Rebel News Podcast - We are now in a Cold War with China

00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. Today, I go a little bit deeper in my attempt to find an analogy for how to treat

00:00:05.520 China. I talk more, do we use the apartheid demonization marginalization approach? Do we

00:00:11.980 use the Cold War approach? Do we use the how we fought Nazi Germany approach? I come up with some

00:00:17.400 more ideas on that, and I bring out a few facts you might not have heard before. I hope you enjoy

00:00:23.580 the podcast, but before I get out of the way, may I invite you to become a premium subscriber. Go

00:00:27.640 to rebelnews.com. It's eight bucks a month. You get the video version of the podcast,

00:00:32.380 Sheila Gunn-Reed's show, David Menzies' show, and it helps us pay the bills. Okay, here's the podcast.

00:00:42.260 Tonight, I make the case that we're now in a Cold War with China. It's April 23rd, 0.93

00:00:57.160 and this is the Ezra Levant Show.

00:01:00.740 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:04.380 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the

00:01:10.020 government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:01:19.480 A couple of weeks ago, I talked about what approaches the right one for democracies

00:01:23.720 in dealing with China in the future. How do you handle a belligerent dictatorship,

00:01:28.080 one that's always been at war with its own people and now is increasingly at war with other people

00:01:33.720 like us? After turning a blind eye to it for years, the Allies finally went to war against Nazi Germany,

00:01:40.040 but only after every possible attempt to stay out of war. Hitler annexed part of Czechoslovakia,

00:01:45.460 and the Allies just shrugged. It was only after the shocking outright ground invasion of Poland

00:01:51.880 that the West finally acted. And probably for good reason, what would the West have done?

00:01:57.020 Invaded Germany itself, probably the leading military power of the day. It took years for 0.72

00:02:02.460 the Allies to build up their military to compete, and the war itself lasted five years,

00:02:08.100 costing countless treasure and millions of lives. So that's out.

00:02:12.140 It's the same reason we simply didn't go to war against the Soviet Union during the Cold War,

00:02:18.260 and add in the fact that like the USSR, China is a nuclear power. Another analogy I used the other 0.57

00:02:24.760 day was apartheid South Africa, and there's a lot to say for that approach. There was a boycott of

00:02:29.360 South African goods, and I'm sure that had some bite. Tourism suffered. Some South African exports

00:02:35.440 suffered, like South African wines were banned from Canada. But really, the damage there,

00:02:41.780 it seemed to me, was more moral than financial. It was the denormalization of South Africa, 0.52

00:02:49.220 its political and social marginalization, turning it into a pariah state. It couldn't participate in

00:02:54.260 international meetings, like the Commonwealth or the Olympics. Again, that's not really devastating

00:03:00.140 in an objective way. That's the diplomatic equivalent of not being invited to someone's birthday party.

00:03:05.020 But it surely stung the elite class who valued those things and felt shunned.

00:03:10.340 Such an approach to China would work, I think. They crave international respect and legitimacy.

00:03:16.840 Hosting the Olympics in 2008 was a huge breakthrough for China when it flipped from being a curious rogue to

00:03:24.240 being the absolute establishment, complete normalization. Pay no attention to those secret

00:03:29.340 police. Pay no attention to the crushing of Tibet or the Uyghur province of Xinjiang. Just look at all

00:03:34.160 those construction cranes and high-tech startups. And look, they can pull off a great party at the

00:03:39.200 Olympics. And these communists sure understand capitalism. Wow, that wasn't just a vindication

00:03:44.560 of them in the eyes of their own subjects. But in the eyes of the world, from professional sports

00:03:50.020 leagues like the NBA to Hollywood, China is really first on their mind. And obviously,

00:03:54.560 for tech companies, too. Companies like Google refuse to do work with the U.S. Pentagon for moral

00:04:00.620 reasons, but they're only happy to do similar work for China. They're testing their bad ideas there,

00:04:05.880 like social credit, total surveillance. And they propose to bring those ideas here, I fear.

00:04:12.420 Hey, did you know that Beijing is getting the Olympics again in 2022, just two years from now?

00:04:18.260 How do you feel about that? So yeah, I think that treating China like an apartheid state pariah

00:04:23.220 would actually be powerful, but mainly because it would be so difficult to do. Look at LeBron James,

00:04:28.020 famous NBA player, very political, very woke. Look at him try to justify not only taking big cash from

00:04:34.940 China, but telling others in the league to shut up with the criticism of China's pogroms, including

00:04:40.260 in Hong Kong. Remember this? We all talk about this freedom of speech. Yes, we all do have freedom of

00:04:45.040 speech. But at times, there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you're not

00:04:51.220 thinking about others and you're only thinking about yourself. So I don't believe, I don't want

00:04:56.180 to get into a word or sentence feud with Daryl, with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn't educated

00:05:04.240 on the situation at hand. And he spoke. And so many people could have been harmed, not only financially,

00:05:13.840 but physically, emotionally, spiritually. So just be careful what we tweet and we say and what we do,

00:05:20.860 even though, yes, we do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative that comes with

00:05:25.460 that too. Yeah. So you'll be fighting against the LeBrons of the world, the Hollywood studios of the 1.00

00:05:31.460 world. You didn't have billions of dollars of investments by the NBA or Hollywood in apartheid 0.80

00:05:37.280 South Africa. So it was easy for them to denounce. This won't be. It's amazing, the sports leagues

00:05:43.260 that took a knee to protest racism in America, racism in a country that had a black president,

00:05:49.180 in sports leagues where black men are disproportionately represented compared to their 11% of the U.S. 0.91

00:05:54.820 population, where every one of the protesters is a black millionaire. The wave of self-serving 0.95

00:06:01.540 statements, they literally monetized the protest into an endorsement deal. That same woke,

00:06:06.460 woke culture. Well, it's totally silent now, even as China actually rounds up black people, 1.00

00:06:13.420 thinking that they're carriers of the virus. I'm not picking on the NBA. I'm just giving you 0.91

00:06:17.360 them as an example. You can substitute any woke team, feminism, transgenderism, environmentalism,

00:06:25.840 whatever. China is a bad country for any of those things if you're woke. Yesterday, we showed you the 0.92

00:06:30.860 obvious. They're one of the least free countries when it comes to press freedom, and yet the

00:06:34.820 wokeer ratty won't say a word against them. Greta Thunberg was literally invited to the United

00:06:41.240 States, to the United Nations, where she was allowed to scowl at Donald Trump, or I don't know, 0.89

00:06:46.000 maybe that was her smiling face. It's hard to tell. But she won't say a word about Xi Jinping,

00:06:50.980 even though China is by far the biggest greenhouse gas meter in the world. Not a word from the Green 0.73

00:06:55.280 Pieces or Extinction Rebellion types about that, which is odd since China is currently building,

00:06:59.740 what, 1,400, 1,500, 1,600 coal-fired power plants in its own country and around the world.

00:07:07.460 1,600, that's the number. That's according to the left-wing New York Times, but still the Times

00:07:12.640 gives the story, the headline, as Beijing joins climate fights, Chinese companies build coal

00:07:17.900 plants, even as they demonstrate the opposite. They just can't help themselves. Hey, Beijing's joining 0.89

00:07:22.800 the climate fight. Yeah, on the other side, guys. You know the New York Times is owned by a Mexican 1.00

00:07:28.100 billionaire, right? His name is Carlos Slim. I think he made his money through cell phones.

00:07:33.420 Why not? Why shouldn't he own the New York Times, even though he's not a New Yorker?

00:07:36.680 He's one of the world's richest men, and he surely has all the usual trinkets that billionaires have,

00:07:41.140 a yacht, a fancy jet, private homes, around exclusive places around the world. But owning

00:07:46.200 the New York Times makes him classy, important, influential. It gives him a seat at the table of

00:07:51.100 global conversations, and it launders his own opinions, which might be crudely expressed

00:07:55.140 by hiring the finest writers in the world to pursue his political agenda. So Carlos Slim owns

00:08:01.060 the Times. And Jeff Bezos, another one of the world's richest men, the owner of Amazon, well,

00:08:06.240 he owned the Washington Post. He owns the Washington Post. Same thing. Like all internet tycoons,

00:08:10.440 the only thing he really fears is government regulation. So why not pick up the most influential

00:08:15.280 newspaper in the U.S. capital city to protect yourself? Oh, hi, Congressman. I hear you want to

00:08:21.080 investigate Silicon Valley for political bias or for acting in an anti-competitive manner. Well,

00:08:26.680 it would be a shame if the Washington Post started digging into your expense accounts or a Me Too

00:08:32.000 accusation and put it on the front page. Yeah, the Washington Post is a political tool. And I'm only

00:08:37.440 surprised that some Chinese billionaire hasn't bought up American newspapers, especially given

00:08:41.500 how bankrupt some of them are. I mean, there's a newspaper closing every week. Remember that in Canada,

00:08:45.880 the most prominent newspaper, the Globe and Mail, it's a massive money loser, but it's owned by the

00:08:51.820 Thompson family. They're actually Canada's richest billionaire. So yeah, it loses millions of dollars

00:08:56.600 a month, but so why? It serves the same purpose for the family. It's an in-house organ for that family

00:09:01.960 and its worldview and generally for the establishment. Why would it be surprising if some billionaire

00:09:07.200 bought, I don't know, the LA Times or the Vancouver Sun? In fact, maybe they already did. The Vancouver

00:09:12.700 Sun is owned by Post Media, which in turn is owned by a US hedge fund. Who knows who invests in that?

00:09:19.580 My point is denormalization and marginalization is hard with China, much harder than for South 0.90

00:09:25.680 Africa. But I think we need to start going there. We need to treat China, like I said the other day, 1.00

00:09:30.740 we need to treat it a bit like we treated the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Don't declare a hot war on

00:09:35.640 it, but don't declare peace either. Realize that they lie to us. And if they treat their own people so 0.75

00:09:40.320 abusively, imagine what they would do to us. It's hard because in the 1980s, when the West 0.81

00:09:45.520 really started to marginalize the Soviet Union, when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and Pope

00:09:50.200 John Paul II started to call the Soviet Union out, that was before the era of ubiquitous telecommunications,

00:09:56.440 before the internet, before we were so integrated, before mass cheap global travel. There weren't

00:10:02.960 100,000 Soviet students in Canadian universities as there are 100,000 Chinese sons and daughters of the

00:10:10.260 Communist Party bosses here. So Soviets were contained. It was geographical. We weren't as

00:10:15.120 integrated as we are. So it was easy for Reagan to speak plainly. And he wasn't called racist for

00:10:20.240 it because the Russians couldn't play that card. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

00:10:28.860 Where's our leaders to say that now to China? Well, Trump, maybe. But the media is at war with him.

00:10:34.920 Look at this story about Michael Bloomberg. This story is about how Michael Bloomberg's company,

00:10:40.040 called Bloomberg, it's a huge media company. It's so deep into China. And this was written a few

00:10:45.000 months ago. They worried what would happen if he became president? It would be a huge conflict of

00:10:48.640 interest because China made him rich. Well, Michael Bloomberg's not going to become president, but he's

00:10:53.340 still influential in the Democratic Party and in the media. And that underlying problem remains. His media

00:10:58.920 company has bet huge on China. So you can imagine he won't tolerate criticisms of China. He'll defend

00:11:05.380 China. No need to imagine. Actually, look at this story by a journalist named Lita Hong Fincher. She

00:11:11.900 said, I am one of the many women Mike Bloomberg's company tried to silence through non-disclosure

00:11:16.060 agreements. The funny thing is, I never even worked for Bloomberg, but my story shows the lengths the

00:11:20.220 Bloomberg machine will go to in order to avoid offending Beijing. Bloomberg's company, Bloomberg LP,

00:11:25.340 is so dependent on the vast China market for its business that its lawyers threatened to devastate

00:11:29.920 my family financially if I didn't sign an NDA non-disclosure agreement, silencing the news about

00:11:35.560 how Bloomberg News killed a story critical of its Chinese Communist Party leaders. Yeah. So I guess

00:11:40.060 China already does have its billionaire owner of a media company, except it's a five foot zero Jewish 1.00

00:11:46.460 guy from New York, not a Chinese tycoon.

00:11:50.180 Xi Jinping is not a dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents or he's not going to survive.

00:11:55.600 He's not a dictator?

00:11:57.160 No, he has to. He has a constituency to answer to.

00:12:04.260 He doesn't have a vote. He doesn't have a democracy. He's not held accountable by voters.

00:12:09.220 If his advisors gave him...

00:12:11.220 Is they check on him just a revolution?

00:12:13.700 You're not going to have a revolution. No government survives without the will of the

00:12:18.180 majority of its people.

00:12:19.840 Yikes. Yeah. We have a bit of a reset job to do, don't you think? And we won't just be fighting

00:12:25.540 culturally square diplomats from Beijing. We'll be fighting culturally savvy Hollywood and Manhattan

00:12:31.440 types right here at home. Oh, and Canada is worse in every measure, of course, because it goes 0.58

00:12:35.620 straight to Trudeau himself. I follow a lot of interesting people on Twitter, not just people

00:12:39.900 I agree with, but also people I disagree with to see what they're up to and occasionally once in a

00:12:44.760 while to change my mind on something. I also follow some people who are good at looking at problems from

00:12:49.060 new angles and breaking groupthink. By the way, this pandemic has been awful for groupthink and for

00:12:54.860 deferring to authority because someone says, I'm a doctor, so we have to believe them when they say

00:12:59.560 we're all going to die if we don't put everyone under house arrest for a year. Anyways, one fellow I

00:13:04.420 follow is Jeff Giese, who I've met a few times. Let me show you a string of comments he made just this

00:13:09.280 morning that I thought were very interesting. He says, perhaps because I like China, my first instinct

00:13:15.160 was to dismiss the hawks for being alarmist. They're just trying to recreate the Cold War or deflect from

00:13:20.860 our own flaws, I thought. The more I follow this, the more they appear right. China is on the offensive. 1.00

00:13:27.440 Follow it closely. And then he lists about 10 little proof points. China's on the offensive in Hong Kong.

00:13:33.760 Over the weekend, 15 prominent Hong Kong citizens were put under political arrest for their role in

00:13:38.500 last year's protest movement. China's on the offensive in the South China Sea. They're building 0.85

00:13:44.160 military islands, obviously depressed Japan, Taiwan, other regional democracies. China's on the offensive

00:13:51.040 in the information space. That's a fancy way of saying they're everywhere on your phone, on your

00:13:55.400 internet, on the websites and news on Facebook. China's on the offensive in food supply. Now that's

00:14:01.540 terrifying to me. You'd be shocked how much food in your grocery store comes from China. I'm guessing

00:14:06.120 half the fish you eat is Chinese. Imagine if they got into the beef business or the dairy business. 1.00

00:14:12.360 Would you buy raw ground beef or cheese made in China? And would you even know if it was?

00:14:18.300 China's been on a public diplomacy offensive with its face mask diplomacy and medical aid to countries.

00:14:23.940 Exactly. Just like Vladimir Putin uses energy. He turns off the taps of the gas pipelines to his enemies.

00:14:30.160 He did that to Ukraine several times. Same with China and face masks. 0.99

00:14:34.860 Chinese diplomats and embassies are increasingly engaging in wolf warrior diplomacy, posting

00:14:39.860 accusations, boasts, and name calling directed at governments and individuals they feel have

00:14:44.900 insulted China. That's so true. It's off the hook. I've never seen such bellicosity from diplomats.

00:14:51.200 They truly sound like they want war. I don't know if that's just to please their masters back in Beijing

00:14:55.360 or if it's meant to intimidate us or what the goal exactly is.

00:14:58.920 But it's pretty undiplomatic. And in the meantime, we've never been more pitiful in our own replies.

00:15:06.560 The Chinese version of hybrid 4G warfare, fourth generation warfare, is unrestricted warfare, 0.92

00:15:12.060 which involves the full spectrum of the instruments of power. That's what we're seeing.

00:15:17.260 That's the thing. They don't want nuclear war either. So they want asymmetrical warfare.

00:15:21.000 They don't want an attack. And why would they attack us with weapons when they can simply win

00:15:26.420 a Cold War asymmetrically, a war they know they're fighting, but many of us don't know we're fighting.

00:15:31.340 And frankly, a war that many important institutions in North America, well, they had to choose sides.

00:15:35.980 They'd choose China's side because they get paid by China. Look at your cell phone companies

00:15:40.000 looking to install Huawei. So I think all this starts by speaking truth to power,

00:15:45.180 by calling out China like Reagan called out Gorbachev. Like this. Look at this.

00:15:51.640 Shocked to learn that my longtime friend Martin Li, founder of the Hong Kong Democratic Party,

00:15:55.360 was arrested today together with many of Hong Kong's most prominent citizens.

00:15:59.300 Martin is the elder statesman of Hong Kong democracy. I hope for his immediate release.

00:16:04.080 I think Alberta's handling of the virus has embarrassed Trudeau,

00:16:07.660 who continues to sulk around the house all day long,

00:16:09.960 while Trudeau's medical equipment, cargo jets, return home empty from China.

00:16:13.820 Did you see that the other day? Kenny has so much health equipment,

00:16:17.160 he's sending his surplus to Quebec. But this tweet by Kenny about Hong Kong

00:16:22.640 will enrage Trudeau the most because it's the truth that Trudeau can't or won't say.

00:16:29.820 Yeah, good. It's about time. Stay with us for more.

00:16:43.820 Kinds of things that that have to be done. You know, there's a during World War Two, you know,

00:16:52.640 where Roosevelt came up with a thing that, you know, was totally different than a than the

00:16:59.680 it's called he called the, you know, the World War Two. He had the world, the war production board.

00:17:05.720 Oh, boy, that's Joe Biden talking to a panel on CNN, Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

00:17:12.940 It was hard to hide their feelings. Their faces show that they were cringing for Joe Biden,

00:17:19.280 struggling to get a coherent sentence together. Very basic thoughts, forgetting himself, looking down at notes.

00:17:27.700 If this happened once in a while, you could say, oh, well, it was a long day, stressful day.

00:17:31.900 It's a gaffe. He accidentally misspoke. We all do it, especially politicians who talk nonstop,

00:17:38.320 except Joe Biden isn't particularly working hard. He's not campaigning. He's not running a country

00:17:44.980 like Donald Trump is, who has, you know, maestro performances, bravura performances in front of

00:17:53.140 hostile questioners at the White House press conference. This is Joe Biden struggling to get

00:17:57.620 through an interview via Skype with notes in front of him with the friendliest of interviewees.

00:18:04.360 Just today, that was from a week or so ago. Let me watch just today. He did another conversation

00:18:09.700 with Al Gore that had about 10 of these strange, bumbling moments in it. And again, the look on

00:18:17.020 Al Gore's face, the pained look. Everyone who comes into Joe Biden is coming to the conclusion,

00:18:23.100 this fella is past his prime. Take a look. So the, one of the things that I think is happening now,

00:18:30.960 you pointed out that American business is realizing they've, they've got a, they got a price in the

00:18:37.260 car. They have to price in the price of carbon and the way they're done. They want, they are looking

00:18:43.300 at their bottom line and reduce car. Oh my gosh. Is he actually in decline? I suppose we all are in

00:18:51.180 decline from the moment. You know, there's a certain point in time. We all head towards our

00:18:56.760 final doom, but is Joe Biden up to the job of being president? Perhaps the most stressful job

00:19:03.180 in the world, the most energetic job in the world. Joining us now by Skype from the Los Angeles area

00:19:07.940 is our friend Joel Pollack, senior editor at large of Breitbart.com. Joel, I just wanted to show those

00:19:12.780 two samples. I swear I could find 20 of them and it's not one goofy comment. It's worrying enough.

00:19:19.740 You could see the look on the faces of those reporters. I'm not a doctor, neither are you.

00:19:24.880 We're not doing diagnoses, but is there something wrong with Joe Biden?

00:19:29.740 I think there is. I'm not sure if we can really tell if it's that much worse than it was 10 years

00:19:38.300 ago. And we just didn't have an opportunity to see him in action as much as we could have. Remember

00:19:44.720 that when he was nominated as the vice president and Sarah Palin was nominated to be John McCain's

00:19:49.980 running mate, the Obama campaign abruptly pulled Biden out of the public eye for three or four

00:19:57.220 weeks. They kept him under wraps. That didn't happen to Sarah Palin. She was immediately thrust

00:20:02.000 into the public eye. She had to answer questions, do interviews, and Republicans never would have gotten 0.93

00:20:06.960 away with something like that. But the Obama campaign kept Biden under wraps for quite a while.

00:20:10.580 Now, perhaps his memory lapses are a little worse now, and perhaps some of his other habits and

00:20:16.440 little ticks on stage are worse and more noticeable, but he's never exactly been smooth in public.

00:20:23.020 Ninety-eight percent of the time, he's okay. And sometimes he's very strong. He sometimes has

00:20:28.760 facts and figures at his disposal. Sometimes he has a very clear presentation of ideas and even makes

00:20:34.920 fine ideological points. And then he falls apart the other two percent of the time. The question

00:20:40.500 facing voters isn't necessarily, where is Joe Biden's mental capacity today? It's, where is it

00:20:47.180 going to be a year from now, two years from now? Can he actually function across four years of a

00:20:53.300 presidency in which he's going to cross the threshold into 80 years old, into his ninth decade

00:20:59.220 on the planet? He's been active in politics since the 1960s. And that is a very, very long time.

00:21:06.380 Occasionally, it catches up with him. There was one debate where he was referring to a record player,

00:21:12.940 a device nobody under the age of 30 has ever seen, unless it's in a vintage vinyl store and one of those

00:21:21.200 newly fashionable devices you might pick up. Or in the days of retail, when you might have picked up

00:21:27.000 at Best Buy or something like that as a novelty item. But nobody's really used one. No one has

00:21:33.260 a record collection. So he really is not entirely there. The question is for Democrats, can they do

00:21:40.480 anything about it? It becomes very difficult to do something about it now because it's so soon after

00:21:45.740 Bernie Sanders was still a viable candidate for the nomination. And anything the party would do to get

00:21:50.620 rid of Biden would be seen as unfair by the Sanders people because they, after all, felt that their guy

00:21:56.660 should have been the nominee and is at least in second place. If they wait too long, it becomes

00:22:02.760 much harder to pull off a switch because they're going to have the convention, presumably in August.

00:22:08.880 There's going to be a nomination process. Procedurally, it gets more difficult to replace

00:22:13.100 a candidate after that process if he is, in fact, ratified as a nominee. So they've got a window of time,

00:22:19.160 perhaps in the summer between, let's say, July 4th and the convention in mid-August, when they can

00:22:26.800 conceivably switch him with whoever his vice presidential candidate is going to be. I think

00:22:33.000 on May 1st next week, he is going to announce a committee to choose his running mate. That could

00:22:39.200 begin the process of moving him out of the race. It depends how loyal the party establishment is to

00:22:46.880 Biden. It depends what the alternatives are. This is going to be something that the leadership of

00:22:52.080 the Democratic Party has to finesse very carefully. I do not put anything beyond them. I don't think

00:22:55.840 the rules matter. We've seen before that they're willing to rig the primary against a candidate they

00:22:59.940 don't want. It did it against Bernie Sanders in 2016. They united legally, perhaps, against Bernie

00:23:05.540 Sanders in 2020. They will do whatever it takes to be competitive in November. If you're a Republican,

00:23:10.060 you can watch this and be entertained somewhat, but I wouldn't find it reassuring at all.

00:23:13.380 Joe Biden cannot beat Donald Trump in the state he's in, and therefore, he will either be bolstered

00:23:20.500 by a very strong vice presidential candidate, or he will be replaced.

00:23:24.620 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

00:33:58.960 open seat in the White House in 2024.

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.

Rebel News Podcast - April 24, 2020

We are now in a Cold War with China

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