before I do, let me invite you to become a subscriber to what we call

00:00:25.760 Rebel News Plus. It's the video version of these podcasts. You also get access to Sheila Gunn-Reed's

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00:00:45.860 only 80 bucks for the year, not 96. You can get that at rebelnews.com. Okay, here's today's podcast.

00:00:55.760 Tonight, the media says that Trump has lost his mind. But what about Joe Biden? It's August 7th,

00:01:13.340 and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:16.820 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:20.320 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the

00:01:26.180 government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:01:35.480 Both the left and the right call their political opponents names, but I think the idea of

00:01:42.540 denormalizing someone, deplatforming someone, is more a feature of the left, and I think it's because

00:01:49.540 it's easier than debating. I mean, the right calls names, too, but nothing like this. I mean,

00:01:55.260 here's an example of a Canadian website, which is owned by the sister of the Tides Foundation founder,

00:02:03.020 actually saying, Hitler. Well, Donald Trump is worse than Hitler, and quoting Noam Chomsky to that

00:02:10.720 effect. Worse than Hitler? That's pretty bad. Do you mean to say that the millions of people 0.74

00:02:16.180 massacred in Europe, the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, they would have been better off 0.99

00:02:21.440 with Hitler than with Trump? That's just insane. It's demonization. It's not arguing with Trump. 0.98

00:02:29.620 It's trying to denormalize him so that people don't even talk to him. It's a form of deplatforming.

00:02:36.000 It's not just wacko news sources like National Observer. Here's global news carrying a story claiming

00:02:43.280 that Donald Trump has Nazi wear because, you see, there's an eagle on this Donald Trump shirt.

00:02:50.860 Yeah, no, an eagle is the American bird that has been for more than 200 years. I don't know if you've

00:02:58.400 ever seen a U.S. $1 bill. You can see on the back of it the official seal of the United States of America

00:03:06.740 has a rather militaristic eagle on it. That's the eagle that is part of the American iconography

00:03:14.940 for more than 200 years. Imagine how mad you have to be to be a journalist claiming that the use of

00:03:22.440 an eagle is a secret Nazi symbol. You'd have to be crazy, which, by the way, is another name that is 0.89

00:03:30.980 called to Donald Trump. Just Google Trump insane and you'll see endless examples. Here's a very 0.99

00:03:37.360 reputable liberal magazine called The Atlantic. They're calling him insane, according to psychologists

00:03:44.120 who have never met him. I don't know about the ethics of diagnosing someone who's not your patient.

00:03:49.680 Here's Al Franken. The president is crazy. Yeah, it could be, but that's Al Franken who lost his job 0.99

00:03:56.460 as a senator because he was groping a sleeping female reporter who was on a USO trip with him.

00:04:02.560 I think that's crazy, posing for a photo, groping someone. I think for Al Franken to call someone

00:04:09.800 else crazy is a bit much. The number one bestselling book in Canada, by the way,

00:04:16.120 is a book by Donald Trump's niece who actually hasn't met him in years. Here she is calling Trump

00:04:21.900 clinically insane. Not sure if she's a psychiatrist. There's so many examples. Here's the Guardian 0.73

00:04:28.140 newspaper, calling him a mad emperor, terrifying to behold. And even one of the most reputable

00:04:35.140 newspapers in American politics, the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, is Trump 0.99

00:04:41.500 mentally ill. Psychiatrists weigh in. Again, psychiatrists are actual medical doctors, 0.99

00:04:47.560 doctors, but none of them have actually examined Trump. Look, the right calls names too, but there's

00:04:54.040 a special style of name-calling, deplatforming, and denormalization that the left uses. They call

00:04:59.980 you a Nazi so people won't even talk to you. They call you insane because you don't debate with insane 1.00

00:05:05.720 people. You, at the very least, marginalize them. Maybe you get them help. All these claims against

00:05:11.620 Donald Trump's mind. Well, he put them to rest, at least for serious people, by taking a cognitive

00:05:18.940 test. That is, a test to test his mind. Is he still with it? Has he gone mad? Is he getting too

00:05:25.540 old? He took something called the Montreal Cognitive Test. And I have a couple of questions from it. I was

00:05:32.320 looking at it myself. I think I could do okay on it. Maybe I should test myself because I have the odd

00:05:37.100 Biden moment myself. Trump apparently got 30 out of 30, and it's questions like this.

00:05:43.540 The words face, velvet, church, daisy, and red are read out to you, and you have to repeat them.

00:05:54.400 And then five minutes later, after you answer a few other questions, you're asked to repeat them

00:05:59.660 again. Did you remember them five minutes later? I think that's probably tougher than it sounds. Or

00:06:04.520 you're read out these numbers. Two, one, eight, five, four. Say them in order. And then say

00:06:12.400 seven, four, two. Say them backwards. And there's little tricks like that, flipping things around in

00:06:19.320 numbers and memory and then come back. And you know what? I mean, I would take that test, but I don't

00:06:25.340 know if I'd get 30 out of 30. Trump did. They did this to Ronald Reagan, too. Now, it's true that in

00:06:31.800 his final days, he did have early stages of Alzheimer's disease. They did it to John McCain,

00:06:39.260 the Republican candidate in 2008. I think he was particularly unfair against McCain. No one doubted

00:06:45.580 that he was sharp. It's just that he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam and was so physically beat up.

00:06:51.080 But they used that as an attempt to call him crazy. The left does that a lot to the right. And in

00:06:57.240 Trump's case, I think he's got enormous mental stamina. And I say that not because he allegedly

00:07:02.840 passed some cognitive test with 30 out of 30. I say that because like you and like everyone in the

00:07:08.620 world, I watch Donald Trump. And one of the things he does, much more than our own Justin Trudeau,

00:07:13.620 for example, is he engages in fast, real-time, live national debates all the time with people who

00:07:21.400 deeply hate him. I'm talking about his press conferences. Throughout the pandemic, we've

00:07:26.120 seen Trump on his feet for up to two hours straight, going back and forth, mastering facts,

00:07:32.120 parrying thrusts for two hours with the likes of Jim Acosta of CNN. Donald Trump chooses his most

00:07:39.260 hostile interlocutors. He doesn't hide from CNN. He calls on them. When you spar with the toughest

00:07:47.340 journalists for an hour or two a day, it would be pretty clear if you lost your train of thought

00:07:52.500 or couldn't remember names. I've never seen Trump forget a name or lose a train of thought of you.

00:07:58.740 But I guess fair is fair. You do want the President of the United States to be sharp.

00:08:03.680 We don't want politicians to lie about their frail health, like some have in the past, including

00:08:09.140 FDR. If it's fair for Donald Trump to ask these questions, and I say it is. I think the left

00:08:15.080 overdoes it. I think the left demonizes it. But if those questions are fair for Donald Trump,

00:08:20.740 are they fair for Joe Biden? And the answer, of course, is of course it's fair. And would you look

00:08:29.020 at this new video comparing Joe Biden's mental acuity when he last ran in 2008, when he was running

00:08:36.860 for vice president versus today? Take a look at this and tell me, if you were a family member,

00:08:42.800 would you intervene? Take a look.

00:08:45.520 You ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration

00:08:50.000 has made them better off in the last eight years. And in addition to that,

00:08:56.240 we have to make sure that we are in a position that we are. We can ensure every single solitary

00:09:05.620 kid. We can provide catastrophic health insurance right off the bat. We can do that for the cost

00:09:10.860 of just one thing, the tax cut for people in the top 1%. And with, I don't know.

00:09:22.820 You got to give them to the people who are going to spend the money. You got to deal with making

00:09:26.460 sure American companies can be competitive, have a health care plan that doesn't put them

00:09:30.600 at a disadvantage when they compete overseas. You know, there's a, during World War II, you know,

00:09:37.360 where Roosevelt came up with a thing that, you know, was totally different than a, than the,

00:09:44.420 he called it the, you know. That is so painful to watch. I'm not angry at Joe Biden. I feel sad for

00:09:52.320 him, like he's being a bullet loaded into a gun shot by someone else. Joe Biden is not his former self.

00:09:59.040 I'm not saying he's crazy or insane. I'm not saying he has Alzheimer's. I'm saying he's 0.85

00:10:04.640 gearing down. He's 10 years past his prime. And yet they're trotting him out as the man who would

00:10:10.580 lead the most important country in the world in one of the most challenging times in the world.

00:10:16.220 They keep him under wraps. They don't let him go out and about. He would certainly never do

00:10:20.900 a two hour press conference like Donald Trump does. But even when he's in controlled environments

00:10:26.000 with very friendly journalists, he seems to come apart. Take a look at this when he was asked about

00:10:31.980 his cognitive abilities. Have you taken a cognitive test? No, I haven't taken a test.

00:10:37.620 Why the hell would I take a test? Come on, man. That's like saying you, before you got in this

00:10:44.080 program, you take a test where you're taking cocaine or not. What do you think, huh? Are you a

00:10:48.880 what do you say to President Trump who brags about his test and makes your mental state an issue for

00:10:56.960 voters? Well, if he can't figure out the difference between an elephant and a lion,

00:11:02.940 I don't know what the hell he's talking about. Did you watch that? Look, come on, man. I know you're

00:11:07.900 trying to goad me. But I mean, I'm so forward looking to have an opportunity to sit with the

00:11:14.880 president or stand with the president in debates. There are going to be plenty of time. And by the

00:11:20.260 way, as I joke with him, you know, I shouldn't say it. I'm going to say something I don't. I

00:11:25.800 probably shouldn't say. Anyway, I am I am very willing to let the American public judge my physical

00:11:33.340 mental, my physical as well as my mental fitness. Oh, that's painful to watch. Come on, man.

00:11:39.760 That's one of his fallbacks. It doesn't doesn't really work. You know, I think it's fair to say

00:11:46.640 that Joe Biden, he's not really in charge of Joe Biden. I don't think he's in charge of the

00:11:53.260 Democrats. I don't think he writes anything he says. And I think there's always someone in his ear

00:11:57.920 cutting him off, telling him to stop talking. I think if Joe Biden were to actually win this

00:12:03.740 November, he would not be the de facto president. Others would be running the country. Here's one

00:12:11.940 Hollywood Democrat who doesn't care. I think Biden is clearly more mentally stable than Trump. But

00:12:17.860 even if he wasn't, I would still vote for him because I don't care if we have to weekend at

00:12:22.140 Bernie's this thing. Just shove a stick up his keister and put him on the White House lawn like a 0.94

00:12:26.700 scarecrow. It's true. If you put your party loyalty ahead of the country, you would literally like

00:12:32.520 Weekend at Bernie's. That's an old movie where a dead guy was. They pretended he was alive and

00:12:37.500 walked around with a dead guy for a weekend. If you put your party ahead of your country,

00:12:43.040 you'd prefer a Weekend at Bernie's corpse as president to whoever the opposition had.

00:12:49.560 That's Hollywood normal. That's Democrat normal. But I don't think it's normal for a country.

00:12:55.540 Here in Canada, Justin Trudeau is an empty suit. We know that. He even says so himself whenever he's

00:13:02.120 called on things. He said, well, I listened to the experts or I was just there for the relationship.

00:13:07.180 Other people sweated the details. Who really calls the shots in Trudeau's Canada? Lobbyists like

00:13:13.500 We Charity? Maybe China, which presses him every way and he submits? Anyone firm can probably get 0.57

00:13:20.320 their way with Trudeau. For a while, Gerald Butts was clearly the operative prime minister in Canada.

00:13:26.100 It just gets a lot more dangerous when you're talking about the most powerful office in the world.

00:13:34.600 Stay with us for more.

00:13:35.700 Well, liberal politicians like to demonize firearms. It's certainly easier than blaming criminals for

00:13:53.360 the crime. It's sort of like how I prefer to blame my fork rather than myself for being fat. But at the

00:14:00.660 end of the day, it was me who did it. In Canada, we pretty much banned everything once, twice, three

00:14:06.920 times. But the United States still persists in its Second Amendment. And in fact, the greatest ads for

00:14:12.960 firearm ownership have not come from the gun lobby, but rather from the Antifa-style riots across America

00:14:19.600 these last months that have terrified Americans, especially with the Democrat cry to defund police.

00:14:27.020 If the police won't be there, maybe you have to be there for yourself. Gun sales have hit new records.

00:14:33.480 Well, there's a new book out that provides the intellectual basis for this natural American reaction to

00:14:40.640 arm themselves. The book is by our friend Dr. John Lott. It's called Gun Control Myths. And the author himself

00:14:49.180 joins us now via Skype from Missoula, Montana. Well, Dr. Lott, it's a pleasure to see you again. It's been too long.

00:14:56.360 Welcome back to the show. Tell us about your new book, Gun Control Myths.

00:15:01.620 It's great to talk to you, Ezra. Well, I mean, I think this election is the most important election

00:15:08.680 that we have in terms of determining whether people are going to be able to go and own guns

00:15:13.560 in the future in the United States. There's really a lot at stake here. And I wrote the book because

00:15:20.120 there are a lot of claims that we've frequently seen in the media that are being made these days

00:15:25.480 that I wanted to go and respond to. So there are 36 different myths that I go through in the book.

00:15:34.280 You know, claims that the United States has more mass public shootings than other countries.

00:15:39.240 You know, it's just one of the things that are there. So, you know, how people should respond

00:15:46.680 when they're confronted by a criminal, whether gun ownership in the home leads to more suicides.

00:15:54.040 There are lots of different types of issues that we go through in the book.

00:15:57.400 But if I could just say before I get into the book stuff, just your comments, because I think

00:16:03.400 they're right on at the beginning there. I think, you know, people, anybody who's read my academic

00:16:11.240 work knows I think police are extremely important in stopping crime. I think they're the single most

00:16:15.880 important factor. But the police themselves have always understood that they virtually always arrive

00:16:21.800 on the crime scene after the crimes occurred. And that raises the question what people should

00:16:26.280 do when they're having to confront a criminal by themselves. And that's in normal times.

00:16:32.600 But now we're in a situation, as you say, where we have calls for defunding the police.

00:16:39.080 We have orders for police to stand down during the riots. I mean, if people want to go and see what

00:16:44.200 it's going to be like having defunded police departments, just go and see what happens when you

00:16:50.360 have the police stand down. We have jails across the country in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

00:16:56.280 And Chicago that have released up to half the inmates that they had in the jails there.

00:17:02.600 It's kind of a perfect storm for having increased crime. And, you know, and as you say,

00:17:10.120 we've had record increases in gun sales because people have begun to realize even more than before

00:17:18.200 that they're ultimately going to have to be the ones who are responsible for protecting themselves

00:17:23.880 when the police can't be there.

00:17:26.200 You know, I think that so far in Canada, we have not been faced with massive police defunding efforts.

00:17:38.360 There have been some attempts to have votes along those lines, including here in Toronto,

00:17:43.160 Canada's largest city. But so far they've failed. I don't think we have the same mania.

00:17:48.440 And I don't think we have the same political funding behind it like the anti-gun groups do

00:17:54.520 in the States. But there are still many gun myths in Canada. You mentioned one of them about mass

00:18:02.600 shootings. Canada recently had our largest mass shooting ever in the Atlantic provinces, where

00:18:11.080 someone strangely with a mock police car and a mock police uniform just went on a shooting spree.

00:18:19.560 The RCMP have been extremely closed mouth about what went on there. There's been theories that he

00:18:25.160 was a police informant or other strange things. But that whole thing went away fairly quickly in the

00:18:31.800 media because I think that the Canadian media, they love the narrative of massive shootings in the

00:18:39.480 States. They cover those exhaustively. But massive shootings in Canada, well, that contradicts one of

00:18:48.040 our righteous delusions, which is that we are immune to gun crimes up here. I think that

00:18:56.200 Democrats in the States and Liberals in Canada

00:19:00.040 only focus on certain shootings that support their own political narrative. What do you think?

00:19:04.520 Well, I think you're right. And I think part of it, which fits in with what you're saying, is

00:19:11.480 I'm not even sure we ever knew what gun that the guy used to begin with, at least not in the initial

00:19:17.480 news reports that I saw over the first weeks afterwards. And I suspect that the gun that was used

00:19:24.680 didn't fit the narrative that was used there. I mean, the person in any case wasn't legally licensed to go and

00:19:32.680 own the guns that he had. So, you know, if he's already breaking the law by having that.

00:19:40.440 I know there was some initial attempt to go and blame the United States or something for him having

00:19:46.040 the guns that were there. But, you know, plus he ended up killing a police officer and taking

00:19:53.400 the guns that the officer had had. It's not really clear what you would do to prevent that.

00:19:59.640 I mean, I guess he had rammed his car into the other police vehicle that was there. So,

00:20:07.080 you know, there were lots of things that kind of didn't fit the normal narrative.

00:20:10.920 But, you know, you look around the world and the United States makes up about one percent

00:20:15.720 of the mass public shooters, which is way below our share of the world population, which is almost five

00:20:21.640 percent. And, you know, there are many countries in Europe. France, for example, has a fatality rate

00:20:31.560 for mass public shootings that's about 111 percent higher than the rate in the U.S. Russia has a rate

00:20:38.280 that's about 50 percent higher. You have other countries, major countries like Norway and Switzerland

00:20:45.240 and Finland, which have rates that are at least 25 percent higher than the rate in the United States,

00:20:50.840 and many smaller European countries, which are much higher. And—but, you know, they just don't

00:20:56.680 get much news coverage. I mean, obviously, when you had, like, the Paris shooting in November 2015,

00:21:05.320 for the concert hall, there were 130 people were killed. That gets news coverage. But I'll just

00:21:11.560 give you an example. So everybody knows about the mosque shooting in New Zealand last year.

00:21:18.600 But few people would know that within less than 24 hours of that, there was a big school shooting in

00:21:23.960 Brazil, or there was a mass public shooting in the Netherlands. You know, I can understand to a large 1.00

00:21:31.640 extent why American cases get more news coverage in America than cases in the rest of the world.

00:21:38.440 But it still creates kind of a misperception in people's minds of the rates that these attacks

00:21:44.040 are occurring in the United States versus other places, many of them like France,

00:21:48.200 which has extremely strict gun control laws. They ban semi-automatic guns, for example.

00:21:54.680 Russia only has about 1 percent of the adult population that is legally licensed to own a gun.

00:22:00.600 And yet they have much higher rates. The other thing that happens with the media coverage,

00:22:06.920 which really, I think, has a huge impact on the debate, is how they cover these cases,

00:22:12.440 or don't cover certain aspects of them. So, for example, relatively few people would know that 94

00:22:20.040 percent of the successful mass public shootings occur in places where guns are banned. 0.99

00:22:27.320 You know, these killers may be crazy in some sense, but they're not all stupid. They know if they go to 0.99

00:22:34.600 a place where people are banned from having guns, where the victims aren't able to go and defend

00:22:39.960 themselves, they're going to be more successful in killing more people. And that's going to make it

00:22:45.240 so that they're going to be able to get more news coverage. My guess is if even once in a while the

00:22:53.080 media would mention we've had yet another mass public shooting where guns were banned, we'd have

00:23:00.280 a different debate. What the media does cover, things like how the person got the gun or what type of gun was

00:23:08.280 used, the media is very frequently wrong in their initial news reports. The easiest thing for them

00:23:13.880 to determine actually would be did this attack occur in a gun-free zone or not. And the other thing

00:23:22.040 is what they don't cover. So just over a week ago there was a case in Indiana where a concealed handgun

00:23:28.520 permit stopped with the police captain said she believed would have been many people killed if he

00:23:34.600 hadn't been there. He was driving by in his car. His car was hit by one of the bullets. He got out

00:23:40.280 and quickly stopped the attack. One of the chapters in gun control myths goes through dozens of cases,

00:23:49.320 which have happened in the last few years, where concealed carry permit holders have stopped

00:23:54.280 what otherwise would have been mass public shootings. And it's just amazing how little news coverage

00:24:00.120 these things get. The five years that I look at there, there's really only two cases that got

00:24:05.960 any national news coverage to speak of. And both of the cases, the media completely boxed the story

00:24:12.760 and got it backwards. There was one case in Louisville, Kentucky, that had occurred just a few days after

00:24:22.840 the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh where an attacker went into a Kroger grocery store, started shooting 0.90

00:24:31.160 blacks. And what got the attention of the New York Times and ABC, CBS, NBC, Meet the Press, whatever, was the 0.82

00:24:40.520 quote from the murderer to a customer saying whites don't shoot whites. And it was played as this murderer 0.88

00:24:49.800 assuring this white customer that since they were both whites, he had nothing to worry about. What

00:24:55.400 they missed was the first part of the quote. The first part of the quote was, please don't shoot me.

00:25:02.120 Whites don't shoot whites. And that rather than the murderer assuring the customer that the customer had 0.94

00:25:08.280 nothing to worry about, the murderer was begging the customer not to shoot him because the customer had

00:25:14.680 a permanent concealed handgun that it was the murderer. And the murderer was begging the customer

00:25:20.840 not to shoot him. At the time, I was still able to kind of text back and forth with Chuck Todd,

00:25:28.440 who was the moderator of Meet the Press, which is a big Sunday morning talk show in the United States.

00:25:36.440 And I texted him. I said, you know, you just spent five minutes on this, which is a long time.

00:25:44.440 And I think you missed some stuff here. And here are some links to the local media

00:25:50.040 in Kentucky, which carried the full quote, because it's kind of the opposite of what you said. Plus,

00:25:55.560 you know, the racial aspect, which was being pushed so much. You know, here you had a white customer

00:26:02.520 who's being assured that he had nothing to worry about. You know, he could have just let the situation

00:26:08.440 go. Instead, he came to the aid of the black customers who are being killed there and stopped 0.98

00:26:15.320 the attack. And so it could have also been played as not just a white killing blacks, but a white 0.99

00:26:22.760 coming to the aid to stop the attack against blacks. But that didn't fit the narrative that was being 0.98

00:26:29.560 pushed at the time. Wow. So the media literally said the opposite meaning of what happened there.

00:26:35.320 I want to ask you about one myth, because in everyone, non-gun people love the word AR-15.

00:26:44.680 It makes them feel like they know the jargon and they're really sophisticated. Ask an anti-gun

00:26:50.040 person to define assault rifle, and they don't know how. It looks scary. It's black. They don't know 1.00

00:26:58.440 what is or isn't an assault rifle. They just know they're against them. And they sure know the word

00:27:03.640 AR-15, because that's the evil gun. I don't think there's ever been a case in Canada of an AR-15 being

00:27:13.400 used in a crime, in a murder, in a shooting, ever. And I can't find a case. I wonder if you know that

00:27:21.720 statistic, or if you know its relative prevalence in uses of crimes in America. Because I bet, 0.52

00:27:32.120 I don't think it's ever been used in a crime in Canada, although boy, Justin Trudeau sure bans it.

00:27:37.640 I don't think it's used often in crimes in the United States, but you would probably know.

00:27:41.640 Right. I don't know the numbers for Canada off the top of my head, but I can believe what you're

00:27:47.000 saying. But in the United States, you have a little bit over 2% of the murders involved any type of

00:27:53.240 rifle, of any type. AR-15s would be one type of rifle. The FBI numbers don't even break it down by

00:28:03.240 type of rifle, because you're talking about, you know, a pretty small number of cases that are there.

00:28:09.800 And so they don't break it down by that. So, you know, I can assume that, look, the thing is,

00:28:17.160 as you say, people don't understand what type of guns are there. We're talking about a semi-automatic

00:28:23.880 rifle that fires the same bullets with the same rapidity, doing the same damage as a small-caliber

00:28:30.920 hunting rifle. And, you know, if you want to go and ban all semi-automatic guns, at least there

00:28:38.760 might be some logic to it. But to go and ban certain semi-automatic guns based on how they look,

00:28:46.200 rather than how they function, doesn't make a lot of sense. I think the reason why they're not trying

00:28:52.200 to ban—or at least not many politicians—there are some who are in the United States now who are

00:28:57.800 trying to ban all semi-automatic guns—is because the vast majority of guns owned in the United

00:29:04.360 States are semi-automatic. There's three types of guns. There's fully automatic machine guns,

00:29:11.720 or guns that at least have burst mode, which, as you pull the trigger, you have multiple bullets come out.

00:29:17.080 You have semi-automatic, which one pull the trigger, one bullet comes out, it reloads itself,

00:29:23.720 one pull the trigger, one bullet comes out, and so on. And then you have manually loaded guns,

00:29:28.760 where you have to physically yourself put another bullet in the chamber after you fire the gun.

00:29:37.080 The thing is, people who use guns defensively benefit from having semi-automatic guns.

00:29:43.800 If you're being attacked by a criminal, you may not have the luxury of time to load your gun like

00:29:49.720 that. If you have to fire more than one shot, you may not have the luxury of time to go and reload

00:29:57.480 your gun like that. And so, you know, I think, you know, if we want to ban semi-automatic guns—and

00:30:04.120 we're not talking about any of these murders involving machine guns. I mean, one of the

00:30:08.760 real misimpressions that the media gets, we put out a video a little while ago on how

00:30:16.120 popular television shows cover guns. And if you watch Chicago PD or Hawaii Five-0 or most of these

00:30:26.040 other cop shows, you know, The Rookie or whatever, you're going to think almost all the criminals

00:30:32.440 have machine guns. And, I mean, I suppose it makes the shows more dramatic. But since the 1930s,

00:30:39.720 there's been two murders in the United States involving machine guns. But yet, if you go and

00:30:44.840 watch Chicago PD, you're going to think, you know, 95 percent of all the murders that occur there

00:30:51.000 involve machine guns. And, you know, and they talk about AR-15s, and then they show a machine gun being

00:30:58.440 fired. And it's really, you know, really creates a lot of misimpressions. So I'm not surprised that

00:31:05.800 people have the misimpressions that you're talking about.

00:31:08.680 Hmm. You know, gun control—I use the phrase security theater when we go to the airport.

00:31:15.720 I don't think the TSA has ever caught a terrorist, but we're supposed to feel better. We have public

00:31:20.280 health theater now. We're wearing masks, but I don't think they work. I think it's just to keep

00:31:24.840 people in a certain psychological state of mind. I think we have gun control theater more than we

00:31:30.440 have gun control. I mean, I don't know how many times the mayor of Chicago is going to re-ban

00:31:37.480 the same guns or why she thinks it will work the tenth time where it didn't work the nine previous

00:31:42.920 times. I think so much of gun control theater is a psychological salve to liberals to make themselves

00:31:51.160 feel better. I don't think it's actually designed to make a difference in crime. Would you agree with

00:31:54.920 that? Yeah, I mean, I think it's to shift the blame to somebody else. I mean, so for example,

00:32:00.920 you mentioned Chicago. In 2018, the arrest rate for murder in Chicago was 13%.

00:32:09.080 That means out of every hundred murders in Chicago, they arrested 13 people for those murders.

00:32:16.120 And that's, on average, the rate for arresting gang murders is even lower. And not all those are

00:32:25.080 convicted. And so you're talking about, you know, single-digit, percent-wise, cases and murders

00:32:33.320 in Chicago that result in the conviction when somebody goes to jail. You know, it's not rocket science.

00:32:41.320 If you make it so that criminals don't have much to worry about, that they're not going to get

00:32:46.440 punished for going and committing a murder, then you're going to see a lot more murders that are

00:32:51.240 going to occur. And it's very easy to understand why you have so many murders in Chicago or some of

00:32:57.800 these other cities. And that is, you know, because of the political correctness of politicians over

00:33:03.320 time. I can give you one example. Rahm Emanuel, when he was mayor, made an agreement with the ACLU

00:33:10.120 that every time a police officer talks to a civilian, they have to fill out two legal-sized

00:33:18.040 pages of fine print forms, which take about an hour for them to fill out, where they have to go and

00:33:25.720 say who they talk to, why they talk to them, where they talk, you know, describe in detail,

00:33:35.080 you know, characteristics of the person they talk to. And so if you're a police officer and you talk

00:33:42.040 to, let's say, four people in the morning, your entire afternoon is taken up filling out paperwork.

00:33:48.920 And that has a couple effects. One, it discourages officers from talking to people in the area that

00:33:55.080 they're policing. And two, it takes police officers off the street. I mean, you're talking at the beginning

00:34:01.560 about defunding police. Well, in some sense, this accomplishes the same thing. I mean, you're still

00:34:07.000 paying them. And you still have them on the payroll. But the effective number of hours that a police

00:34:13.000 officer is out there has been greatly reduced. And, you know, so it's, again, it's not too surprising.

00:34:21.800 And that's just one of many things that happens in many of these Democratic-controlled cities. And here's

00:34:27.880 the sad thing. And that is the very people that Democrats claim that they care about,

00:34:33.880 poor blacks, are the ones who get harmed the most by this. When you go and you have police stand down,

00:34:41.640 where do they think the riots are occurring? They're occurring in heavily black areas. 0.87

00:34:45.640 Some of those businesses are owned by blacks. The people who mainly work in those businesses are blacks. 0.98

00:34:51.960 The people who shop in those stores are overwhelmingly black. 0.90

00:34:55.400 But, you know, where are they supposed to have jobs afterwards? What happens to their jobs? 0.94

00:35:00.280 What happens to where they can go and shop? And the business owners who've had their businesses

00:35:06.280 destroyed, even if they want to try to open up again, what do you think the insurance premiums are?

00:35:13.880 If you want to go and see the impact of something like this, go look at Detroit. Back in the 1950s,

00:35:20.440 in the first part of the 1960s, Detroit was the wealthiest by far large city in the United States.

00:35:26.680 You go there now, you still have fields where there used to be businesses and buildings that

00:35:34.200 were destroyed that have never been replaced. That's very sad. Very sad. Well, listen,

00:35:40.200 I'm very glad you're writing this book and it couldn't be more timely. The book is called Gun Control

00:35:44.520 Myths. We're talking with Dr. John Lott, who joins us via Skype from Montana. Dr. Lott, I look forward to

00:35:51.160 seeing how your book does, how it's received. I know that you have done interviews in the past with

00:35:59.000 many national media. In fact, you just mentioned a text exchange you had a little while back with a

00:36:07.400 prominent national journalist. Can I ask you, is your point of view even allowed into legacy media?

00:36:15.720 Have you received any interviews or are you in some ways being deplatformed?

00:36:21.320 Right. Well, it's gotten a lot harder over the last 10 years or five years in particular.

00:36:27.720 You know, there are a couple things that have happened. One, the gun control groups have an

00:36:33.000 agreement among themselves not to debate me. And that includes not just on TV and radio,

00:36:39.160 but even in university settings. And when you're talking about TV, they want to make sure that they

00:36:46.520 have people on the other side of the debate, at least if they're going to have me on. And I've had

00:36:52.360 a number of occasions where I've been asked to be on CNN or what have you, and I'll go be driving into

00:36:58.840 the studio and I'll get a call from the booker saying, well, you know, she's sorry, but she just

00:37:04.680 talked to, you know, Michael Bloomberg's Everytown and they won't debate me. You know, and if there's

00:37:13.400 time, she may ask me, well, is there somebody else who has similar views that I could suggest?

00:37:19.880 But, you know, often they'll just let them on by themselves then at that point and not have somebody

00:37:25.160 on the other side. But, you know, we've, you know, last year, twice I had Twitter

00:37:33.640 locked my accounts that we had, both my personal account and the Crime Prevention Research Center

00:37:40.120 account, because we had tweeted on the New Zealand shooter basically telling people that this guy

00:37:48.280 called himself a socialist, that he was extreme environmentalists who hated minorities because

00:37:55.400 he thought they had too many kids and that it was going to damage the environment. You know, I just was

00:38:02.680 tweeting the truth out there. And there are other things like Google has shadow banned our website,

00:38:09.160 our crimeresearch.org website, right after the 2016 election. There's about, in January, there was a

00:38:17.160 set at 90% drop in the traffic that we had to the website. So, I mean, there are lots of things

00:38:23.800 that are going on, but we keep pushing on. That's incredible. Well, listen, it's great to have you

00:38:29.640 on our show. We certainly will never shadow ban you or de-platform you. Keep up the fight down there.

00:38:35.640 I look forward to reading the book. Well, thanks. I think it's one of my best books, and I really

00:38:40.120 appreciate you having me on. Thank you very much. It's our pleasure. That's our friend, Dr. John Lott.

00:38:44.280 And I have ordered the book, and when it arrives, I'll let you know what I think.

00:38:48.200 Stay with us. More Head on the Rebel.

00:39:01.800 Hey, welcome back on my monologue last night. Mike writes,

00:39:04.840 Is the only opposition to the liberals the rebel?

00:39:08.280 Well, I certainly wouldn't say the only opposition. And I want to give a shout out again

00:39:12.440 to Pierre Polyev, who did a great job grilling Trudeau whenever that happens. I mean, how often

00:39:17.400 does that even happen? How often has question period been during this crisis? How often and for

00:39:22.600 how long did Trudeau present himself to committee? We're talking a few hours over the course of the

00:39:26.920 whole summer. I think the Conservative Party is sleeping. A few of the B-list or C-list

00:39:33.160 are involved in the Conservative leadership contest. But where's the idea campaigns? Where's making noise

00:39:42.120 about crazy things? We're just opposing the government's ideas. That's their job. Opposition.

00:39:48.120 I don't see it. Provincially in Ontario, Doug Ford seems to be little more than a liberal light. I say

00:39:55.240 that with some regret. Alberta is zigging where others zag, but it's only one province, and it's expected to

00:40:01.480 be a bit more conservative. I feel that Canada does not have the other side of the story being spoken

00:40:08.200 politically. It used to be that newspapers and the media were somehow dissident, or they would regard

00:40:14.360 themselves as the official opposition. That generally only happens when it's liberals in power. And of

00:40:19.960 course, now most of the media is on Trudeau's payroll. I'm not going to say that Rebel is the only

00:40:25.000 opposition in Canada, but sometimes it feels like we're the only ones making a fuss.

00:40:29.000 Tom writes, how do we light a fire under the Conservatives? The Liberals continue to give

00:40:34.840 these perfect opportunities to rally the Conservative base, and yet we hear nothing. Why is that?

00:40:39.960 Well, it beats me. Maybe they're leaderless. Maybe they're just tired. Maybe they're still demoralized

00:40:45.480 from losing the last election that they should have won. Or more likely, maybe they're just afraid of

00:40:51.160 criticizing anything in the era of the pandemic because the media will devour them. That's the thing.

00:40:56.920 The Conservatives made a choice over the last few years that they were going to be more afraid of

00:41:01.480 what the CBC said about them than what the people would say about them, even their own base. I find

00:41:06.680 that very sad. Well, that's our show for today. Until next time, on behalf of us here at Rebel World

00:41:12.200 headquarters to you at home, good night and keep finding for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - August 08, 2020

The media says that Trump has lost his mind. But what about Joe Biden？

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