Rebel News Podcast - April 05, 2019


This “one very simple question” about Trudeau and SNC-Lavalin still needs to be asked


Episode Stats


Length

39 minutes

Words per minute

160.18924

Word count

6,298

Sentence count

430

Harmful content

Misogyny

15

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Why should others go to jail when you re the biggest carbon consumer in the world? Why is SNC-Lavalin not facing criminal charges? And why did the Prime Minister s office try to get rid of two of his own women cabinet ministers?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. I have one very simple question about SNC-Lavalin.
00:00:04.820 There's a lot of complicated questions, wouldn't you say?
00:00:06.720 There's a lot of details and rules and intrigues, and, you know, it's really interesting.
00:00:12.260 It's, I guess you could even call it like a soap opera, but there's one very, very simple question that I get into today.
00:00:21.140 I'll tell you what the question is. You'll have to listen to the show for my answer.
00:00:23.600 The question is, why? Why? All right, before I let you get to the podcast, can you do me a favor?
00:00:32.960 Can you go to the rebel.media slash shows, and can you sign up to be a premium subscriber?
00:00:39.680 I'd appreciate it. It's eight bucks a month, and I know that's, you know, more than nothing, but it's not that much,
00:00:45.560 and what it does is it helps us pay the bills here, pay our staff, pay our rent, stuff like that.
00:00:49.540 And what do you get for it, besides the moral satisfaction of keeping us going?
00:00:54.480 You can see this in video format and the video shows of my colleagues, Sheila Gunn-Reed and David Menzies.
00:01:01.460 So please take a moment and do that. The rebel.media slash shows.
00:01:06.020 And by the way, if you type in podcast as your coupon code, you can save a few bucks,
00:01:10.420 but of course the point is just to help us out, so I hope you will.
00:01:13.500 All right, without further ado, here's my show.
00:01:16.000 You are listening to a Rebel Media podcast.
00:01:18.540 Tonight, there are lots of complicated questions about Trudeau and SNC-Lavalin,
00:01:24.180 but I have one very simple question I'd like to ask.
00:01:27.500 It's April 4th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
00:01:31.960 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:01:35.700 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
00:01:39.760 The only thing I have to say to the government, the wire publisher, is because it's my bloody right to do so.
00:01:45.620 Another day, another front-page story about Justin Trudeau's disastrous handling of the SNC-Lavalin scandal.
00:01:59.540 As you know, a couple of days ago, he sacked his two top cabinet ministers who were women.
00:02:04.020 And I'm not talking about the comic relief of Mariam Monsaf.
00:02:08.800 So you were born in Afghanistan, correct?
00:02:10.820 I believe I was.
00:02:13.440 I'm not talking about the shrieking global warming cult leader.
00:02:17.760 Who remembers last summer?
00:02:21.360 Who remembers the extreme heat that we felt last summer?
00:02:26.100 Who remembers that people literally died of extreme heat?
00:02:31.000 Jeez.
00:02:32.100 Now, I'm talking about two professional women who had successful careers of accomplishment before they were recruited to run for office. 1.00
00:02:41.280 I'm talking about Jane Philpott, a doctor, and Jody Wilson-Raybould, a lawyer and crown prosecutor.
00:02:48.020 Look, this issue just isn't going away.
00:02:49.920 In fact, it's drowning out most other things that Trudeau wants to talk about, like his new carbon tax.
00:02:55.060 Now, I don't believe the carbon tax is a political winner for Trudeau, but he thinks it is.
00:03:01.060 But no one's really talking about it other than the CBC state broadcaster, because they have to.
00:03:05.680 Everyone else in the media is just watching this slow-motion car crash of the SNC-Lavalin matter, which will turn two months old this week.
00:03:13.620 So, happy anniversary to it.
00:03:16.000 The state broadcaster has run all sorts of attacks against Philpott and Wilson-Raybould, and none of them have worked.
00:03:23.160 Today's attempt is this one.
00:03:26.260 Wilson-Raybould set multiple conditions for ending the rift with Trudeau, say sources.
00:03:31.780 Let me read a little more.
00:03:32.680 Weeks of tense negotiations preceded the PM's highly controversial decision to eject two high-profile MPs.
00:03:40.940 Really?
00:03:41.700 What were those demands?
00:03:43.480 Was it like cash?
00:03:45.500 I don't know.
00:03:45.920 Maybe power or a promotion or something crass like that?
00:03:50.600 No.
00:03:51.700 The opposite.
00:03:53.880 Jody Wilson-Raybould just really wanted them to stop corrupting the process of criminal prosecutions
00:03:59.260 and to get rid of those henchmen who were responsible for it.
00:04:03.020 And all this was a confidential negotiation.
00:04:05.560 She wasn't looking to make a fuss.
00:04:07.060 She was looking to clean out the rot. 0.98
00:04:09.320 Get rid of the rotten apples before they rotted the whole barrel of apples.
00:04:12.420 Let me read from this story.
00:04:13.740 This is meant to be a smear.
00:04:15.200 I found it quite vindicating.
00:04:16.780 Over the course of the secret discussions, it emerged that Wilson-Raybould had a list of
00:04:23.120 at least five conditions that could help end the civil war that has been tearing the government
00:04:27.340 apart, multiple liberal sources say.
00:04:30.460 The first three conditions involved staff changes at the very summit of the government.
00:04:35.660 The sources said Wilson-Raybould wanted Trudeau to fire his principal secretary, Gerald Butts,
00:04:40.520 along with the clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, and PMO senior advisor, Mathieu Bouchard.
00:04:45.260 Now, that rings true.
00:04:47.400 As you know, Gerald Butts, in fact, did quit quite unexpectedly very soon after this story
00:04:52.580 started spreading.
00:04:53.800 And Michael Wernick quit, too.
00:04:55.580 Now, I think he should have been fired, given his outrageously unprofessional and partisan
00:05:00.220 remarks in Parliament that showed he was out of control and untrustworthy.
00:05:04.460 But he did leave, too, which is very good.
00:05:06.820 Mathieu Bouchard, he was one of the PMO staff who was pushing to let the corrupt SNC-Lavalin off
00:05:12.340 the hook for their crimes.
00:05:13.180 And so, yeah, we've already got two out of those three gone.
00:05:17.380 This is a good thing.
00:05:18.340 Frankly, this is what anyone who actually wanted to fix the problem would recommend.
00:05:23.740 It doesn't have to come from Jody Wilson-Raybould.
00:05:26.400 Any wise old hand would say, you've got to get rid of these troublemakers.
00:05:30.220 And look at the last two points she wanted.
00:05:33.320 Wilson-Raybould's wishes went beyond a limited house cleaning in the PMO.
00:05:36.780 Sources said she also sought assurances that her replacement as Attorney General, David
00:05:41.380 Lamedi, would not overrule Director of Public Prosecutions Kathleen Roussel and direct her
00:05:46.100 to give SNC-Lavalin a deferred prosecution agreement.
00:05:49.420 Wilson-Raybould also wanted Justin Trudeau to admit publicly or to caucus alone that his
00:05:54.260 office acted inappropriately in its attempts to convince her to consider granting SNC-Lavalin
00:05:59.540 a DPA.
00:06:00.480 Again, this is a pretty modest request, and it's nothing for her benefit.
00:06:06.020 It's for the country's benefit.
00:06:07.620 It makes a lot of sense.
00:06:08.960 Can you promise not to keep trying to interfere?
00:06:12.520 How is that not good advice?
00:06:14.440 In fact, how is that that Trudeau hasn't made these decisions, done these things on his own
00:06:19.760 already?
00:06:20.440 And that last point, that Trudeau would just admit that his office's course of action was
00:06:28.100 wrong, even just in private to MPs.
00:06:30.480 How is that not common sense?
00:06:33.040 It's not even a personal apology.
00:06:34.540 My office was wrong.
00:06:35.520 I admit my office was wrong.
00:06:37.180 I mean, unless Trudeau still thinks everything they did was fine?
00:06:43.140 That's a pretty big question, isn't it?
00:06:45.360 Does Justin Trudeau, after these two disastrous months, after the departure of his best friend
00:06:52.460 and Principal Secretary, Gerald Butts, the departure of the Clerk of the Privy Council and two top
00:06:56.440 cabinet administration, does he actually think that everything was okay and he did nothing
00:07:03.700 wrong and none of his staff did nothing wrong?
00:07:06.540 And doesn't that get right to the heart of it?
00:07:08.400 If he won't agree to sack the staff who pushed his interference, if he won't agree to promise
00:07:14.680 not to do it anymore, then he probably wouldn't admit that his office was wrong, would he?
00:07:20.740 If he thought he did nothing wrong.
00:07:23.340 Now, I'm not sure how tenable that position would be.
00:07:25.440 If nothing's wrong, why indeed did Wernick and Butts quit?
00:07:28.100 And does that mean that maybe they'll be coming back now that the real trouble, Jody Wilson-Raybould
00:07:33.980 herself, is gone?
00:07:34.660 Let me show you a bizarre TV clip of Trudeau speaking to a group of young women who visited
00:07:39.060 Parliament yesterday.
00:07:40.540 Remember, almost 50 of these young women, when Trudeau spoke, as you can see here, they
00:07:45.060 stood up and turned their backs on him.
00:07:47.740 He was speaking.
00:07:48.680 They stood up with their backs to him.
00:07:51.540 It's sort of incredible, given how much he's sold himself as a male feminist.
00:07:55.600 I think he's destroyed that reputation these past two months.
00:07:59.180 These young women are his core demographic. 0.98
00:08:02.080 They all think he's just like a Gian Gomeschi character now, a groper, which, of course,
00:08:07.220 we know he is.
00:08:09.220 Anyways, to the young women who didn't turn their backs on him, here's what he said.
00:08:13.840 Now, listen to this.
00:08:14.820 It's so weird.
00:08:15.740 Listen.
00:08:16.940 I know nobody in here wants to have to pick who to believe between Jody Wilson-Raybould
00:08:22.440 and Chrystia Freeland.
00:08:23.880 Nobody wants to know that one person has to be right and another person has to be wrong
00:08:29.060 between Jane Philpott or Miriam Mosef.
00:08:37.840 There are always going to be a range of perspectives that we need to listen to.
00:08:42.200 First of all, he actually forgot Jane Philpott's name, which is weird.
00:08:49.260 Look what he did.
00:08:49.900 He reframed this whole crisis as just something between quarreling women. 0.95
00:08:54.720 Jody Wilson-Raybould versus Chrystia Freeland?
00:08:58.680 What?
00:09:00.520 Jane Philpott versus Catherine McKenna?
00:09:02.220 You know, what, what, what, what, what?
00:09:04.940 So this whole problem these past two months hasn't been about him.
00:09:08.700 He's not the problem here.
00:09:09.860 The problem is between a couple of quarrelsome women, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Chrystia Freeland. 1.00
00:09:13.900 It's between Philpott and McKenna.
00:09:15.320 It's between some arguing, gossipy women. 1.00
00:09:20.000 He's the calm father figure above it all.
00:09:23.100 You know his role.
00:09:26.400 He's the great giver.
00:09:29.420 He gives to these women.
00:09:31.720 His role is to give them a chance.
00:09:34.960 He's their father figure.
00:09:36.880 He's their, what, boyfriend?
00:09:38.780 I don't know anyone else who would get that close to some of these women 1.00
00:09:41.400 other than their maritable, marital spouse.
00:09:44.520 I mean, why are you hugging?
00:09:46.860 Why are you coming nose to nose with these women? 0.99
00:09:49.680 It's so, look at that hug.
00:09:51.020 What is with that?
00:09:51.980 That's a chest-to-chest hug.
00:09:54.400 What is that?
00:09:57.740 Trudeau is playing a weird sociopathic political game here.
00:10:00.940 He's gaslighting these women. 0.99
00:10:02.360 You know what gaslighting means, right?
00:10:04.260 He's changing the historical facts with a straight face, daring you,
00:10:10.340 telling you not to believe your lying eyes.
00:10:13.000 This wasn't about him trying to bully Jody Wilson-Raybould.
00:10:15.580 What are you crazy?
00:10:16.680 This is about Jody Wilson-Raybould fighting with Chrystia Freeland.
00:10:18.980 This isn't about him doing something that Jane Philpott disapproved of.
00:10:22.940 This is about Jane Philpott quitting.
00:10:25.340 Well, not because of Trudeau's misconduct.
00:10:26.780 It's because she was fighting with Catherine McKenna.
00:10:29.240 Don't you see that?
00:10:31.480 What?
00:10:32.620 It's so weird.
00:10:34.120 He blames other women.
00:10:35.200 He pits women in hypothetical battles. 0.63
00:10:37.920 McKenna and Freeland had nothing to do with this.
00:10:40.320 It's so weird what he did, so manipulative.
00:10:43.040 But it served to exonerate himself psychologically,
00:10:46.240 so he doesn't have to take any responsibility for his screw-ups.
00:10:49.420 It makes sense, in a way.
00:10:52.560 It's like what he said about the woman he groped in Creston, B.C., Rose Knight.
00:10:58.280 Like I said, I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way.
00:11:04.400 But I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently.
00:11:11.640 That's exactly what he did in this case, too, wasn't it?
00:11:13.940 Each of these interactions was a conversation among colleagues
00:11:18.980 about how to tackle a challenging issue.
00:11:22.640 Each came at a time when my staff and I believed
00:11:26.540 that the former Minister of Justice and Attorney General
00:11:29.480 was open to considering other aspects of the public interest.
00:11:34.480 However, I now understand that she saw it differently.
00:11:39.520 So he's just saying the girls are lying.
00:11:42.280 They're the problem.
00:11:43.940 He did nothing wrong.
00:11:46.420 You know, Justin Trudeau makes a public apology about once a month,
00:11:50.020 usually with tears in his eyes,
00:11:52.400 usually involving giving away our tax dollars to someone.
00:11:55.000 He gave $10 million to Omar Khadar with a public apology.
00:11:58.540 He's always apologizing.
00:12:00.420 But always for something that someone else did.
00:12:03.240 You notice that?
00:12:04.240 He never apologizes what he did.
00:12:06.280 In fact, by apologizing for what other people did,
00:12:09.340 it's his oblique way of saying, I'm better than them.
00:12:11.840 I think Trudeau psychologically refuses to apologize for himself
00:12:16.640 because, like a sociopath, he finds a way to blame everything on everyone else.
00:12:22.080 He's never wrong.
00:12:23.280 So why would he apologize?
00:12:24.940 That's why he did that weird Freeland and McKenna thing,
00:12:27.880 and that's why he wouldn't admit,
00:12:29.440 even in the privacy of caucus, that his office was wrong.
00:12:32.000 That's why he won't rule out still doing this SNC-Lavalin deal,
00:12:36.000 because he's morally incapable of admitting he's ever wrong.
00:12:42.160 I think he lies to himself as much as he lies to us.
00:12:46.060 Oh, quick clip from Question Period yesterday that shows this.
00:12:49.340 Did you catch this? Take a look.
00:12:50.420 The Attorney General reports that she looked the Prime Minister in the eye
00:12:57.680 and said, are you interfering with my role as Attorney General?
00:13:03.260 Because I strongly advise against it.
00:13:07.700 Does the Prime Minister remember her saying any such thing?
00:13:13.160 The Honorable Prime Minister.
00:13:14.860 And, Mr. Speaker, once she said that, I responded, no, I am not.
00:13:22.560 It is her decision to make.
00:13:24.420 And she then committed to revisit and look into the decision once again, Mr. Speaker.
00:13:30.780 All these are elements in the testimony that we have heard,
00:13:33.660 that the Justice Committee examined exhaustively.
00:13:36.060 But once again, we see the member opposite is desperate to talk about anything other than our budget,
00:13:42.720 anything other than the economic growth we're putting forward,
00:13:46.520 anything other than our concrete plan to fight climate change,
00:13:50.160 because they have no plan on any of that.
00:13:54.300 See, the trouble with lying is it's hard to keep a lie straight in your memory.
00:13:58.580 It's easy to remember the truth.
00:13:59.580 Just remember, just say what you remember.
00:14:01.780 But when you tell a lie, you can forget.
00:14:03.760 So Trudeau accidentally admitted that Jody Wilson and Mabel did, in fact,
00:14:08.980 object to his interference with the file.
00:14:10.380 Well, funny because he said something different when he was first asked about it.
00:14:15.300 Remember this?
00:14:16.260 In regards to the matter of SNC-Lavalin, let me be direct.
00:14:21.020 The government of Canada did its job and, to the clear public standards, expected of it.
00:14:29.120 If anyone felt differently, they had an obligation to raise that with me.
00:14:34.980 No one, including Jody, did that.
00:14:40.900 What a pathological liar.
00:14:44.000 No wonder Jody Wilson Mabel is so insistent that he acknowledge his office was wrong.
00:14:49.960 Because he still doesn't.
00:14:51.120 He can't.
00:14:51.560 He won't.
00:14:51.960 It's not in his blood.
00:14:53.020 And he will sink his whole career over this if he has to.
00:14:56.240 Holy moly, that is a lot of pride and arrogance.
00:14:59.120 I think that's the most likely explanation for why Trudeau has let this small problem turn into a big problem
00:15:04.220 that's, in fact, devouring his entire government.
00:15:06.600 And that has him so far behind in the polls, he would lose an election today.
00:15:11.120 But there is perhaps one other reason.
00:15:13.020 And it's that he really, really needs this SNC-Lavalin matter to go away.
00:15:19.460 Because if it actually goes to trial, and if actual facts come out, perhaps it will become an extinction-level event.
00:15:26.680 Like a comet hitting the dinosaurs for him and his party by revealing something that we don't yet know about that might be lurking.
00:15:34.060 This is pure speculation on my part.
00:15:36.160 But look at this breaking news.
00:15:37.020 The federal Crown Corporation investigating claim it backed SNC-Lavalin on corrupt Angola dam contract.
00:15:45.540 That's weird.
00:15:46.560 This is just from yesterday.
00:15:47.380 This news came out yesterday.
00:15:48.480 Let me read it back.
00:15:49.500 Export Development Canada is reviewing its decision to provide up to half a billion dollars worth of insurance in 2011
00:15:55.180 for an SNC-Lavalin contract in Angola.
00:15:58.120 After learning of an allegation, the company may have won the bid with help from bribes.
00:16:02.440 The Crown Corporation, which acts as a credit agency for Canadian firms looking to do business abroad,
00:16:07.760 says it could widen its investigation to scrutinize other deals it struck over the years
00:16:14.020 with the construction and engineering firm, likely worth several billion dollars combined.
00:16:20.260 Oh, bribes.
00:16:22.940 More bribes.
00:16:24.140 These are other bribes on top of the bribes they're being prosecuted for in the case we've been following.
00:16:30.000 The bribes in Libya.
00:16:32.000 And then, of course, there's the bribes to get the Montreal Hospital contract.
00:16:36.500 Those bribes.
00:16:37.180 And don't confuse those with the bribes to get the bridge.
00:16:40.520 There's so many different bribes.
00:16:41.600 You have to keep them all straight.
00:16:42.680 You need an Excel spreadsheet.
00:16:44.040 There's lots of bribing going on almost all the time, it seems.
00:16:49.760 Hey, what do you think the chances are that if this current case about the Libyan bribes went to trial,
00:16:55.280 well, that maybe some facts might come out about a bribe that we don't actually know about yet,
00:17:00.860 hasn't been aired yet, hasn't been revealed yet.
00:17:03.460 Not necessarily a bribe for Trudeau.
00:17:06.240 Maybe someone close to him.
00:17:07.980 Maybe a senator.
00:17:08.880 Maybe an MP.
00:17:09.660 Maybe for a friend.
00:17:10.600 Maybe for the Liberal Party itself.
00:17:12.320 We don't know.
00:17:13.020 A few years back, just about every senior Liberal Party politician in Quebec,
00:17:19.820 at a certain level, was charged with corruption.
00:17:22.680 Mayor after mayor.
00:17:24.060 So many politicians.
00:17:26.420 Quebec liberals are corrupt.
00:17:27.580 We've all known that forever.
00:17:29.160 Ad scam remanded us of that.
00:17:32.060 Do you think that maybe that's behind this intransigence by Trudeau?
00:17:37.480 It's been a terrible two months for him.
00:17:39.220 But he still has a chance to win.
00:17:42.100 A chance.
00:17:43.200 If it turns out his Liberal Party took millions in bribes, though,
00:17:46.220 or some other extreme fact that we don't know about now,
00:17:50.200 but that seems to be how SNC-Lavalin operates, would you agree?
00:17:54.600 Well, then his chances of winning would go to zero.
00:17:57.040 And some of his friends might even go to jail.
00:17:59.120 Who knows?
00:17:59.520 Maybe even him.
00:18:00.080 I don't know.
00:18:01.800 It's all speculation on my part.
00:18:03.060 I have no idea what details of corruption would emerge in a trial about corruption
00:18:06.720 by a corrupt company.
00:18:08.060 Not what I know.
00:18:10.540 But look at this.
00:18:11.160 This is weird.
00:18:11.820 Don't you think?
00:18:12.340 The chairman of SNC-Lavalin is Kevin Lynch.
00:18:16.040 Did you know he used to be the clerk of the Privy Council in Ottawa?
00:18:19.220 Did you know that?
00:18:20.900 Isn't that funny?
00:18:22.120 That's a coincidence.
00:18:23.640 And you know this guy, Jacques Bougie?
00:18:26.820 He's the director of SNC-Lavalin.
00:18:28.740 This is from their website.
00:18:30.360 Oh, and would you look at that?
00:18:31.880 Here he is on the Trudeau Foundation.
00:18:34.760 What are the odds?
00:18:36.380 And you know the lawyer working for SNC-Lavalin on this whole, you know, DPA thing?
00:18:42.700 He just happens to be Frank Iacobucci, a former Supreme Court of Canada judge who also works
00:18:49.560 now for Justin Trudeau on the Trans Mountain Pipeline project.
00:18:54.500 So yeah, those are just connections we know about.
00:18:58.400 But I wonder what we don't know about and that we'd find out about at a criminal trial
00:19:03.600 of corruption.
00:19:04.660 Again, this is all speculation on my part.
00:19:06.580 As far as I know, they're all clean as a whistle.
00:19:11.400 I still think Trudeau won't fix this problem because the reason is he's too stubborn to admit
00:19:16.920 there's a problem other than the quarrel between some women. 1.00
00:19:19.960 It's nothing to do with him.
00:19:22.580 I think it's high self-regard that has caused this problem to continue.
00:19:26.360 I mean, why didn't he accept the thoughtful recommendations of Jody Wilson-Rabel to settle
00:19:30.360 this and put this away?
00:19:31.100 That was actually really good legal advice that she gave him those five conditions.
00:19:34.560 But maybe, just maybe, Justin Trudeau or those around him know that there is a lot worse
00:19:40.560 to come, much, much, much worse to come if this criminal prosecution actually goes to
00:19:46.200 trial and that maybe, maybe any other price that he has to pay, any other humiliation is
00:19:52.440 less painful than the full truth coming out in a trial.
00:19:57.820 Hey, what do you think?
00:19:59.820 Stay with us for more.
00:20:04.560 Stay with us for more.
00:20:34.560 A group of radical black activists who started swearing at them and shouting racial epithets
00:20:41.560 and then one aboriginal protester who famously walked right up to the face of one of the
00:20:47.300 teenagers banging a drum and that young man stood very quiet, smiling and not saying a
00:20:53.520 word.
00:20:53.800 Well, the media saw that young man's red Make America Great Again hat and they had the story
00:21:00.200 they wanted.
00:21:01.200 This was a racist teenager who had trapped the aboriginal man and insulted him racially.
00:21:09.640 That's what the entire media said.
00:21:12.320 CNN, Washington Post, the whole media jumped on that kid and demonized him.
00:21:17.500 And soon his own school threw him under the bus, metaphorically, the school and the local bishop denouncing that young man, Nicholas Sandman, and his entire class.
00:21:30.020 It took days for the truth to get its boots laced up and for fuller video to be seen showing that, in fact, Nicholas Sandman and his classmates conducted themselves perfectly.
00:21:42.080 It was the black and aboriginal activists that were the ones doing the racial epithets and no, Nicholas Sandman did not swarm or surround that aboriginal man.
00:21:53.580 There's a lesson there about not bowing into the media mob and not allowing leftists online to demonize you.
00:22:00.280 But the reason I tell you all this is because I don't think that lesson has been learned here in Toronto.
00:22:05.980 And this time we're talking not about a Catholic school, but a Jewish school, a trip to Washington.
00:22:12.280 Nonetheless, a trip to a pro-Israel advocacy event, a conference called APAC, where students from a Jewish high school called CHAT, Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto,
00:22:25.840 went down to Washington, and they met with a pro-Israel activist that you might know.
00:22:32.260 He's a former rebel contributor, Dr. Sebastian Gorka.
00:22:35.980 Well, they met with Dr. Gorka, and he gave them a big pro-Israel pep talk.
00:22:41.840 Here's an excerpt from that meeting that was recorded.
00:22:45.680 Take a listen to this.
00:22:47.340 I was very clear in my mind.
00:22:50.080 You know what?
00:22:50.980 I don't have scars on my wrists from where they hanged me, from the ceiling of the torture chamber.
00:22:59.100 So bring it.
00:23:02.200 Bring it.
00:23:04.160 Because it's just words.
00:23:07.280 So my message to you, and it's not a cop-out, because I've lived it and I have the right to say it.
00:23:15.060 Never, ever give up, and never let them get away with it.
00:23:24.940 Six million murdered.
00:23:28.420 We will never let that happen again.
00:23:31.860 And it is up to you to stand up for the truth.
00:23:36.840 There is only one truth.
00:23:38.520 And every time we say, oh, I'm not going to risk my grades, or I don't want to get kicked out of the cool kids club at school,
00:23:49.640 so I'm going to just not comment when they say BDS is cool.
00:23:54.780 Every time we do that, they win.
00:23:58.680 Every time they do that, a soul cries out, saying, will you not stand for my memory?
00:24:06.400 That's just a short excerpt from a one-hour presentation that Dr. Gorka made to these kids.
00:24:12.520 Very emotional, very passionate, talking about his own father's fiscal torture at the hands of authoritarians
00:24:17.920 and how Gorka himself is now a pro-Israel activist.
00:24:21.380 Can you imagine that such a positive meeting, encouraging these kids, was turned into, I know it's hard to believe,
00:24:29.880 a claim of anti-Semitism or even Nazism?
00:24:33.900 Well, that's exactly what happened.
00:24:35.920 Left-wing extremists online, just as they had done to the Covington Catholic kids,
00:24:41.280 said that Dr. Gorka was anti-Semitic in some way,
00:24:44.920 even though he was giving a pro-Israel talk at a pro-Israel conference to pro-Israel Jewish kids.
00:24:50.480 And before long, just like Covington Catholic did in Kentucky,
00:24:54.400 that school in Toronto threw their own teacher and students to the Wolves,
00:25:01.920 sending out a letter to their entire community, including their alumni,
00:25:07.080 denouncing the visit, saying if only they had known they would never have approved it,
00:25:12.300 and saying that a teacher who attended the meeting, Aviva Polonsky,
00:25:18.600 inappropriately tweeted pictures and praise of Dr. Gorka.
00:25:24.160 You can see her tweet here,
00:25:25.580 honored to finally meet the great Seb Gorka, the former deputy assistant to Donald Trump
00:25:30.400 and expert on counterterrorism.
00:25:33.220 And you can see how pleased they all were.
00:25:34.980 I should point out that in addition to this teacher, Aviva Polonsky,
00:25:39.500 a vice principal of the school also attended.
00:25:42.380 That's a picture of him right there.
00:25:44.220 But nonetheless, the school bowed down to the Internet leftists
00:25:50.100 and denounced their own people.
00:25:52.840 Well, I didn't mention it on my show last week,
00:25:55.500 but in a video on YouTube, we set up a petition called StandWithAviva.com.
00:26:02.860 Aviva being the teacher who was blamed by the school.
00:26:07.660 Joining us now via Skype from Vancouver is an alumnus of CHAT
00:26:12.120 who agrees that the school should not have thrown the teacher and the students to the wolves.
00:26:18.000 Noah Alter, great to meet you.
00:26:20.120 You've actually put together a petition of your own
00:26:23.920 in support of the teacher, Aviva Polonsky.
00:26:26.880 What motivated you to do so?
00:26:29.180 Well, I saw the manufactured outrage and I knew that Sebastian Gorka is not a Nazi,
00:26:36.820 not an anti-Semite.
00:26:37.760 Everything he's done in the past, everything we've seen from him,
00:26:40.440 everything he's produced shows very clearly that he's vehemently pro-Israel,
00:26:43.620 vehemently pro-Jewish.
00:26:45.660 I think the allegations are outrageous.
00:26:48.740 They're based on vague associations he had back when he was in Hungary.
00:26:52.420 And from my perspective, it seems, you know, Hungary is a somewhat anti-Semitic country.
00:26:58.660 It might be hard to get around politics without meeting anti-Semitic people.
00:27:02.740 But everything Gorka said is pro-Jewish, pro-Israel.
00:27:06.000 He's very clearly not a Nazi sympathizer.
00:27:10.320 What irritated me the most was not that false accusations would be made about Gorka.
00:27:16.500 I mean, that's life when you're the former deputy assistant of the president.
00:27:22.460 But that the school would cave so quickly and would blame the teacher, Aviva,
00:27:31.140 and pretend they had no knowledge of this event, sort of push it off on her,
00:27:35.880 when in fact they approved this event to begin with and a vice principal attended it.
00:27:40.620 That's what shocked me.
00:27:41.660 It didn't shock me that Gorka is a target.
00:27:44.240 It didn't shock me that a bunch of online leftists tried to bully the school.
00:27:47.720 What shocked me is that the school caved in so quickly.
00:27:50.820 This is very odd behavior for the school.
00:27:52.860 The school usually is very proud to display views from across the political spectrum.
00:27:58.820 But I think this might be a symbol of the times we're in
00:28:01.400 and that the school is so willing to give into pressure.
00:28:05.020 Yeah, you know, the Covington Catholic school kids,
00:28:09.200 who I think were world famous,
00:28:11.000 I can understand how the school got it wrong
00:28:13.360 because they were literally standing outside at a memorial
00:28:17.460 and the first reports that came in
00:28:19.740 were by supposedly reputable news or agencies like the Washington Post.
00:28:25.080 So the school in that case got the lies first
00:28:29.200 and it took a while for the truth to get out.
00:28:31.680 But in this case, the school knew everything in advance
00:28:35.240 and at the time, like I say, the teacher was there,
00:28:37.880 the vice principal was there, the kids looked thrilled.
00:28:41.000 So it's not like they had a chance to be misinformed by the fake news media,
00:28:46.860 which is what happened in Covington.
00:28:48.300 That's what I don't get.
00:28:49.500 I don't, I am still angry at the Covington Catholic school
00:28:54.420 for being so quick to judge their own kids.
00:28:59.080 But at least they have the excuse that the Washington Post lied about the facts.
00:29:03.620 In this case, it was just some Twitter trolls on the left
00:29:06.780 who weren't even lying about what happened.
00:29:09.480 They're just sort of really, really mad that it happened.
00:29:12.840 I just, I'm boggled by it.
00:29:15.400 Do you think, do you think that the school regrets overreacting
00:29:19.840 or do you think they, they actually mean what they said
00:29:23.140 in that bizarre smear letter that they sent around?
00:29:26.240 Well, the school's apology didn't seem overly sincere.
00:29:33.780 It seemed more like they were just trying to get out some sort of apology
00:29:36.580 and be done with it.
00:29:37.340 I think a lot of it was just trying to avoid controversy
00:29:39.860 and they may have not realized that that would actually contribute to more.
00:29:44.460 And also I think a lot of it was that there was no real voice
00:29:46.920 in support of Polanski when they sent out that letter.
00:29:49.360 The only people who I heard really talking about it outside of the CJN,
00:29:52.580 which was reporting pretty unbiasedly on it, was we saw IJV or Independent Jewish Voices
00:29:58.640 make a bunch of Facebook posts, a few tweets, and an alumni letter
00:30:03.920 from largely left-wing students or former students who no longer go there
00:30:09.860 and, you know, were not present on this trip.
00:30:13.140 And in fact, you know, in the letter that I wrote, I made it also only for alumni,
00:30:18.420 but in fact a number of students who are currently students of Ms. Polanski,
00:30:22.000 including students who were on that trip, asked me if they could sign the letter.
00:30:26.800 One of the things that I think made the Covington Catholic School do the right thing
00:30:34.300 when they exhausted all other options first was that the family of Nicholas Salmon,
00:30:39.720 I don't know how he did it, I don't know who helped him,
00:30:42.220 but they teamed up with a PR firm.
00:30:44.360 And then later, with one of the most powerful lawyers in the United States,
00:30:50.800 they put together a definitive authoritative video showing the truth of what happened.
00:30:57.440 I mean, it's very persuasive.
00:30:58.660 You can find it online.
00:31:00.220 But more importantly, they slapped these media outfits with warnings,
00:31:05.740 and then when they didn't correct,
00:31:09.140 they sued the Washington Post for $250 million.
00:31:14.340 And I know here in Canada we'd say, well, that sounds like a joke lawsuit.
00:31:17.520 Well, the lawyer who did it is a serious heavy hitter attorney
00:31:21.340 who has done these sorts of suits in the past.
00:31:23.540 I think it is a deadly serious lawsuit.
00:31:27.820 No one here in Toronto has lawyered up,
00:31:30.820 and the teacher herself, Aviva Polonsky,
00:31:33.700 maybe she's afraid to take on the school for being fired or something.
00:31:37.980 Do you think that a lawyer sending off some missives
00:31:41.580 would splash some cold water in the face of this Dr. Jonathan Levy
00:31:48.460 who signed the smear letter of her to begin with?
00:31:53.540 I don't necessarily think that lawyering up.
00:31:58.300 See, with internal Jewish community issues,
00:32:01.300 a lot of the time I think what's really worrisome
00:32:03.660 is if the issues within the community kind of spill out to the general population
00:32:10.900 because these are very much internal issues that we can deal with internally.
00:32:14.940 I think a bigger issue would be calling to the fact
00:32:18.920 that the original letter written by a group of left-wing alumni,
00:32:23.120 the open letter that they wrote,
00:32:25.080 was entirely to do with trying to basically self-promotion at the end of the day.
00:32:33.140 It was written by a member of the Liberal Party
00:32:35.620 who probably wanted to get some brownie points with his Liberal Party friends,
00:32:40.240 and that came at the expense of slandering the school and the teacher and Mr. Gorka.
00:32:46.280 But that doesn't really matter at the end of the day
00:32:48.260 because it was political opportunism is what it looks like to me.
00:32:51.720 So I don't think it's worth lawyering up quite yet over this issue
00:32:56.920 because it seems pretty internal.
00:32:58.580 But I think it's more important that we reinforce it within our community
00:33:02.280 not to bring these issues externally and try to solve them among ourselves
00:33:07.120 without delivering horrible slanders to people who are fellow Zionists 0.91
00:33:13.340 and fellow Jews, people who are a part of our community.
00:33:17.800 Well, and that's the thing.
00:33:18.840 Dr. Gorka, who was a great ally of Jews and Israel,
00:33:22.540 to be smeared this way and to be abandoned by the school,
00:33:26.260 that's a pretty rough way to treat a friend.
00:33:28.940 I will say that, I mean, I'm a Jew and I live in Toronto,
00:33:31.340 so I have a religious and approximate geographic connection to the school.
00:33:36.680 But I felt just the same connection to Nicholas Sandman of Covington Catholic in Kentucky.
00:33:41.640 And I'm not Catholic and I'm not from Kentucky
00:33:43.960 because I saw it as a grave and unfairness.
00:33:47.660 And really one of the poisons of social media is this Twitter mob
00:33:52.520 that can get this Facebook mob that can get whipped up
00:33:55.580 to smash and destroy someone's reputation just because some activists want it. 0.73
00:34:00.520 Well, listen, Noah, congratulations on you doing a counter petition.
00:34:04.920 Let me ask you, finally, have you received any reply to your petition?
00:34:10.480 I see you have a number of names on it, people who graduated in different years.
00:34:14.600 It's a very thoughtful letter.
00:34:16.240 Did you get a letter back from Dr. Levy or anyone else at the school?
00:34:21.960 No, I sent the letter directly to him, actually, but I never received any reply.
00:34:28.280 Yeah, somehow I'm not surprised by that.
00:34:30.100 Well, we'll drop off our petition as well.
00:34:31.760 Last I checked, I had over 3,000 petitions, signatures I haven't looked in a few days.
00:34:36.220 It's probably over 4,000 now.
00:34:38.520 Listen, thanks, and thanks for standing up to be counted.
00:34:40.880 And you told me just before we turned the camera on that you're with the Free Speech Society out there in Vancouver.
00:34:46.540 So congratulations on that.
00:34:49.340 I'm sorry, what were you saying?
00:34:50.360 Yeah, so I think part of what motivated me in this situation was it's an attack on free speech, too.
00:34:57.800 You know, students have a right to be exposed to a multitude of different viewpoints,
00:35:02.660 and they shouldn't have to be harassed by a bunch of university students and a left-wing Twitter mob
00:35:09.120 just because they choose to explore multiple angles of the political spectrum.
00:35:14.380 Yeah.
00:35:15.060 Well, listen, thanks so much for taking the time, and thanks for fighting back.
00:35:17.840 It's great to see.
00:35:19.300 Thank you, Ezra.
00:35:20.080 All right, there you have it.
00:35:20.840 That's Noah Alter, who joins us from Vancouver via Skype.
00:35:24.160 He's an alumnus of CHAT, and the only thing I would disagree with him on
00:35:27.620 is that I don't think this is a matter of internal community politics for the Jewish school.
00:35:32.840 I think this goes to a larger problem in our society that anyone who takes a conservative point of view,
00:35:38.620 a pro-Trump point of view, a pro-Israel point of view, is hounded and deplatformed in the Twitter mob.
00:35:44.600 And I think just as I believed it was my place to care about those Covington Catholic kids,
00:35:49.600 I think it's everyone's place to care about what happened here, even if you're not Jewish.
00:35:53.660 And even if you don't really care about Israel, the kind of censorship we saw there was just awful.
00:35:58.420 That's my view.
00:35:58.920 If you want to sign our petition, go to StandWithAviva.com.
00:36:02.900 Stay with us.
00:36:03.760 More Ahead on the Rebel.
00:36:15.760 Hey, welcome back to my monologue yesterday about Justin Trudeau kicking Jody Wilson-Raybould
00:36:19.560 and Dr. Jane Philpott out of the Liberal Party.
00:36:22.000 Ron writes,
00:36:23.220 This story is exciting, and there's a long way to go.
00:36:26.360 It is exciting.
00:36:27.320 I mean, it's also terrible if you look at the substance of it, what it means for our country.
00:36:31.860 But what's exciting to me is that you've got a woman of character.
00:36:35.280 And listen, do I have to say for the 10th time, I disagree with her ideologically,
00:36:39.360 but that doesn't mean she's not an honest woman.
00:36:41.200 I would trust her.
00:36:42.320 I would buy a used car from her. 0.99
00:36:44.200 I would lend her money.
00:36:45.840 I would trust her to babysit my kids.
00:36:48.440 I'm just trying to come up with examples of when you really need to trust a real person in a real way, right?
00:36:53.360 I would absolutely trust her, wouldn't you?
00:36:57.220 Because here's someone who gave up everything on a point of moral principle.
00:37:01.800 I have to say that's extremely rare in life, and it's as rare as a unicorn in politics, wouldn't you say it?
00:37:08.640 I know she's left wing. 1.00
00:37:10.940 Of course she is.
00:37:12.600 But can you not put that aside and say, here's a woman of character.
00:37:16.600 So, so rare.
00:37:18.000 Yes, I'm blown away.
00:37:18.900 No, I don't want her to join the conservative party.
00:37:20.580 She's not a conservative.
00:37:21.880 But just the character of this woman to stand up on a point of principle.
00:37:24.980 And what I showed you today, the five demands she made to Justin Trudeau.
00:37:29.020 Those weren't even demands.
00:37:30.240 Those are five ways for him to stop his ship from leaking.
00:37:33.780 What a fool not to take them.
00:37:35.120 Yes, it is exciting.
00:37:36.740 And it's exciting that the woman who holds him to account is her.
00:37:41.440 Monica writes, every woman should turn their back on Trudeau when he talks. 0.99
00:37:46.600 Yeah, but be careful.
00:37:47.940 Turn your back on him, but careful he doesn't grope you.
00:37:50.880 That's what the New York Times said he did when Rose Knight turned her back on him.
00:37:56.600 Mark writes, the CBC said that the caucus just generally agreed that they should kick the woman out.
00:38:01.440 They did not mention there were illegal procedures to follow.
00:38:03.500 Well, we would not know about Section 49-2 if we relied on the CBC for our news.
00:38:09.520 Oh, yeah.
00:38:10.180 You know what?
00:38:10.460 I saw a CBC journalist named Aaron Wary actually on Twitter correcting journalists who made the point that you and I just made.
00:38:19.620 Literally like a spin doctor for the liberal war room.
00:38:22.180 It's so gross.
00:38:23.100 Watching the CBC is awful.
00:38:24.380 They get worse every year.
00:38:25.300 But their conduct in the last two, three weeks here, as the Liberal Party decided to get tough with Jody Wilson-Raybould,
00:38:32.700 there's no dividing line between the CBC newsroom and the Liberal Party war room.
00:38:38.200 It's all the same, and I think it looks really, really bad on them.
00:38:42.140 Well, folks, that's our show for today.
00:38:44.160 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.
00:38:48.240 Keep fighting for freedom.
00:38:48.980 We'll be right back.