The Candice Malcolm Show - August 25, 2021


The Taliban are not “our brothers”

Topics
Monsef's comments on Taliban
Hosted by
Candice Malcolm
Mentioned
Mariam Monsef Justin Trudeau Mark Carney Robert Fyfe Katie
Could Erin O’Toole actually become Prime Minister？ Trudeau pushes misinformation about Canada’s health care system

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

161.9

Word count

2,226

Sentence count

137

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

9

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Mariam Monsef, a Canadian cabinet minister, calls the Taliban her brothers. Is this an indication of softening on the Taliban? Or is this a softening of the government s stance on a group that is responsible for mass rape and genocide in Afghanistan?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.260 Mariam Monsef reminds us that she is the very worst cabinet minister to ever serve in a Canadian government. 0.91
00:00:06.320 I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:00:13.440 Mariam Monsef is a Liberal Member of Parliament from Peterborough and she is currently a cabinet minister in the Trudeau government.
00:00:21.540 She is the minister for women and gender equality in the Trudeau government.
00:00:26.620 And today she called the Taliban her brothers, the Taliban.
00:00:32.600 I want to take this opportunity to speak to our brothers, the Taliban. 0.95
00:00:39.860 We call on you to ensure the safe and secure passage of any individual in Afghanistan out of the country.
00:00:49.780 She didn't even call them her brothers.
00:00:51.780 She called the Taliban our brothers.
00:00:54.020 Now, when she says this, when she says the Taliban are our brothers, is she speaking as a Canadian?
00:01:00.940 Why on earth would a Canadian woman say that the Taliban are our brothers?
00:01:07.000 Or perhaps even worse, is she speaking as a member of the Trudeau government?
00:01:13.000 Does the Trudeau government believe that the Taliban are our brothers?
00:01:17.000 Last week, when the Taliban brutally took control of Kabul, toppled the democratically elected government in Afghanistan and replaced it with an Islamist terrorist dictatorship ruled by the Taliban,
00:01:29.580 the Trudeau government stumbled to decide how they would approach it.
00:01:33.780 First, Canada's foreign affairs minister, Mark Garneau, went on CBC and said that it was too soon to tell whether or not Canada would recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government in Afghanistan.
00:01:44.980 The U.S. had warned the Taliban if Afghanistan was taken by force, it would not be recognized internationally.
00:01:51.980 Will Canada refuse to recognize a Taliban government?
00:01:57.140 Well, thank you, Katie, for the question.
00:01:59.220 I would say to you it's early days.
00:02:01.520 Right now, we want to see what happens.
00:02:04.040 The country has essentially surrendered to the Taliban.
00:02:07.760 The Taliban is saying that it wants to run as a government.
00:02:10.840 But we're going to wait and see.
00:02:12.980 It's too early to answer that question.
00:02:15.580 You're waiting to see.
00:02:16.960 Are you going to treat the Taliban with credibility?
00:02:21.260 Well, we have to see how they behave since they have taken over the country.
00:02:26.780 Certainly, their behavior was totally unacceptable for the short time that they were in charge after the Russians left about 20 years ago.
00:02:35.700 So we'll wait and see.
00:02:37.420 Trudeau sort of doubled down on this idea when he pleaded with the Taliban and tried to appeal to their better nature, telling them to step up and allow people to leave the country.
00:02:47.860 We need to see the Taliban step up and permit an evacuation of those who want to leave.
00:02:54.440 And that is what we are expecting.
00:02:56.940 Now, seeing how that played out, Trudeau quickly adjusted course, and he strongly and firmly said that he would not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government in Afghanistan.
00:03:06.780 Canada has no plans to recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan.
00:03:12.780 When they were in government 20 years ago, Canada did not recognize them as a government.
00:03:19.160 They have taken over and replaced a duly elected democratic government by force.
00:03:25.980 And as you point out, they are a recognized terrorist organization under Canadian law.
00:03:32.600 So he finally got to the right place and said the right thing.
00:03:35.360 But think about it.
00:03:36.160 It took him days.
00:03:37.320 It took him about 36 hours to finally say what was right and what was obvious to 99% of Canadians.
00:03:45.660 No, the Taliban is not legitimate.
00:03:48.060 No, we do not recognize them.
00:03:49.860 No, we will not work with them. 0.97
00:03:51.380 We will not in any way, shape or form acknowledge or support a repressive Islamist terrorist entity that just forcefully removed a government by raping and killing anyone who stood in its way. 0.75
00:04:03.900 But Monsef's remarkable comments on Wednesday morning displayed something totally different.
00:04:10.380 Calling these terrorists our brothers doesn't just recognize them as a legitimate government.
00:04:15.720 It implies that they are our allies, that they are our friends, that they're one of us, that we're all on the same side here.
00:04:22.180 This is perhaps the most appalling thing that I have ever heard come out of the mouth of a Canadian politician.
00:04:27.960 Probably the most appalling thing I have ever heard come out of anyone's mouth ever.
00:04:31.540 Now, fortunately, someone in the media did ask Monsef what the heck she was talking about and why a Canadian cabinet minister would call a despicable, repressive, barbaric terrorist group our brothers.
00:04:44.760 And now, I'll note that this is a member of the legacy media asking this question, so you can tell how there's a sense of deference, how it's very polite, and in some ways it's helpful to Monsef.
00:04:55.240 I have a follow-up. This is for Minister Monsef.
00:04:59.080 In your statement, you referred to the Taliban as our brothers.
00:05:03.760 Can you clarify your remarks?
00:05:06.020 Is this an indication of the government positioning softening on the Taliban?
00:05:10.280 Hardly. The Taliban are a terrorist group, and yet they claim to be Muslims. 0.93
00:05:19.160 We're calling on them to immediately allow for the safe passage of any individual who is in Afghanistan out of the country. 0.57
00:05:28.340 We are calling on them to immediately cease the violence, the femicide, the genocide, the rapes, the lootings, and to return immediately to the peace negotiation table in an inclusive and meaningful way.
00:05:43.280 If they will ever be recognized as a legitimate party, this is the starting point.
00:05:49.860 The reference to brothers is a cultural reference, of course, but let me be very clear.
00:05:54.960 We do not support the Taliban.
00:05:57.000 We are horrified that the hard-won gains of the past 20 years are at stake like this and being eroded like this.
00:06:05.340 We are horrified that our women and men in uniform had to move forward with a difficult operation that was only made more difficult by their actions and deeply disappointed that their threats of ongoing violence have led to the international community, particularly the Americans, saying we're going to leave on the 31st due to these threats of violence.
00:06:32.180 And you can see that Monsef is in total damage control.
00:06:36.660 First of all, she emphasizes how horrible the Taliban are and how they are, yes, a terrorist group, which sort of makes it so much worse that she would have referred to them as our brothers.
00:06:46.900 Next, she plays Trudeau's favorite card in inventing creepy politically correct language to virtue signal about being a feminist. 1.00
00:06:54.420 She calls the Taliban's crusade a femicide, which what, I guess it means a genocide against women. 0.72
00:07:01.060 I honestly don't understand what these liberals are saying half the time, and I don't think they do either. 0.99
00:07:06.620 Now, finally, Monsef just sort of brushes off her insanely idiotic comment, calling the Taliban our brothers by saying it is cultural. 0.94
00:07:15.080 So if I read between the lines here, I suppose she is saying that in that moment, she was not speaking as a cabinet minister. 0.99
00:07:22.300 She wasn't even speaking as a Canadian.
00:07:24.660 She was speaking as a Muslim and perhaps as an Afghan.
00:07:28.320 So is that supposed to make any of this better?
00:07:31.540 That as a cabinet minister, she sometimes doesn't speak as a Canadian, but instead speaks as an Afghan?
00:07:37.860 That she speaks to the Taliban as her brothers because they share some cultural and religious bonds from the country of her origin?
00:07:45.340 But doesn't that just sort of undermine the entire idea of Canada, the entire experiment of a Western liberal democracy?
00:07:52.760 Monsef came to Canada as a refugee.
00:07:54.540 Here, she was given incredible opportunities to succeed, excel, and rise to the highest status in the country.
00:08:02.180 She is a federal cabinet minister.
00:08:04.360 And yet, she still looks back longingly at Afghanistan as her country, and she sees the Taliban as her family.
00:08:11.900 She again had the opportunity to clarify, and she clarified that this is exactly what she means.
00:08:17.580 Here is another question, this time from an independent journalist from Blacklock's Reporter.
00:08:22.540 This journalist is not on Trudeau's payroll.
00:08:25.100 He's not on the dole.
00:08:26.240 So you can notice how he speaks to Monsef the way that a journalist should speak to a politician who has just said something crazy.
00:08:33.480 Thank you.
00:08:34.140 And Minister Monsef, I'd like to follow up on this brother business.
00:08:38.980 Frankly, if there's some cultural nuance here, I'm not getting it.
00:08:41.980 I've never heard you refer to a Muslim Canadian member of the Conservative Party as your brother.
00:08:46.260 Sir, everyone is aware of the Taliban's human rights atrocities.
00:08:50.240 It's just a really jarring phrase.
00:08:52.660 Do you just want to walk that back now?
00:08:55.420 Could you just take that back, or do you really think the Taliban are our brothers?
00:09:02.800 I think this whole situation is jarring, sir, that there are terrorists taking over my beloved ancestral land.
00:09:10.040 And in terms of the terminology, if you go to masjids across the country, Muslims refer to one another as brothers and sisters.
00:09:18.460 So, you know, rest assured, I continue to believe deeply that the Taliban are a terrorist organization.
00:09:26.160 Our government believes so.
00:09:28.020 We'll continue to protect women, Hazaras, Shias, Hindus, Sikhs.
00:09:33.080 We'll continue to do everything we can to get as many people out of their grasp in Afghanistan. 1.00
00:09:39.920 And we'll continue to do everything we can with our global partners to make sure that the hard-won gains of the past two decades are not lost to these individuals whose mandate is not to govern.
00:09:53.820 Their mandate is to oppress and to kill, and we condemn that entirely.
00:09:58.480 And again, she doubles down, refuses to walk it back, and defends, calling the terrorists in the Taliban her brothers. 0.92
00:10:07.280 What a slap in the face.
00:10:08.840 A slap in the face to all Canadians. 1.00
00:10:11.020 A slap in the face to women in Afghanistan who are currently being repressed in despicable ways.
00:10:16.820 I won't even go into some of the details of what is going on in Afghanistan, what is happening to women right now.
00:10:22.000 It is unspeakable.
00:10:23.280 And it is a slap in the face to those women what Monsef has said.
00:10:27.280 But then again, this is Mary Monsef we're talking about.
00:10:30.780 Remember back in 2015 when she was celebrated as a member of Trudeau's inner circle.
00:10:36.260 Remember the countless profiles and puff pieces written about her.
00:10:39.500 The young woman who came from a humble position as a poor Afghan refugee who then rose all the way up to a high-profile cabinet minister.
00:10:48.000 Only in Canada could such a wonderful fairy tale story happen.
00:10:51.960 But then, sadly, we learned that much of her story just simply wasn't true.
00:10:56.280 Monsef wasn't even from Afghanistan.
00:10:59.020 She was from Iran.
00:10:59.980 She was born in Iran.
00:11:01.100 And she was hardly a refugee given that she used to travel back and forth between Canada, Iran, and Afghanistan when she was in her 20s after she became a Canadian citizen.
00:11:10.280 She said that her refugee application to Canada did list Afghanistan as her place of birth.
00:11:16.200 And she blamed the entire debacle on her mother. 0.90
00:11:19.020 How gracious.
00:11:19.520 Even though she grew up in Iran, she claimed to, what, have not known that it was Iran?
00:11:25.000 That she thought that she was living in Afghanistan when she was actually in Iran?
00:11:28.780 She says that her mother hid it all from her and apparently she just didn't know the difference.
00:11:33.280 Right.
00:11:33.540 Well, here is the clueless Mary Monsef awkwardly trying to tell reporter Robert Fyfe, the one who broke the story about her not being from Afghanistan and actually being from Iran.
00:11:43.020 Here she is telling him that she was born in Afghanistan, even though you can tell that she clearly knows otherwise.
00:11:49.920 So you were born in Afghanistan, correct?
00:11:51.960 I believe I was.
00:11:53.060 Now, did you know that in Canada, lying on your asylum claim paper, lying on your citizenship application papers, is against the law?
00:12:01.800 It's punished so harshly that if a government finds out that you have lied on your application, it will strip away your citizenship.
00:12:09.000 Even if this happens years later, it will go back and it will strip citizenship from you.
00:12:14.020 It's called citizenship revocation and it happens all the time.
00:12:17.680 Here is the Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, saying just that.
00:12:21.340 A revocation of citizenship can and should happen in situations of becoming a Canadian citizen on false pretenses.
00:12:29.460 Indeed, when people have lied on their applications, those applications get rescinded even years later.
00:12:37.260 Of course, rules don't apply to Liberals.
00:12:39.040 Monsef is in Trudeau's inner circle and so the rules simply don't apply to her.
00:12:43.540 Criticizing Mary Monsef is probably considered culturally insensitive.
00:12:47.940 Some will probably say it is even racist.
00:12:50.440 Well, guess what?
00:12:52.120 My husband, just like Mary Monsef, was born in Iran.
00:12:55.740 And just like Mary Monsef, my husband and his family came to Canada when he was a child.
00:13:01.020 But unlike Mary Monsef, my husband's family didn't try to sneak in the back door by claiming asylum and pretending to be something that they're not. 0.60
00:13:08.720 And unlike Mary Monsef, my husband would never, not in a million years, describe the despicable terrorists in the Taliban as our brothers. 0.75
00:13:19.600 They're not.
00:13:20.360 He would never say that.
00:13:21.980 Don't be fooled by Mary Monsef. 0.95
00:13:24.000 There is nothing cultural about calling the Taliban our brothers.
00:13:29.160 I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:13:31.440 I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.