All eyes at this hour on Ukraine and the White House after a dramatic series of events over the past 24 hours. Megyn Kelly is joined by National Review's Charles C.W. Cook and Eric Bolling to discuss the latest developments.
00:01:28.740Eric Bolling will join us in a bit to lay out what this means for the market, for gas prices, and for the U.S. economy overall, which, as you know, is already struggling.
00:01:46.160But first, I am joined by Charles C.W. Cook, Senior Writer for National Review.
00:01:53.200So, the reports are that Vladimir Putin has been creating the conditions for war inside Ukraine.
00:02:01.880Certain alleged false flag incidents that have happened within these two very pro-Russian regions of Ukraine that he's now declaring independent.
00:02:11.100He's just unilaterally declared them to be independent.
00:02:15.200In any event, some small incidents of explosion or what have you that, according to the New York Times at least, are believed to have originated with the Russians,
00:02:24.780trying to make it look like there's violence against the local Russians by Ukraine, but it's not so.
00:02:32.040He's looking for a reason to send troops in there.
00:02:35.000We've been told all along it's because he wants NATO not to expand.
00:02:40.960He doesn't want Ukraine to be a part of NATO.
00:02:42.800More and more analysts who I trust are saying that's just pretextual.
00:02:48.580Putin wants Ukraine to remain essentially a part of Russia or at least an extension, in a way, of Russia under his control, not under the control of the West.
00:02:58.560He likes their border a lot better than he likes his own Western border.
00:03:03.640And he's just not going to sit back and let it become more and more pro-Western and tied to the West and that that's what this is really about.
00:03:43.560And now within the hour, we're expected to get more from President Biden on, quote, severe sanctions to punish Putin for what he's done thus far.
00:04:14.660There is no reason for us to take his words at face value.
00:04:18.900I think one of the problems here is that we have a tendency in the West to view everything that happens in the world through our own eyes, through our own lens.
00:04:30.440You said that Republicans had argued that Biden was weak.
00:04:43.900The ambitions that you described at the beginning did not start when Joe Biden became president.
00:04:51.140They didn't start when Donald Trump became president.
00:04:53.760We have been aware of who Vladimir Putin is and what he wants to do for 20 years.
00:05:00.500This is a question that faced George W. Bush as a new president.
00:05:04.720In fact, these ambitions, they predate Vladimir Putin himself.
00:05:12.700We, as I'm sure everyone knows, spent most of the last century in a struggle with the Soviet Union, which also had expansionist ambitions.
00:05:21.580So I think a lot of the coverage that we're going to see is going to get sucked into this Republican, Democrat, Western, particularly American mindset.
00:05:34.180Now, that said, clearly, Vladimir Putin is aware that the preeminent world power is the United States and that he is, at 69 years old, unlikely to find another opportunity in his lifetime to execute some of the plans that he's had in mind for a long time.
00:05:51.580And America does look relatively weak.
00:06:28.160Last time we saw him seize territory in Ukraine was Crimea.
00:06:31.800That was during the Obama administration.
00:06:36.060And Putin was upset because back then they had managed to oust a more pro-Putin president of Ukraine for a more pro-Western president of Ukraine.
00:06:47.160And then before he knew it, he was taking Crimea and he's not going to give up Russian influence and power in Ukraine easily.
00:06:54.520He's made that clear over the past 10 years.
00:06:57.580He did nothing during the Trump administration that looked anything like that.
00:07:01.420And now we have this under President Biden.
00:07:04.380And I saw you had called attention to this tweet by then candidate Joe Biden, which really does sort of belie the reality of those two events as I just laid them out.
00:07:37.240My colleague Jim Garrity at National Review said earlier that he was trying to sound like John Wayne.
00:07:42.300Of course, it didn't work because it's based on nothing.
00:07:46.680And again, this is a good example of a tendency within the United States to view everything that happens on the world stage as an extension of our domestic politics.
00:07:57.340Donald Trump said some pretty terrible things about Vladimir Putin.
00:08:01.300There's a famous moment with Bill O'Reilly where Bill O'Reilly says he's a killer and Vladimir Putin, Trump says, is not so bad because we have killers here too.
00:08:12.700We're not so innocent, I think were his exact words.
00:08:16.980But there's no real evidence beyond that that Donald Trump was weak on Russia.
00:08:20.980In fact, Trump sent more arms to the countries that are threatened by Russia than did Barack Obama.
00:08:29.180And so what Joe Biden was trying to do there is play off this conception that Trump was Putin's puppet and that what we really needed in the White House was a guy who would stand up to him.
00:08:41.220Of course, that's not really how this works.
00:08:42.780And even if Joe Biden does a good job in responding to Russian aggression, he's still going to be somewhat hamstrung.
00:08:51.360We're not going to go to war with Russia.
00:08:54.140We will be able to maneuver, maybe send weapons, maybe impose more sanctions, maybe deploy some troops to make sure this doesn't spiral out of control.
00:09:02.920But I don't really know what Biden means when he says, well, I'm the one who went toe to toe with him.
00:09:09.860That's just not how the Russians think.
00:09:14.580And even now that the word invasion, which the White House was reluctant to use, comes from some low level person in the PR shop who I've never even heard of.
00:09:23.240I know it's not the president saying that, at least not yet.
00:09:26.460It's like 14th man in charge of the PR shop has called it an invasion.
00:09:31.080The Ukrainians aren't calling it that.
00:09:32.900We've been threatening these severe sanctions over and over, but we haven't unleashed them, even though Putin's been upping his game and upping his game.
00:09:40.060Now we'll see whether Biden does it today.
00:09:42.280But, you know, one does wonder whether Biden and his administration are somehow, I don't want to use the term, enjoying this controversy, but he certainly does tout it every other day as tomorrow's the day.
00:10:03.640And there's now speculation in the press that Biden's looking to this whole conflict as a distraction from our disastrous domestic situation back here at home.
00:10:13.020Well, I hope he's not, because that would be genuinely appalling.
00:10:17.200And it would also be to reduce the lives and happiness of the Ukrainian people to mere domestic pawns.
00:10:26.460One of the strange things about this administration, and it's true of Joe Biden, it's also true of Kamala Harris, is their tendency to answer questions on grave topics such as these as if they were a pundit on a panel in Washington, D.C.
00:10:40.640It's fine if you are in a think tank to say you think that Putin will engage in warfare or in an invasion.
00:10:50.800It is fine if you're on a think tank to say a minor incursion might be acceptable.
00:10:55.840As an analytical matter, that may well be correct.
00:10:59.900But if you're the president of the United States, you have to talk differently.
00:11:05.120And if he does, he will face consequences, even if those consequences are sanctions or arms exports or what you will.
00:11:12.840And both he and Kamala Harris have this strange way of separating themselves from this, of talking about it from 30,000 feet in the abstract, when in fact they are in charge of the executive branch.
00:13:40.480I don't want to see people prosecuted or marginalized in our society for criticizing the United States.
00:13:47.800If Kamala Harris thinks that the United States has segregation, fine.
00:13:52.820If she thinks that it's an Islamophobic, transphobic, homophobic nation, fine.
00:13:58.480But there are certain responsibilities that go with being the vice president.
00:14:02.140You don't get to just say that anymore.
00:14:05.380You have a responsibility to represent your country, to put the best foot forward.
00:14:10.860Ronald Reagan had a conception of the United States as a shining city on a hill.
00:14:15.760That doesn't mean he didn't recognize that there were problems at home.
00:14:19.540In fact, he was elected to fix some of those problems.
00:14:21.900But he understood that just as building up arms helps you win in a Cold War type scenario, so does telling the rest of the world that actually your country's great.
00:14:35.500But yes, it may have some issues, but it is a model.
00:15:01.120It weakens us and it shows our rivals and indeed our allies how they can divide us and how they can best use diplomacy to achieve their ends at the expense of ours.
00:15:21.460So there's that rhetoric from our vice president.
00:15:23.960We'll hear what the president says in terms of sanctions on Russia.
00:15:26.440One does wonder, if we drop the big hammer of the, quote, severe sanctions, that's the term he keeps using today, if we take it from impotent to something more severe, where do we go from there?
00:15:40.160If Putin's not done, if a full-scale invasion of the non-pro-Russia areas of Ukraine happens, what's the next cudgel that we have?
00:16:00.880And first off, there is not, as far as I can see, a particular appetite in the United States to get into a war over Ukraine.
00:16:09.760Irrespective of whether or not this should be the case, if Russia invaded London, I think you would see a majority in favor of the United States going in hard.
00:16:22.140Ukraine is a long, long, long way away.
00:16:36.260Second, historically, we tend to struggle when the areas in question are disputed or when there are elements within them that would actually prefer to be part of the invading force.
00:16:53.800Let us dispense for a second with the idea that Vladimir Putin is Hitler or that this crisis is the same as those that arose in the late 1930s.
00:17:10.040When Germany said, well, we want the Sudetenland because it's full of ethnic Germans, many of whom want to be German, we struggle with that because at the root of our system is consent.
00:17:21.360And we find it difficult to rationalize opposition to consent.
00:17:28.200And we're not quite sure what's true and what's not.
00:17:33.260And I think where Putin has been clever here is, in addition to creating all sorts of pretextual reasons to go in, he's playing around with the separatist parts of Ukraine that don't actually want to be a part of Ukraine.
00:18:10.580Story after story of the human rights abuses that are allegedly being perpetrated on the Russians inside of these two regions of Ukraine in particular.
00:18:20.640And the spin inside of Russia and inside of, you know, they're there with their amongst their lawmakers is, you know, we have to do something.
00:18:35.780There was a standing ovation for Vladimir Putin's comments, his speech the other day.
00:18:39.620So within Russia, they see themselves as sort of liberators going there to protect, you know, the Russians who are living in these two parts of Ukraine in particular.
00:18:48.520That's, of course, not at all the way Europe or the rest of the world sees it.
00:19:11.120But that, you know, that is one of the considerations we have to think about is how is it going to hurt our economy if we impose the severe, quote, again, capital sanctions?
00:19:20.680Well, and especially given a backdrop that is not that rosy to begin with.
00:19:28.840And I think this will only lessen any American willingness to make sacrifices in order to help Ukraine.
00:19:37.980It would be one thing if it were 1998, the economy were booming, gas was, you know, $1.25 a gallon.
00:19:47.720Gas is creeping up to $4 in many places.
00:19:54.040Americans are coming out of a terrible two years with COVID and its associated lockdowns.
00:20:01.800And I suspect the last thing they're going to want to do is to make more sacrifices, again, for a country many of them couldn't locate on a map.
00:20:41.340And we don't have to have Vladimir Putin as Hitler in order to understand that.
00:20:46.960We do have in this country a commitment to a principle that was established 500 years ago, the Treaty of Westphalia, that borders are important and sovereign nations should be respected.
00:21:01.280And in such a case as they are not, we have historically done all that we can, or at least a great deal, to change that.
00:21:10.100And if America decides, for whatever reason, just to look the other way, I'm not arguing here we should go to war with Russia.
00:21:18.680But if America decides to look the other way, say who cares, someone else's problem, there are very, very few historical examples of that working out for us.
00:21:27.880So we should be concerned about this, and we should be rooting for this administration to do as well as it can.
00:21:36.980But I don't think there are that many options on the table at the moment.
00:21:41.580One positive development is the Germans.
00:21:44.200You know, the German chancellor there hadn't been going so far as to explicitly say that he was going to sort of put the Nord Stream 2 on hold, that he was going to suspend it.
00:21:53.540And now he has. So that's, you know, yet another sort of threat that we have over Putin, because he definitely wants that thing open.
00:22:00.720He wants to get, you know, be the be the main energy supplier on an ongoing basis to Germany.
00:22:06.000And Nord Stream 2 is important to that.
00:22:08.040We'll continue to watch it as we expect President Biden in about 40 minutes to come out and add to his earlier comments.
00:22:14.240Charles C.W. Cook, always a pleasure. Thank you.
00:22:18.020Coming up, Eric Bolling, before he was a big star on Fox News and now Newsmax, made his big fortune trading oil and gas futures in sort of the financial markets.
00:22:29.820I didn't know about this, but Melissa Francis explained it to me once.
00:22:32.940Eric Bolling made a fortune doing that.
00:22:35.440He understands this area very, very well.
00:22:38.280And he's the perfect person to talk to about what's going to happen to gas prices here if we impose severe sanctions.
00:22:45.220What's going to happen to your energy bill?
00:22:47.800What's going to happen to inflation that is already at record levels?
00:23:08.840But what if you or a partner needs to step away?
00:23:11.260When the unexpected happens, count on Canada Life's flexible life and health insurance to help your business keep working, even when you can't.
00:23:19.900Don't let life's challenges stand in the way of your success.
00:25:19.160Anyway, to make a long story short, here we are.
00:25:21.780Putin, over the last few months, has aligned troops and done his little military war games along the Ukraine border.
00:25:27.480It scared the bejesus out of the oil markets.
00:25:30.360Oil was about $50 a barrel before this whole thing started.
00:25:33.840And I'm talking about North Sea Brent, which is the international oil for Europe.
00:25:37.560And now it's spiked to $98 and almost $99 a barrel today.
00:25:42.220So that's a 100% increase, a $50 barrel increase.
00:25:46.040And that translates into about $250 billion a year increase, not just total increase to the Russian economy.
00:25:55.480Because they sell, they produce and sell 11 million barrels of oil per day.
00:25:59.800And that turns into almost a quarter of a trillion dollars increase because we're allowing the oil markets to rally because we say we're going to get involved in a situation that has absolutely nothing to do with us.
00:26:09.940If we didn't play these sanctioned games, Megan, why would the price of a barrel of oil go up?
00:26:15.340Russia is still going to produce their 11 million barrels.
00:26:27.400And at this price right now, because we've run up so dramatically over the last month, month and a half, all that oil is becoming higher and higher priced oil in inventory tanks and refiners.
00:26:37.340So they buy oil, they put it into the tank.
00:26:42.540So everything they're replacing of the cheaper oil is being replaced with $100 barrel of oil, which means they haven't even begun to charge us at the gas pump yet for the more expensive feedstock inventory crude that's going into the refinery.
00:26:55.180In other words, if you're paying $4 a gallon right now, $3.80, $3.75, whatever, now expect another 50% increase.
00:27:02.820So I would say it's almost a lot that nationally average we're going to see a $5 gallon of gasoline, which is very, very difficult, especially people-
00:27:11.400Wait, let me let you know me and the numbers.
00:27:13.860I mean, I mean the math, Eric, we're going to walk through it slowly.
00:27:16.700So I get our gas prices are going up even more.
00:27:20.140That is a sticker shocking number, $5 a gallon here in the United States.
00:27:23.840It's already gone up $0.90 just over the past year, so going to go up more.
00:27:27.980And is that without the severe sanctions?
00:27:30.480Are you saying that's going to happen to us irrespective of what happens in Ukraine?
00:27:34.320Megan, this is without any sanctions yet.
00:27:37.400This is what's already happened with this saber-rattling of Putin on the border and the world saying, well, if they're going to do that, there's surely going to be some sanctions slapped on.
00:27:45.840It's the anticipation of whatever these sanctions will be.
00:27:48.360We're locked in to probably another dollar a gallon on the upside on gasoline.
00:27:53.080Just locked in already because these refiners have to buy crude oil on the world market, and they're paying $100 a barrel right now.
00:28:00.380We're not going to take a loss on that.
00:28:02.000When that feedstock finally goes through the refinery, on the backside becomes gasoline, heating oil, and jet fuel.
00:28:07.620That stuff, they have to make up that loss.
00:28:13.060We're going to see $5 a gallon in this country, absolutely, no matter what happens.
00:28:17.600So what happens, so if, you know, the Nord Stream 2, that's going to be shut down, so Russia's not going to be able to get that energy supply down to Germany.
00:28:26.620Russia supplies 40% of Europe's natural gas and 25% of Europe's oil.
00:28:32.600So if you're, and apparently what I read is that that's what Biden's been doing overnight, trying to get the Europeans to come on board so that we can, as a unified force, come out today, again, within the next 30 minutes and say, we're all together.
00:28:54.640We got that 40% of natural gas supply, and we got that 25% of oil supply.
00:28:59.180But if we had all of that in abundance, and I know we do, but we're just not mining it under Biden, why wouldn't we be using it on the American people to lower those gas prices down from four to three instead of going from four to five?
00:29:09.080So what position are we going to be in if this all really does go through and Germany doesn't go through and Europe starts curtailing its energy purchases from Russia and so on?
00:29:17.740Yeah, and any sort of supply disruption or dislocation in this case, because Russia will still produce, they just won't be able to put in anywhere.
00:37:11.100Regular law enforcement could have dealt with this problem.
00:37:13.120The things that they're doing to sort of clear the areas in Ottawa and so on were all regular matters of law enforcement.
00:37:19.420You didn't need to give Trudeau the power to seize people's bank accounts.
00:37:24.540And so he's seizing the truckers, professional bank accounts, canceling their insurance policy so that they can't work at all.
00:37:31.420And if you're some person who donated twenty five bucks or 50 bucks from your personal bank account now, some of those those private personal bank accounts are being seized.
00:37:42.880And Justin Trudeau has zero problem with any of this.
00:38:04.700But Trudeau has become the Canadian Fidel Castro.
00:38:08.900I mean, he has really become a dictator up there.
00:38:11.600He's a power drunk, hungry socialist who who says exactly what you said there.
00:38:17.380What kind of constitution allows a government to go in and seize people's personal property for simple for peaceful protests?
00:38:23.780I mean, they didn't do that with BLM here.
00:38:25.460However, I've become very close to the people's convoy here in the United States, which is leaving Barstow, California tomorrow, trekking across the country, weeding its way through Texas and other states.
00:38:36.400They don't announce where they're going to be.
00:38:38.260But we know they're going to end up in the D.C. area on March 5th.
00:38:41.660I'm going to ride the last leg of that with them.
00:38:43.700And they're doing exactly the same thing the Canadian truckers did.
00:38:46.380They're fighting for the for our freedoms.
00:38:47.940Now, we have a constitution that protects that peaceful, peaceful protests.
00:39:24.740In Canada and in here, there's a collapse of faith in the public health messengers and, you know, prophets like I call him the prophet Fauci because that's how he's treated by the mainstream media and the far left.
00:39:36.400And at my little Upper West Side bookstore, there's literally a Dr. Fauci superhero doll you can buy and people buy it.
00:39:59.420There's a report just today, Eric, about how the CDC has not been publishing large portions of the covid data that it's collecting because it basically admits it's not going to uphold its push for vaccines, in particular the booster.
00:40:14.040But not just the booster, the hospital data on the hospitalizations of children and so on.
00:40:18.520So they don't want to release it because it undermines their narrative.
00:40:21.160And then when you try to talk about facts that may undermine their narrative, they block you.
00:40:25.060They they organize letter writing campaigns against you.
00:40:27.960They try to get you pulled off the air like they did with Joe Rogan.
00:41:04.920But here's the point when the CDC admits that they were not exposing or sharing data that they knew would affect the way the narrative would would be seen by the people because they were so intent on having people vaccinated that they didn't want to show them what people what the actual science was saying.
00:41:24.020Isn't that isn't that isn't that in itself a statism, a communism, a the government telling you what you can and can't do and with your own body?
00:41:36.620I mean, it literally we've gone from a democratic republic into some sort of communist regime where the group, the big farmer gets together with the administration, who also gets backed by the vast majority of the mainstream media to make sure that the loop is closed and the narrative stays the same.
00:41:55.460It becomes less about science and more about the politics of it, what they want.
00:41:58.880And again, Megan, I'm telling you, we've talked about this for a long time, for two years of this pandemic.
00:42:30.460Everyone, including five month down to whatever year olds for free.
00:42:35.820Well, it's free to those people who are doing it because that's a lot of demand that you can create.
00:42:40.260The demand means that there's a lot of medicine that these big pharma people are going to sell to our government, who's just printed five or six trillion dollars to pay for all that.
00:42:49.400Send it over to big pharma and they turn around and send it back into these Democrats coffers.
00:43:04.440And we start hearing some some of these people, some of these Pfizer CEOs and Moderna CEOs on the stand explaining why they're the biggest donors to the Democrats.
00:43:12.680And is there any link to Democrats pushing their product on the American people?
00:43:16.440Hmm. There's no there's no federal booster mandate yet, but there is in city after city in New York.
00:43:20.900You're going to have to have it to enter a lot of facilities and so on.
00:43:23.360And, you know, the thing that supports that theory, because I understand you could just make the argument.
00:43:29.000I mean, it would just sort of make logical sense and you could say this is just what I believe.
00:43:32.280But the thing that really adds to it, in my view, is the fact that they were doing they were pushing the vaccine at the expense of the therapeutics.
00:43:39.140They didn't want any talk of therapeutics at all.
00:43:42.040They weren't actively unleashing, you know, the way they did to generate the vaccine.
00:43:45.900The companies to go get the therapeutics on it.
00:43:48.360And when you had hydroxychloroquine came up, it was like, no, Ivermectin.
00:43:52.560It was like, no, you had the Fauci squash machine come down and anybody pushing it.
00:43:56.780So why? Why was the vaccine so prized over everything?
00:44:01.140We can't get straight answers because they bury the information.
00:44:04.060Yeah, you can. Because the therapeutics are cheap and they're, you know, Ivermectin.
00:44:18.340And, you know, it really is if you it probably would be illegal if you were doing it in the public and the free, you know, your average investor, average person out in the markets trying to do this.
00:44:30.460But these guys are scratching each other's back.
00:44:32.980There's a string attached to every policy that the administration is making.
00:44:36.620They get Fauci to sign on and say, yeah, this is definitely he's a doctor.
00:44:40.180He's a doctor. He's a scientist. He's a doctor.
00:45:24.520And now we believe it started in the Wuhan lab, which we've been talking about for a long time.
00:45:28.720In the meantime, if you say, no, no, that's that's kabuki theory.
00:45:31.880That's not proven that the Wuhan lab theory is real.
00:45:34.760And also in the meantime, China destroys all our data from that Wuhan lab and then tells us they only lost 3000 people during the pandemic.
00:45:42.460We've lost 600,000, 800,000, whatever the number is there.
00:45:46.160They've lied and Fauci, he's hidden, he's blocked for that, for the Chinese.
00:45:52.080And we've done less to the Chinese to hold them accountable than we're about to do to Russia for its border skirmish with Ukraine.
00:45:59.520OK, let me let me shift gears because we lost a friend of ours, a mutual friend of ours and a former co-host of yours, Bob Beckel died.
00:46:08.180Bob Beckel's dead, age of 73, the cause of death not released.
00:46:11.600It's hard to believe, Eric, such a larger than life force, right?
00:46:19.160So many, so many, so many great memories with Bob.
00:46:22.580Bob used to sit in the breezeway smoking his little cigar and talk to anyone who would talk to him.
00:46:27.380Bob, you know, you may not remember this, but Bob, the first day that the five was slated to become a show, we went and had lunch over at Del Frisco's across the street with the whole cast and crew and everything.
00:46:38.640And Bob choked on a shrimp and I. Yes, you saved him. I did save him a Heimlich.
00:46:43.840I did save him with the Heimlich and I wish I could do it again.
00:46:46.680Bob was a was a unique character, a real true hero for in my book.
00:46:50.940Hey, look, we had opposite political views, but that was a time when two people can have completely bipolar political views and come together and just be friends and have a good time and make some good TV.
00:47:02.900Mm hmm. My husband talked to him for one of his books, spent so much time with Doug.
00:47:08.060You know, he wasn't going to get anything out of this, but spent so much time with him talking about, you know, the golden days when he used to be able to run the Democrat campaign and talk to the guy running the Republican campaign and fight it out all day, but then have a drink together at night back when he was still drinking.
00:47:19.260But, you know, it's just he always gave and gave and gave and never expected anything in return and so quick with a laugh and a compliment and support.
00:47:36.580And up next, we're going to have a bit more on that authoritarian crackdown into Canada as a Canadian radio host who recently went independent, is here to share his story of what the media there did to him when he had the nerve to be a black man who with heterodox thinking.
00:48:02.640But what if you or a partner needs to step away?
00:48:06.140When the unexpected happens, count on Canada Life's flexible life and health insurance to help your business keep working, even when you can't.
00:48:14.380Don't let life's challenges stand in the way of your success.
00:48:27.240President Biden is expected to speak this afternoon within minutes, we're told, about Russia and sanctions while a Ukraine invasion is underway, though not necessarily in progress.
00:48:43.580In other words, they went in, they took these two areas of Ukraine that are more pro-Russian and filled with a bunch of Russians.
00:48:50.280Last we knew, they weren't continuing the march, though anything could happen.
00:48:55.680That situation is clearly quite fluid.
00:48:58.380Meantime, Canada's Justin Trudeau being accused of crossing a Democratic line of his own in his crackdown against the Freedom Convoy truckers.
00:49:06.520Late last night, in a party line vote, his side won to continue his emergency measures as Canada's House of Commons approved the Emergencies Act extension.
00:49:18.080Today, police are fully in control of the Canadian capital.
00:49:22.320Convoy leaders are under arrest and people who supported them, even with small donations, have had their personal bank accounts frozen.
00:49:50.580I realize that Canadians tend to be nicer than Americans.
00:49:54.480They tend to take a bit more than we would take here, though clearly they have their breaking point.
00:49:59.380So what's been the reaction to the Canadian Parliament, at least part of it, extending this emergency state that allows him to pursue these crazy measures?
00:50:22.720I mean, you know, the decision of the Trudeau government to continue pushing these mandates onto the truckers, onto others, despite the fact that 90 percent of our population has gotten vaccinated.
00:50:35.980It just seems like such an unnecessary, brutal action.
00:50:40.440And that's what led to the trucker convoy.
00:50:43.000And the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is continuing on this path of using his power in ways that are completely unnecessary.
00:50:50.840What's interesting, as you noted, Megan, about the party line vote is that the reason why Justin Trudeau is able to get his Liberal Party members to all vote in this direction and also to get our Socialist Party, the NDP in Canada, to vote in this direction is because he made it what is called a confidence vote.
00:51:11.700And in our parliamentary system, what that means is if his party didn't support him 100 percent, it could have triggered an election.
00:51:19.960And so a lot of the people who voted in favor of him getting the Emergency Act passed are actually doing so because they didn't want an election, not because they agree with him.
00:51:30.300So here's here was his message to parliament about why it was necessary to give him these powers officially to let him roll with these.
00:51:38.460This is Justin Trudeau from Monday, Soundbite 2.
00:51:42.220I ask all members of parliament to take action against illegal blockades and to stand up for public safety and for the freedom of Canadians.
00:51:54.660Invoking the Emergencies Act has been necessary.
00:52:20.160You can't block a critical trade corridor and deprive people of their jobs.
00:52:26.040You can't attack journalists for reporting, which is essential to our democracy.
00:52:31.800It's pretty crazy when you listen to that and and think back on how he felt very differently when the BLM protests were going on inside Canada.
00:52:40.960And by the way, as for the harassment of journalists, we just had Eric Bolling on.
00:52:45.580Why don't you tell it to to the Rebel News journalists, including Alexa, who we were talking about with Eric Bolling.
00:53:38.220Well, it's frustrating to see and hear, you know, those images, those those interactions, those conflicts between citizens, journalists and police officers.
00:53:51.160The unfortunate thing here is that the Trudeau government has picked cops against the community.
00:53:58.280You know, you mentioned Black Lives Matter earlier, Megan.
00:54:00.740I mean, this is the same prime minister who kneeled with Black Lives Matter protesters, called our country racist, called police officers racist, and then decided to put police officers in these tense situations where they're in conflict with citizens and journalists.
00:54:18.780Keeping in mind, by the way, that the police chief of Ottawa resigned a week ago.
00:54:24.380The first black police chief, by the way, in Ottawa's history, which is just another layer of what's going on here in terms of the hypocrisy of the Trudeau government treating police officers in many ways like pawns to do their bidding.
00:54:38.500It's incredibly frustrating when it comes to video of the of the BLM protests in Canada.
00:54:43.980And while it didn't approach what we saw here in America in terms of the violence and the, you know, the looting and so on, it doesn't look like it was exactly a picnic and completely law abiding either.
00:54:56.820And yet, you know, back then, like you point out, he was out there marching with them.
00:55:00.740Look, you can see the people running in the streets and kicking over the garbage.
00:55:04.400And he was like, yeah, let's go out and protest with them.
00:55:06.660I'll be with them right in the middle of the road, blocking traffic.
00:55:08.820The very things he said you cannot do.
00:55:11.460But he supported that fully, Jamil, fully.
00:55:16.020How does he distinguish between the two?
00:55:18.020Oh, he says, well, the truckers are all racists based on what?
00:55:21.140One flag with a swastika on it that wasn't even tied directly to an actual protester as opposed to somebody there trying to make protesters look bad.
00:55:51.040Justin Trudeau is gaslighting not just my fellow Canadians, but the entire world right now.
00:55:55.800You heard him go on television and say this is for freedom.
00:55:58.860How exactly could restricting our civil rights and civil liberties lead to make more freedom?
00:56:06.280It's just it's it's just all these mind games that get done to make us not realize what is going on, including focusing, by the way, on the mainstream media corporations who love to make martyrs and victims out of their journalists who tow the government's line on all of these issues.
00:56:22.840And meanwhile, the vast majority of these protests with these truckers were annoying from what we've heard for the local citizenry.
00:56:30.520But it's not like the truckers were going after the locals, trying to hurt the locals, looking for opportunities to create havoc or cause violence.
00:56:39.300And as you point out, he sends the cops in and treats them like they're violent criminals.
00:56:44.840And now we are seeing skirmishes like we saw some woman get trampled by a police officer on his horse.
00:56:51.460This is soundbite for you can hear some of the desktop for our audience at home.
00:57:24.240And, Jamil, this is what this is what people are saying now from our Wall Street Journal to, you know, the more right leaning pundits in Canada.
00:57:31.760You know, like I was talking about Ezra Levant saying this isn't necessary.
00:57:36.820They're treating these truckers like they are like some sort of crazed band of bandits out there setting fires and causing havoc and looting stores.
00:57:49.740And it's not even just, you know, pundits or journalists who are making this point.
00:57:55.160Even premiers in Canada, which is the equivalent of a governor in Alberta, Saskatchewan, they're making the exact same point.
00:58:02.400You know, Justin Trudeau referenced the trade corridor between Michigan and Ontario that was blockaded a couple weeks back.
00:58:11.480And they were able to resolve that blockade without him, you know, using the suspending our civil rights and using the Emergencies Act to pit police officers against citizens.
00:58:22.400So it's it's very bizarre that they've proven they could resolve these things without the violence, without the manipulation of our laws and our liberties.
00:58:31.820And yet he's now arguing that he has to do this in order to clear a few blocks in our capital city.
00:58:38.120You had the deputy prime minister, Ms. Freeland, come out last week and warned that what they were going to do to the bank accounts and so on.
00:58:46.760And I'll play you that. But indeed, it appears they're doing it. Here she is. Soundbite one.
00:58:52.480If your truck is being used in these protests, your corporate accounts will be frozen.
00:59:00.220The insurance on your vehicle will be suspended.
00:59:05.360The consequences are real and they will bite.
00:59:10.420And not just the truckers, but anyone who donated twenty five bucks to them, 50 bucks.
00:59:16.940We're hearing reports of people being fired from their jobs once it's emerged that they donated fifty dollars to support what freedom to support some pushback on the vaccine mandates.
00:59:26.440That's what it started as. And it became more about government authoritarianism.
00:59:30.120But that's a that's a protected political view. At least it would be here in America.
00:59:34.840As it should be. You know, what's happening with the freezing of bank accounts.
00:59:39.060You're right, Megan. There are stories of single moms who work at diners who donated fifty dollars and have now had their bank accounts frozen.
00:59:46.960I mean, the impact this is having on working class and middle class families is significant.
00:59:51.860And it is a way of just cracking down on political dissent.
00:59:56.940You know, Christia Freeland, our deputy prime minister, who you mentioned, she was a journalist and a writer.
01:00:03.200Before she got into politics, she covered countries all around the world that did this kind of stuff to their citizens.
01:00:08.700And before she got into Trudeau's government, she probably would have opposed these things.
01:00:13.780But this is what happens when power is at your fingertips.
01:00:17.060We've seen from Justin Trudeau, we've seen from Christia Freeland an appetite for power that transcends principles, values and ethics.
01:00:25.560He the Wall Street Journal put it as follows.
01:00:28.640Mr. Trudeau criminalized a protest movement deputizing financial institutions without due process or liability to find and freeze personal accounts of blockaders and anyone who helps them.
01:00:41.180These extraordinary measures are a needless abuse of power.
01:00:45.260Now, I'd like to think if that happened here, I mean, that that is extreme, freezing the personal bank accounts of people making a $20 donation.
01:00:54.440I like to think we would throw that politician out on his ear.
01:01:08.620And I think it's important to note, Megan, that a lot of this crackdown on the trucker convoy began with American corporations like GoFundMe.
01:01:18.800So we've seen, you know, the thread that we're seeing in Canada does go back to the United States.
01:01:26.840It goes back to this overwhelming desire from some people in positions of power to want to control what we say, when we say it, how we think.
01:01:36.440And so we do worry about this expanding beyond just the 30 days that Justin Trudeau has asked for this power.
01:01:44.840They've already alluded to the possibility it could last for months.
01:01:48.120We worry about it happening to our brothers and sisters in other countries, like in the United States, because we've seen collaboration between American corporations and the Canadian government to make these sorts of things happen.
01:02:01.260So it is a it's a scary idea that there aren't enough checks and balances.
01:02:04.900And this is not a common feature in Canadian democracy.
01:02:09.300The only other times this has been used, this power that Justin Trudeau is invoking now, is during world wars or when there was a terrorist attack and Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre Trudeau, was the prime minister.
01:02:22.720So it's been decades since this power was used.
01:02:25.220And I think it is revealing that he is so quick and hungry to have this power himself.
01:02:32.260My hope is that enough Canadians and frankly, also enough people outside of the country like yourself will draw attention to this so that he feels some accountability.
01:02:41.460But unfortunately, you know, he's proven to be someone who likes to avoid accountability at all costs.
01:02:46.560All right. He put his tail between his legs and hid rather than speaking with the truckers and hearing them out, even at a time when covid is receding and the restrictions are coming down one by one.
01:02:57.900Even then, he couldn't even make it look like he was talking with them and extending an olive branch.
01:03:02.640He had to just call them racists, try to dismiss them and then try to ruin their lives.
01:03:06.720I'll tell you something, Jamil, if if that happened here in America, if the Biden administration has the nerve to try to do any of this to this trucker convoy that's starting to organize here domestically in the wake of giving BLM a total pass on the rioting and the looting and in too many cases, the physical violence and even murders we saw happen, all hell is going to break loose.
01:03:29.960They they will be forced to pay at the ballot box this November in in a way that they're not even anticipating.
01:03:37.400There's no way the American people are going to allow that double standard.
01:03:39.900All right. Stand by, because you mentioned these woke corporations which are ruining your country and mine.
01:03:44.700And it is corporations. And I've read that in your sub stack.
01:03:47.760It's not just these individual journalists that we can call out as being pernicious forces.
01:03:52.240It's the corporations that back them up, that want to exploit these divisions between us to line their pockets or make themselves look better.