We are now in a Cold War with China
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Summary
In an attempt to find an analogy for how to deal with China, I talk more about the apartheid demonization, marginalization, and demonization approach to dealing with China. And I bring out a few facts you might not have heard before.
Transcript
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Hello, my Rebels. Today, I go a little bit deeper in my attempt to find an analogy for how to treat
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China. I talk more, do we use the apartheid demonization marginalization approach? Do we
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use the Cold War approach? Do we use the how we fought Nazi Germany approach? I come up with some
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more ideas on that, and I bring out a few facts you might not have heard before. I hope you enjoy
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the podcast, but before I get out of the way, may I invite you to become a premium subscriber. Go
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to rebelnews.com. It's eight bucks a month. You get the video version of the podcast,
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Sheila Gunn-Reed's show, David Menzies' show, and it helps us pay the bills. Okay, here's the podcast.
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Tonight, I make the case that we're now in a Cold War with China. It's April 23rd,
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the
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government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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A couple of weeks ago, I talked about what approaches the right one for democracies
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in dealing with China in the future. How do you handle a belligerent dictatorship,
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one that's always been at war with its own people and now is increasingly at war with other people
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like us? After turning a blind eye to it for years, the Allies finally went to war against Nazi Germany,
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but only after every possible attempt to stay out of war. Hitler annexed part of Czechoslovakia,
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and the Allies just shrugged. It was only after the shocking outright ground invasion of Poland
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that the West finally acted. And probably for good reason, what would the West have done?
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Invaded Germany itself, probably the leading military power of the day. It took years for
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the Allies to build up their military to compete, and the war itself lasted five years,
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costing countless treasure and millions of lives. So that's out.
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It's the same reason we simply didn't go to war against the Soviet Union during the Cold War,
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and add in the fact that like the USSR, China is a nuclear power. Another analogy I used the other
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day was apartheid South Africa, and there's a lot to say for that approach. There was a boycott of
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South African goods, and I'm sure that had some bite. Tourism suffered. Some South African exports
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suffered, like South African wines were banned from Canada. But really, the damage there,
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it seemed to me, was more moral than financial. It was the denormalization of South Africa,
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its political and social marginalization, turning it into a pariah state. It couldn't participate in
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international meetings, like the Commonwealth or the Olympics. Again, that's not really devastating
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in an objective way. That's the diplomatic equivalent of not being invited to someone's birthday party.
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But it surely stung the elite class who valued those things and felt shunned.
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Such an approach to China would work, I think. They crave international respect and legitimacy.
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Hosting the Olympics in 2008 was a huge breakthrough for China when it flipped from being a curious rogue to
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being the absolute establishment, complete normalization. Pay no attention to those secret
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police. Pay no attention to the crushing of Tibet or the Uyghur province of Xinjiang. Just look at all
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those construction cranes and high-tech startups. And look, they can pull off a great party at the
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Olympics. And these communists sure understand capitalism. Wow, that wasn't just a vindication
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of them in the eyes of their own subjects. But in the eyes of the world, from professional sports
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leagues like the NBA to Hollywood, China is really first on their mind. And obviously,
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for tech companies, too. Companies like Google refuse to do work with the U.S. Pentagon for moral
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reasons, but they're only happy to do similar work for China. They're testing their bad ideas there,
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like social credit, total surveillance. And they propose to bring those ideas here, I fear.
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Hey, did you know that Beijing is getting the Olympics again in 2022, just two years from now?
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How do you feel about that? So yeah, I think that treating China like an apartheid state pariah
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would actually be powerful, but mainly because it would be so difficult to do. Look at LeBron James,
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famous NBA player, very political, very woke. Look at him try to justify not only taking big cash from
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China, but telling others in the league to shut up with the criticism of China's pogroms, including
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in Hong Kong. Remember this? We all talk about this freedom of speech. Yes, we all do have freedom of
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speech. But at times, there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you're not
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thinking about others and you're only thinking about yourself. So I don't believe, I don't want
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to get into a word or sentence feud with Daryl, with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn't educated
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on the situation at hand. And he spoke. And so many people could have been harmed, not only financially,
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but physically, emotionally, spiritually. So just be careful what we tweet and we say and what we do,
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even though, yes, we do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative that comes with
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that too. Yeah. So you'll be fighting against the LeBrons of the world, the Hollywood studios of the
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world. You didn't have billions of dollars of investments by the NBA or Hollywood in apartheid
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South Africa. So it was easy for them to denounce. This won't be. It's amazing, the sports leagues
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that took a knee to protest racism in America, racism in a country that had a black president,
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in sports leagues where black men are disproportionately represented compared to their 11% of the U.S.
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population, where every one of the protesters is a black millionaire. The wave of self-serving
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statements, they literally monetized the protest into an endorsement deal. That same woke,
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woke culture. Well, it's totally silent now, even as China actually rounds up black people,
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thinking that they're carriers of the virus. I'm not picking on the NBA. I'm just giving you
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them as an example. You can substitute any woke team, feminism, transgenderism, environmentalism,
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whatever. China is a bad country for any of those things if you're woke. Yesterday, we showed you the
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obvious. They're one of the least free countries when it comes to press freedom, and yet the
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wokeer ratty won't say a word against them. Greta Thunberg was literally invited to the United
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States, to the United Nations, where she was allowed to scowl at Donald Trump, or I don't know,
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maybe that was her smiling face. It's hard to tell. But she won't say a word about Xi Jinping,
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even though China is by far the biggest greenhouse gas meter in the world. Not a word from the Green
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Pieces or Extinction Rebellion types about that, which is odd since China is currently building,
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what, 1,400, 1,500, 1,600 coal-fired power plants in its own country and around the world.
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1,600, that's the number. That's according to the left-wing New York Times, but still the Times
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gives the story, the headline, as Beijing joins climate fights, Chinese companies build coal
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plants, even as they demonstrate the opposite. They just can't help themselves. Hey, Beijing's joining
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the climate fight. Yeah, on the other side, guys. You know the New York Times is owned by a Mexican
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billionaire, right? His name is Carlos Slim. I think he made his money through cell phones.
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Why not? Why shouldn't he own the New York Times, even though he's not a New Yorker?
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He's one of the world's richest men, and he surely has all the usual trinkets that billionaires have,
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a yacht, a fancy jet, private homes, around exclusive places around the world. But owning
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the New York Times makes him classy, important, influential. It gives him a seat at the table of
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global conversations, and it launders his own opinions, which might be crudely expressed
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by hiring the finest writers in the world to pursue his political agenda. So Carlos Slim owns
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the Times. And Jeff Bezos, another one of the world's richest men, the owner of Amazon, well,
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he owned the Washington Post. He owns the Washington Post. Same thing. Like all internet tycoons,
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the only thing he really fears is government regulation. So why not pick up the most influential
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newspaper in the U.S. capital city to protect yourself? Oh, hi, Congressman. I hear you want to
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investigate Silicon Valley for political bias or for acting in an anti-competitive manner. Well,
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it would be a shame if the Washington Post started digging into your expense accounts or a Me Too
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accusation and put it on the front page. Yeah, the Washington Post is a political tool. And I'm only
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surprised that some Chinese billionaire hasn't bought up American newspapers, especially given
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how bankrupt some of them are. I mean, there's a newspaper closing every week. Remember that in Canada,
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the most prominent newspaper, the Globe and Mail, it's a massive money loser, but it's owned by the
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Thompson family. They're actually Canada's richest billionaire. So yeah, it loses millions of dollars
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a month, but so why? It serves the same purpose for the family. It's an in-house organ for that family
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and its worldview and generally for the establishment. Why would it be surprising if some billionaire
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bought, I don't know, the LA Times or the Vancouver Sun? In fact, maybe they already did. The Vancouver
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Sun is owned by Post Media, which in turn is owned by a US hedge fund. Who knows who invests in that?
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My point is denormalization and marginalization is hard with China, much harder than for South
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Africa. But I think we need to start going there. We need to treat China, like I said the other day,
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we need to treat it a bit like we treated the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Don't declare a hot war on
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it, but don't declare peace either. Realize that they lie to us. And if they treat their own people so
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abusively, imagine what they would do to us. It's hard because in the 1980s, when the West
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really started to marginalize the Soviet Union, when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and Pope
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John Paul II started to call the Soviet Union out, that was before the era of ubiquitous telecommunications,
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before the internet, before we were so integrated, before mass cheap global travel. There weren't
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100,000 Soviet students in Canadian universities as there are 100,000 Chinese sons and daughters of the
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Communist Party bosses here. So Soviets were contained. It was geographical. We weren't as
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integrated as we are. So it was easy for Reagan to speak plainly. And he wasn't called racist for
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it because the Russians couldn't play that card. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
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Where's our leaders to say that now to China? Well, Trump, maybe. But the media is at war with him.
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Look at this story about Michael Bloomberg. This story is about how Michael Bloomberg's company,
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called Bloomberg, it's a huge media company. It's so deep into China. And this was written a few
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months ago. They worried what would happen if he became president? It would be a huge conflict of
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interest because China made him rich. Well, Michael Bloomberg's not going to become president, but he's
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still influential in the Democratic Party and in the media. And that underlying problem remains. His media
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company has bet huge on China. So you can imagine he won't tolerate criticisms of China. He'll defend
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China. No need to imagine. Actually, look at this story by a journalist named Lita Hong Fincher. She
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said, I am one of the many women Mike Bloomberg's company tried to silence through non-disclosure
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agreements. The funny thing is, I never even worked for Bloomberg, but my story shows the lengths the
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Bloomberg machine will go to in order to avoid offending Beijing. Bloomberg's company, Bloomberg LP,
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is so dependent on the vast China market for its business that its lawyers threatened to devastate
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my family financially if I didn't sign an NDA non-disclosure agreement, silencing the news about
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how Bloomberg News killed a story critical of its Chinese Communist Party leaders. Yeah. So I guess
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China already does have its billionaire owner of a media company, except it's a five foot zero Jewish
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Xi Jinping is not a dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents or he's not going to survive.
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No, he has to. He has a constituency to answer to.
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He doesn't have a vote. He doesn't have a democracy. He's not held accountable by voters.
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You're not going to have a revolution. No government survives without the will of the
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Yikes. Yeah. We have a bit of a reset job to do, don't you think? And we won't just be fighting
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culturally square diplomats from Beijing. We'll be fighting culturally savvy Hollywood and Manhattan
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types right here at home. Oh, and Canada is worse in every measure, of course, because it goes
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straight to Trudeau himself. I follow a lot of interesting people on Twitter, not just people
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I agree with, but also people I disagree with to see what they're up to and occasionally once in a
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while to change my mind on something. I also follow some people who are good at looking at problems from
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new angles and breaking groupthink. By the way, this pandemic has been awful for groupthink and for
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deferring to authority because someone says, I'm a doctor, so we have to believe them when they say
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we're all going to die if we don't put everyone under house arrest for a year. Anyways, one fellow I
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follow is Jeff Giese, who I've met a few times. Let me show you a string of comments he made just this
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morning that I thought were very interesting. He says, perhaps because I like China, my first instinct
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was to dismiss the hawks for being alarmist. They're just trying to recreate the Cold War or deflect from
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our own flaws, I thought. The more I follow this, the more they appear right. China is on the offensive.
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Follow it closely. And then he lists about 10 little proof points. China's on the offensive in Hong Kong.
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Over the weekend, 15 prominent Hong Kong citizens were put under political arrest for their role in
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last year's protest movement. China's on the offensive in the South China Sea. They're building
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military islands, obviously depressed Japan, Taiwan, other regional democracies. China's on the offensive
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in the information space. That's a fancy way of saying they're everywhere on your phone, on your
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internet, on the websites and news on Facebook. China's on the offensive in food supply. Now that's
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terrifying to me. You'd be shocked how much food in your grocery store comes from China. I'm guessing
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half the fish you eat is Chinese. Imagine if they got into the beef business or the dairy business.
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Would you buy raw ground beef or cheese made in China? And would you even know if it was?
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China's been on a public diplomacy offensive with its face mask diplomacy and medical aid to countries.
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Exactly. Just like Vladimir Putin uses energy. He turns off the taps of the gas pipelines to his enemies.
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He did that to Ukraine several times. Same with China and face masks.
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Chinese diplomats and embassies are increasingly engaging in wolf warrior diplomacy, posting
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accusations, boasts, and name calling directed at governments and individuals they feel have
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insulted China. That's so true. It's off the hook. I've never seen such bellicosity from diplomats.
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They truly sound like they want war. I don't know if that's just to please their masters back in Beijing
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or if it's meant to intimidate us or what the goal exactly is.
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But it's pretty undiplomatic. And in the meantime, we've never been more pitiful in our own replies.
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The Chinese version of hybrid 4G warfare, fourth generation warfare, is unrestricted warfare,
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which involves the full spectrum of the instruments of power. That's what we're seeing.
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That's the thing. They don't want nuclear war either. So they want asymmetrical warfare.
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They don't want an attack. And why would they attack us with weapons when they can simply win
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a Cold War asymmetrically, a war they know they're fighting, but many of us don't know we're fighting.
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And frankly, a war that many important institutions in North America, well, they had to choose sides.
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They'd choose China's side because they get paid by China. Look at your cell phone companies
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looking to install Huawei. So I think all this starts by speaking truth to power,
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by calling out China like Reagan called out Gorbachev. Like this. Look at this.
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Shocked to learn that my longtime friend Martin Li, founder of the Hong Kong Democratic Party,
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was arrested today together with many of Hong Kong's most prominent citizens.
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Martin is the elder statesman of Hong Kong democracy. I hope for his immediate release.
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I think Alberta's handling of the virus has embarrassed Trudeau,
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who continues to sulk around the house all day long,
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while Trudeau's medical equipment, cargo jets, return home empty from China.
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Did you see that the other day? Kenny has so much health equipment,
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he's sending his surplus to Quebec. But this tweet by Kenny about Hong Kong
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will enrage Trudeau the most because it's the truth that Trudeau can't or won't say.
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Yeah, good. It's about time. Stay with us for more.
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Kinds of things that that have to be done. You know, there's a during World War Two, you know,
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where Roosevelt came up with a thing that, you know, was totally different than a than the
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it's called he called the, you know, the World War Two. He had the world, the war production board.
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Oh, boy, that's Joe Biden talking to a panel on CNN, Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
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It was hard to hide their feelings. Their faces show that they were cringing for Joe Biden,
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struggling to get a coherent sentence together. Very basic thoughts, forgetting himself, looking down at notes.
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If this happened once in a while, you could say, oh, well, it was a long day, stressful day.
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It's a gaffe. He accidentally misspoke. We all do it, especially politicians who talk nonstop,
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except Joe Biden isn't particularly working hard. He's not campaigning. He's not running a country
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like Donald Trump is, who has, you know, maestro performances, bravura performances in front of
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hostile questioners at the White House press conference. This is Joe Biden struggling to get
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through an interview via Skype with notes in front of him with the friendliest of interviewees.
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Just today, that was from a week or so ago. Let me watch just today. He did another conversation
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with Al Gore that had about 10 of these strange, bumbling moments in it. And again, the look on
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Al Gore's face, the pained look. Everyone who comes into Joe Biden is coming to the conclusion,
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this fella is past his prime. Take a look. So the, one of the things that I think is happening now,
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you pointed out that American business is realizing they've, they've got a, they got a price in the
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car. They have to price in the price of carbon and the way they're done. They want, they are looking
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at their bottom line and reduce car. Oh my gosh. Is he actually in decline? I suppose we all are in
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decline from the moment. You know, there's a certain point in time. We all head towards our
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final doom, but is Joe Biden up to the job of being president? Perhaps the most stressful job
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in the world, the most energetic job in the world. Joining us now by Skype from the Los Angeles area
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is our friend Joel Pollack, senior editor at large of Breitbart.com. Joel, I just wanted to show those
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two samples. I swear I could find 20 of them and it's not one goofy comment. It's worrying enough.
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You could see the look on the faces of those reporters. I'm not a doctor, neither are you.
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We're not doing diagnoses, but is there something wrong with Joe Biden?
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I think there is. I'm not sure if we can really tell if it's that much worse than it was 10 years
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ago. And we just didn't have an opportunity to see him in action as much as we could have. Remember
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that when he was nominated as the vice president and Sarah Palin was nominated to be John McCain's
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running mate, the Obama campaign abruptly pulled Biden out of the public eye for three or four
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weeks. They kept him under wraps. That didn't happen to Sarah Palin. She was immediately thrust
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into the public eye. She had to answer questions, do interviews, and Republicans never would have gotten
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away with something like that. But the Obama campaign kept Biden under wraps for quite a while.
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Now, perhaps his memory lapses are a little worse now, and perhaps some of his other habits and
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little ticks on stage are worse and more noticeable, but he's never exactly been smooth in public.
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Ninety-eight percent of the time, he's okay. And sometimes he's very strong. He sometimes has
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facts and figures at his disposal. Sometimes he has a very clear presentation of ideas and even makes
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fine ideological points. And then he falls apart the other two percent of the time. The question
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facing voters isn't necessarily, where is Joe Biden's mental capacity today? It's, where is it
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going to be a year from now, two years from now? Can he actually function across four years of a
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presidency in which he's going to cross the threshold into 80 years old, into his ninth decade
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on the planet? He's been active in politics since the 1960s. And that is a very, very long time.
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Occasionally, it catches up with him. There was one debate where he was referring to a record player,
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a device nobody under the age of 30 has ever seen, unless it's in a vintage vinyl store and one of those
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newly fashionable devices you might pick up. Or in the days of retail, when you might have picked up
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at Best Buy or something like that as a novelty item. But nobody's really used one. No one has
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a record collection. So he really is not entirely there. The question is for Democrats, can they do
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anything about it? It becomes very difficult to do something about it now because it's so soon after
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Bernie Sanders was still a viable candidate for the nomination. And anything the party would do to get
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rid of Biden would be seen as unfair by the Sanders people because they, after all, felt that their guy
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should have been the nominee and is at least in second place. If they wait too long, it becomes
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much harder to pull off a switch because they're going to have the convention, presumably in August.
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There's going to be a nomination process. Procedurally, it gets more difficult to replace
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a candidate after that process if he is, in fact, ratified as a nominee. So they've got a window of time,
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perhaps in the summer between, let's say, July 4th and the convention in mid-August, when they can
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conceivably switch him with whoever his vice presidential candidate is going to be. I think
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on May 1st next week, he is going to announce a committee to choose his running mate. That could
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begin the process of moving him out of the race. It depends how loyal the party establishment is to
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Biden. It depends what the alternatives are. This is going to be something that the leadership of
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the Democratic Party has to finesse very carefully. I do not put anything beyond them. I don't think
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the rules matter. We've seen before that they're willing to rig the primary against a candidate they
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don't want. It did it against Bernie Sanders in 2016. They united legally, perhaps, against Bernie
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Sanders in 2020. They will do whatever it takes to be competitive in November. If you're a Republican,
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you can watch this and be entertained somewhat, but I wouldn't find it reassuring at all.
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Joe Biden cannot beat Donald Trump in the state he's in, and therefore, he will either be bolstered
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by a very strong vice presidential candidate, or he will be replaced.
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Huh. You know, I see more and more that Biden, who's doing these Skype interviews,
00:23:30.260
not unlike you and I are talking here, he has notes in front of him. He looks down at them. I mean,
00:23:35.820
it's not details, facts, figures, statistics, technical things that one might need a refresher.
00:23:41.960
Very basic points. He stumbles, he forgets his train of thought, he looks down. In some of these
00:23:47.980
interviews, his wife, Jill Biden, sits right next to him, and it has the feel of not a, I'm his loyal
00:23:56.040
wife, I'm fighting with him. It has the feel almost of a nurse or someone there to calm him. And I'm not
00:24:03.860
trying to be mean here. And I acknowledge that sometimes politicians have mannerisms or quirks or
00:24:11.640
even gaffes that we all do. And I don't feel like I'm piling on unfairly. I can't see him get through
00:24:20.620
a single Skype interview, and he does them every day now, without screwing up a simple, simple
00:24:27.740
conversation. You talk about, he mentioned a record player. And he did it in a way, he was trying to
00:24:33.440
have a cultural reference everyone could connect to. And he went back to something when his life was
00:24:41.360
at its prime, record players. I've seen him do that. I've seen him refer to himself as a candidate for
00:24:46.660
Senate, because that's imprinted in his mind for 40 years. I've seen him refer to politicians by the name
00:24:54.020
of a prominent politician 40, 50 years ago. He falsely called someone the name, I think, of a
00:25:00.380
very old governor from the 60s. So it's almost like those Alzheimer's patients who are losing their
00:25:07.180
memories of today and reminiscing sentimentally about the memories they have as a young man.
00:25:13.840
I am not a doctor, and I might be dead wrong, but my God, it reminds me of someone losing their
00:25:19.360
cognitive ability. It's hard not to draw that conclusion. And once you start thinking about
00:25:25.820
that, everything he does, even ordinary forgetfulness, reinforces that conclusion. So for
00:25:30.880
example, this week, he had an interview where he held up a picture of his granddaughters, and he
00:25:37.160
misstated the number of granddaughters he had before quickly correcting himself. Now that's the sort of
00:25:42.140
error anyone can make. I was trying to explain to someone earlier this week, the number of siblings
00:25:48.080
I have, and I left somebody out. So that sort of happens. But once you start seeing the pattern,
00:25:53.380
as you mentioned, substituting the wrong name of a politician 30 or 40 years ago for someone who's
00:25:59.200
active today, mixing up the office he's running for, having to be prompted by his wife. Once you
00:26:05.540
start seeing that pattern, and you take into account how old he is, it really does seem to just look at
00:26:12.240
me now, struggling for the right word in a live interview, seems like there's something wrong. And
00:26:17.300
it's got to be troubling. Remember also that Democrats made John McCain's age a very important
00:26:25.180
issue in 2008. They said that he had had skin cancer, they had wartime injuries, which was a bit
00:26:30.920
of a low blow, but they went there. And they said he could not be trusted to serve out four years or eight
00:26:36.920
years if that were the case, if you were reelected. Now, he did actually survive the eight years of
00:26:42.300
Obama's presidency and passed away a short time thereafter. But he would have made it through the
00:26:47.220
eight years. The point is Democrats made age a legitimate issue to discuss. And it's once again
00:26:54.260
legitimate. There's a lot of discussion now. I saw on 538.com about a week ago, there was an article
00:26:59.400
about what it would take to remove a party nominee. Now, they didn't just limit it to Biden. They also
00:27:04.440
considered Trump because although when he ran for president, he was in his late 60s, he's now in his
00:27:08.780
early 70s, considerably younger than Biden and sharper than Biden. But they wanted to give the
00:27:14.720
inquiry kind of a bipartisan sheer or sheen. And look, it's pretty easy in the Republican case.
00:27:22.240
You've got Mike Pence as the vice president. So if Donald Trump can't serve, Mike Pence steps up.
00:27:26.940
There's nobody who would vote for Trump who wouldn't vote for Pence. So it's not going to take
00:27:33.060
anything away. With Biden, it's more of a basket of unknowns. You don't know who he's going to
00:27:37.040
choose. You just know he's committed to choosing a woman. Stacey Abrams has said it's got to be a
00:27:41.360
black woman. He's already committed to appointing a black woman to the Supreme Court. But Stacey
0.99
00:27:44.840
Abrams has said black women correctly. She said black women are the most loyal voting bloc in the
0.81
00:27:50.720
Democratic Party, and they need to be rewarded for their loyalty. The problem with that argument is the
00:27:54.640
more loyal you are, the less you need to be rewarded to retain your loyalty. But that's another story.
00:27:59.280
We have to see who he's going to pick. The likeliest pick is Kamala Harris. They seem to
1.00
00:28:03.320
get along. She is very left wing on policy, which will please the Bernie Sanders people. But she's
00:28:07.900
also a former prosecutor, which at least ties her into the Democratic establishment. And that will win
1.00
00:28:14.340
her some points with people who like Biden. She's well tapped into the Clinton fundraising network.
00:28:19.300
The Clintons like her. The Obamas like her. Everybody in a position of power in the party likes her.
00:28:23.580
So she's the likeliest choice. And it then becomes a question of who would she choose? Suppose Biden
00:28:30.160
is asked to step off the ticket. Kamala Harris moves into the top spot. Who does the party
00:28:34.960
put in place as number two? And the answer is really not going to be satisfactory to anybody.
00:28:40.660
The party has moved so far left that it almost doesn't matter at this point who the candidate is.
00:28:47.700
We're going to see people voting on parties this time in a way we haven't in a very long time.
00:28:51.320
There was an evangelical leader earlier this week whose name escapes me for the moment. I'm having
00:28:55.560
a Biden moment. But he was a never Trumper back in 2016. And he said that he was going to support
00:29:01.200
Trump in 2020. And that one of the reasons he was going to do so was it had just become clear to him
00:29:06.740
that the elections are really about parties right now rather than about candidates. And Donald Trump
00:29:11.800
has been very faithful to the policies of his party. He's been a conservative. He's been a pro-life
00:29:15.960
conservative, a pro-religious liberty conservative, and so forth. And Biden is essentially an empty
00:29:20.700
shell. And his party has become so left wing that he has moved along with it. So the choice is now
00:29:26.360
very stark. And for a voter who cares about exemplary leadership, which President Trump hasn't always
00:29:33.920
shown in his personal life, at least before he came to Washington, it's not as big a deal as it
00:29:41.600
might have been once upon a time when the parties were closer. When the Republicans and Democrats had
00:29:46.400
essentially very similar pro-market, pro-free trade, pro-globalization policies in the 1990s,
00:29:52.020
the difference between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton was basically age, if you were a Democrat, and
00:29:57.420
trustworthiness, if you were a Republican. I think one of the Republican slogans was trust Dole. It
00:30:01.680
really came down to personal characteristics. That's definitely not the case anymore. It's almost the
00:30:05.880
case that if the Republicans nominated a cardboard box, and the Democrats nominated a worn out tire,
00:30:11.320
that people would still vote for their respective candidates based on the parties, because they just
00:30:16.200
are so different. And they're so opposed to one another.
00:30:20.380
I read in the New York Post, which is a scrappy tabloid. It's like our Toronto Sun chain of
00:30:25.760
newspapers in Canada. It's got a sense of humor and a reverence to it. I like it. They had, I forget who
00:30:31.660
the author was, but they brooded a scenario where, and I'm just going to run it by you, I think you
00:30:37.660
probably know the one I mean, where Joe Biden shows Michelle Obama, Barack Obama's wife, as his
00:30:46.160
running mate. And then after the inauguration, Biden steps down, and you got yourself a President
00:30:53.180
Obama. And I read through it, and I thought, first of all, that would bring all the fond memories of
00:31:00.780
the Obama years back for a lot of Democrats. It would give sort of the centrist, you know,
00:31:06.860
continuation vibe. First woman candidate, another black candidate. The media loved Michelle Obama.
0.99
00:31:16.860
I don't think she's half as graceful or charming as her husband, but good enough. And I know this was
00:31:22.600
like a flight of fancy, but I read that and I thought, yikes, that's a silver bullet. What do you
00:31:28.360
think of that fantasy theory? Well, I don't think it can work. First of all, she's not going to leave
00:31:35.900
behind all the riches that she's been able to enjoy. She's probably got a net worth of hundreds
00:31:41.380
of millions of dollars at the moment. She's running a film production company with her husband,
00:31:46.000
enjoying life on Martha's Vineyard near a beach that will be flooded if they say what they mean or
00:31:53.760
mean what they say about global warming. I mean, why would she give all that up? She's going to be
00:31:58.140
influential regardless. She doesn't need to be a candidate. She actually loses some credibility
1.00
00:32:01.580
as a candidate. She can certainly campaign for him, and I'm sure she'll be a featured speaker at
00:32:05.460
the convention. But like it or not, regardless of who the candidate is, we are going to see
00:32:10.260
something of an Obama third term if any of the Democrats become president right now. Biden has
00:32:18.780
already revealed some of his potential cabinet picks. And aside from some of the people who ran
00:32:24.240
against him, like Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg, who would certainly get important posts,
00:32:28.800
it's basically going to be a rehash of the Obama administration. Add that to the fact that the
00:32:33.120
D.C. metro area, which staffs most of the federal government agencies, is vehemently anti-Trump.
00:32:40.240
And you have a situation where if Biden wins, the Obamas are going to control everything anyway.
00:32:45.080
They're basically tied in to the apparatus of government. The Clintons will also have a similar kind
0.63
00:32:51.980
of influence. So why would any of these people go into the race when they can be super influential
00:32:56.400
from afar without any of the costs or drawbacks, without losing any money, without losing any
00:33:01.320
image, street credibility, whatever, without losing any friendships? I mean, the Obamas are in a prime
00:33:07.100
position, and they don't need to run for anything. I think they also probably believe that if Biden
00:33:13.200
can't win on his own, they can't save him. And from where they sit, it's okay to wait four years.
00:33:19.600
They don't feel the same sense of urgency, I think, that people who are still in the arena
00:33:24.020
might tend to feel. And I think they think their chances will be a lot better in four years
00:33:28.440
than they are with Biden. The Democratic Party is building up a bench. They'll have good candidates
00:33:32.940
in four years' time. They've got a couple of governors who are showing some potential.
00:33:36.940
They've got young leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and so forth. So I think the
00:33:42.720
smart move for the Obamas is to offer moral support to Joe Biden and campaign for him.
00:33:50.580
Hope he wins, because winning is better than losing, but bet on a stronger candidate for the
00:34:01.060
Last question for you. Sometimes people who are candidates, they want it, but the people around
00:34:09.680
them want it more. You talked about the permanent political class. I suppose you could call it the
00:34:14.120
deep state if you want. But if someone's been a donor to Joe Biden for 20 years, if someone's been a
00:34:21.280
staffer who's hitched their career to his for 20 years, they might want Biden to run for president
00:34:27.120
even more than he does. Maybe Biden's family, including his son, Hunter Biden, who seemed to
00:34:34.300
enrich himself from China through his dad's political connections. Do you think it's possible
00:34:40.880
that in his heart of hearts, Biden feels like this isn't right, like it's not a good fit? Do you think
00:34:49.400
maybe even his own wife says, oh, Joe's not really up to it? Do you think there's just so much pressure
00:34:56.080
that they must continue, but that really they're doing the bidding of supporters and he's not
00:35:02.840
burning with fire for this and he'd rather just be a grandpa enjoying his senior years?
00:35:08.760
I applaud to that. I'm not sure that the donors around Biden need him to win. I do think that the
00:35:16.740
donor class in the Democratic Party needed Bernie Sanders not to win. And in early 2019, when I went to
00:35:25.160
my first one of my first events of the campaign, when the campaign was just getting started and
00:35:29.900
Bernie Sanders had just announced he was running, I went to one of his speeches here in LA. And I
00:35:34.700
remember texting someone or maybe I wrote it up in the article, my coverage of the event, that Biden's
00:35:40.980
donors have to be beating down his door, asking him to run, because Sanders is so radical and his
00:35:47.960
policies are so out there that Democrats had to be afraid that he would have tanked the entire party.
00:35:57.040
And I imagine that even some Republicans would have been happier to see Biden run, because in the
00:36:01.920
event that Trump loses, you'd want the alternative to be not so terrible. I think that whole is out of
00:36:08.680
the barn already, because I think the party has moved so far left that it almost doesn't matter
00:36:12.600
that Biden's the candidate. But there definitely was a desperation to have someone who could beat
00:36:18.540
Sanders. And it looked like only Biden had the institutional heft to do it. I don't know that
00:36:23.560
they're so loyal now. This is the process that the Democratic Party has to manage. It's going to
00:36:28.320
require a lot of political finesse, but they have to have those donors on board if they're going to
00:36:31.860
switch someone else in for the presidential slot. And they have to assure the Biden donors that
00:36:38.740
they're going to have what they want from another candidate. Now, they can never promise 100% of
00:36:44.040
what they want. But I agree with you that that tends to be a problem in politics, that the donors
00:36:49.300
often want something more than the politicians do and the politicians have to run. In this case,
00:36:54.400
partly because there was a four-year interim when Biden didn't run in 2016 anyway, I don't know that
00:36:59.300
there's as much tying the donors to Biden personally as there was motivating the donors to bring him in
00:37:05.860
as a foil to Sanders. So it's a very interesting question, and we'll have to see how they manage it.
00:37:10.880
Well, Joel, thank you so much for taking so much time. I know you're at home like so many of us are
00:37:15.240
trying to run the household and homeschooling and all that. So thanks for taking the time and for your
00:37:20.360
wisdom as always. I look forward to a return to normalcy. But it's been great to have you join us a
00:37:27.020
couple times in a row from home. So nice to see you again. Thank you. I hope to be back soon.
00:37:31.480
Right on. There you have it. Joel Pollack, the senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com. He joined
00:37:36.680
us via Skype from his home in the Los Angeles area. Stay with us. More ahead on The Rebel.
00:37:50.420
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about Earth Day and the annual press freedom rankings.
00:37:54.760
Paul writes, they gave China a low rating to give the rankings more credibility.
00:37:58.720
Really? This survey seems to be really about who has embraced globalism the best that year.
00:38:03.560
Well, I just will not accept anyone saying America is what ranked, was it 45 or 55? And Canada is what,
00:38:10.180
16? I'm saying that's just not true. Whatever you think about Donald Trump, America is the freest place
00:38:15.600
in the world to be a journalist. The First Amendment is rock solid. I mean, I'm not tearing down Norway,
00:38:21.520
which they put as number one, but they put it as number one because it's an inoffensive,
00:38:24.820
tiny European social welfare democracy. America is the living, beating heart of free press around
00:38:32.300
the world. And I say that with some jealousy because of their First Amendment. Bruce writes,
00:38:37.820
Ezra's comment on Earth Day is spot on. As Mark Levin said a few years ago, the old reds are the new
1.00
00:38:42.780
greens. I think so. There is a deep state in science, in environmentalism. You can ban things in the
00:38:51.660
name of the environment that you couldn't ban elsewise. And I think we've discovered that public
00:38:55.500
health warriors like Teresa Tam, like so many others, they're part of the deep state too. And
00:39:01.440
they're absolutely plugged into the UN. The World Health Organization is a UN agency. They don't
00:39:06.480
believe in local sovereignty. They don't believe in freedom. By definition, a public health doctor is
00:39:12.040
about control, whereas a regular doctor that meets patients is about making the patient better,
00:39:16.360
very different. On my interview with Manning Montenegrino, Karen writes, the whole point of
00:39:21.880
these restrictions were to save the elderly. Foreign workers bringing in COVID-19 is counterproductive.
1.00
00:39:27.220
You know what? It's a false economy. When you look back through the sweep of time, you see slave labor.
00:39:33.240
There's been slavery on every single continent in the world other than Antarctica. There really has been.
00:39:37.700
And it's such a blight on humanity. And, you know, look at not just the damage that was done morally
00:39:43.580
at the time by slavery. But to this day, the wounds of American slavery, even though it was 150 years
00:39:48.900
ago, the Emancipation Proclamation, the wounds of slavery are still hurting today. You can't deny that.
00:39:56.400
And what we are doing with temporary foreign workers is a form of wage slavery. And what we were doing by
0.99
00:40:02.960
outsourcing our factories to China to save a few bucks an hour on labor is a form of slavery. Now,
00:40:10.460
they're not utter slaves, but in some ways they are. We pay them less than the law would allow for a Canadian.
1.00
00:40:16.500
A lot of illegal aliens picking fruit or whatever they do in California, they, because they're sort of in the
1.00
00:40:23.240
shadows, they can't avail themselves of laws, legal protection. So they're vulnerable to all sorts of things.
00:40:28.840
And why? I say again, if you have a cheap indentured worker, which is really what a temporary foreign
1.00
00:40:36.680
worker is, like at the cargo plant in Alberta, it's not like your steak is going to be half price.
00:40:42.540
It might be 5% cheaper because the cost of your steak, you know, that laborer cutting it up is such a
00:40:51.140
small part of the cost. It's not like your food is in any substantial way cheaper because we use foreign
00:40:58.000
slave labor. But we brought all these problems here. And you know what? How about pay people
00:41:02.780
a decent wage, a prevailing wage? And you know what? If you can't find someone willing to work
00:41:07.260
for peanuts at a restaurant drive-thru, well, pay what you need to pay or shut it down.
00:41:14.020
There's no constitutional right to have a cheap coffee donut or burger. And if you have to pay an
00:41:20.040
extra 50 cents because you're paying a living wage to the people inside, that is not only morally
00:41:24.780
better than bringing in cheap subsidized de facto slave labor. It's going to, in the long run,
00:41:33.240
I mean, what is the price of having close to a thousand COVID-19 cases in those two slaughterhouses
00:41:40.580
in Alberta? So we saved a few bucks that all went in the pocket of those multinationals. And now the
00:41:46.260
province is saddled with a billion dollars in healthcare. Where's the savings there? I just don't
00:41:50.300
get it. I want to get away from the slave labor approach. If something's worth doing, pay the guy
00:41:56.160
to do it. And if it's a few extra bucks, get over it. I think we have to get out of that globalist
00:42:00.720
thing. And this comes from a guy who is a Fraser Institute alumni, alumnus. I've been, when I was 22,
00:42:08.380
I interned with the Koch Foundation in Washington, DC. There's nothing more open borders than that.
00:42:13.740
But I see now that that simply doesn't work on its own. You can't just have a race to the bottom
00:42:19.740
in terms of wages. When you do that, you wind up giving your entire industry to China,
0.97
00:42:25.800
including not a single N95 mask manufacturer in Canada. 90% plus of our pharmaceuticals are made
00:42:33.700
in China. We're hooped because of that globalization. Oh, you tell me if you disagree with me. All right,
00:42:39.360
folks, that's my show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World
00:42:43.360
Headquarters, to you at home, good night. And keep fighting for freedom.