Rebel News Podcast - Tomorrow, The Rebel Media celebrates its fourth anniversary： Looking back — and ahead to the future

00:00:00.620 Hello, Rebels. You're listening to an audio-only recording of my show, The Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:04.820 It's free as a podcast. Today, I take my time and give you a half-hour monologue. It's a

00:00:11.220 recap of four great years of the Rebel. Do you know that we turned four years old? Four

00:00:16.500 years old. Someone mentioned to me that's longer than the Sun News Network was on the

00:00:21.340 air. Yikes. That's incredible. If you like listening to this podcast, then I think you'd

00:00:26.280 like to watch it. I mean, I show video clips. We're in the video business. You just need

00:00:29.980 to be a subscriber to premium content. That's what we call it. It's pretty easy peasy. It's

00:00:33.600 eight bucks a month. You get access to my show, Sheila Gunnery's show, David Menzies' show.

00:00:38.940 If you subscribe to a whole year, you actually get two months free. And if you're a podcast

00:00:42.740 listener, just type in podcast as the coupon code when you subscribe and you'll get an

00:00:48.900 extra 10% off. So just go to therebel.media slash shows to become a member. And hey, if

00:00:54.760 you wouldn't mind leaving a positive review on iTunes or wherever else you listen, that'd

00:00:58.840 be great. It's a good way to support us without chipping in a dime. So without further to do,

00:01:02.460 enjoy this free audio only version of my show.

00:01:06.580 Tonight, it's our fourth anniversary tomorrow. Let me share with you some thoughts. It's February

00:01:11.720 14th and this is the Ezra LeVance Show.

00:01:13.880 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:19.660 There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.

00:01:23.740 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody

00:01:28.600 right to do so.

00:01:34.980 Four years ago, I read on Twitter that I was out of a job. Someone had leaked the news to a rival news

00:01:42.200 channel that the Sun News Network was being shut down. It was a depressing way to learn it, though

00:01:47.120 I imagine there was no good way. If I recall, it was a Thursday night, I think, and we all just went

00:01:53.520 into the office the next morning to find out if it was true. And it was. And we commiserated and said

00:01:59.880 some goodbyes and cleared out our desks. It was pretty sad, but frankly, no one was that surprised we

00:02:05.220 had been euthanized by the CRTC. Our owner, Quebecor, hadn't, I mean, I'd put in, what, 50 million

00:02:13.260 dollars into Sun News on the expectation that we would be treated the same way by the government

00:02:18.240 regulator as the two existing all-news channels in Canada owned by CTV and CBC were.

00:02:25.100 But we weren't. And the regulator shut us down again and again, making it impossible for the

00:02:30.300 company to survive. I won't get into the details, but it's a reminder that Stephen Harper sometimes

00:02:35.120 lacked the killer instinct of his partisan opponents. There's simply no way that Jean

00:02:39.240 Quat-Jean or Gerald Butts would have allowed a regulator to kill a liberal-leaning TV news

00:02:44.140 channel. Harper just watched as the CRTC killed Sun News in an election year, no less. Trudeau showed

00:02:51.060 he was no dummy, immediately giving a massive increase to the CBC. And now he's adding 595 million

00:02:56.980 to control the private media too. So yeah, that was all four years ago today. I recall that day,

00:03:03.140 that night, like I say, we all knew the end was coming. It was a slow motion death. So I had been

00:03:07.680 thinking a bit about the possibilities of life after Sun News. And that day when we were all

00:03:11.960 commissary, I invited some of my colleagues to come to my house to see if we could, I don't know,

00:03:18.080 hammer out a plan to keep the momentum going online that we had on TV. I knew our audience wasn't huge

00:03:24.620 because, of course, the CRTC ensured we were hard to find on the dial, hard to order, in many cases

00:03:30.160 simply not available at all. But we had built up a loyal audience over the years and I knew we had to

00:03:34.320 catch them quickly to let people know we had a plan. So immediately we put up this video just to let

00:03:40.760 people know we were working on it. Sun News Network is off the air. Bang. Gone. That's basically what

00:03:46.980 happened. Sun News Network went off the air today. Sun News Network has gone dark. The end of Sun News

00:03:54.520 Network. Sun TV faded to dark. With Sun gone, there's a hole in the far right side of the dial.

00:04:01.940 Sun News Network.

00:04:06.980 Ezra Levant fighting for freedom in Calgary. Good night.

00:04:20.020 Well, after spending a day talking about how things could work, we put out our very first video

00:04:25.020 from my living room. Here's a few moments of that.

00:04:28.800 So here's my plan.

00:04:30.120 I want to create something to take the place of the Sun News Network.

00:04:33.820 It won't be as big, at least not for a while.

00:04:36.100 It won't be as much content.

00:04:37.540 It won't be 12 or 16 hours of video content a day,

00:04:40.700 not as many bells and whistles, yes.

00:04:43.220 But all the heart, all the independence, all the great conservative ideas.

00:04:47.640 I've reached out to a number of my former colleagues to invite them along,

00:04:51.420 and I'll reach out to still more.

00:04:52.660 Some are still mourning the loss of the Sun

00:04:54.260 and trying to figure out what comes next.

00:04:56.360 We're all still reeling a bit,

00:04:57.740 but we all know that we still care about the things we cared about last week,

00:05:01.700 and I think you do too.

00:05:04.120 But what should we call all this?

00:05:06.380 I got an idea.

00:05:08.520 TheRebel.media.

00:05:12.100 You know most of the rest.

00:05:13.440 We started making videos, very homemade,

00:05:15.700 almost all of them outside,

00:05:17.120 and it was as cold four years ago as it is this week.

00:05:20.080 We did about 50 videos or so just to show we could do it,

00:05:23.720 just to practice, just to show we could do it the next day too.

00:05:26.380 My old studio at the Sun had cost more than a million dollars to build,

00:05:30.740 they told me.

00:05:31.800 It was massive.

00:05:32.620 It had huge robotic cameras that cost more than a quarter million bucks each,

00:05:36.520 I was told.

00:05:37.400 The control room had five or six people running it.

00:05:40.280 It was a big operation.

00:05:42.140 At Sun News, it was about 200 people altogether,

00:05:45.420 including, for example, a whole makeup team.

00:05:47.340 Well, none of that for The Rebel.

00:05:50.260 We used little $2,000 handheld video cameras.

00:05:52.920 We edited things on our laptops.

00:05:54.720 We uploaded videos to YouTube.

00:05:56.400 We could do our own TV makeup.

00:05:58.080 I still do.

00:05:59.120 We knew we had to go ultra low cost to survive.

00:06:02.280 The name The Rebel, I'm not quite sure if I'd choose that again,

00:06:04.880 if I could do it over.

00:06:06.200 I know why I chose it back then.

00:06:07.720 I felt it summed up our spirit.

00:06:08.900 We were rebelling against the system that killed Sun News,

00:06:11.320 and by that I mean the CRTC and the regulators

00:06:13.500 and the fact that the government could decide what's on TV.

00:06:16.840 Four years ago, that was before Internet censorship really took off.

00:06:20.460 YouTube, Twitter, Facebook were non-political bastions of free speech back then.

00:06:24.800 So we were saying we don't need a Stephen Harper to look out for us.

00:06:28.140 We don't care if a Justin Trudeau hates us.

00:06:30.580 We rebelled against the system, the technology, the cost,

00:06:33.540 the media party think-alike narrative.

00:06:35.680 We were rebels against all that.

00:06:38.600 The Rebel.media was a weird Internet name.

00:06:40.760 It wasn't a .com, but I thought it made sense

00:06:43.600 since it wasn't geographically limiting like a .ca would be,

00:06:47.660 and it wasn't just about me, Ezra Levant.com,

00:06:50.500 and I thought the .media might catch on.

00:06:52.920 In truth, I don't know of a single other website that has used .media.

00:06:57.780 It's still weird to this day, frankly.

00:06:59.460 I'm thinking of changing our name to TheRebel.com,

00:07:01.720 a domain we now own.

00:07:04.220 I suppose the main reason I now wonder about the name

00:07:06.140 is that why should we be called the Rebels?

00:07:09.040 It's true we are rebelling.

00:07:10.200 It's true we are dissident, that we object and oppose,

00:07:12.800 but that implies we're the minority,

00:07:14.580 or more to the point that we are abnormal or outsiders or the other.

00:07:18.920 And worse, it implies that our critics and opponents are the center,

00:07:22.380 that they're normal.

00:07:23.860 On so many issues, though, it's simply not true.

00:07:26.440 The entire media political establishment, for example,

00:07:29.920 they'll love Omar Khadr.

00:07:31.980 The vast majority of Canadians don't.

00:07:33.820 Angus Reid polls show that only 5% or 6% of Canadians want more immigration.

00:07:39.920 The entire media political industrial complex wants more,

00:07:42.900 including, I might add, Andrew Scheer, the conservative leader.

00:07:45.540 Sorry, we're not the outliers on that.

00:07:47.980 The establishment is.

00:07:49.780 We became, and we still are,

00:07:51.500 the largest YouTube news channel in Canada,

00:07:53.700 measured by the number of our subscribers.

00:07:55.100 We now have 1.145 million.

00:08:00.080 YouTube, which started to treat us poorly in the months after Trump's election win,

00:08:05.160 has punished us by cutting off ads to us,

00:08:08.000 not just to us, but to all conservative news sites.

00:08:11.640 But they haven't banned us yet.

00:08:14.280 And in fact, they have sent us plaques commemorating our huge milestones,

00:08:18.020 100,000 and then a million subscribers.

00:08:19.820 And you know what?

00:08:20.760 Time has flown, and we have now actually

00:08:23.180 been operating the rebel for longer than Sun News was on the air.

00:08:27.680 Isn't that something?

00:08:28.660 I loved Sun News Network, and I wish it had been allowed to live.

00:08:32.240 But no point in lamenting what's gone.

00:08:34.700 Let's focus on what is here.

00:08:36.040 We have published, we have broadcast more than 11,000 videos,

00:08:39.860 and we upload around 10 more every day.

00:08:42.440 We're still alive.

00:08:44.440 Our critics, who despised us merely because we dared to have a conservative point of view,

00:08:48.540 well, they've had some hard times themselves, even in recent weeks.

00:08:52.120 I guess there's only so much pro-terrorist, pro-transgenderism, pro-Trudeau,

00:08:57.580 anti-Trump clickbait the world can consume.

00:09:01.260 One more fond memory.

00:09:02.380 I remember when we unveiled our business plan in a video

00:09:05.840 while I was standing on a very, very cold street in downtown Toronto.

00:09:09.160 Let me play the whole thing for you.

00:09:10.640 It's a couple minutes, but I want you to watch.

00:09:12.840 And you tell me, did we more or less keep to the plan?

00:09:18.540 Hi, I'm Ezra Levant.

00:09:22.700 I was the anchor of The Source on the Sun News Network,

00:09:25.680 but the sun has set and thousands of people say they miss us dearly.

00:09:29.680 Is there anything we can do?

00:09:31.320 I think so.

00:09:32.340 Along with a handful of former staff,

00:09:34.260 we pledge to create something new called www.therebel.media.

00:09:39.780 As the dot media part suggests, it's everything you love.

00:09:43.700 Videos, news stories, podcasts, updated around the clock

00:09:47.900 and available on your computer screen or even on your cell phone.

00:09:51.240 We started right away, literally out of my living room last week.

00:09:54.980 But we're already producing national quality TV clips

00:09:58.100 and we're reporting stories that nobody else will.

00:10:01.240 Here's our simple business plan.

00:10:02.920 Produce enough quality news, opinion and activism

00:10:06.320 to inspire a loyal following.

00:10:10.160 Aim for 50,000 people a day coming by the site for a quick look.

00:10:14.560 That sounds huge, but we're growing like crazy,

00:10:16.820 already getting about 20,000 hits a day.

00:10:19.540 Now, most of those will be casual users

00:10:21.660 and we'll make a few pennies off each of them in display ads.

00:10:24.760 But we hope people will love what we're doing

00:10:27.040 and become engaged in our community and buy a membership.

00:10:31.440 Members would get special paywall-protected content

00:10:34.260 that casual viewers wouldn't.

00:10:36.620 I'm talking about exclusive documentaries, feature interviews,

00:10:40.180 special things you could only get from the Sun News Network in the past

00:10:43.680 and that you'll only be able to get from us now.

00:10:46.200 That's our business plan, but we can't start this business alone.

00:10:49.960 Will you help us?

00:10:51.180 In the past week, we've shown you what we can do on a shoestring budget.

00:10:55.420 Imagine if we actually had some real tools,

00:10:58.080 professional cameras, video software, even a studio.

00:11:01.920 Will you chip in?

00:11:03.840 We're asking everyone who loved the sun and was sad to see it die

00:11:07.220 to crowdfund the rebel.media and help it be born.

00:11:11.680 So we've set up a crowdfunding page on our website,

00:11:14.700 almost like a wedding gift registry

00:11:16.600 where people who want us to start our business can help us.

00:11:20.280 I've told you our plan.

00:11:22.200 Please help us get the tools.

00:11:24.100 I've listed all of the things we need right on our website at the rebel.media,

00:11:28.320 from buying lunch for the team for 40 bucks

00:11:31.400 to endowing a chair in investigative journalism for 40,000

00:11:35.360 and everything in between.

00:11:37.920 If you want to cover Ottawa seriously, then you've got to be here

00:11:40.660 in the foyer of the House of Commons at microphones like these

00:11:43.340 asking the tough questions.

00:11:45.000 This is the only place where the media really holds politicians to account.

00:11:49.260 Thanks, Brian.

00:11:50.540 Did you love the sun?

00:11:52.140 Let's build something even better.

00:11:54.300 If you give us the tools, we'll finish this job.

00:11:58.300 Thanks, my friends.

00:11:59.660 Visit therebel.media.

00:12:01.380 And good luck to us all.

00:12:04.200 You know, I think we sort of did that.

00:12:07.020 I think we sort of did.

00:12:08.340 In fact, we get way more than 50,000 viewers a day.

00:12:11.500 Sometimes we get that in an hour.

00:12:14.220 So we started out in my living room.

00:12:16.980 After a week, my wife kicked us out.

00:12:19.020 We moved into a hotel boardroom.

00:12:21.140 And then we had our first little tiny office, one of those shared office spaces you can rent.

00:12:25.300 It was too small, as you can see.

00:12:27.780 Then we moved into an abandoned daycare, if you can believe it,

00:12:32.680 where we just set up some used office furniture and just did it.

00:12:37.380 You'll recall we crowdfunded a little studio inside that abandoned daycare.

00:12:42.000 We stayed there for 18 months or so until we just outgrew the place

00:12:45.240 and the kid-sized bathroom.

00:12:46.840 In January of 2017, we moved into our current location, a real office.

00:12:52.160 It's still very modest.

00:12:53.340 All used furniture, low-rent part of town in an industrial park.

00:12:57.260 But we're still alive and kicking, still trying to keep our costs low

00:13:00.340 because we're not going to take any of that Trudeau bailout money.

00:13:03.660 And over the years, you know, we've grown.

00:13:05.700 We've grown geographically.

00:13:07.060 I wouldn't have guessed it back in 2015.

00:13:08.960 But we have a lot of American viewers.

00:13:10.580 I remember deliberately saying, let's not try to grow in the U.S.

00:13:13.660 My thinking was they have so many outstanding conservative broadcasters there,

00:13:17.240 not just Fox News, but on the radio, like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck

00:13:22.000 and great online websites from Drudge to The Blaze to New Upstarts.

00:13:26.020 That's what I thought back then.

00:13:27.000 I thought, we'll never compete with Americans in America.

00:13:29.400 Let's just focus on our own stuff.

00:13:31.840 But Americans had a different opinion.

00:13:33.520 They liked our take on things.

00:13:35.120 We talked about Trump because we found him interesting and appealing.

00:13:38.060 Americans watched those vids even more than Canadians did.

00:13:41.620 And that's one of the wonderful things about being online.

00:13:43.660 At the sun, on real TV stations, the world is divided up geographically.

00:13:49.700 The sun was only available in Canada and only in certain parts of Canada,

00:13:53.700 on certain cable companies.

00:13:55.040 Same with other TV stations.

00:13:56.160 It's national or regional markets.

00:13:57.940 Not so with YouTube videos.

00:14:00.560 We're a global broadcaster, no limits.

00:14:03.020 And Americans liked our stuff.

00:14:05.660 And same with the United Kingdom.

00:14:07.520 We didn't discover Tommy Robinson.

00:14:11.360 But we did propel him into TV.

00:14:14.580 I would talk to Tommy from time to time on Skype, as you know.

00:14:17.560 And one day I just said to him, hey, Tommy, what do you do for a living?

00:14:21.340 And if you don't mind me asking, how much do you earn doing it, Tommy?

00:14:25.420 And he told me.

00:14:26.880 He worked in construction, really.

00:14:28.540 And by that, I mean, he would renovate homes.

00:14:30.400 Good, honest work.

00:14:31.220 He was good at it.

00:14:32.000 Impressive stuff.

00:14:32.580 I've been to his home that he built for himself.

00:14:34.540 But I thought, that man has a higher purpose in life.

00:14:36.980 He has to fight for freedom.

00:14:38.160 Tommy has since gone independent, as you know.

00:14:40.700 But I will forever feel a small sense of paternity in his media career.

00:14:45.460 And even after he left us to go independent, when he was falsely arrested and imprisoned for contempt of court,

00:14:50.120 we knew we had to help him for all the reasons we thought he was important in the first place.

00:14:54.080 I'm happy to say that although he doesn't work with us still, we're friends.

00:14:59.700 And helping to get him out of prison by asking our viewers to help crowdfund his legal defense

00:15:04.540 was one of the great public achievements of my life.

00:15:06.960 And I hope you feel the same way.

00:15:09.660 In the UK, we met other characters along the way.

00:15:12.860 Jack Buckby, who does videos for us every day.

00:15:15.860 And Katie Hopkins, who did videos for us for almost a year, including in South Africa,

00:15:20.700 where she documented the ethnic cleansing of white farmers.

00:15:24.080 Now, like I say, Tommy's a friend, but he's not working with them anymore.

00:15:27.300 Katie Hopkins is independent now, too.

00:15:29.320 And when you look back over the four years, for better or worse,

00:15:32.400 we've had some very interesting characters pass through our doors.

00:15:35.700 Holy moly.

00:15:37.180 Lauren Southern, the crusading journalist who did some exciting things, some gonzo things.

00:15:41.500 She fought against political correctness.

00:15:43.000 She went to exotic places like the Calais jungle refugee camp outside of, on the coast of France. 0.98

00:15:51.520 Even Faith Goldie, who reported for us from across Canada and around the world,

00:15:56.640 seen here in Bethlehem, the city where Jesus was born, now dominated by the PLO. 0.83

00:16:01.200 As you know, we fired Faith and we've said goodbye to a few other talents over the years, too.

00:16:05.520 Sometimes it's a deep editorial disagreement.

00:16:07.800 Sometimes it's young talent wanting to spread their wings and fly on their own.

00:16:11.800 Some of our journalists were hired right out of school.

00:16:14.300 Some are still in school when they work for us.

00:16:16.140 What I like about the rebel, and what sometimes drives me crazy,

00:16:18.940 is that we hire people who are unusual or unconventional.

00:16:22.040 You might say they're rebels.

00:16:24.780 Down under, that was the former leader of the Labour Party of Australia, Mark Latham,

00:16:29.540 who later in life became a bit of a blue-collar Trump supporter.

00:16:32.400 But all of these people, for better or for worse, they were part of a great project.

00:16:36.820 A project that continues.

00:16:38.860 I think it's the democratization of journalism.

00:16:41.800 The exploration of citizen journalism.

00:16:44.280 We're experimenting a bit. I don't care.

00:16:47.580 I'm not lingering on people who have left us.

00:16:49.160 The media is notoriously unstable as an industry, especially political media,

00:16:52.700 especially when you set out in advance to be a little bit prickly,

00:16:55.500 a little bit challenging, a little bit obstinate.

00:16:57.300 When you call yourself the rebel, don't be surprised if some of the people you team up with

00:17:00.500 are a bit of a prickly porcupine themselves.

00:17:03.160 But, you know, all of it?

00:17:04.800 Well, it's been such a refreshing antidote to the sameness,

00:17:08.220 the vanilliness, the dreariness of the establishment,

00:17:12.140 especially here in Canada, and it's even worse in the UK, by the way.

00:17:15.960 I mean, I'm sorry, I just don't care what the little incestuous circle of panelists 1.00

00:17:20.520 on the CBC says anymore.

00:17:22.920 About anything, I mean, take these two, Andrew Coyne and Sean Talibert.

00:17:26.480 Andrew Coyne, he's the son of the former Bank of Canada governor,

00:17:29.220 whose cousin, Debra Coyne, dated Pierre Trudeau and then ran against Justin Trudeau

00:17:35.800 for the liberal leadership.

00:17:37.040 That's about as close to the real-life definition, as incestuous as it gets.

00:17:41.460 And just for balance, you know, Sean Talibert, who's surprised,

00:17:45.340 was on the Trudeau Foundation.

00:17:47.000 I mean, come on!

00:17:48.360 We're a country of 35 million people.

00:17:50.500 You literally couldn't get anyone else on a political panel

00:17:53.500 to discuss Justin Trudeau, besides a Trudeau Foundation appointee

00:17:57.780 and the cousin of old man Trudeau's mistress.

00:18:00.980 I mean, come on.

00:18:02.200 Yeah, no, we need a bit more fresh water in this stale pond of journalism.

00:18:06.360 I'd rather have the odd wild man or wild woman

00:18:09.080 work for us at the Rebel and maybe flame out

00:18:11.520 and have them go too far from time to time, sure,

00:18:14.200 but then just put on those Ottawa lobbyists with their talking points?

00:18:17.960 That's not even journalism.

00:18:20.080 And I think Canadians feel the same way.

00:18:21.640 At least a bunch of Canadians do. 0.62

00:18:23.500 Call us the deplorables. 0.96

00:18:24.900 I don't care.

00:18:25.840 I think the victory of Doug Ford in Ontario

00:18:28.000 against the entire media party

00:18:29.980 was a vindication of our thinking

00:18:31.680 on everything from populism to the carbon tax.

00:18:34.800 Here's Paul Wells,

00:18:36.160 the ultimate vanilla establishment journalist,

00:18:39.480 tweeting that Doug Ford will never leave.

00:18:43.400 There's no chance Doug Ford will leave the Ontario Conservatives.

00:18:47.560 Suspense now is over whether he realized it.

00:18:49.520 Yeah, yeah.

00:18:50.780 Same folks who said Hillary Clinton had a 98% chance of winning.

00:18:54.300 Well, we beg to differ, and so do our viewers.

00:18:56.760 And judging by the failing mainstream media companies,

00:18:59.400 so do their viewers, their ex-viewers.

00:19:01.740 I mean...

00:19:02.340 So here we are in 2019, bigger than ever in some ways,

00:19:06.560 more than 1.1 million subscribers on YouTube.

00:19:08.900 Now, don't think that means 1.1 million dollars.

00:19:11.720 Those are just YouTube subscribers.

00:19:13.340 It's free to be a YouTube subscriber.

00:19:15.600 We don't get paid for that.

00:19:17.060 YouTube demonetized our site by about 90%

00:19:19.540 shortly after Trump's victory.

00:19:21.780 We have literally millions of people

00:19:23.040 who have interacted with our site over the years,

00:19:26.260 chipping in a bit to help us crowdfund projects

00:19:28.900 like travel, signing petitions,

00:19:30.520 even helping us put up billboards.

00:19:31.820 I love doing things like that.

00:19:33.320 I love our billboards to fire politicians,

00:19:35.780 like the one we did saying,

00:19:37.140 fire, win. 0.93

00:19:37.760 That was a good one.

00:19:38.560 Mission accomplished.

00:19:39.840 And the one we're doing right now,

00:19:41.860 saying fire Alberta's David Egan.

00:19:44.380 Mission about to be accomplished.

00:19:46.800 I love the mobile billboards.

00:19:48.960 The jumbotron trucks, I call them.

00:19:51.680 I love the rallies we do.

00:19:53.280 We got to do some more rallies.

00:19:55.060 Like the one against the carbon tax a couple years back,

00:19:57.700 where we lit the match that's turned into a blazing forest fire.

00:20:01.920 I love our lawn signs.

00:20:02.920 You know, we got lawn signs.

00:20:04.100 We got the stop the carbon tax lawn sign.

00:20:06.680 We got some fire wind lawn signs.

00:20:09.940 We got some new lawn signs coming

00:20:11.580 that you are going to love, love, love, I promise you.

00:20:14.280 And you know what?

00:20:16.040 I love our people here.

00:20:17.560 Our people behind the scenes,

00:20:19.440 our staff, our producers, our editors,

00:20:21.500 our technical people, our computer people,

00:20:23.840 our database people.

00:20:24.860 They don't get the same public credit

00:20:26.340 that our on-camera stars do,

00:20:28.380 but they're just as important.

00:20:30.420 I love that we have found people

00:20:32.180 and made them, well, famous is the wrong word,

00:20:34.980 though it's true.

00:20:35.960 To me, I think more we've made them

00:20:37.840 your reliable guides to the world today.

00:20:41.020 I mean, do you really trust, by contrast,

00:20:43.600 the CBC and Rosemary Barton

00:20:46.120 to ask real questions of the liberals?

00:20:49.080 I mean, look at this.

00:20:49.580 This is really footage.

00:20:51.300 We slowed it down a bit

00:20:52.120 and put a Valentine's Day hue on it.

00:20:55.320 But this is real footage

00:20:56.300 from Rosemary Barton's lovey-dovey interview.

00:20:58.820 Look at that giggle. 1.00

00:20:59.600 She's in love.

00:21:00.460 She's in love.

00:21:01.140 She's in love.

00:21:02.240 Her lovey-dovey interview with Trudeau

00:21:03.740 a few months back.

00:21:05.020 She looks like a girl on a first date.

00:21:07.540 They're walking in the snow together.

00:21:09.460 She's flicking her hair.

00:21:11.300 Am I pretty enough for him?

00:21:14.440 I don't trust Rosemary Barton

00:21:15.940 to tell me the truth about Justin Trudeau.

00:21:17.780 Do you trust her?

00:21:19.080 Do you trust Wendy Messer?

00:21:20.080 Do you trust the Toronto Star,

00:21:21.520 the Globe and Mail?

00:21:22.020 No, I don't.

00:21:23.560 Tell you who I trust?

00:21:24.540 I trust people like Sheila Gunn-Reed.

00:21:26.120 I know I can trust Sheila

00:21:27.300 because she's a real-life person,

00:21:29.460 not a journalism school liberal-trained

00:21:32.040 assassin-gotcha conservative hater. 0.69

00:21:34.980 No, she's real life 0.98

00:21:36.260 and a better journalist

00:21:37.280 than any in the official press gallery

00:21:39.220 because she's got... 0.81

00:21:40.840 She's not trying to audition for a job 1.00

00:21:42.720 with Rachel Notley's NDP

00:21:43.740 or Justin Trudeau's liberals.

00:21:45.860 I love Sheila's reports

00:21:47.080 from the United Nations

00:21:47.980 global warming conferences.

00:21:49.200 They're great.

00:21:49.740 David Menzies, too,

00:21:51.240 whether it's on the streets of Toronto

00:21:53.020 or the streets of Mexico.

00:21:54.760 Remember when we sent him

00:21:55.800 to cover the migrant caravan?

00:21:57.080 That was great journalism.

00:21:59.060 Or he does fun stuff, too,

00:22:00.580 like streeters, we call it,

00:22:02.280 with Generation Trudeau.

00:22:04.680 He's so funny.

00:22:06.800 I like our young Calgary reporter,

00:22:09.380 Kian Bexte.

00:22:10.040 He's only been with us about six months,

00:22:11.460 but he's been hitting home run

00:22:12.900 after home run lately.

00:22:14.240 It's just great.

00:22:15.420 The NDP hate him.

00:22:17.100 Look at him asking a question yesterday

00:22:19.120 of Rachel Notley

00:22:19.840 and Senior Cabinet Minister Darren Billis.

00:22:22.400 Kian found out that Billis,

00:22:23.980 a senior minister,

00:22:25.000 hasn't been paying his alimony,

00:22:26.760 had an affair with the woman

00:22:28.060 who's now the NDP caucus chair,

00:22:30.320 and according to a sworn affidavit

00:22:32.000 from his wife,

00:22:32.820 is a drug addict. 1.00

00:22:33.980 That's all crazy. 1.00

00:22:35.980 That's investigative journalism.

00:22:37.380 And then look at the courage

00:22:38.520 to put those facts right to their face.

00:22:40.800 Take a look.

00:22:41.940 Premier Rachel Notley,

00:22:43.280 documents filed by Minister Billis' wife,

00:22:45.960 sworn affidavits,

00:22:47.240 suggest that he has a problem

00:22:49.000 with drug addiction

00:22:49.720 as well as suggest,

00:22:51.220 the details in that sworn affidavit

00:22:52.540 suggest that he might be one of the MLAs

00:22:54.320 who the NDP caucus covered up

00:22:56.960 in terms of sexual allegations.

00:22:58.800 Can you confirm or deny this?

00:23:00.400 What I can say is that

00:23:01.980 that question is essentially

00:23:03.980 irresponsible,

00:23:05.380 rumour-mongering,

00:23:06.380 and with the greatest respect to you,

00:23:08.360 you work for an organisation

00:23:09.480 that probably ought to be registered

00:23:11.680 as a third party

00:23:12.760 under the elections legislation,

00:23:15.620 and so I have nothing more

00:23:16.420 to say to that.

00:23:17.720 Minister Billis,

00:23:18.400 will you answer the question?

00:23:20.640 I have nothing further to add.

00:23:22.960 Yeah, neither of them said no,

00:23:24.240 did they?

00:23:24.920 No other Alberta journalist

00:23:26.040 would ever ask a tough question like that.

00:23:27.420 It's too uncomfortable

00:23:28.080 because you want to be loved

00:23:29.020 if you're a mainstream media journalist.

00:23:30.900 No other journalist

00:23:31.480 has ever asked,

00:23:32.280 for example,

00:23:33.160 when Kian asked Omar Khadar,

00:23:35.880 the terrorist,

00:23:36.580 some real questions.

00:23:38.060 It was the first time

00:23:39.060 in his life

00:23:39.580 a reporter actually asked him

00:23:41.300 a tough question.

00:23:42.940 Where did all the money go

00:23:43.900 that he got from Trudeau?

00:23:44.820 Take a listen.

00:23:46.700 Even if he gets a passport, 0.85

00:23:48.120 which airline in Canada

00:23:49.060 will take him to Saudi Arabia?

00:23:51.940 You'd have to ask

00:23:52.760 some Canadian airlines.

00:23:53.840 I doubt that they'd want

00:23:54.840 to take a terrorist

00:23:55.640 across the sea

00:23:56.700 to Saudi Arabia.

00:23:58.280 Oh, I see.

00:23:58.560 Okay.

00:23:59.500 He later chased Cotter

00:24:00.820 down the street

00:24:01.360 asking him where the money was.

00:24:03.360 I don't have time

00:24:04.060 to go through

00:24:04.360 our entire list of talent.

00:24:05.580 Martina Marcotta,

00:24:06.560 who covers culture for us.

00:24:09.760 Ben Davies,

00:24:11.480 a working actor in Hollywood

00:24:13.020 who covers movies

00:24:14.480 from a conservative

00:24:15.220 and Christian point of view.

00:24:18.380 Amanda Head,

00:24:19.460 an accomplished singer

00:24:20.460 and cultural observer.

00:24:23.360 Kurt Schlichter,

00:24:24.620 tough as nails,

00:24:25.480 U.S. Army veteran,

00:24:26.500 fighting lawyer,

00:24:27.520 and a fun troublemaker.

00:24:29.780 Speaking of which,

00:24:30.600 it looks like Miles...

00:24:31.760 Like I'm on Earth right now.

00:24:32.880 ...are becoming the rebel.

00:24:34.300 Not Gavin.

00:24:35.080 He's much too toxic. 0.93

00:24:36.940 Masculinity. 0.51

00:24:38.520 But Gavin's twin brother,

00:24:39.640 the woke Miles McInnes,

00:24:41.760 who will pay just 73 cents

00:24:43.720 on the dollar

00:24:44.120 and what we paid Gavin

00:24:44.920 out of solidarity

00:24:45.760 as a male feminist.

00:24:47.780 New voices joining

00:24:48.720 the rebel all the time.

00:24:49.520 Janice Atkinson,

00:24:51.000 a sitting member

00:24:51.760 of the European Parliament

00:24:52.760 who won as a UKIP candidate.

00:24:55.540 Isn't that exciting?

00:24:56.340 She's just started

00:24:57.100 with us in the last month.

00:24:58.820 Jessica Svietsvonevsky,

00:25:00.500 whose debut report with us

00:25:02.480 was a powerful investigation

00:25:04.160 of the leftist propaganda event

00:25:06.440 called We Day.

00:25:08.180 Adam, who goes by

00:25:09.380 the nickname 0.97

00:25:10.060 Pathetic Millennial. 0.98

00:25:11.640 He is so funny. 0.99

00:25:14.020 And new correspondents

00:25:15.200 like the delightful

00:25:15.900 Pardes Salam.

00:25:17.880 There are so many things

00:25:19.760 going on here

00:25:20.780 at The Rebel.

00:25:21.320 We had such an interesting

00:25:23.000 four years so far,

00:25:24.320 but I think we're stronger

00:25:25.800 and better than ever,

00:25:27.100 if I do say so myself.

00:25:28.300 But what I mean by that

00:25:29.160 is we've survived

00:25:29.920 some bumps in the road

00:25:31.140 and we've thrived

00:25:33.260 and we've grown

00:25:34.960 and we've grown stronger

00:25:36.020 and we've proved

00:25:36.680 that we're here

00:25:37.500 for the long run.

00:25:38.880 And I think we've done

00:25:39.860 great journalism

00:25:40.500 and most importantly,

00:25:42.580 you seem to want us

00:25:45.040 to live on.

00:25:45.560 I know this

00:25:46.360 because if you didn't,

00:25:47.880 we'd be dead

00:25:48.640 pretty quickly.

00:25:49.300 No government grants here.

00:25:50.540 No corporate benefactor here

00:25:51.940 like the great

00:25:52.700 Pierre-Carl Pelletot.

00:25:53.900 Oh, believe me,

00:25:54.380 I'd take 50 mil.

00:25:55.800 I'm always grateful

00:25:56.860 for what he did

00:25:57.820 with the sun.

00:25:58.520 I wish the government

00:25:59.220 didn't shut him down.

00:26:00.480 But instead of lamenting

00:26:01.680 the unfairness

00:26:02.500 to which he

00:26:03.140 and Sun News

00:26:04.140 were treated,

00:26:04.840 we've gone ahead

00:26:05.500 and built something

00:26:06.680 that's actually

00:26:07.220 been more enduring

00:26:08.020 and has had

00:26:09.220 a farther reach.

00:26:10.080 And judging from

00:26:10.640 the reaction we're getting

00:26:11.460 from our viewers

00:26:12.000 and from the world,

00:26:13.960 I think we're having

00:26:14.720 an impact.

00:26:17.520 It is disappointing

00:26:18.600 to see the Conservatives

00:26:19.880 and the member opposite

00:26:23.700 engage in peddling

00:26:25.240 rebel media conspiracy theories.

00:26:28.140 It is disappointing

00:26:29.300 to see the Conservatives

00:26:30.680 engage in peddling

00:26:31.720 rebel media conspiracy theories.

00:26:34.400 It is disappointing

00:26:35.240 to see the Conservatives

00:26:36.460 engage in peddling

00:26:37.580 rebel media conspiracy theories.

00:26:40.400 I think that's almost been worth the whole four years right there, wouldn't you say?

00:26:45.640 It's not boasting when I say our viewers love us.

00:26:48.100 It's an observation because if it weren't true, our crowdfunding would dry up.

00:26:52.560 The thing about the Internet is we have to prove our value to our viewers every single day.

00:26:56.440 And we know immediately if we're failing, if we can see that people just don't watch our videos,

00:27:00.940 or if we ask people to chip in for something and they don't.

00:27:04.640 For example, I love our coverage this past year.

00:27:06.480 It's been a dramatic...

00:27:07.500 We have a freelancer, Annika Rothstein, who's down there.

00:27:10.680 I made a misjudgment.

00:27:11.820 Our viewers actually aren't that interested in Venezuela.

00:27:15.580 We did not crowdfund enough to cover our costs.

00:27:18.440 Okay, fine. Message received.

00:27:20.080 Now, I'm glad we tried it.

00:27:21.260 I thought it was a great experiment in citizen journalism.

00:27:23.340 I'm proud of the work. I thought Annika did a great job.

00:27:26.000 But at the end of the day, I work for our viewers, and we'll do more of what you do want us to do.

00:27:32.760 By the way, if you're interested in how that works, we've described it all,

00:27:36.480 including our crowdfunding budget, at the rebel.media slash trust.

00:27:42.880 We've put our crowdfunding financials right there, and we explain how we raise our money,

00:27:46.340 and how we spend it, and on what?

00:27:48.200 We call it social commerce.

00:27:49.340 You might call it pay it forward.

00:27:51.860 You'll see that paying for lawyers is a massive expense.

00:27:55.060 We're always under attack from some censor, whether it's a Muslim extremist suing us,

00:28:00.880 or Rachel Notley trying to shut us down with the elections commissioner or whatever she's up to. 0.99

00:28:07.600 I'm not shy about what we spend our money on,

00:28:10.060 because going back to the days of operating out of that abandoned daycare,

00:28:14.480 I know we keep it lean, from our low-cost cameras to our economy-class travel

00:28:19.560 to our use of Skype instead of expansive satellite connections.

00:28:23.000 Check it out if you're interested, rebel.media slash trust.

00:28:26.540 And if you want to help, please do.

00:28:29.120 Sure, we've had our ups or downs, but as Frank Sinatra said,

00:28:32.060 regrets?

00:28:32.600 You know, I've had a few, but too few to mention.

00:28:36.500 As we mark our fourth anniversary and enter our fifth year,

00:28:39.700 we do so stronger than we ever have been before,

00:28:42.020 and if I may say so, more needed than ever.

00:28:45.000 With Trudeau paying off the mainstream media with his slush fund,

00:28:48.580 and with social media companies censoring conservatives,

00:28:52.180 our rebel voice is needed in Canada, and I think around the world, too.

00:28:57.580 Maybe the rebel is a good name, after all, because we're still not done fighting.

00:29:01.980 I'm sure I've left out some names of people I ought to have thanked.

00:29:05.200 Over the four years, we've had dozens of people work with us,

00:29:08.300 some full-time, some part-time, some freelancers,

00:29:10.920 and some people even just doing one or two videos.

00:29:13.580 We've all learned how to do this together.

00:29:15.600 When we started, we really had no examples to follow, no role models,

00:29:19.600 no one who had done this before, at least not in this way.

00:29:23.100 So please forgive me for my mistakes.

00:29:26.080 And surely, just as I have personally received credit

00:29:28.600 for great work that my team has done,

00:29:31.020 let me therefore take any blame for any mistakes

00:29:33.540 that we have done as a company, too.

00:29:35.520 But maybe from those mistakes, a little bit of wisdom has come.

00:29:40.180 Thank you to our staff.

00:29:42.020 Thank you to our crowdfunding donors.

00:29:43.740 Thank you to our on-air talents who are routinely abused in public,

00:29:50.300 either through mere slander or, unfortunately, actual physical attacks on us,

00:29:54.880 including David Menzies just last week.

00:29:58.320 Thank you to everyone who believed in us.

00:30:01.500 And most of all, thank you, our viewers.

00:30:03.960 You are the reason we do this.

00:30:06.320 And I hope we will continue to serve you for years to come.

00:30:09.580 Happy birthday to us.

00:30:10.680 I promise you, we will keep fighting for freedom.

00:30:27.680 So today, on an island in the middle of the mighty Mississippi,

00:30:33.020 in our nation's heartland,

00:30:36.360 at a time when we must heal the heart of our democracy

00:30:40.800 and renew our commitment to the common good,

00:30:45.060 I stand before you as the granddaughter of an iron ore miner,

00:30:51.080 as the daughter of a teacher and a newspaper man,

00:30:54.900 as the first woman elected to the United States Senate from the state of Minnesota

00:31:01.100 to announce my candidacy for president of the United States.

00:31:08.840 Well, that is a senator that I, I got to be honest,

00:31:12.380 I had never even heard of her before,

00:31:14.100 even though she's been in the Senate for a dozen years.

00:31:16.420 Her name is Amy Klobuchar, if I'm saying that right.

00:31:19.000 And that was her campaign kickoff in the snow.

00:31:23.240 I actually thought it looked sort of lovely.

00:31:26.220 It, you know, it looked fun, even.

00:31:29.460 It's a little weird, though, to be in the snow talking about global warming,

00:31:33.340 a point not missed by President Donald Trump, who tweeted this.

00:31:38.160 He said, well, it happened again.

00:31:40.260 Amy Klobuchar announced that she's running for president,

00:31:42.380 talking proudly of fighting global warming

00:31:44.220 while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow,

00:31:47.480 ice and freezing temperatures, bad timing.

00:31:50.300 By the end of her speech, she looked like a snowman woman.

00:31:54.240 And that tweet went viral, 166,000 likes.

00:31:57.740 Very funny.

00:32:00.260 I think this is going to be a great, great season for politics,

00:32:05.220 just like you had, what, 15, 16, 17 Republicans

00:32:08.980 vying against each other in 2015-16.

00:32:12.660 It was wonderful.

00:32:14.220 I think you're going to have the most interesting characters,

00:32:16.800 including the abominable snow woman here. 1.00

00:32:19.800 And joining us now to talk about this,

00:32:21.580 live from Washington, D.C., is our friend Pardes Saleh,

00:32:24.260 who has written about Senator Klobuchar in MediaEye.

00:32:28.040 Great to see you again, Pardes.

00:32:29.760 Hi, thanks for having me back.

00:32:31.220 Well, it's fun to talk with you,

00:32:33.380 and you're right there in America's capital.

00:32:36.540 Would you agree with, you've got a couple of news stories

00:32:38.280 you've written about, and I want to get to them,

00:32:39.640 but would you agree with me that it is likely

00:32:42.340 that this senator is going to have an interesting time,

00:32:45.280 going to be part of a few debates, get her name out there. 1.00

00:32:47.700 But the likelihood that she will get past the first few primaries

00:32:53.120 or caucuses is pretty much as low as the temperature that day in Minnesota.

00:32:58.380 It's near zero.

00:33:01.080 Yeah, I mean, you mentioned that you'd never heard of her.

00:33:04.160 I never heard of her either.

00:33:05.660 And I, you know, I live here and I'm surrounded by everything.

00:33:08.300 And I never heard of her.

00:33:10.580 The first thing that I saw when I looked online

00:33:15.200 was all these just, you know,

00:33:20.060 her former employee, her former staffer is just like ripping her.

00:33:25.220 And this has been actually going on for a while.

00:33:28.260 A year ago, Politico reported that she was listed

00:33:32.060 one of the worst bosses in Congress.

00:33:34.940 She made it to that list.

00:33:36.660 And she also has the highest, one of the highest turnover rates,

00:33:39.640 if not the highest.

00:33:41.700 So she already had a bad reputation. 0.97

00:33:44.620 And then now that she's announced her candidacy for president,

00:33:48.520 she's now a whole wave of new people are coming up and saying how bad she is, 0.57

00:33:55.920 her old staffers, and saying what she did to them, you know,

00:33:59.180 when they were working for her.

00:34:00.260 You know, Donald Trump, I mean, he was famous for a very long time.

00:34:04.440 But I think one of his iconic phrases is,

00:34:06.600 you're fired from the apprentice.

00:34:08.940 It sounds like when she fired someone, that wasn't enough.

00:34:13.100 Let me quote from one of your very interesting stories here on Mediaite.

00:34:18.480 Klobuchar reportedly called new employers of her departing staffers

00:34:23.460 to have their job offers rescinded.

00:34:26.300 So, like, anyone can fire someone.

00:34:29.700 But to fire someone and then try and get them fired from their next job,

00:34:35.040 that's special.

00:34:36.900 I've never heard of that before, Pardes.

00:34:38.340 Yeah, it sounds like it's like a, you know,

00:34:42.180 she feels betrayed if somebody wants to leave her office.

00:34:45.640 Why would they ever want to leave?

00:34:47.380 So she would call their future employers to make sure they didn't get the job.

00:34:53.360 That's crazy.

00:34:54.600 I mean, that's almost a Hillary Clinton level vendetta. 0.99

00:35:00.160 Maybe she has what it takes.

00:35:01.900 I mean, if you're going to try and dethrone Trump,

00:35:05.180 who's a Manhattan brawler,

00:35:07.080 maybe you need that kind of viciousness.

00:35:10.100 I don't know.

00:35:10.600 She seemed very nice as the snow woman, man, lady, whatever Trump called her.

00:35:15.760 I guess she's got a darker side, too.

00:35:18.540 Very, very exciting.

00:35:20.560 Does she have a chance?

00:35:22.060 Does she have a chance at all?

00:35:23.200 Does she have any allies? 0.79

00:35:24.760 I mean, Minnesota's not a particularly big state.

00:35:27.420 I don't think so.

00:35:28.540 It doesn't seem like it.

00:35:29.480 She has a lot of mainstream progressive views

00:35:33.760 that a lot of Democrats support.

00:35:35.100 And so I think that's where she gets a lot of her supporters.

00:35:38.160 But in general, not a lot of people know her.

00:35:40.980 Donald Trump is someone who, even though he's known for being like a hardcore boss,

00:35:45.940 people knew who he was before.

00:35:47.660 He was like, you know, he was on The Apprentice.

00:35:49.980 He had a whole bunch of other things that made him famous.

00:35:52.880 He was practically a household name.

00:35:56.060 But, you know, nobody knows who Amy Klobuchar is.

00:36:00.440 Yeah, I took about five minutes just to make sure I was pronouncing her name right 0.99

00:36:05.940 because I certainly wouldn't want to disrespect her.

00:36:09.580 You wrote another article, and I just, I've been trying to wrap my head around this next one, Pardes.

00:36:16.220 Let's put it up on the screen here.

00:36:18.280 It says, Veep Rider, that's a show about a female politician, Democrat. 1.00

00:36:25.540 Veep Rider confirms rumor about staffers shaving Amy Klobuchar's legs.

00:36:34.420 He's inspired joke on HBO's show.

00:36:38.740 Now, Pardes, this is very difficult territory for me because there's certain things I think boys should never know about.

00:36:46.820 I think there's certain things that should be mysterious and guys just shouldn't know.

00:36:52.080 And the idea, well, you know what, why don't I just sort of go get myself a coffee or something

00:36:56.720 while you talk to the lady viewers about what the rumor is 0.75

00:37:00.420 because I don't even think boys are supposed to talk about this stuff.

00:37:02.720 What exactly is the rumor?

00:37:05.400 Now, again, this might be disgruntled former staffers.

00:37:08.000 It sounds like there's a lot of them out there. 0.68

00:37:09.740 But apparently, Senator Klobuchar asked one of her staff to shave her legs. 0.99

00:37:18.080 Is that right? 0.80

00:37:19.300 Yeah.

00:37:20.820 Yeah, it seems like it, based on what the writers from Veep are saying.

00:37:24.980 It sounds like they found out when they took a trip to Washington, D.C.

00:37:29.140 in order to find out more about how things work for the show.

00:37:33.860 Multiple people who, on Capitol Hill, told the writers that Amy Klobuchar had staffers shave her legs for her.

00:37:43.880 Now, Klobuchar's spokesperson is saying that's not true.

00:37:47.400 So it could actually be made up, but it seems like multiple people have been spreading this rumor, if it's true or not.

00:37:58.620 Yeah, I mean, but there were other reports.

00:38:02.360 And I was reading online in your story and elsewhere that it's not debated that she had staffers do other weird errands or personal errands.

00:38:17.340 And listen, if you have a personal assistant, I get it.

00:38:20.680 You're a busy senator.

00:38:21.920 You're flying between Minnesota and Washington, D.C.

00:38:24.320 You have two households, plus you have a family, plus you don't have time to get your dry cleaning.

00:38:28.960 You don't have time to do stuff that mere mortals do.

00:38:31.380 So I can understand having a personal assistant for some things, but it looks like she had political staff doing personal favor errands, 1.00

00:38:43.860 like picking up dry cleaning, packing suitcases for travel, cleaning and washing her dishes at house, at her house.

00:38:53.500 That's housekeeper stuff. 0.99

00:38:55.680 That's not political staffer stuff.

00:38:57.560 Maybe this leg-shaving rumor, if you're asking a Senate staffer to wash your dishes, maybe you'd say, clip my toenails too.

00:39:09.320 I think this Senate is a little unusual.

00:39:12.120 It sounds pretty believable, and it doesn't sound like she's willing to back down and say, yes, you know, this is me or whatever.

00:39:22.900 She sounds a little bit, a tiny bit defensive on this issue, so it could be true. 1.00

00:39:30.980 It could be true.

00:39:32.060 The leg-shaving could be true also. 0.96

00:39:35.860 But, and also just a lot of people saying it.

00:39:38.820 Well, this is extremely weird, which bodes well for all of us, I think.

00:39:44.580 I think it bodes well for getting Senator Klobuchar press coverage that I don't think she could otherwise earn.

00:39:50.200 Maybe she's just saying, I'm just going to out, this is a big reality show.

00:39:53.320 I'm going to be more dramatic and outrageous than anyone else.

00:39:55.580 That's how Trump did it, so I'm going to be the leg-shaving lady.

00:39:58.480 And that's just, you know what, that's my cross to bear, but it's going to get me to the top of the pack.

00:40:02.100 In fact, I think it bodes well for political journalists who want something more interesting to talk about than her speeches.

00:40:09.000 She should own it.

00:40:10.080 Pardon me?

00:40:11.160 She should own it.

00:40:12.320 She should say, yes, I'm a leg-shaving lady, and make it sound cool in some way.

00:40:17.060 Yeah, and I bet Gillette would sponsor that.

00:40:19.400 And, of course, this is good for Trump.

00:40:22.540 I mean, there's a lot of talent out there, but right now I'm leaning towards Klobuchar.

00:40:30.320 And it's not just because I invested a full five minutes in learning how to pronounce her name.

00:40:35.200 I've learned so much from you today, Pardes.

00:40:37.580 I don't know if I'll ever be able to use that knowledge, but it's good to see that Donald Trump is not the only reality TV star who wants to be president.

00:40:46.400 Last word to you, my friend.

00:40:49.720 Thanks.

00:40:50.180 And, well, if you watch Veep, maybe you'll be able to put it to good use.

00:40:54.160 You'll see the joke and you'll know where it's from.

00:40:57.020 Yeah, that's right.

00:40:58.260 Well, listen, keep in touch.

00:40:59.340 We love what you're doing, and we'd love to catch up with you once a week for the quirkier side or the lighter side of Washington.

00:41:05.740 There's some heavy stuff, too.

00:41:06.720 I remember our last discussion was about Virginia. 0.94

00:41:09.340 Give me a 30-second update on that weird Democrat racist governor. 0.98

00:41:14.100 I call him racist because he dressed up in blackface. 1.00

00:41:16.740 His nickname in college was Coon Man, which is a derivative of a racial story.

00:41:21.860 It's really weird.

00:41:22.920 He hasn't stepped down yet, and really, it doesn't look like he's going to, is he?

00:41:27.040 No, it looks like, you know, this is going to, he can't find another job after this.

00:41:32.840 This is his last chance at staying in office and trying to maybe change his reputation.

00:41:38.240 It sounds like he's also taking classes.

00:41:40.800 His staffers are assigning him, like, you know, Black History Month readings to, so that he can learn better what to say, what not to say.

00:41:50.620 So, it looks like he plans to stay, and everyone plans on keeping him at this point.

00:41:57.400 Wow.

00:41:57.840 Well, maybe he can get Rachel Dolezal to give him some tips on how to be sensitive.

00:42:02.340 Pardes, great to see you again.

00:42:03.220 Thanks for your time.

00:42:04.400 Thanks for having me.

00:42:05.400 All right, there you have it.

00:42:06.100 Pardes Saleh, a writer with Mediaite.com.

00:42:09.780 Stay with us.

00:42:10.280 More ahead on The Rebel.

00:42:10.900 We'll be right back.

00:42:41.660 Well, Billy, that's the worst case scenario, and that's what we're going to do our best to fight against.

00:42:46.540 And I will give credit to Bob Fyfe, Stephen Chase, and Sean Fine of The Globe and Mail.

00:42:50.380 They're the ones who started this fuss, and I don't think they're going to go quietly.

00:42:53.520 But by gosh, the Toronto Star, the CBC, and a lot of the other media are trying to bury it.

00:42:59.840 Liza writes,

00:43:00.460 I want to hear about the SNC-Lavalin story every day. 1.00

00:43:03.700 I don't want to give Justin and his fellow scum-sucking bottom feeders a moment's rest. 0.99

00:43:08.620 The story only dies if Canadians let it. 1.00

00:43:11.360 Okay, message received.

00:43:12.480 There are other important things, though, too.

00:43:14.440 But I agree with you.

00:43:16.420 It's very important.

00:43:17.440 And when we have Trudeau on the run on something, we don't want to let up.

00:43:20.020 But we will talk about other things, too.

00:43:21.280 On my interview with Kian Bextie, Paul writes,

00:43:25.280 the questions Kian asked were not inappropriate.

00:43:27.600 The Alberta NDP are inappropriate.

00:43:29.900 Well, if you watch Kian's video, and I encourage you to watch the whole thing,

00:43:33.320 he very clearly articulates what kinds of things he did not report from the divorce case.

00:43:39.260 There are many personal details.

00:43:40.340 I've gone through the files myself that are irrelevant to the public and are private and personal.

00:43:44.480 We did not touch on those.

00:43:46.260 We only touched on the things that go to the public interest.

00:43:49.640 Mark writes,

00:43:51.960 I want to thank you for making the audio podcast available recently.

00:43:55.060 I'm already a subscriber, but I usually don't have time to watch the videos.

00:43:58.300 Podcast listening fits into my workday, so now I have better access to the content,

00:44:01.380 and I will continue to subscribe to Rebel Media.

00:44:03.720 Well, that's nice, Mark.

00:44:04.520 I appreciate that.

00:44:05.680 You know what?

00:44:06.580 My life is not podcast-friendly.

00:44:08.920 I don't have that kind of downtime, but I take your point.

00:44:11.960 If you're driving in your car, if you're on a bus,

00:44:14.580 if you're sort of doing something where you can listen in the background without it distracting you,

00:44:19.760 podcasts are great for that.

00:44:21.840 Or maybe if you just want to listen to it like people listen to the old-timey radio.

00:44:24.840 So I'm not really deep in the world of podcasting, but I'm glad you like it,

00:44:28.620 and hopefully it'll really catch on.

00:44:30.160 So thanks for spreading the good word about it.

00:44:32.940 That's our show for today, folks.

00:44:34.260 Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,

00:44:37.960 happy birthday, and keep fighting for freedom.

00:44:49.640 Hey.

00:44:51.880 Hey.

00:44:52.440 Hey.

00:44:52.880 Hey.

00:44:55.220 Hey.

00:44:56.520 Hey.

00:44:57.060 Hey.

00:44:57.420 Hey.

00:44:57.860 Hey.

00:44:58.580 Hey.

00:44:59.520 Hey.

00:44:59.900 Hey.

00:45:00.680 Hey.

00:45:01.200 Hey.

00:45:01.820 Hey.

00:45:02.640 Hey.

00:45:02.820 Hey.

00:45:03.700 Hey.

00:45:04.060 Hey.

00:45:04.960 Hey.

00:45:06.220 Hey.

00:45:07.140 Oh, girl.

00:45:07.840 Hey.

00:45:09.900 Hey.

00:45:12.880 Hey.

Rebel News Podcast - February 15, 2019

Tomorrow, The Rebel Media celebrates its fourth anniversary： Looking back — and ahead to the future

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