The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - JJ McCullough： Awful Liberal leadership, Jagmeet Singh, and Zoomer politics

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody. This is a very special episode of the show because not only do I have a guest on, but I have a guest on that I've been watching on YouTube for probably about seven years at this point, Mr. J.J. McCullough. Very good education videos, very good videos on Canada and North America.

00:00:19.480 I'm not even very good at describing what exactly your channel is, so maybe you could do it. You've been doing everything from writing columns for newspapers, doing TV, and now YouTube, but what is the YouTube channel?

00:00:33.420 Yeah. I mean, I often struggle to describe it a bit as well. I've been doing it for 10 years. The sort of three Cs that I have sort of associated with it on my banner headline is I make videos about culture, countries, and Canada.

00:00:50.320 And so every time I make a video and I make a video every week, I try to make one that at least sort of broadly falls under one of those three categories.

00:00:57.140 And a lot of times it sort of winds up dipping into all three. And despite my best efforts, you know, when I started my YouTube channel 10 years ago, I was finishing up a career sort of involuntarily at Sun News, which had recently sort of shut down.

00:01:12.460 I had been a sort of TV talking head over there and on CTV before then. And I had kind of wanted to make a channel that wasn't political because I was kind of getting a little sick of political commentary.

00:01:22.380 But, you know, old habits die hard. And I still do make the occasional political sort of pundit video every so often on my channel as well.

00:01:32.220 And I feel like a lot of people think of me as still as a kind of political commentator, even though, you know, I don't go out of my way to produce an abundance of that sort of content.

00:01:42.320 Although I did, you know, until quite recently, I was also a weekly columnist at the at the Washington Post.

00:01:48.060 So that was a career that overlapped with my my YouTube career. And I only lost that, you know, I think less than two years ago.

00:01:53.680 Well, you don't even do as much commentary as more so like history videos, even when you're talking recently about Justin Trudeau announcing he's going to step down as Liberal Party leader.

00:02:04.880 You go into all the ins and outs of how leadership races were, what, you know, the sort of different paths forward for the Liberal Party might be. 0.93

00:02:12.900 And so it's like half commentary, which I enjoy, because oftentimes anyone can make a video where Justin Trudeau sucks. 0.81

00:02:19.600 Did you guys know this? That Justin Trudeau sucks. And it's always good for people to actually make videos that help people understand how politics works. 1.00

00:02:28.360 And not in the way of how does politics actually work in the CV background, but like, how does like boring political like mechanics actually function?

00:02:39.200 And I think your videos do that. Well, I even got some A's on some papers, both for my bachelor and my master's degree by just watching the social credit video a few times.

00:02:48.980 And making that my default answer on everything that had to do with like BC or Alberta social credit and explaining the movement.

00:02:59.440 Yeah, well, thank you. That's very flattering. I mean, I like to think that my videos primarily serve an educational purpose.

00:03:07.060 And, you know, I try to be I try to be sort of honest in them.

00:03:10.360 I try to, you know, I try to be more nonpartisan than not to be fair, you know, or at least objective, you know, being unbiased is, I think, you know, a kind of difficult standard for anyone to meet.

00:03:21.580 But you can be objective and you can try to tell the truth, even when it doesn't flatter one side or the other.

00:03:26.140 Because I do think that what people and especially young people need is just sort of to understand the context in which sort of politics is happening.

00:03:34.040 You can get opinions from anybody, but sort of being able to understand kind of the background, the sort of the historical context and, you know, sort of the institutional kind of procedural things in an honest way.

00:03:46.680 Right. And this is sort of something that I've often cared a lot about and gets me actually in trouble with some of the, dare I say, some of the more some of the more legacy pundits is that I have a very unsentimental view of Canadian politics and the Canadian political system.

00:04:00.180 You know, when we talk about the parliamentary system or the way the political parties work and all of this kind of stuff, I think it's important that we speak sort of bluntly and honestly about how these things actually work and not how they, you know, theoretically work in some, you know, textbook or on the Government of Canada website or how some, you know, sort of romantic, you know, professor at some high minded institution sort of thinks about the majesty of the Canadian political system.

00:04:28.660 You know, and I think we're seeing a lot of people, you know, and I think we're seeing a lot of that unfold right now in the context of Trudeau's resignation and the liberal leadership race.

00:04:34.180 You know, a lot of Canadians are sort of waking up to the realities of how our democracy actually works and it doesn't strike them as something that's particularly attractive.

00:04:43.520 Well, I'm going to exercise your skills right now in being nonpartisan because we're going to talk about the liberal leadership race because why wouldn't we, while all the candidates are currently announcing, because outside, I'm a very conservative person. 0.93

00:04:59.380 So obviously I could just make videos say, Carney sucks. 1.00

00:05:02.460 Did you know that he's also, he also is in favor of the carbon tax and that Christy Freeland froze trucker bank accounts.

00:05:08.840 I'm just looking at it from the perspective of who's actually a good candidate who could actually have an impact on the next election 2025 is probably going to have problems with any of these people, but getting right down to it, this is something you and I both agree on.

00:05:24.120 And then I want to touch on something that we actually both uniquely said yesterday, it's just a boring race. 0.99

00:05:28.960 And then on top of it, even like the front runner candidates feel like a second tier conservative party leadership candidate, because we both highlighted yesterday, Mark Carney celebrating raising $125,000 in 24 hours is genuinely not impressive at all.

00:05:47.020 But maybe you can give your thoughts on why, what, what, how that struck you yesterday when you saw it.

00:05:53.000 Well, it's like, I know that we have to sort of adjust our expectations in the context of sort of Canadian politics versus American politics, right?

00:06:02.180 Like we're all aware that, you know, every random primary candidate will brag about, oh, I raised like 2 million bucks in like 24 hours and that kind of thing.

00:06:10.200 I'm like, you know, I get that Canadian politics is smaller and all that, but like, you know, what Carney raised is not even enough to cover the entry fee in his liberal leadership candidacy.

00:06:20.340 So I, which is like, what, like 350 grand.

00:06:23.760 So I think it's might just be 300,000, but yeah, maybe 350.

00:06:27.560 But yeah, the hilarious thing too, is that whenever I would mention this, it's not that much money.

00:06:33.700 If you divide it by the maximum donation, which is only $1,750, it's 71.4 maxed out donations given to him in 24 hours.

00:06:43.040 But then people will say, well, why?

00:06:45.220 It's only been 24 hours.

00:06:47.580 It's like, well, did you not see the month long setup to this moment?

00:06:51.320 They would have had a Rolodex of donors, emails, phone numbers.

00:06:55.020 They would have been text blasting people.

00:06:56.500 They would have been harassing people to donate.

00:06:59.020 And they got, like, what a municipal council candidate might be able to get at a, you know, at a dinner.

00:07:08.540 No, and it's, I suppose in some ways it actually might reveal some of the sort of misassumptions of even his conservative critics, right?

00:07:18.740 Like, because the idea was that, you know, the great strength of Mark Carney is like that he's the elitist among elitists,

00:07:24.100 that he's very plugged into sort of the Canadian power network, the rich and well-connected.

00:07:27.960 And if they're not willing to open their wallets for him, in the wake of what you said was an enormous lead up.

00:07:33.880 Like, he's been running a shadow campaign, I mean, arguably for years, right?

00:07:37.760 Like, we're all leading up to this moment in which Mark Carney makes his triumphant entry into the Canadian political space.

00:07:45.480 And, yeah, for it to kind of go over like such a, you know, tiny ripple in the pond,

00:07:52.060 it seems profoundly underwhelming in a way that has to be, I think, troubling.

00:07:55.560 And that's the thing about the race, and I think this is what the donors are having to struggle with.

00:08:01.780 It's not that they're wondering, who do I get behind because these are such dynamic and different candidates.

00:08:06.700 It's like, who is going to even move the needle in terms of getting the audience's attention?

00:08:13.280 I watched the announcement launch video by Critchie Freeland this morning.

00:08:17.200 It's something genuinely better than anything that Carney's put out so far, and it's not actually saying much, though.

00:08:23.120 It's basically, she delivered her message with some energy.

00:08:27.040 I'm not even sure if the Jon Stewart interview really helped Mark Carney in any way.

00:08:31.600 If people saw that, I did a short video on it.

00:08:34.500 He's not terrible in it, but when you're on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and you just kind of come off as fine,

00:08:40.480 well, you know, you've got to be a bit better than fine if you're trying to be the prime minister who then builds momentum to be pure poly.

00:08:48.560 I know people are saying, well, there's an ECOS poll out from Frank Graves showing the Liberals have closed the gap to just 11% after Trudeau stepped down.

00:08:56.140 I'm like, no chance.

00:08:57.620 If there is one pollster in Canada I do not take at face value, it is Frank Graves and ECOS.

00:09:02.520 I don't have any vendetta against him, but when his last poll in December shows a 24% gap, actually 25% gap in favor of the Conservatives,

00:09:10.680 and it's come down to 11% in January, that's not real.

00:09:14.500 It's what I call an unmotivated polling change.

00:09:18.120 If the poll from one to the next is very different, and there's nothing really in the news that would suggest that it would close up that much,

00:09:25.960 because while Trudeau stepped down, all the problems of the government are still there, and he technically hasn't even left yet.

00:09:30.300 That does not cause a 14% swing, but if you were to having to define this race in a sentence, what is this leadership race all about?

00:09:42.660 What is it all about?

00:09:46.200 What's the fundamental question of this leadership race for the Liberal Party?

00:09:51.300 Not for Canadian politics, but for the Liberals, what are we doing here?

00:09:55.300 I think, you know, I guess this is two or three words, but like turning the page, like I do think that that is kind of like fundamentally what they're looking for,

00:10:06.220 and what they should be looking for, which is the idea like, you know, we're putting a bookend at the Trudeau era,

00:10:10.840 we're in some sort of new era that feels forward-facing, right?

00:10:16.120 That's not just all about looking backwards and sort of playing sort of cleanup for the Trudeau legacy,

00:10:22.180 but, you know, we're kind of like forging a new legacy for the, you know, the 2020s,

00:10:26.700 and we're kind of into a new era of Canadian politics defined by new ideas, addressing new problems,

00:10:31.740 and a new kind of like mindset of leadership to deal with those challenges.

00:10:35.520 And, you know, I think that Carney is like well positioned to be that kind of person in theory, you know,

00:10:42.620 and I think that's why the Conservatives are very desperate to tie him to the Trudeau government,

00:10:48.780 because they understand that at some level, he can make a more persuasive case to be something new.

00:10:54.260 I mean, a man who's literally never held elected office before is by definition, you know, somebody that is a bit of an outsider.

00:11:01.040 And again, like, you can argue that he's, you know, been consulting with the Liberals for ages, which he has been,

00:11:06.600 but, you know, he can make that claim a lot stronger than someone like Chrystia Freeland was,

00:11:11.260 who has, you know, or has been, who has been, you know, Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Finance Minister,

00:11:16.300 you know, on Trudeau's side since the very beginning.

00:11:20.180 So I actually didn't see her campaign launch,

00:11:24.020 but I'd be, I'd be curious to see if you felt that she communicated any of that energy at all,

00:11:30.120 because that definitely feels like it's her biggest liability is her closeness to Trudeau.

00:11:34.080 She actually, that's the funny thing.

00:11:35.900 I would actually say she is like, this leadership race is the Trudeaus versus the non-Trudeaus. 0.70

00:11:41.080 And ironically enough, Chrystia Freeland is the non-Trudeau candidate,

00:11:45.220 and Carney is the Trudeau candidate, not because of like public word association between the two.

00:11:49.960 Obviously, people think of Freeland and Trudeau as more of a package deal than Carney and Trudeau,

00:11:55.060 at least in the average person's mind.

00:11:57.620 But it's because Freeland's explicitly running as the lady who said,

00:12:02.240 I'm standing up to Trudeau at the end.

00:12:04.240 This has gone too far.

00:12:05.520 And she says that in the video and then pushes herself as like a tough anti-Trump negotiator.

00:12:12.020 So she's very, she's trying to go away from sort of like the happy talk,

00:12:16.540 liberal rhetoric we've seen from Trudeau leading up to his announcement that he was going to resign,

00:12:22.780 that Carney's also been doing.

00:12:24.740 The whole, there's opportunities out there and we just need to seize them type boilerplate political rhetoric

00:12:32.320 that, you know, just is quite gross when you read it.

00:12:37.100 But there's really not that much to talk about in the liberal leadership race.

00:12:41.020 That's honestly why I'm struggling as a Canadian content creator.

00:12:44.640 Like after Trudeau announced that he was resigning, I was just like beside myself.

00:12:48.440 I'm like, what did they do to my baby boy?

00:12:51.780 How am I supposed to talk about Anita Anand and make her interesting?

00:12:56.880 At least she had the good sense to leave me alone and resign. 1.00

00:13:01.240 But that, I mean, you made a good point though.

00:13:04.640 Like you made it like in one of your video, in one of your recent videos,

00:13:06.880 you made a line that I really liked and really has struck with me,

00:13:09.920 which is that you sort of said that the liberal party under Trudeau has really had an aversion

00:13:13.940 to the cultivation of big personalities, right?

00:13:18.720 Like that there haven't been an emergence of people who kind of have a brand independent of just being loyal Trudeau foot soldiers.

00:13:27.720 And I think that that is now really sort of coming to bite them, right?

00:13:31.460 You're having a race between just fundamentally boring people that are not dynamic and are not kind of like effective communicators,

00:13:38.940 except in a very sort of limited, you know, defend the policy kind of style of communication.

00:13:44.100 And I think you can contrast that with what we saw during the Harper years,

00:13:47.580 which is that you did see the emergence of some people like, say, Michelle Rempel or Pierre Polyev or, you know,

00:13:55.280 Baird, the foreign minister or whoever.

00:13:57.400 Like there was a number of people that we can think of who are kind of characters, right?

00:14:01.640 And I think Pierre benefited from that.

00:14:03.260 And that's why he is where he is today, because he had a sort of legacy that he cultivated with the base,

00:14:08.280 a sort of credibility that he cultivated with the base.

00:14:10.620 And I think that while like Freeland and Carney are like good on paper and they appeal to a certain kind of like,

00:14:17.180 you know, pundit class person who can kind of like look down the list of resume virtues

00:14:22.660 and sort of say this person would be objectively good, you know, their ability to kind of resonate

00:14:27.620 with people beyond, you know, people like you and me who follow this stuff extraordinarily closely

00:14:32.020 is, I think, a real sort of deficit that they're now having to desperately try to correct for.

00:14:37.640 And here's the thing.

00:14:38.720 The Conservative Party and the Liberal Party both have the same problem in that they are not the same problem.

00:14:44.720 They have the opposite problem.

00:14:45.820 The Conservative Party, and we saw this especially under Erin O'Toole, is that they have a need to play outside their base.

00:14:53.600 We need to expand the base, even though the Conservatives arguably have a much wider base

00:14:58.000 than all the other parties of the sorts of different types of people who will think about voting for them,

00:15:02.860 where the Liberal Party constantly doubles down on their base.

00:15:05.780 And if I'm to stereotype a Liberal voter, it is a Montreal, Toronto, metropolitan woman past the age of 45.

00:15:15.220 Somebody, especially a pensioner. 1.00

00:15:17.500 When you look at the polling, you will always see if you look at 65 plus, that is the demographic

00:15:22.140 the Liberals do disproportionately well with.

00:15:24.620 And a lot of the candidates are kind of the type of person that a woman in her 60s who's very,

00:15:31.920 sees herself as progressive and sees herself as like looking out for the downtrodden,

00:15:37.160 wants to vote for and wants to seem impressive for liking.

00:15:40.760 And so it's highlighted or encapsulated by this meme I see going around on social media right now

00:15:48.400 where people put up Pierre Polyev's resume against Mark Carney's resume.

00:15:53.440 And I'm like, that is not how the average person votes.

00:15:58.000 They don't care.

00:15:59.020 And I don't even like the counterexample when people then start showing,

00:16:03.080 well, Pierre Polyev has had all these roles in government and Carney has had basically nothing.

00:16:07.100 I'm like, you're missing the point.

00:16:08.740 I don't care about the resume.

00:16:11.180 That's actually the thing.

00:16:12.180 I actually don't, and this is something I hear repeated a lot.

00:16:15.500 It's one of those truisms where this person is a career politician.

00:16:19.900 I'm like, I don't actually care.

00:16:22.040 Are they good at the job or not?

00:16:24.320 Some of the longest serving Congress people in the US are also the most competent.

00:16:30.380 It's not because of corruption that they're there.

00:16:32.560 Oftentimes people think corruption is just politics they don't like.

00:16:36.900 Dianne Feinstein, as long as she was in there, and despite the fact she should have retired,

00:16:42.420 far better senator than probably whoever, who's the new guy there?

00:16:48.220 Yeah.

00:16:49.240 Schiff.

00:16:49.760 There you go.

00:16:50.160 Adam Schiff.

00:16:50.960 He's far more competent and far more able to sort of triangulate her positions to the moderate middle of California.

00:16:58.520 There is a reason why nobody could beat Mitch McConnell in a primary.

00:17:02.720 It's not because it's rigged.

00:17:04.000 It's because people in Kentucky actually liked him.

00:17:06.920 That's why.

00:17:08.780 But the thing is that I find constantly political consultants and whatnot are playing to a voter who's already on side in the Liberal Party.

00:17:16.860 And then the Conservatives, they're playing to voters who will never vote for them in the first place.

00:17:21.500 So like Aaron O'Toole is the perfect encapsulation of trying to get the Liberal Party's base who was never going to shift in the first place.

00:17:31.040 Yes.

00:17:31.860 No, I think it's kind of like one, this is maybe a little off topic, but I do think it's kind of like remarkable how there's been no real reckoning with the failure of Aaron O'Toole, right?

00:17:43.480 Like that there's always this kind of narrative in sort of the Canadian sort of pundit class and, you know, I'd sort of say kind of progressive urban Canada in general, that like, oh, the Conservatives would be doing so much better if they would just sort of tack more to the middle and be a kind of more progressive kind of party, right?

00:18:01.640 Like you see this with the, what is it, like the center ice Conservatives and that guy who's trying to create his centrist party and all that kind of thing.

00:18:08.320 Right, it's like, yes, yes.

00:18:11.060 So it's like, it's a line that you always see and like, you're going to surely see it now this time where, you know, there's always this kind of person where it's like, well, you know, I wish that there was something between these two crazy extremes and all that.

00:18:22.480 But it's like Aaron O'Toole more than anyone else in modern Canada tried to offer that in the last election.

00:18:28.920 Like he went out of his way. He even self-identified as a progressive. He made such a big deal about how socially liberal he was and how his ambitions were not radical and, you know, how we're not your dad's Conservative Party or whatever that line he used was, right?

00:18:44.000 And yet it didn't work, right?

00:18:45.020 Yeah, please call that from Alison Redford.

00:18:46.480 Yeah, no. And it's like, he did worse than Andrew Scheer did, right?

00:18:49.880 And I just feel like there has been no reckoning with the consequences of that or the lessons to be learned from that. And that's just, that's just incredible to me.

00:19:00.100 I'm not trying to sideswipe anyone, but I always find it fascinating that when you go on some of these political like panel shows on CBC or CTV, and one of the commentators is like a failed Conservative campaign manager, and they're going to tell you what the Conservatives need to do and what the Liberals are doing wrong.

00:19:18.940 I've seen one of these people. I'm not going to name them just to not be rude. But they're like, you know, I've been up against Justin Trudeau. And so I know what the Conservatives need to do to counter a man like Mark Carney or somebody like Christy Freeland. I've gone up against all these people. I'm like, you lost. What is this? Does no one ever leave quietly in this business?

00:19:38.440 Does anyone just realize they burnt the house down and just dance back into the background and let other people fight the fire here rather than saying, you know, I used to live in that house that's currently burning down. I know where you should be pouring the water on. It drives me up the wall.

00:19:53.560 But speaking of these kind of moderate, progressive type political people, you and I both have an equal hatred for Zoom or social media politics. And that is also why I brought up Anita Anand and us snaking back to Aaron O'Toole brings up Anita Anand again, because he was praising her as she was stepping down.

00:20:15.040 I this is something I find sidetracked so many young people when they get into politics. There is both the kind of and I'm talking from the perspective of conservatives, but obviously exists in the liberals and the NDP as well, that you get oddly hard edged politicos who want to talk about, you know, we should slash the federal budget by 80 percent or we should have zero immigration or we should do we should adopt a Catholic theocracy or something like that.

00:20:45.040 Yeah. But the one that gets on my nerves, because honestly, I think especially around staffers and in staffer culture, it's far bigger is the enlightened centrist who praises the most boring politicians you've ever seen in your life.

00:20:59.920 I see this on a daily basis, all of these stan accounts, or I'm not even kidding, Kim Campbell, Charles Tupper, the seven week prime minister, for people that you don't know who they are. And there were so many people say, you know, Anita Anand would have been the exact person the liberals needed.

00:21:17.860 And now they're pushing the idea that she should actually run for liberal leadership in Ontario if Crombie loses, because she'll beat Doug Ford. Guys, read a book. That's not how politics has ever worked at all. I think this also ends up like making it so that people like 10 years into their political life of engaging, they still haven't done anything substantial.

00:21:39.860 And I think social media politics has really ruined it. You've done a great video on that. I should edit it in right here of why just fringe social media politics ends up actually just destroying people's understanding of, you know, how bills move downfield, how to influence stuff, how to sell memberships, how an actual campaign works.

00:21:59.860 And that's even infecting Carney and freelance campaigns. There are staffers all around them trying to do the, you know, Mark Carney's rat thing.

00:22:07.980 Oh, yeah, I saw that. That was pretty cringe, for sure. But no, I mean, I saw you. I forget if you talked about this in one of your shows, or if it was in a tweet. But I think like the good way that you expressed it, when it comes to this kind of like zoomer, sort of fascination with obscure politicians and all that, is that you sort of, you said it, you said something along the lines of like, that they

00:22:29.260 assume that if someone is obscure and unknown, then that means that they are significant, right? And that somehow like, this is a kind of like flex of how deep and substantial your political knowledge is, if you're able to kind of like nerd out on a very sort of minor figure of political history, when it's like, it's opposite, like, it's the exact opposite.

00:22:53.200 It's like people that are big and famous are usually big and famous for a reason, like that they're, they've accomplished sort of substantial things. And if people are small and obscure, it's like, yeah, maybe once in a great, great while, there's like a forgotten figure of history who had an underrated effect on things, but they've really sort of like, over learned that lesson and over applied it.

00:23:11.640 And I know what you mean as well, where it's like, I mean, like, I feel like you, you see this a lot, uh, when it comes to like obscure political parties, obscure political movements, you know, and it's like this obsession with putting everything on the political compass and putting everything in tier lists and, and just like kind of treating politics, like it's a, like it's an RPG or something, right?

00:23:31.580 Where it's like, can you amass like the biggest kind of like, uh, you know, appendix of all of the different monsters and goblins and Pokemon and stat lists and tier lists and all this, right?

00:23:42.500 The, the political compass and the political spectrum in general has just been like a net negative for people being able to understand things because people are very like hierarchical and how they think about things.

00:23:54.460 And as soon as they see the compass or the spectrum, they're like, okay, I need to be the furthest right or the furthest left that person's left.

00:24:02.700 I need to be even more left.

00:24:04.620 So there were, there were like NDP accounts talking about how Carney's actually a capitalist chill because he says that we need to grow the economy.

00:24:12.420 If we want to pay for social services, if anything, Carney's saying something extremely socialistic that he thinks the free market is just a vehicle to spend more on, on social programs.

00:24:22.000 But that wasn't enough because don't, you know, that he's actually a left-wing trader.

00:24:25.960 I have been seeing other left-wing creators attacking Jagmeet Singh because he got rid of the commitment to democratic socialism that was in some subsection of the federal NDP constitution as if anyone cared.

00:24:41.240 But this is a deeply like interesting and important thing.

00:24:47.060 But as soon as you introduce the spectrum of the compass, people are like, I'm going to be the most centrist.

00:24:51.500 I'm going to be the most authoritarian right or like libertarian right or left or whatever.

00:24:57.460 It's like, you're not.

00:24:58.860 This is where I try and promote a philosophy of reasonableness.

00:25:03.200 And naturally, my audience tends to be older.

00:25:05.940 We actually have kind of opposite audiences because I have, mine is news-based.

00:25:10.440 So people who watch the news and follow like my news details day to day tend to be, you know, earning a salary and whatnot.

00:25:16.440 They're not younger, but you tend to have a younger audience.

00:25:18.700 So you're doing a good job of trying to, you know, snap people out of the artificial moderation.

00:25:24.600 But maybe this is a good transition to the third topic that I was planning today, but we'll probably snake in and out of it.

00:25:31.540 Is that there is so much what I would call grifter commentary out there, grifter political engagement.

00:25:38.020 And it is fueled by social media.

00:25:40.100 I think social media is a good thing.

00:25:41.860 But the way so many people use it just drives me up the wall.

00:25:45.420 There is a video that a Canadian commentator made the other day of every commentator who's trying to show how conservative they are.

00:25:52.540 One day we'll make the – actually, the conservatives and liberals are the same.

00:25:57.200 Actually, they're the same on trade policy, on foreign policy, on immigration.

00:26:02.560 They're actually the same.

00:26:03.800 It's like, no, I know you want to get the nod from like the PPC, right, that, oh, this guy's our guy.

00:26:11.280 But you're just wrong.

00:26:12.820 Or people who will bring on – and this is a more egregious example.

00:26:17.600 Recently, Benny Johnson had Andrew Tate on his show.

00:26:21.540 And then it's horrified. 0.94

00:26:22.560 People are saying, well, why are you having a pimp and like alleged rapist on your show?

00:26:26.760 And he's like, oh, do you guys not believe in free speech?

00:26:28.640 I'm like, you don't – you're just doing this for the engagement.

00:26:31.760 There are so many commentators who literally just do their thing for engagement these days.

00:26:35.820 Yeah.

00:26:36.520 No, it's really quite disturbing because – I mean, I think that what you gave like the –

00:26:42.180 Benny Johnson and Andrew Tate is a good example of that.

00:26:44.460 Because you have – and this is, I think, very much a dysfunction of the right, which I think anybody who sort of self-identifies as a conservative should be concerned with, is that you have increasingly like conspiracy theory world has become sort of right-coded, right?

00:27:00.240 And so as a result, like conspiracy theorists and complete sort of wackos and people that just have this like incredibly adversarial relationship with like civilization, like that these people are very dopaminergic as far as personalities go.

00:27:15.640 Like they're often very entertaining, they're very flamboyant, they're shocking in a way that's, you know, kind of, yeah, again, like sort of titillating and in a very sort of shallow kind of way.

00:27:25.920 And the problem is, is that sort of in the game of commentary, you know, in the game of making media, which is ultimately all about just attracting eyeballs and clicks and view counts, like it behooves you to go for that kind of content, right?

00:27:39.880 If that's all you're looking for.

00:27:40.880 And so you kind of have this terrible sort of nexus in which you kind of have like right-wing grifter types, and then you have conspiracy theorists becoming right-wing coded, and then so you bring that together and then increasingly it seems like if left to its own devices and market forces alone, a lot of right-wing commentary will inevitably just descend into platforming sort of cranks of various sorts or another.

00:28:04.880 Whether that's Andrew Tate, whether that's, you know, Alex Jones, who is of course now also right-coded, you know, Candace Owens, even, you know, Tucker Carlson, like all of these people seem to be spiraling more and more and more in the direction of just platforming, like highly sort of flamboyant cranks.

00:28:21.420 And when you have, like, when you're tied to no principle in how you do your commentary and what you believe, so many of these people who are on the right, in fact, then become extremely unprincipled in social ways, in economic ways, in terms of what policies they back.

00:28:38.100 That's why you see people like Candace Owens now joining Redbook or whatever that new Chinese social media app is, because it's all just about the attention. 0.92

00:28:46.920 Do you, and this is my thing about grifter commentary, because grifter can often be just a throwaway term that doesn't really apply, because as Ann Coulter has pointed out in the past, if I'm a grifter and I'm still beating you in a debate, what does that say about you that I'm beating you and I don't even believe the things I'm saying?

00:29:04.220 But there is a new class of people who truly, I don't think Candace Owens actually thinks Emmanuel Macron's wife is a man.

00:29:11.360 I genuinely do not think that she cares.

00:29:13.560 I actually, and I don't mean this in a way that what she says isn't wrong, I don't think that Candace Owens is actually anti-Semitic.

00:29:20.140 I think she is saying the things that get clicks and doesn't care.

00:29:23.380 Maybe she will eventually become it in her heart because she said enough things like that,

00:29:28.920 but so many of these people will literally misunderstand politics on purpose.

00:29:34.500 The H-1B visa debate that happened in the U.S. was from, like, people can have, there was genuinely good disagreements to have with what Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk said.

00:29:45.520 I had some problems with it.

00:29:47.060 They were kind of not addressing that that program is used for, like, abuse of labor in terms of just bringing in people for jobs that you could easily pay somebody for in the U.S.,

00:29:56.080 but you can get, like, subsidized labor this way.

00:29:59.100 Same thing happens in Canada all the time.

00:30:01.040 The temporary foreign worker program is so subsidized.

00:30:03.960 It actually does incentivize owners to bring in foreign workers rather than domestic.

00:30:07.660 But so many people are turning it into, oh, my goodness, Elon Musk and Vivek want our country taken over by India.

00:30:13.820 I'm like, you know they didn't say that.

00:30:16.220 And this also happens in Canada, too, where people, creators, will misunderstand politics on purpose to say,

00:30:23.280 a year ago when it wasn't going to happen, is Trudeau going to resign?

00:30:26.680 You know he's not going to resign.

00:30:28.380 Or people acting shocked that things are happening.

00:30:31.720 If you had a cursory knowledge of what's going on, none of this is shocking at all.

00:30:35.520 So, and that's the clickbaity nature of social media.

00:30:38.580 But I find that so much of this politics, and it also obviously happens on the left, too.

00:30:45.420 I was just scrolling through someone's channel today, the Surf Times, where one channel,

00:30:50.420 he's one of these Canadian guys who only makes videos on the U.S. pretty much.

00:30:53.620 One of his videos is on about how bad this guy Asmagold is or whatever, who's some Twitch creator.

00:31:01.520 And then four videos later, it's how right Asmagold is about Elon Musk.

00:31:07.960 Well, like, this is the thing, right?

00:31:09.180 And I do think that this is something that audiences need to get better at,

00:31:13.220 is that we need to demand more accountability from the pundit class, from the commentators,

00:31:18.920 from the grifter commentators especially.

00:31:21.300 But we all have sort of like the attention span of goldfish these days.

00:31:24.380 And that's something I find very frustrating, is that a creator can make some wild posit one day,

00:31:29.700 and then three days later, he can posit the exact opposite.

00:31:32.700 And everybody just kind of like sort of shrugs it off,

00:31:35.380 if they can even remember what he said three days prior, right?

00:31:38.440 So people can sort of say like, oh, you know, Trudeau is finished, you know,

00:31:42.100 three years ago or whatever.

00:31:43.520 And then Trudeau proceeds not to be finished.

00:31:45.380 And then it's just kind of like, oh, whatever.

00:31:47.420 You know, we're off to some new thing.

00:31:48.540 As long as like you keep getting those dopamine hits,

00:31:51.160 as long as like you keep being fed a steady stream of sort of sensationalistic reporting

00:31:55.280 in one direction or the other, people just seem to be going for that

00:32:00.060 and don't really care if these sort of takes all add up to anything coherent,

00:32:04.660 you know, ideologically or even just in the kind of, I don't know,

00:32:09.540 sort of like narrative sense, right?

00:32:11.260 Like their predictions of what's going to go wrong, does it go wrong?

00:32:14.160 Or does it actually like those plot lines just kind of like drift away

00:32:17.080 when something new and shiny comes?

00:32:19.280 Yeah. 0.99

00:32:19.380 And it genuinely pays to be stupid in the sense that everything is just a whole new world 1.00

00:32:25.060 every single day. 1.00

00:32:26.440 Trudeau said this.

00:32:27.220 I am outraged to like an absurd degree and I'm not articulating myself

00:32:32.120 and it just becomes insult comedy or whatever.

00:32:34.620 And not that I don't like insult politicians I don't like.

00:32:38.020 I think anyone watching my videos realizes I do that a decent amount.

00:32:41.100 But a comment I see a lot in my comment section whenever I'm talking about polling,

00:32:45.980 especially federal, that always gets on my nerves a little bit.

00:32:50.060 Whenever I say like, oh, the liberals are all the way down at 22%.

00:32:54.280 And you get the comment, they should be at zero.

00:32:57.540 Oh, that's still too high.

00:32:58.560 I'm like, it actually isn't.

00:32:59.840 Think about, just think about it for a second.

00:33:02.180 How many federal employees are there?

00:33:04.440 How many very wealthy people live in Toronto or other metropolitan cities

00:33:08.800 who the economy doesn't affect and they are not voting on the same issues

00:33:12.540 that you're voting on?

00:33:13.540 And it's like, just, you just have to understand the landscape.

00:33:18.260 If you understand the landscape just a bit, it becomes so,

00:33:21.880 it's like it's a much easier world to understand if you just,

00:33:26.340 like you actually kind of look into what the other side's up to

00:33:29.080 and what they believe and all this sort of other stuff.

00:33:32.420 But I guess what's the big concerning trend that you see coming in Canada

00:33:38.180 or is there any sort of thing that you think we need to look out for

00:33:40.540 in the 2025 election?

00:33:43.540 I mean, I would sort of say, like, as somebody that is invested in Pierre winning,

00:33:49.040 and I do think that it's important for the future of this country that Pierre win

00:33:52.340 and that he win a majority government.

00:33:53.880 I mean, I've kind of laid my cards on the table as far as that goes.

00:33:57.000 But I do think it's, I think that sort of people of this persuasion should not be overly confident.

00:34:03.980 Like, I think that there are concerning signs in the way that the Conservative campaign is being run.

00:34:08.720 You know, I was tweeting out earlier today and got a lot of positive feedback on this,

00:34:12.940 that I do think the Conservatives have put way too many eggs in the axe the tax basket.

00:34:17.760 I think that they've been too singularly focused on the carbon tax at the expense of everything else,

00:34:23.080 which, you know, and I think we've sort of seen that the Liberals have a strategy for dealing with that,

00:34:27.100 is to just basically move on from the carbon tax or ditch it or get rid of it, right,

00:34:30.820 which I think puts the Conservatives on a bit of a back foot.

00:34:33.380 So I would say, like, you should not take it for granted that the Conservative Party is incapable of making mistakes.

00:34:39.560 I do think that there is a not impossible possibility that a new Prime Minister,

00:34:45.900 a new face on the Liberal government could give them a bit of a boost

00:34:50.300 or at least give some voters of the sort that you're describing a reason to give the party a second chance.

00:34:57.300 I think that, you know, like, just politics is more fluid than we think it is.

00:35:04.140 And if there's something that I've learned in now being in my 40s,

00:35:08.220 it's that, you know, you can get too arrogant in sort of assuming that sort of things are fixed,

00:35:15.280 particularly in this kind of, like, world that we inhabit now where, like I said,

00:35:20.020 people's attention spans are very short and new news stories can have a dramatic effect

00:35:24.820 to kind of, like, swing people's perceptions in a very short period of time.

00:35:28.620 So, you know, I mean, I do think that all things being equal,

00:35:31.800 there's plenty of reason to suspect that the Conservatives will win and will win big

00:35:35.820 and will win a majority government.

00:35:37.560 But it also, there's just a little sort of sense that I have

00:35:41.760 that things are maybe a little bit more fragile than we think

00:35:45.340 and that there is, there are reasons to suspect that the kind of momentum and fluidity

00:35:51.700 and just novelty that a new Liberal leader,

00:35:55.520 particularly if the Liberal leader proves to be kind of cynical and crafty.

00:36:00.260 You know, there was a very good piece in The Hub, written by my friend Sean Spear,

00:36:04.860 where he talked about the ways in which, you know,

00:36:07.540 you can't fully count out the possibility that the NDP,

00:36:10.660 that Jagmeet Singh could, you know, find reason to, you know,

00:36:14.400 forego his previous declaration that he was going to vote no confidence

00:36:18.500 on the first opportunity.

00:36:20.060 Like, there's no reason to suspect that, you know,

00:36:22.720 the Parliament wouldn't necessarily be brought back

00:36:25.580 when Trudeau has promised it would be brought back.

00:36:28.520 Like, there are, and, you know, there's even sort of, like,

00:36:30.680 the most extreme scenario is that, you know,

00:36:32.560 they work out some deal with the NDP

00:36:34.120 and they even blow past the fixed election date law

00:36:37.580 and don't even feel the need to hold a vote in October of this year at all.

00:36:42.480 That the, you know, the Constitution technically says

00:36:45.300 that you could have an election a year later from now, right?

00:36:49.140 So, like, there's just, like, a lot of little seeds of doubt

00:36:52.720 that have been planted.

00:36:54.440 And it's, you can't go, you can't take it for granted

00:36:57.160 that any of these are going to blossom into anything major.

00:36:59.260 But, you know, they're worth sort of keeping an eye on

00:37:01.880 and that Conservatives should not get too arrogant

00:37:05.200 and too cocky about the degree that this is 100% in the bag.

00:37:10.120 I would say that right now there's maybe, like,

00:37:12.140 a 5% sort of chance of doubt,

00:37:14.520 but I think that that could easily grow.

00:37:17.580 And here's the thing that the Conservatives often do

00:37:20.240 to trip themselves up,

00:37:21.560 is when the Liberals start catching up,

00:37:23.480 even though there was no chance the Liberals

00:37:25.420 were actually going to go as probably low as 20%

00:37:28.000 when it comes to Election Day,

00:37:29.860 there's always that kind of returning to the party effect

00:37:33.040 when people don't really like the leader,

00:37:35.240 they don't like the brand,

00:37:36.200 but it's the one that they usually vote for.

00:37:38.180 People are very default.

00:37:39.820 Even in this election, 70% of people who do vote

00:37:42.680 are going to vote for the party they voted for last time,

00:37:45.060 except for, like, you know, the PPC,

00:37:46.680 which died off pretty fast.

00:37:48.460 But, like, most Liberal voters still vote Liberal.

00:37:51.240 It's not like the Liberals have lost, like, you know,

00:37:53.780 more than 50% of their support.

00:37:56.080 They've lost a third,

00:37:57.040 but you need to be in, like, the mid-30s

00:37:59.640 to really be in the game in Canadian politics

00:38:01.840 in terms of being able to form government.

00:38:03.640 But what the Conservatives often do

00:38:04.820 is that the Liberals start catching up.

00:38:06.780 Okay, we're losing.

00:38:07.780 Now, guys, we're going to start

00:38:09.560 falling into a death spiral

00:38:11.760 of becoming more tight-lipped,

00:38:14.220 we're going to take safer policies,

00:38:16.020 and we're going to differentiate ourselves

00:38:18.320 less from the Liberals

00:38:19.340 because, oh my goodness, the Liberals are coming back,

00:38:21.140 they must be doing something right,

00:38:22.940 rather than realizing

00:38:24.000 you're currently doing something right,

00:38:26.100 you should stick to it.

00:38:27.140 So I always find it concerning

00:38:28.340 when I hear stories

00:38:29.320 where Conservative MPs

00:38:31.560 are being sort of coached

00:38:33.600 on what to say on policies

00:38:34.940 and don't say anything

00:38:36.120 that we haven't approved.

00:38:37.100 It's like,

00:38:37.660 why do you think Harper lost in 2015?

00:38:40.840 That's always the thing

00:38:41.700 that drives me up the wall,

00:38:43.140 is sometimes the people

00:38:44.080 who are involved

00:38:44.880 in the Harper loss in 2015

00:38:46.240 are telling people

00:38:47.080 how we need to win an election

00:38:48.940 a decade later,

00:38:50.640 and it happens to do

00:38:51.680 with the exact same thing

00:38:52.680 we did in 2015.

00:38:53.780 We stick to a very narrow set of policies

00:38:56.300 we're going to talk about.

00:38:57.740 We only talk about those,

00:38:59.440 and we want no,

00:39:01.020 the whole overly talked about concept

00:39:03.680 of a bozo eruption.

00:39:05.400 We don't want anyone 0.99

00:39:06.200 saying something dumb 0.98

00:39:07.360 that's going to put us through the floor. 0.96

00:39:09.400 And it's never actually that

00:39:10.880 that causes people to lose.

00:39:12.820 It's like,

00:39:13.560 Blaine Higgs in New Brunswick

00:39:15.320 did not lose

00:39:16.500 because he was too right-wing.

00:39:18.500 It's because he ran a campaign

00:39:20.220 that didn't want to win.

00:39:21.320 If you were trying to win,

00:39:22.900 do you run on a platform

00:39:24.240 of a 2% HST cut?

00:39:26.660 No, you should run on

00:39:27.540 a 2% income tax cut

00:39:29.040 and have cut the HST a year ago.

00:39:31.440 But it was just

00:39:32.400 kind of like a dying campaign

00:39:34.500 that didn't give people

00:39:35.700 a reason to show up.

00:39:36.820 That's why Harper lost in 2015.

00:39:38.700 Trudeau mania wasn't

00:39:39.660 that big of a deal back then.

00:39:41.380 It was more so just that

00:39:42.880 Harper didn't give his own people

00:39:44.780 a reason to vote,

00:39:45.540 but Trudeau did give his people

00:39:47.140 a reason to vote,

00:39:47.840 and they won

00:39:48.500 and it wasn't even,

00:39:49.800 and it was still pretty close

00:39:50.900 when you actually look

00:39:51.460 at the popular vote.

00:39:53.680 And this is why I feel like

00:39:55.360 I'm a little bit

00:39:56.320 sort of concerned

00:39:57.840 with the axe-the-tax

00:39:59.660 sort of rhetoric, right?

00:40:00.920 Because I think

00:40:01.640 the Conservatives

00:40:02.580 feel themselves

00:40:03.540 or felt very sort of

00:40:04.660 pleased with themselves

00:40:05.560 that they had found

00:40:06.560 like the perfect issue, right?

00:40:08.620 Like the carbon tax

00:40:09.460 is very unpopular.

00:40:10.580 It's obviously been

00:40:11.460 very sort of deleterious

00:40:13.020 to a lot of Canadians

00:40:14.220 and it's not like

00:40:16.240 controversial per se.

00:40:18.020 Like it's not sort of

00:40:18.780 tainted with any sort of

00:40:20.400 scary social issue

00:40:21.560 or something like that.

00:40:22.540 So it felt like

00:40:23.480 the perfect one note

00:40:25.100 to kind of prosecute

00:40:26.800 the case against Trudeau on.

00:40:28.540 But, you know,

00:40:29.600 and that's fine

00:40:30.680 as far as it goes,

00:40:31.340 but like I sort of said,

00:40:32.160 like if that issue goes away,

00:40:33.540 then what are you left with, right?

00:40:35.560 There are lots of other issues

00:40:37.060 that, you know,

00:40:37.900 I think the polls suggest

00:40:38.820 that the Canadian people

00:40:39.640 are pretty agitated about.

00:40:41.140 I think a big one, frankly,

00:40:42.340 is immigration.

00:40:43.720 But we know that

00:40:44.360 that is kind of like

00:40:45.460 the scary no-go zone

00:40:47.000 as far as the sort of

00:40:48.460 Conservative Party

00:40:49.140 has traditionally

00:40:49.740 been concerned with.

00:40:51.120 So I do worry that

00:40:52.640 if the carbon tax

00:40:54.160 sort of fades a bit

00:40:56.340 as a sort of

00:40:57.100 front of mind issue

00:40:58.000 of salience,

00:40:58.920 that then the Conservative Party

00:41:00.000 is going to lapse

00:41:00.900 into much more

00:41:02.080 sort of traditional

00:41:02.880 kind of mushy rhetoric

00:41:04.380 and sort of shy away

00:41:06.040 from the kind of,

00:41:07.060 you know,

00:41:08.540 kind of just sharper tone,

00:41:09.880 which I think

00:41:10.380 the Canadian public

00:41:10.980 is ready for,

00:41:11.920 not just on immigration,

00:41:13.420 but I think on crime

00:41:14.420 is I think another big one

00:41:15.540 where, you know,

00:41:16.420 you need to sort of

00:41:17.040 strike a bit more

00:41:17.760 of a kind of

00:41:18.380 stereotypical Conservative tone.

00:41:20.120 And again, like,

00:41:20.640 I'm not arguing that,

00:41:21.620 like, the only way

00:41:22.540 the Conservatives could win,

00:41:24.160 because this is obviously

00:41:24.800 not the case,

00:41:25.440 they don't have to go

00:41:26.420 full PPC.

00:41:27.560 I would not want them

00:41:28.280 to go full PPC.

00:41:29.540 But I definitely think

00:41:30.660 that they have to have,

00:41:32.140 you know,

00:41:32.580 sharp, focused,

00:41:34.500 decisive positions

00:41:36.200 on a number

00:41:37.160 of front of mind

00:41:38.240 concerns

00:41:38.820 of the Canadian people,

00:41:40.200 as opposed to,

00:41:41.560 you know,

00:41:41.880 just the kind of

00:41:42.820 endlessly sort of safe,

00:41:45.240 same old,

00:41:45.760 same old kind of approach

00:41:46.880 that the, you know,

00:41:47.960 that the Conservative consultants

00:41:49.640 prefer to run on.

00:41:50.920 I'll add that

00:41:51.780 even the PPC

00:41:52.540 at one point

00:41:53.280 wasn't going full PPC.

00:41:55.260 I remember when,

00:41:56.200 when Paulieff announced

00:41:57.440 that we,

00:41:58.040 like,

00:41:58.180 immigration's still too high 1.00

00:41:59.440 after Mark Miller

00:42:00.300 had cut it by 100,000.

00:42:02.300 And the absurd thing

00:42:03.360 is after they cut it

00:42:04.060 by 100,000,

00:42:04.760 it's still probably

00:42:05.820 300,000 too high.

00:42:07.120 I've always advocated

00:42:07.900 for a cap

00:42:08.440 for 10 years

00:42:09.320 of 100,000

00:42:10.200 with actual strict

00:42:11.460 means,

00:42:11.820 values,

00:42:12.300 tests,

00:42:12.620 skills,

00:42:12.940 tests,

00:42:13.360 not too many dependents.

00:42:15.140 And then you can kind of

00:42:16.060 get back up to even

00:42:17.380 by having it lower.

00:42:18.820 But then the PPC immediately,

00:42:20.620 even though their limit

00:42:21.740 in 2019

00:42:22.400 is to 150,000,

00:42:24.020 they immediately said,

00:42:24.700 no,

00:42:24.940 moratorium.

00:42:25.860 I'm like,

00:42:26.340 good job, guys.

00:42:27.480 You've made yourselves

00:42:28.320 irrelevant.

00:42:29.440 Because at the end

00:42:30.460 of the day,

00:42:31.220 you have now made

00:42:32.280 the window of people

00:42:33.340 who are willing

00:42:33.880 to vote for you

00:42:34.640 very thin.

00:42:35.740 And you're going

00:42:36.220 to have to win

00:42:36.700 100% of them

00:42:37.480 to probably even

00:42:38.300 just come into second place.

00:42:39.940 And this is where

00:42:40.560 people get politics wrong.

00:42:42.660 There are the people

00:42:43.440 who think that

00:42:44.060 you've got to go

00:42:44.820 full controversy to win.

00:42:46.780 And then the people

00:42:47.660 who think you have

00:42:48.180 to avoid controversy.

00:42:49.920 It's just not how it works.

00:42:51.980 As you probably,

00:42:53.140 as you've been basically

00:42:53.960 pointing out by talking

00:42:54.700 about crime and immigration

00:42:56.060 and some of these other issues

00:42:57.300 that are big deals,

00:42:58.780 there's a lot of cultural

00:42:59.440 issues out there.

00:43:00.740 Controversy is good

00:43:01.680 if you are on the side

00:43:03.320 of the controversial issue

00:43:04.540 to talk about.

00:43:05.560 That's like the 80-20.

00:43:07.620 There are tons of issues

00:43:08.760 out there that are 80-20

00:43:10.420 prospects for the conservatives.

00:43:12.040 Immigration is going 1.00

00:43:12.660 to be very controversial

00:43:13.500 to run on,

00:43:14.660 but 80% of people

00:43:15.820 are going to agree with you.

00:43:17.400 I campaigned in my riding

00:43:19.520 for the conservative nomination

00:43:20.780 in Calgary Signal Hill.

00:43:22.340 And I would go door to door

00:43:23.700 talking to people

00:43:24.340 who would immediately say,

00:43:26.000 well, I'm not very conservative.

00:43:27.060 I'm kind of centrist.

00:43:28.200 I bring up immigration.

00:43:29.220 They're like,

00:43:30.000 yeah, it's way too high.

00:43:31.020 It was kind of like

00:43:32.020 that begrudging everyone's

00:43:33.300 like, yeah,

00:43:34.020 it's pretty crazy.

00:43:35.040 And I did like zero effort

00:43:36.400 getting people

00:43:37.280 to agree with that.

00:43:38.440 But I guess moving

00:43:39.640 on to a new topic,

00:43:41.140 how is Jagmeet Singh

00:43:43.020 even still leading

00:43:44.680 the NDP

00:43:45.380 into the election?

00:43:47.760 This is a bit

00:43:48.560 out of left field for you

00:43:49.760 because I didn't mention

00:43:50.560 I was going to talk

00:43:51.020 about this before.

00:43:51.920 No, no, no.

00:43:52.260 It's a good one though.

00:43:52.820 I am amazed

00:43:55.340 that this man

00:43:56.600 has been able

00:43:57.180 to dig his nails

00:43:58.320 into his desk

00:43:59.240 this deeply.

00:44:00.520 The NDP

00:44:00.960 is such an insecure

00:44:03.140 and like a party

00:44:04.860 that lacks

00:44:05.380 so much self-confidence

00:44:06.520 internally.

00:44:08.020 They're very confident

00:44:09.320 that they're the party

00:44:10.600 that should be leading

00:44:11.300 Canada publicly.

00:44:12.640 But internally,

00:44:13.520 when they got rid

00:44:14.760 of Tom Mulcair

00:44:15.840 for having a perfectly

00:44:17.540 good result

00:44:18.480 for the NDP

00:44:19.420 in 2015

00:44:20.260 and now they're

00:44:21.480 letting Singh

00:44:22.420 have his third attempt

00:44:23.740 to maybe have

00:44:25.200 a result

00:44:25.860 we can even

00:44:26.400 describe as mediocre.

00:44:28.600 It's crazy.

00:44:29.700 What's your

00:44:30.180 social relationship

00:44:32.540 with Jagmeet Singh?

00:44:33.740 Because you've been

00:44:34.900 having to cover him

00:44:35.620 for a while now

00:44:36.560 at this point.

00:44:37.760 Yeah, I mean

00:44:38.480 Jagmeet Singh

00:44:40.120 is like he was

00:44:41.300 an interesting

00:44:41.880 sort of propositional

00:44:43.140 candidate

00:44:44.500 when he was first

00:44:45.620 made head

00:44:46.400 of the NDP

00:44:47.440 back however

00:44:48.860 many years ago

00:44:50.000 that was.

00:44:50.980 Because the theory

00:44:51.820 behind Jagmeet Singh

00:44:52.640 was that

00:44:53.120 he was a personality

00:44:55.040 to go back

00:44:55.760 to what we were

00:44:56.180 saying before.

00:44:56.880 He is an interesting

00:44:58.400 character.

00:44:59.140 Obviously he comes

00:44:59.740 from an interesting

00:45:00.440 background.

00:45:01.180 He's sort of young.

00:45:02.340 He communicates

00:45:03.280 in a perfect style

00:45:04.100 or in a distinctive

00:45:05.880 style.

00:45:06.480 Clearly not a perfect

00:45:07.420 style.

00:45:08.160 But anyway,

00:45:08.600 the theory was

00:45:09.560 that there was

00:45:10.340 something novel

00:45:11.440 about him

00:45:12.160 and that it was

00:45:12.760 worth a try.

00:45:13.760 And I don't begrudge

00:45:14.480 the NDP

00:45:14.940 for giving him

00:45:16.000 a try.

00:45:16.660 I think that the case

00:45:17.600 I even made

00:45:18.120 a video

00:45:18.480 about a sort

00:45:20.160 of bearish

00:45:21.220 or sort of

00:45:22.520 bullish case

00:45:23.260 on Jagmeet Singh.

00:45:25.200 I made a whole

00:45:25.560 video that probably

00:45:26.860 is a little cringe

00:45:27.560 to rewatch

00:45:28.140 in retrospect

00:45:28.620 where I sort

00:45:29.420 of said

00:45:29.620 he had potential

00:45:30.560 to be a sort

00:45:31.700 of slayer

00:45:32.160 of Justin Trudeau

00:45:33.140 on the left.

00:45:34.340 You know,

00:45:34.700 that didn't happen.

00:45:36.280 Right?

00:45:36.600 So I think

00:45:37.080 in any sort

00:45:37.560 of sane party

00:45:38.460 when you try

00:45:39.460 something,

00:45:40.000 when you put

00:45:40.680 something up

00:45:41.060 the flagpole

00:45:41.620 to see who salutes

00:45:42.520 and no one does,

00:45:43.580 you know,

00:45:43.780 you pull it down

00:45:44.420 the flagpole

00:45:45.020 and you try

00:45:45.480 something else.

00:45:46.200 But the NDP

00:45:47.040 just has a very

00:45:47.760 weird culture.

00:45:49.180 You know,

00:45:49.300 I don't want to put

00:45:49.780 too fine a point

00:45:50.500 on it,

00:45:50.820 but there are

00:45:51.280 sort of like

00:45:51.720 culty elements

00:45:52.880 to the NDP,

00:45:54.040 one of which

00:45:54.500 is like just

00:45:54.980 kind of like

00:45:55.360 blind deference

00:45:56.320 and trust

00:45:56.960 to the leader

00:45:57.580 and sort of

00:45:58.160 the ruling

00:45:58.920 kind of clique

00:45:59.740 of the party.

00:46:00.820 You know,

00:46:00.960 the fact that

00:46:01.320 Jagmeet Singh

00:46:01.740 got a like

00:46:02.800 over 80%

00:46:04.020 approval rating

00:46:04.940 at his most

00:46:05.780 recent leadership

00:46:06.720 ratification

00:46:07.680 is just insane.

00:46:09.140 Like there is

00:46:09.500 no rational reason

00:46:10.600 for a man

00:46:11.260 who lost

00:46:11.780 two elections

00:46:12.780 in a row

00:46:13.420 to get an 80%

00:46:14.980 endorsement

00:46:15.780 from the party

00:46:16.360 faithful.

00:46:17.140 Unless this is

00:46:18.000 a party that

00:46:18.500 just kind of

00:46:19.000 has its mind

00:46:19.960 in some place

00:46:20.960 other than,

00:46:21.620 you know,

00:46:22.320 political strategy

00:46:23.220 and they're

00:46:24.020 making decisions

00:46:25.480 based on some

00:46:26.320 weird kind of

00:46:27.020 like culty logic

00:46:27.940 where it's just

00:46:28.560 kind of like,

00:46:29.020 well,

00:46:29.200 he is the leader

00:46:29.920 and we must

00:46:30.480 support him

00:46:31.320 and the party

00:46:31.760 must be

00:46:32.500 consolidated

00:46:33.300 and loyal.

00:46:34.120 It's worth noting

00:46:34.700 that the only reason

00:46:35.340 why Tom Mulcair

00:46:36.160 got booted as well

00:46:37.220 was because a

00:46:38.060 substantial,

00:46:38.780 you know,

00:46:39.260 chunk of the NDP

00:46:39.980 faithful, 0.92

00:46:41.060 the real sort

00:46:41.680 of party line,

00:46:42.520 you know,

00:46:42.860 dogmatists

00:46:43.720 never trusted him

00:46:45.620 because of course

00:46:46.160 he came from

00:46:46.640 outside of NDP world

00:46:48.340 which is the great sin.

00:46:50.380 You know,

00:46:50.540 you have,

00:46:51.520 and this is again

00:46:52.000 where sort of like

00:46:52.500 the culty vibe

00:46:53.400 comes from

00:46:53.920 in the NDP world

00:46:54.720 and like I've seen this,

00:46:56.220 you know,

00:46:56.520 because in British Columbia

00:46:57.200 this culture

00:46:57.740 is quite sort of strong

00:46:59.280 where you have these people

00:47:00.620 and like,

00:47:01.040 you know,

00:47:01.620 they're involved

00:47:02.140 in the Canadian Federation

00:47:03.060 of Students

00:47:03.700 which is like an NDP front group

00:47:05.120 when they're in college

00:47:05.920 and then they go to work

00:47:06.800 for the Canadian Union

00:47:07.620 of Public Employees

00:47:08.620 which is also allied

00:47:09.640 with the NDP

00:47:10.280 and you know,

00:47:11.300 they go to like certain bars

00:47:12.660 and they like,

00:47:13.340 their families marry

00:47:14.860 other families

00:47:15.840 and you know,

00:47:16.780 they like,

00:47:17.120 just the whole world

00:47:17.940 is so little self-contained

00:47:19.500 and really is very hypercritical

00:47:21.320 of anyone who comes 1.00

00:47:22.200 from outside of that world

00:47:23.120 but because you live

00:47:24.420 so tightly in this NDP bubble

00:47:26.060 of NDP logic

00:47:27.060 and like NDP slogans

00:47:28.820 and NDP policy positions

00:47:30.340 that can never be questioned

00:47:31.440 because we've been trying them

00:47:32.600 you know,

00:47:33.140 again and again

00:47:33.660 and at some point

00:47:34.300 the Canadian public

00:47:35.360 will be sort of radicalized

00:47:36.700 and awakened

00:47:37.380 to the truth

00:47:38.120 of the NDP light.

00:47:39.080 It's just like

00:47:40.140 the culture of the party

00:47:41.100 is so sort of dysfunctional

00:47:42.740 it's not a surprise

00:47:43.720 that they're as bad

00:47:44.580 at politics as they are.

00:47:46.180 I was watching

00:47:46.940 just today,

00:47:47.860 this morning,

00:47:48.840 some NDP TikTokers

00:47:50.660 talking about like

00:47:52.400 the labor movement.

00:47:54.160 Every single one

00:47:55.040 of these guys

00:47:55.600 wearing like

00:47:56.400 a beanie on their heads

00:47:58.000 and you know,

00:47:59.440 like in like

00:48:00.700 they're like

00:48:01.200 wearing t-shirts

00:48:02.100 and like

00:48:03.020 chino pants

00:48:03.960 sitting on a stage

00:48:04.860 are talking about

00:48:06.440 labor like 0.57

00:48:08.200 like they were part

00:48:08.960 of like

00:48:09.500 the labor riots

00:48:10.700 in Winnipeg

00:48:11.600 back in like

00:48:12.360 1905 or whatever.

00:48:14.260 It's like

00:48:14.740 guys,

00:48:15.920 settle it down.

00:48:17.560 The thing is

00:48:18.100 it's all about

00:48:18.740 it's like

00:48:19.220 this is what represents

00:48:21.060 the NDP.

00:48:22.740 It's like this.

00:48:24.060 Not the average NDP voter.

00:48:26.000 That's why

00:48:26.420 when you look

00:48:26.920 at the polling

00:48:27.460 he's actually

00:48:28.580 secretly in the same

00:48:29.880 position Trudeau is.

00:48:31.320 Half the party

00:48:31.960 thinks that he's

00:48:32.560 not the right leader

00:48:33.400 but the people

00:48:34.240 who hold

00:48:34.700 memberships

00:48:35.280 and vote

00:48:35.600 and leadership

00:48:35.980 reviews

00:48:36.540 want Singh

00:48:37.620 and I think

00:48:37.980 it's a deeply

00:48:38.640 insecure party

00:48:40.740 that because

00:48:42.180 Singh is to the

00:48:43.340 left of Mulcair

00:48:44.320 it feels like

00:48:45.340 a repudiation

00:48:46.200 of left-wing

00:48:47.640 policy

00:48:48.300 or politics

00:48:49.400 to get rid

00:48:50.360 of Jagmeet

00:48:50.980 so that's why

00:48:51.640 they're giving him

00:48:52.380 this many tries

00:48:54.360 because

00:48:55.140 well Mulcair

00:48:56.620 had betrayed us

00:48:57.620 because he

00:48:58.300 wasn't progressive

00:48:59.220 even though

00:48:59.840 he secretly

00:49:01.140 understands the party

00:49:02.360 far better

00:49:02.900 because he understands

00:49:03.820 the fundamental

00:49:04.560 voter in the NDP

00:49:06.040 if they want

00:49:07.480 to be successful

00:49:08.220 is like the worker 0.94

00:49:09.340 is the actual guy

00:49:11.500 who works a tough job

00:49:14.100 and now it's like

00:49:15.200 an HR party

00:49:16.080 it is the party

00:49:16.900 for people who work

00:49:17.920 unionized office jobs

00:49:20.080 and college students

00:49:21.760 and so we talked

00:49:22.980 about before

00:49:23.380 I mentioned

00:49:23.860 that the conservatives

00:49:25.000 their fatal flaw

00:49:26.020 is they often

00:49:26.700 are trying to play

00:49:27.640 to a group of voters

00:49:28.860 who will never

00:49:29.300 be part of their base

00:49:30.180 even though their base

00:49:31.260 is actually quite broad

00:49:32.260 already

00:49:32.640 and then they end up

00:49:33.640 betraying those people

00:49:34.280 and they tick them off

00:49:35.180 like O'Toole did

00:49:35.900 the liberals

00:49:36.840 are constantly doubling down

00:49:38.120 on like a very small

00:49:39.540 fraction of people

00:49:40.400 who are loyal already

00:49:41.600 and they desperately

00:49:42.840 need to expand

00:49:43.680 the NDP

00:49:44.620 handers to a base

00:49:46.420 who will not show up

00:49:47.940 no matter what they do

00:49:49.200 even if they like them

00:49:50.520 and that's young people

00:49:51.760 the ideal

00:49:53.340 Jagmeet Singh

00:49:54.640 like a voter

00:49:55.940 who he very much

00:49:56.960 comes across like

00:49:57.840 is an 18 year old girl

00:49:59.320 taking anthropology

00:50:00.300 who probably is not

00:50:02.100 going to vote

00:50:02.600 like at all

00:50:03.580 well and then

00:50:04.960 the problem though

00:50:05.740 is that the NDP

00:50:07.120 because it's this

00:50:08.600 old legacy party

00:50:09.940 that has a very

00:50:10.820 settled way

00:50:11.580 of doing things

00:50:12.520 is that it's actually

00:50:13.880 not receptive

00:50:15.240 to kind of like

00:50:16.220 the youthful dynamism

00:50:17.700 that should in theory

00:50:19.460 be a sort of

00:50:20.460 leftist party's

00:50:21.380 greatest asset

00:50:22.200 right

00:50:22.680 so it's like

00:50:23.540 you have a lot

00:50:24.880 of like young

00:50:25.560 kind of like

00:50:26.040 leftist people

00:50:26.940 who try to get

00:50:27.820 involved with the NDP

00:50:28.800 and oftentimes

00:50:29.400 they get very frustrated

00:50:30.540 by it

00:50:30.960 they get turned off

00:50:31.740 by it

00:50:32.160 because it is run

00:50:33.260 ultimately at the end

00:50:34.180 of the day

00:50:34.520 by this old guard

00:50:35.560 of kind of like 0.55

00:50:36.320 fat union bosses 0.72

00:50:37.780 and you know 0.68

00:50:38.820 these kind of like

00:50:39.380 entrenched

00:50:39.940 kind of like

00:50:40.480 white collar

00:50:41.060 bureaucrat types

00:50:42.120 and these like

00:50:42.620 party loyalists

00:50:43.760 who have been there

00:50:44.440 since day one

00:50:45.280 and you know

00:50:45.960 like there's a kind

00:50:46.440 of like aged

00:50:47.300 kind of core

00:50:48.340 to the NDP

00:50:48.980 as well

00:50:49.600 I remember seeing

00:50:51.300 this once

00:50:51.740 this photo

00:50:52.380 that I thought

00:50:52.900 was just so fantastic

00:50:54.300 I should try to see

00:50:55.340 if I can find it

00:50:56.000 and share it

00:50:56.520 but it was like

00:50:57.220 Jagmeet Singh

00:50:57.920 at some NDP convention

00:50:59.240 and it's like

00:51:00.000 you know

00:51:00.160 Jagmeet Singh

00:51:00.720 sort of like

00:51:01.160 tall thin

00:51:01.940 you know

00:51:02.380 handsome Indian man

00:51:03.480 being flanked

00:51:04.560 on both sides

00:51:05.480 by these two

00:51:06.120 big fat 0.94

00:51:07.020 old white 0.96

00:51:07.760 union bosses

00:51:08.600 and it's like

00:51:09.420 that's kind of

00:51:09.920 like the NDP

00:51:10.500 in a sort of

00:51:11.380 like in

00:51:12.380 in one image

00:51:13.420 right

00:51:13.660 it's like

00:51:14.300 you have

00:51:14.740 you can put

00:51:15.200 different faces

00:51:15.940 on the party

00:51:16.600 you can put

00:51:17.020 different masks

00:51:17.700 whether it's

00:51:18.300 Mulcair or Leighton

00:51:19.440 or you know

00:51:20.400 Jagmeet or whoever 0.53

00:51:21.280 but it's like

00:51:22.020 at the end of the day

00:51:22.700 it is still

00:51:23.500 just this very

00:51:24.120 slow-moving

00:51:25.020 entrenched

00:51:25.880 kind of

00:51:26.680 political machine

00:51:27.920 that is ultimately

00:51:28.860 so heavily bound up

00:51:30.060 in these entrenched

00:51:30.720 political machines

00:51:31.540 of the labor unions

00:51:33.080 and of the entrenched

00:51:33.880 sort of like

00:51:34.400 you know

00:51:35.180 white-collar bureaucrats

00:51:36.560 who now

00:51:36.960 disproportionately make up

00:51:38.060 the Canadian

00:51:38.600 labor movement

00:51:39.640 such as it is

00:51:40.500 and just the party

00:51:41.640 is so averse to change

00:51:43.060 is so averse

00:51:43.660 to new ideas

00:51:44.340 and new blood

00:51:44.980 you know

00:51:45.540 I had a friend

00:51:46.120 actually who

00:51:46.760 went back

00:51:47.760 out of some sort

00:51:48.360 of sadistic sense

00:51:49.900 masochistic sense

00:51:51.040 he watched

00:51:51.780 all of the old

00:51:52.320 leadership

00:51:52.680 elections

00:51:53.540 leadership debates

00:51:55.720 since such things

00:51:57.220 began being televised

00:51:58.460 you know

00:51:58.700 with the old man

00:51:59.280 Trudeau

00:51:59.720 and all the rest

00:52:00.700 of it

00:52:00.940 and he said

00:52:01.660 it was striking

00:52:02.280 when you hear

00:52:02.900 like Broadbent

00:52:03.900 and Audrey

00:52:04.480 McLaughlin

00:52:05.040 and all these

00:52:05.980 other kind of

00:52:06.460 characters

00:52:06.900 they all are

00:52:08.060 sort of saying

00:52:08.540 the same

00:52:09.160 kind of talking

00:52:09.880 points

00:52:10.320 like the NDP

00:52:11.160 has just changed

00:52:11.880 so little

00:52:12.440 honestly people

00:52:14.440 sometimes see

00:52:15.320 Jagmeet

00:52:15.860 and it's

00:52:16.460 frankly because

00:52:17.240 he's a South 0.98

00:52:17.880 Asian Sikh man

00:52:18.960 with a turban

00:52:19.560 on that

00:52:19.920 he's very different

00:52:20.960 he reminds me

00:52:22.580 and maybe this

00:52:23.280 is McLaughlin

00:52:23.980 but he reminds me

00:52:25.500 of the typical

00:52:27.000 kind of square

00:52:28.440 woman who's leading 1.00

00:52:30.260 provincial NDP

00:52:31.340 parties

00:52:31.880 or the lady

00:52:32.540 who was in the

00:52:33.080 2000 debate

00:52:34.080 with Day

00:52:35.180 and Kretchen

00:52:35.900 somebody who

00:52:37.320 stands up

00:52:37.820 and says

00:52:38.140 won't people 0.85

00:52:39.160 think about

00:52:39.860 the social programs

00:52:41.000 won't people 0.85

00:52:42.540 think about

00:52:43.560 the postal workers

00:52:44.540 and it's like

00:52:45.060 bankimonious

00:52:46.140 obnoxious

00:52:47.420 I think

00:52:48.240 what defines

00:52:49.140 Jagmeet's leadership

00:52:50.100 better than anything

00:52:51.340 is the fact

00:52:52.180 that he did

00:52:52.640 a Twitch stream

00:52:53.500 with Hassan Piker

00:52:54.420 that defines him

00:52:56.100 down to a T

00:52:56.760 the man

00:52:57.560 I've heard

00:52:59.560 he actually

00:53:00.000 does genuinely

00:53:00.740 care about

00:53:01.300 getting his pension

00:53:01.920 which is sad

00:53:03.140 to me

00:53:03.640 considering it's

00:53:04.320 not even

00:53:04.580 worth that much

00:53:05.120 he doesn't even

00:53:05.540 get it for like

00:53:06.180 another couple

00:53:07.360 decades

00:53:07.760 but the man

00:53:09.320 is a media

00:53:10.040 hound

00:53:10.560 but the problem

00:53:11.500 is he also

00:53:12.260 isn't a good

00:53:12.940 media hound

00:53:13.660 if he was

00:53:15.120 good at this

00:53:16.540 he would actually

00:53:17.200 embrace the fact

00:53:18.020 that he's a

00:53:18.480 champagne socialist

00:53:19.520 he would actually

00:53:20.520 try and be even

00:53:21.480 ritzier in a certain

00:53:22.680 sense and even

00:53:23.340 more kind of

00:53:23.920 plush in the way

00:53:24.720 he presents himself

00:53:25.800 as this

00:53:26.440 stylish figure

00:53:27.660 who is better

00:53:28.500 than all these

00:53:29.180 square politicians

00:53:30.040 trying to seem

00:53:30.820 like average

00:53:31.800 Joes 1.00

00:53:32.160 I'm definitely

00:53:32.760 not an average

00:53:33.480 Joe

00:53:33.840 which is what

00:53:34.620 Hassan himself

00:53:35.340 does right

00:53:35.980 I know

00:53:36.660 and that's

00:53:37.080 why it perfectly

00:53:38.240 defines him

00:53:38.840 he's a man

00:53:39.340 living in a

00:53:40.040 I believe

00:53:40.940 3 million

00:53:42.120 or 13 million

00:53:43.060 one of the

00:53:44.040 2 million dollar

00:53:45.160 home

00:53:45.520 and he's there

00:53:46.480 screaming at

00:53:47.500 landlords

00:53:48.180 and talking about

00:53:49.140 how we should

00:53:49.580 bathe in the

00:53:50.680 blood of

00:53:51.000 capitalists

00:53:51.760 in Minecraft

00:53:52.480 and it's like

00:53:53.900 dude

00:53:54.180 you would get

00:53:54.880 mad

00:53:55.120 so you

00:53:55.680 you're not a

00:53:56.580 bad person

00:53:57.040 for owning

00:53:57.420 this large

00:53:58.100 of a house

00:53:58.680 but if you

00:53:59.800 suddenly

00:54:00.340 if somebody

00:54:00.920 living right

00:54:01.560 next to you

00:54:01.960 suddenly started

00:54:02.480 renting out a

00:54:03.280 room in their

00:54:03.760 house

00:54:03.960 they're now 0.97

00:54:04.360 a dirty 0.98

00:54:04.780 landlord 0.97

00:54:05.300 even though

00:54:06.660 they have

00:54:07.260 made more

00:54:08.060 housing available

00:54:09.000 but yeah

00:54:10.200 so that's

00:54:10.900 no

00:54:11.560 I think

00:54:12.080 you're

00:54:12.300 no no

00:54:14.040 you're good

00:54:14.320 no no

00:54:15.200 I think

00:54:15.780 but I think

00:54:16.240 you're on

00:54:16.680 to something

00:54:17.320 right

00:54:17.640 like it was

00:54:18.260 like the line

00:54:18.900 that

00:54:19.280 sort of

00:54:20.780 Eva Perón

00:54:21.700 said in

00:54:22.520 Argentina

00:54:23.160 right

00:54:23.520 like you know

00:54:23.880 she always had

00:54:24.420 like jewels

00:54:24.960 and furs

00:54:25.640 and this kind

00:54:26.080 of thing

00:54:26.340 where it's

00:54:26.880 like you must

00:54:27.340 sort of like

00:54:27.760 outshine the

00:54:28.700 enemy

00:54:29.040 right

00:54:29.580 like you must

00:54:30.280 sort of be

00:54:30.780 more

00:54:31.160 like you can

00:54:32.060 sort of beat

00:54:32.520 them at their

00:54:32.960 own game

00:54:33.360 you can beat

00:54:33.860 the capitalists

00:54:34.440 at their own

00:54:34.860 game

00:54:35.080 you can lean

00:54:35.820 into it

00:54:36.440 you can be

00:54:37.260 like just kind

00:54:38.140 of proud

00:54:38.640 at your wealth

00:54:39.380 and decadence

00:54:40.160 and good looks

00:54:40.880 and all the rest

00:54:41.560 of that

00:54:41.840 but then still

00:54:42.520 sort of fight

00:54:43.100 for sort of

00:54:43.760 socialism

00:54:44.180 right

00:54:44.760 like it

00:54:45.180 it feels

00:54:45.760 like a paradox

00:54:46.420 but clearly

00:54:46.920 like Hassan 0.95

00:54:47.500 has proven

00:54:47.920 that there's

00:54:48.300 an appetite

00:54:48.700 for that

00:54:49.080 kind of thing

00:54:49.560 but what Jagmeet's

00:54:50.680 problem is

00:54:51.160 is that he

00:54:51.580 can't be

00:54:52.120 his authentic

00:54:52.740 self in that

00:54:53.400 way

00:54:53.620 he kind

00:54:54.180 of has

00:54:54.520 to like

00:54:54.800 be this

00:54:55.180 kind of

00:54:55.420 like awkward

00:54:56.000 guy

00:54:56.520 who is

00:54:57.340 like you

00:54:57.940 know

00:54:58.080 kind of

00:54:58.720 interesting

00:54:59.280 but then

00:54:59.940 is ultimately

00:55:00.620 still boxed

00:55:01.900 in by this

00:55:02.480 very sort

00:55:03.080 of ossified

00:55:03.720 NDP culture

00:55:04.660 that won't

00:55:05.240 give him

00:55:05.880 the kind

00:55:06.540 of independence

00:55:07.060 that perhaps

00:55:07.860 he would

00:55:08.320 enjoy

00:55:09.180 in an

00:55:09.480 American

00:55:09.760 system

00:55:10.280 he should

00:55:11.240 be the guy

00:55:12.080 doing the

00:55:13.020 hour and a

00:55:13.460 half long

00:55:13.960 podcast

00:55:14.480 but I find

00:55:15.440 that he's

00:55:15.840 actually the

00:55:16.480 most sloganeering

00:55:17.560 of the leaders

00:55:19.140 the bootlicker

00:55:20.200 for billionaires

00:55:21.080 thing

00:55:21.440 is the 1.00

00:55:22.480 dumbest 1.00

00:55:23.160 line I've 1.00

00:55:23.860 ever heard

00:55:24.380 because it's

00:55:25.360 so leftist

00:55:27.000 coded

00:55:27.420 that it

00:55:28.380 just ends

00:55:28.980 up making

00:55:29.400 everyone

00:55:29.740 uncomfortable

00:55:30.320 and so

00:55:31.140 the NDP

00:55:31.720 oddly enough

00:55:32.440 has a lot

00:55:33.060 of the same

00:55:33.520 flaws

00:55:33.920 even though

00:55:34.300 they're somewhat

00:55:34.960 successful

00:55:35.540 that the

00:55:36.280 PPC does

00:55:37.080 they needlessly

00:55:38.240 turn people

00:55:39.060 off

00:55:39.520 just to show

00:55:40.640 how pure

00:55:41.440 they are

00:55:42.060 that we are

00:55:42.880 I am willing

00:55:43.580 to throw 0.99

00:55:44.280 these people 0.98

00:55:45.340 to the wolves

00:55:46.400 and like

00:55:47.160 you know

00:55:47.400 I don't need

00:55:48.160 your votes

00:55:48.640 you guys

00:55:49.140 are all 1.00

00:55:49.600 scum 1.00

00:55:50.080 and maybe 1.00

00:55:51.760 one extra

00:55:52.720 topic we could

00:55:53.400 talk about

00:55:53.820 before we end

00:55:54.400 this

00:55:54.600 and this is

00:55:55.540 something that

00:55:56.020 you're not

00:55:56.380 involved in

00:55:56.960 any way

00:55:57.560 and I'm not

00:55:58.020 really involved

00:55:58.500 in either

00:55:58.920 but I

00:56:00.200 I find

00:56:01.440 this is one

00:56:02.120 of those

00:56:02.320 again

00:56:02.580 those things

00:56:03.240 that drives

00:56:03.900 me up the

00:56:04.240 wall because

00:56:04.620 people don't

00:56:05.300 understand how

00:56:05.920 politics really

00:56:06.520 works

00:56:06.820 all the PPC

00:56:08.140 influencers

00:56:08.720 currently

00:56:09.260 complaining

00:56:09.820 that the

00:56:10.200 PPC is

00:56:11.060 not going

00:56:11.640 on to

00:56:12.020 going to

00:56:12.540 be on the

00:56:12.840 debate

00:56:13.160 stage in

00:56:13.660 2025

00:56:14.120 and I

00:56:15.900 look at

00:56:16.300 this and

00:56:16.620 I'm thinking

00:56:17.200 like guys

00:56:17.720 if you

00:56:18.540 understood

00:56:19.220 actually what

00:56:20.840 campaigning

00:56:21.420 was you

00:56:22.560 would know

00:56:23.060 why you're

00:56:23.580 not on

00:56:24.160 stage and

00:56:24.840 I find so

00:56:25.460 often people

00:56:26.680 just think

00:56:27.400 that they

00:56:27.780 deserve to

00:56:28.660 be at the

00:56:29.260 goal of

00:56:29.860 being an

00:56:30.340 elected office

00:56:31.120 and that

00:56:31.900 it will

00:56:32.340 haven't you

00:56:32.900 read the

00:56:33.240 platform

00:56:33.760 it's like

00:56:34.520 you're at

00:56:35.280 3%

00:56:36.180 you're at

00:56:36.780 2%

00:56:37.400 why should

00:56:38.460 you want to

00:56:38.780 be on the

00:56:39.020 debate

00:56:39.200 well it was

00:56:39.980 promised that

00:56:40.460 if we had

00:56:40.720 5% in the

00:56:41.440 last election

00:56:42.060 we'd be on

00:56:42.480 the stage

00:56:42.820 this time

00:56:43.340 let's imagine

00:56:44.540 there was

00:56:45.040 something called

00:56:45.480 the no more

00:56:46.120 lockdowns party

00:56:46.980 and it gets

00:56:47.400 7% in the

00:56:48.900 2021 election

00:56:49.980 and then they're

00:56:51.020 pulling flops to

00:56:51.920 like 0.5%

00:56:52.840 because lockdowns

00:56:53.540 are gone

00:56:53.860 do you think

00:56:54.880 that party

00:56:55.360 should be on

00:56:55.840 the debate

00:56:56.220 stage and

00:56:57.340 they're like

00:56:57.680 well that doesn't

00:56:58.400 matter they did

00:56:59.000 this to get rid

00:56:59.440 of the PPC

00:56:59.900 I'm like no

00:57:01.100 they didn't

00:57:02.000 and so I'm

00:57:04.060 not sure how

00:57:04.500 much you usually

00:57:05.240 talk about the

00:57:05.940 PPC but what

00:57:06.700 do you think is

00:57:07.080 going to happen

00:57:07.540 to them in

00:57:08.040 2025

00:57:08.580 I mean I'll

00:57:10.800 just be frank

00:57:11.920 like I in

00:57:12.640 general have a

00:57:13.420 very very low

00:57:14.120 opinion of

00:57:14.740 small parties

00:57:15.500 of fringe

00:57:15.980 parties

00:57:16.360 like I feel

00:57:17.200 like if you're

00:57:17.660 a small fringe

00:57:18.380 party you're a

00:57:18.960 small fringe

00:57:19.440 party for a

00:57:20.040 reason you know

00:57:20.960 you're often

00:57:21.460 like a party

00:57:22.500 that's kind of

00:57:22.940 like run by

00:57:23.640 people who

00:57:24.100 fundamentally

00:57:24.880 don't really

00:57:25.660 understand politics

00:57:26.660 don't really

00:57:27.200 understand strategy

00:57:28.140 often have a

00:57:29.660 very sort of

00:57:30.080 like arrogant

00:57:30.620 and very sort 0.70

00:57:31.660 of like entitled

00:57:32.380 kind of attitude

00:57:34.000 towards the

00:57:35.360 political sort of

00:57:36.340 system you know

00:57:37.160 and I feel the

00:57:37.560 exact same way

00:57:38.080 about the

00:57:38.540 Green Party

00:57:39.000 right like no

00:57:39.700 one has been a

00:57:40.800 more consistent

00:57:41.520 critic of the

00:57:42.280 Green Party

00:57:42.760 than me I'm

00:57:43.860 happy to say

00:57:44.460 like I have

00:57:45.040 been arguing

00:57:45.920 against Elizabeth 0.74

00:57:47.060 May and her

00:57:47.760 one woman

00:57:48.420 medicine show

00:57:49.120 since she first

00:57:49.940 sort of rambled

00:57:50.480 onto the scene

00:57:51.100 20 years ago

00:57:51.820 right so and I

00:57:53.600 just see the

00:57:54.240 people by the

00:57:55.000 way Nami Paul

00:57:56.300 is an actual

00:57:57.360 good Green Party

00:57:58.400 leader she had

00:57:59.460 the most sensible

00:58:00.360 carbon tax

00:58:01.380 position of all

00:58:01.980 the leadership

00:58:02.520 candidates and or

00:58:03.780 the leaders in

00:58:04.820 2021 because they

00:58:05.840 were all saying

00:58:06.320 the carbon tax

00:58:06.960 should stay

00:58:08.040 and while she

00:58:08.980 said that she

00:58:09.420 says we should

00:58:09.920 get rid of it

00:58:10.420 on all agriculture

00:58:11.560 and it's like

00:58:12.160 that's kind of

00:58:13.240 smart and then

00:58:14.460 but they didn't

00:58:15.000 like her because

00:58:15.560 she was not

00:58:16.560 fringe enough on

00:58:18.120 Israel she was a 0.99

00:58:19.540 Jewish lady and

00:58:20.800 she didn't hate 0.98

00:58:21.620 Israel enough 0.99

00:58:22.400 that was like

00:58:23.240 the great the

00:58:24.980 great sort of

00:58:25.420 unreported fact

00:58:26.720 about the Green

00:58:27.640 Party is that it

00:58:28.220 has a huge

00:58:28.900 anti-semitic

00:58:29.740 faction and that

00:58:31.440 you cannot like

00:58:32.780 as much as you

00:58:33.620 know the mainstream

00:58:34.080 media sort of

00:58:34.620 portrays it as like

00:58:35.580 oh it's it's the

00:58:36.900 environmentalist party

00:58:38.100 and like it's

00:58:38.720 defined by that

00:58:39.360 no it's it's

00:58:40.240 basically just like

00:58:40.860 a crank party of

00:58:41.900 various conspiracy

00:58:42.600 theorists and if

00:58:43.480 you make any sort

00:58:44.700 of movement that's

00:58:45.940 open to conspiracy

00:58:46.680 theorists it will

00:58:47.420 inevitably develop a

00:58:48.780 strong anti-semitic

00:58:49.960 faction and I think

00:58:51.480 that's always been

00:58:52.180 the case you know

00:58:53.280 Dimitri Leskaras you

00:58:54.920 know the guy who

00:58:55.720 very close to beat

00:58:56.720 anime Paul in the

00:58:57.720 in the leadership

00:58:58.380 election is like an

00:58:59.340 open like anti-Israel

00:59:01.400 anti-Jewish you know

00:59:02.460 he's been accused

00:59:03.340 of being an

00:59:03.800 anti-semit by no

00:59:04.920 less than Prime

00:59:05.820 Minister Trudeau

00:59:06.340 himself right so

00:59:07.440 it's like the party

00:59:08.000 has a huge problem

00:59:09.000 with this this kind

00:59:10.400 of thing that's not

00:59:11.320 often commented on

00:59:12.480 but again like all

00:59:13.580 people this too

00:59:14.260 because I I hate

00:59:15.500 the movement on

00:59:16.460 certain parts of

00:59:17.460 the right of maybe

00:59:18.940 Russia has a point 1.00

00:59:20.120 I'm like guys Russia 0.63

00:59:21.620 is targeting you

00:59:22.500 because you are easy

00:59:24.000 marks right now do

00:59:25.180 you know who the

00:59:25.820 the historical easy

00:59:27.380 marks are and they

00:59:28.180 still are the Green

00:59:29.280 Party both in the

00:59:30.540 USA and Canada

00:59:31.660 Damien Leskaras

00:59:32.860 goes on Russia

00:59:33.600 today and he

00:59:34.320 even tours around

00:59:35.220 Russia all the 0.98

00:59:36.400 time why is Jill

00:59:37.780 Stein literally at

00:59:39.220 every dinner she's

00:59:40.140 ever been with at

00:59:41.060 with Putin always

00:59:42.180 sitting at his table

00:59:43.100 because they saw the

00:59:44.780 anti-imperialist

00:59:46.120 Green Party as the

00:59:47.760 vehicle for sort of

00:59:48.900 like pro-Russian

00:59:49.900 politics in in the

00:59:52.120 US and now that

00:59:53.720 there are certain

00:59:54.140 people on the right

00:59:54.760 who are saying maybe

00:59:55.740 this country which

00:59:57.000 stopped reporting

00:59:57.840 alcoholism because it

00:59:58.860 was so bad and

00:59:59.760 there the church

01:00:01.000 attendance rates are

01:00:01.920 like the lowest in

01:00:02.800 Europe maybe this is

01:00:04.240 the trad paradise we've

01:00:05.460 all been looking for

01:00:06.420 and it's like it's

01:00:07.220 not no and I bet

01:00:08.820 but it's like to get

01:00:09.520 to get back to the

01:00:10.320 point of what you

01:00:11.120 were sort of initially

01:00:11.840 sort of framing this

01:00:12.600 up to be it's like I

01:00:14.880 think that it's fair to

01:00:17.140 have expectations for

01:00:19.280 fringe parties and for

01:00:20.720 small parties and I

01:00:21.940 don't think that we've

01:00:22.840 set the bar

01:00:23.440 extraordinarily high

01:00:24.980 right like we're if

01:00:26.600 you can't get one 0.93

01:00:28.060 friggin MP elected and 0.97

01:00:30.100 you know to kind of go

01:00:30.800 back to what we were

01:00:32.320 talking about before

01:00:33.060 you know the zoomers 1.00

01:00:33.880 that are obsessed with

01:00:34.680 like political esoterica

01:00:36.300 from Canada's past right

01:00:38.780 when you look at like 1.00

01:00:39.920 the list of every stupid 1.00

01:00:41.680 party in this country's 1.00

01:00:42.720 history that's been able

01:00:43.440 to get like one MP

01:00:44.940 elected you know the

01:00:45.960 anti-confederation party

01:00:47.520 the pro-prohibition party

01:00:49.280 you know all sorts of

01:00:50.300 different social credit

01:00:51.400 parties and factions of

01:00:52.780 social credit party you

01:00:54.160 know different Marxist

01:00:55.160 parties like the bar

01:00:56.220 hasn't been set that high

01:00:57.560 historically speaking you

01:00:59.540 know we've had all sorts

01:01:00.640 of flaky parties that

01:01:01.620 have been able to

01:01:02.100 concentrate enough of

01:01:03.840 their resources in one

01:01:05.400 part of this country to

01:01:06.660 get one MP elected and if

01:01:08.700 you can't even pull that

01:01:10.060 off despite spending you

01:01:11.620 know multiple campaigns

01:01:12.820 trying to do it you know

01:01:14.120 I think it's fair for the

01:01:15.380 you know the debate

01:01:16.180 commission people or or

01:01:18.180 the mainstream press or

01:01:19.120 whoever to conclude that

01:01:21.180 maybe this is a party that

01:01:22.260 doesn't have a great

01:01:22.980 future maybe this is a

01:01:24.200 party that is not

01:01:24.920 resonating with the

01:01:25.820 Canadian people and as

01:01:27.860 a result maybe we can

01:01:29.400 afford to kind of not pay

01:01:30.940 that much attention to

01:01:31.940 them you know and by the

01:01:33.180 way they didn't just say

01:01:34.580 PPC you're not allowed

01:01:35.820 they changed the rules so

01:01:37.360 that your past election

01:01:38.380 performance does not

01:01:39.360 affect your your future

01:01:41.300 debate prospects because

01:01:42.720 that's obviously silly the

01:01:44.180 rules were probably set up

01:01:45.040 that way because an issue

01:01:46.500 like this had never

01:01:47.200 occurred where a party

01:01:48.220 technically qualified even

01:01:49.400 though they're they're

01:01:50.300 not relevant at all

01:01:51.480 anymore so current rules

01:01:53.240 are you just have to hit

01:01:54.120 two of the three criteria

01:01:55.580 points one is that you've

01:01:57.220 elected an MP in the last

01:01:59.040 parliament you didn't just

01:01:59.860 cross the floor it is your

01:02:00.940 MP that you elected the

01:02:02.480 second one is that you

01:02:03.460 have candidates in 90% of

01:02:04.960 the writings there's some

01:02:05.740 probably some modified

01:02:06.580 version for the Bloc 0.60

01:02:07.980 Quebecois if you're a 0.98

01:02:09.140 regional party and then

01:02:10.660 the last one is you just

01:02:12.360 had to have 4% or higher

01:02:13.520 on average in the polls

01:02:14.380 yes they were competent

01:02:16.020 you could easily do that

01:02:18.240 you just have to spend

01:02:19.600 money where it matters and

01:02:21.160 this even happens and this

01:02:22.840 is where people almost

01:02:23.820 kind of consume politics

01:02:25.660 in like a very toxically

01:02:27.720 spiritual way that as

01:02:29.660 soon as that a party has

01:02:31.300 wronged them it is that the

01:02:32.720 whole thing is corrupt and

01:02:35.220 is the fruit of the

01:02:36.320 poisonous tree now I have

01:02:38.420 more reason to have a 0.73

01:02:40.580 huffy issue with the

01:02:41.560 conservative party than

01:02:43.060 anyone else at least in

01:02:44.540 Alberta right now and the

01:02:46.220 thing is it's not really

01:02:47.340 worth it not like oh it's

01:02:48.520 not worth it I can't win

01:02:49.780 it's not worth me attacking

01:02:52.560 the party and I'm not

01:02:54.040 saying this in like this

01:02:54.840 kind of Soviet anything for 0.78

01:02:56.620 the party kind of a way

01:02:57.580 but when 99% of people in

01:02:59.540 the party are perfectly

01:03:00.300 fine to me and like two

01:03:01.740 people messed me over is it

01:03:04.340 worth me then jumping on

01:03:05.760 any fringe movement that

01:03:06.840 says we are not the party

01:03:08.260 instead of just hanging

01:03:09.940 around doing my thing and

01:03:12.300 eventually people noticing

01:03:13.520 that maybe we kind of owe

01:03:14.820 him some amount of

01:03:15.760 recompense and it's like

01:03:17.200 that's really what

01:03:17.900 happened with Bernier is

01:03:19.680 assuming that grievances

01:03:21.960 and like the spiritual

01:03:23.560 corruption of something is

01:03:25.560 something that matters to

01:03:26.720 the average voter like have

01:03:27.660 you ever done door knocking

01:03:28.620 before in a campaign oh

01:03:31.360 yeah you have yeah so I

01:03:33.580 don't know I imagine that

01:03:34.960 some for some reason like

01:03:36.040 people who get into the

01:03:37.320 commentary business

01:03:38.020 sometimes don't end up

01:03:38.900 doing that but like if

01:03:39.900 you're when you actually

01:03:40.840 talk to a voter you will

01:03:42.880 realize how average they

01:03:44.900 are how just not a lot of

01:03:47.180 thoughts about politics

01:03:48.320 even now with Trudeau

01:03:49.460 around there's a lot of

01:03:50.540 people who know they don't

01:03:51.560 like Trudeau but past that

01:03:53.380 they don't have strong

01:03:54.400 opinions and you need to

01:03:55.940 really talk it through I

01:03:57.260 had a PPC organizer a guy

01:03:59.580 who is a regional director

01:04:00.920 one time say oh I've never

01:04:03.060 door knocked because I've

01:04:04.000 never had my opinion

01:04:04.880 changed at a door before

01:04:06.300 like that is arrogance

01:04:08.060 personified that I would

01:04:10.520 have never had my my mind

01:04:12.260 changed by a door knocker so

01:04:13.400 I'm never gonna door knock

01:04:14.660 it's like well who could

01:04:16.500 have guessed why you only

01:04:17.360 got three percent in the

01:04:18.400 writing you ran in no no

01:04:20.960 absolutely right so again

01:04:22.760 it's like you know it's a

01:04:23.820 similar problem to to to the

01:04:25.580 NDP right like you kind of

01:04:27.480 create this kind of culture

01:04:29.420 of purity and purity testing

01:04:32.400 and sort of maintaining that

01:04:34.380 purity and sort of creating a

01:04:35.820 narrative that you're kind of

01:04:39.180 like you're too you're too

01:04:40.820 good for the rest of the world

01:04:43.880 right and it's kind of like the

01:04:45.280 rest of the world's obligation

01:04:47.880 to sort of become enlightened

01:04:50.000 to your brilliance and then for

01:04:51.960 them to inevitably sort of come

01:04:53.680 to you like you don't have to do

01:04:55.520 anything substantial to improve

01:04:56.840 yourself to make yourself more

01:04:58.240 impressive to engage in any sort

01:05:00.060 of like you know sort of tactical

01:05:01.780 outreach it's all just a matter

01:05:03.720 of like you just keep doing what

01:05:05.100 you're doing and at some point

01:05:06.320 people's you know third eye will

01:05:07.920 open and then they'll realize

01:05:09.400 that you know that they've been

01:05:11.200 wrong up until this this very

01:05:12.660 point it's and this is where you

01:05:14.560 get the woke left and the woke

01:05:16.260 right where much of it is based

01:05:18.360 around the idea that everything's

01:05:19.920 corrupt and until you have your

01:05:21.560 third eye opened about how 0.99

01:05:23.080 everything's bad then I can't help

01:05:25.420 you and it's like I'm gonna go

01:05:27.320 around dating people and just 1.00

01:05:28.460 being a massive jerk and then I'm 1.00

01:05:30.120 gonna say oh they rejected me 1.00

01:05:31.440 because the world's unkind and

01:05:33.100 cruel I mean like and it's and

01:05:35.420 it's and it's like you know it's

01:05:36.840 not a surprise that the PPC and

01:05:39.420 the Green Party and I'm sure

01:05:41.120 other I remember I once had a

01:05:42.940 friend who had had some

01:05:43.980 involvement with the Christian

01:05:45.020 Heritage Party if we remember

01:05:46.440 them I think they're still

01:05:47.660 I talk to people from them

01:05:49.640 they're they're an honest fringe

01:05:52.440 party we're just here to

01:05:54.160 basically give people tax credit

01:05:55.840 so we can promote the things that

01:05:57.320 we believe in do you know that

01:05:58.720 the actually the social credit

01:05:59.940 party still exists in Alberta I'm

01:06:02.520 sort of vaguely familiar with that

01:06:03.960 as well I think that is this the

01:06:07.740 corpse of social credit that's

01:06:09.020 been taken over actually

01:06:10.560 intelligently to then just be a

01:06:12.420 way of a pro-life group giving

01:06:13.760 out tax credits while being very

01:06:15.820 partisan that's pretty wild I know

01:06:18.180 that there's there's still like

01:06:19.760 John Rustad the head of the

01:06:20.980 conservatives here in British

01:06:21.900 Columbia who is a much less sort

01:06:23.820 of like in many ways ideological

01:06:24.980 person than he gets credit for I was

01:06:27.300 once at a interview with him and he

01:06:29.140 mentioned I don't know if he

01:06:30.160 mentioned this in the green room

01:06:31.120 or on the show itself but that he

01:06:32.920 actually was trying to bring back

01:06:34.640 social credit because he you know

01:06:36.220 he's an old man and I guess for

01:06:37.420 some reason thought that was a

01:06:38.620 better winning brand in British

01:06:39.940 Columbia but he said that there is

01:06:41.900 still somebody or like a group of

01:06:43.720 tiny people in British Columbia that

01:06:45.240 are still clinging to the the social

01:06:46.780 credit are still the legal owners of

01:06:49.060 the social credit of British

01:06:50.000 Columbia party and he couldn't

01:06:51.200 wrestle it from them so that's why

01:06:52.520 he went to to to be the head of the

01:06:55.360 Conservative Party of British

01:06:56.360 Columbia so you know that Bill

01:06:58.680 Vanderzam was actually an advisor on

01:07:00.800 on the 2024 campaign here and

01:07:05.140 there really is that so that's

01:07:07.860 Vanderzam is an example of my theory

01:07:11.240 that I don't think any Dutch person

01:07:12.820 has ever actually died of old age I

01:07:14.880 think they just eventually ascend

01:07:16.420 because people are the only white

01:07:18.660 people who age like Asian Asian

01:07:20.580 people

01:07:21.020 Bill Vanderzam could run for something

01:07:24.300 today he's like 92 or like 89 or 90

01:07:27.300 he looks 60 the man looks 60 also by

01:07:30.440 the way congratulations Bill

01:07:32.140 Vanderzam he was actually vindicated on

01:07:35.080 the HST finally because yeah he did

01:07:38.360 not have all of its tax revenues taken

01:07:40.900 away from them by the Federals when they

01:07:42.560 just decided to cancel the HST

01:07:44.420 everywhere

01:07:44.920 he's he's he's an interesting

01:07:47.180 character our former premier Bill

01:07:49.480 Vanderzam that I definitely have often

01:07:52.060 felt that if there was somebody in

01:07:54.360 Canadian politics who could pull like a

01:07:57.060 you know Jerry Brown in California and

01:07:59.700 you know win a second term like 40

01:08:01.820 years after having left the first time

01:08:05.080 I've often felt it was like Vanderzam and

01:08:06.960 it was often kind of like curious to me

01:08:08.940 that Vanderzam because he was very

01:08:10.120 involved in the fight against the HST

01:08:11.780 he's been you know kind of just always on

01:08:13.820 the margins of BC politics and he

01:08:16.020 does interview still it's yeah he still

01:08:18.020 does and it's just curious to me that he

01:08:19.780 never made a serious another run for the

01:08:23.320 premiership he tried to be head of the

01:08:25.840 reform party of British Columbia which

01:08:27.400 was briefly a kind of party in sort of

01:08:28.900 the late 90s he didn't really sort of

01:08:31.120 succeed at that he never contested that

01:08:32.860 election for complex BC reasons but yeah

01:08:36.120 like I wouldn't it wouldn't shock me if I

01:08:38.280 mean he might be past the moment now but

01:08:40.320 it always seemed to me that there was

01:08:41.520 this kind of like looming kind of sort of

01:08:44.720 threat that he posed that he could get

01:08:47.280 back in power if he really put his mind

01:08:49.200 to it because he is he's just an odd and

01:08:51.360 like remarkable figure in a lot of ways

01:08:53.280 so well apparently he's gonna be alive

01:08:55.140 for another hundred years so he's

01:08:56.640 thinking about it at some point

01:08:58.140 uh I like I love watching his old

01:09:00.600 interview old interviews on the Webster

01:09:03.040 show because he's just oh yeah a very

01:09:05.280 characterful type of person he has a

01:09:08.040 great voice for radio and whatnot and

01:09:10.280 like very under understated skill or

01:09:15.280 uh attribute to have like a really good

01:09:17.160 voice to listen to over time but I guess

01:09:19.300 I'm forgetting that you live in BC so I

01:09:21.440 think I should finally end off on this

01:09:23.880 last topic of what do you think is the

01:09:26.160 future for David Eby and the BC NDP now

01:09:28.740 that they're kind of in government when I

01:09:31.100 say kind of I mean like I don't feel like

01:09:33.480 they feel comfortable in their current

01:09:35.160 position they they don't and you know

01:09:37.920 like and I've spoken I still have some

01:09:39.500 connections in the BC party I mean or in

01:09:41.780 the BC NDP not that I was ever part of it

01:09:43.700 but you know I know people in there from

01:09:45.500 when I was more involved in formal

01:09:46.820 journalism and stuff and and they were

01:09:48.800 like legitimately pretty spooked by how

01:09:51.020 close this election was and and I think

01:09:53.240 that you know David Eby comes from a more

01:09:56.580 pragmatic faction of the NDP that frankly

01:09:59.420 has I think been in ascendancy for a while

01:10:02.180 in the party right like Premier Horgan who I

01:10:05.060 think is you know who passed away

01:10:06.480 recently and and was generally quite

01:10:08.320 popular because he was pragmatic like

01:10:10.520 people don't people don't know this I think

01:10:13.260 in other parts of Canada but here in

01:10:15.080 British Columbia under an NDP government we

01:10:17.300 had the least restrictive COVID policies

01:10:20.000 of anywhere in Canada we got off really

01:10:22.400 easy in COVID to the point where sometimes

01:10:24.640 when I hear other Canadians talk about

01:10:26.420 lockdowns and this kind of stuff I find it

01:10:28.380 hard to relate to because we just didn't

01:10:29.820 have that kind of stuff in British

01:10:31.060 Columbia people could go to the gym I went

01:10:32.740 to restaurants and supermarkets and

01:10:34.180 shopping malls and you know my life you know

01:10:36.120 we had the mask on but beyond that my life

01:10:37.860 was more normal than not and I think that's

01:10:40.480 in part because we've had an NDP leadership

01:10:42.840 that has been you know quite quite pragmatic

01:10:45.920 and careful and worried and I think Premier

01:10:48.160 Eby has signified this as well the way that

01:10:50.980 he's flip-flopped on a lot of sort of lefty

01:10:54.160 ideological policies in a way that a more

01:10:56.940 dogmatic leader would not you know when it

01:10:58.960 comes to drugs he's flip-flopped on that

01:11:01.080 when it's come to involuntary treatment for

01:11:04.180 for addicts he's kind of flip-flopped on that

01:11:06.360 he talks a lot about crime and all this

01:11:08.020 kind of stuff and yet the NDP brand is

01:11:10.440 still so toxic in the eyes of you know

01:11:12.500 clearly half the province that it's it's

01:11:14.760 still not good enough and for an untested

01:11:17.460 party you know which like the BC

01:11:19.540 Conservatives which you know I know I voted

01:11:22.740 for them but they do have a significant

01:11:24.420 crank problem and no one can deny that and I

01:11:26.840 think to come so close to losing to this

01:11:29.540 group of sort of you know as they would

01:11:31.220 sort of see it misfits I think has really

01:11:33.300 troubled the NDP a lot and scared them and

01:11:35.660 I feel like they're a party that is a

01:11:37.400 little adrift and not quite sure what to

01:11:40.300 do what the province wants of them what a

01:11:42.700 reasonable agenda that they can sort of

01:11:44.800 pave forward when they have you know a narrow

01:11:49.500 majority or a narrow minority that's kind of

01:11:51.640 backed up by a flaky you know green party in

01:11:54.320 the legislature it's a it's a pretty uncertain

01:11:56.880 time for for BC and and you're actually right

01:12:00.760 because although I consider David Eby especially

01:12:03.560 for Alberta standards where I'm at a very left

01:12:07.060 type of political figure like very left like I

01:12:10.200 wouldn't call him central left at all he is left

01:12:12.140 there are a lot more people even much more

01:12:15.080 further left than him in the party like there

01:12:17.180 are people who in their bios during the election

01:12:20.440 just openly said that they're trade unionists

01:12:22.580 which the person's a lawyer and if they are in any

01:12:26.860 lawyer using that term knows what it means that is

01:12:29.460 the idea that unions and the government should

01:12:32.040 literally directly run the economy which is I'm

01:12:35.560 not sure I'm not I'm not even trying to be like you

01:12:37.740 know like all shocking that's what fascism is

01:12:42.080 fascio is what a Italian union was and that's why it's 0.94

01:12:45.180 fascism it's trade unionism it's the idea that the

01:12:48.520 government and corporations and the unions should run the

01:12:51.820 economy but and tons of people who are just openly

01:12:54.680 democratic socialists openly just anti-capitalist inside

01:12:59.360 of the BC NDP and I think the big I would almost say that

01:13:03.120 David Eby had the same election outcome that Daniel

01:13:05.600 Smith did in 2023 he didn't win his opponents just

01:13:09.800 failed to win Daniel Smith ran frankly a bad campaign in

01:13:14.360 2023 she was saved by Rachel Notley announcing she was 0.50

01:13:17.980 going to raise corporate tax the corporate tax burden by

01:13:20.740 33 percent that's what killed her in Calgary because 1.00

01:13:23.940 she lost by like five votes or like 100 votes and a lot of

01:13:28.380 these writings that the UCP narrowly squeaked it out that

01:13:31.840 the BC NDP were almost saved by the fact that they had the

01:13:34.960 taxpayer you know public financing of their party they

01:13:38.160 had a 7.8 million dollar spending advantage over the

01:13:42.160 last four years so naturally more people know who they

01:13:44.920 are I was campaigning in that I actually brought my mom

01:13:48.240 along even though she's from Calgary to come up door

01:13:51.200 knocking and whatnot the NDP would have in a one little area

01:13:54.800 two people who'd go in pairs to every single door to get out

01:13:58.180 the vote they were like oozing cash and they literally got the

01:14:02.580 majority by 22 votes and even now that's in contention

01:14:06.140 no I mean like you know British Columbia has faced a lot of

01:14:13.620 growing challenges in in terms of you know cost of living sort of

01:14:18.060 crises the drug situation is is very profound and it's not just a

01:14:21.800 Vancouver problem has been sort of spreading across the across the

01:14:25.100 province you know crime is a very sort of significant problem and

01:14:29.060 and there is just kind of a sense you know that the NDP is just not

01:14:34.180 well suited does not have ideas to deal with these problems because of

01:14:38.980 their sort of ideological priors are so strong when it comes to the sort of

01:14:43.460 the right or wrong way to sort of think and talk about these issues right but

01:14:47.060 they're they're not a nimble and pragmatic party in the way that they

01:14:49.860 need to be but again I do think that that sort of like grinds that sort of NDP

01:14:54.100 orthodoxy is I think perceived by a certain group and I would I would

01:14:58.900 probably disagree with you a bit on your characterization of Premier Eby but

01:15:02.100 maybe that's just because I'm a British Columbian and I've sort of seen this

01:15:05.200 party and yeah in Alberta context or not like they're pro oil or generally

01:15:13.840 they're not gonna shut down the oil and gas you know there they crack down on

01:15:16.540 crime they generally keep things the same there you know they put out one

01:15:20.380 safe injection site yeah I mean I think that the the sort of the general sort

01:15:24.820 of narrative of British Columbia NDP politics is that during the 1990s

01:15:30.400 especially under the Glenn Clark administration there was this kind of

01:15:35.200 sense that like that was the real like true believer like the real kind of like

01:15:39.100 Marxist types in charge right and that was a disastrous period of governance for

01:15:44.920 for the province and that is sort of something that we've never like fully

01:15:48.120 lived down right and then that has sort of like spooked the NDP ever since and

01:15:53.080 then that's why sort of somebody like Premier Horgan especially after Adrian Dix who I

01:15:58.160 think was a much more sort of doctrinaire socialist he was the previous one who

01:16:01.580 lost to Christy Clark and then when when Horgan got in you know he very much

01:16:06.440 identified himself he I remember even interviewing him once for a local paper

01:16:09.500 here and he said like I'm not a socialist I've never considered myself a

01:16:12.300 socialist like I don't represent that faction of the party at all and you know I

01:16:16.260 think Premier Eby is a similar way like he kind of comes from the more like he is a

01:16:20.060 sort of civil rights lawyer civil libertarian he used to be head of the BC

01:16:24.260 civil liberties union like he comes from that kind of flavor of leftist world and

01:16:30.740 so but that being said there is still that very sort of dogmatic faction of the

01:16:36.660 BC NDP that you know demands a seat at the table and has an influence on you know no

01:16:42.740 matter how pragmatic the the Premier is that side of the party still deserves to

01:16:47.000 have some bones thrown to them but I think the thing is that you have a lot of

01:16:50.620 kind of like middle-class voters now who do associate the NDP with you know soft

01:16:56.500 on crime you know kind of socialist economic policies you know pro-drug

01:17:00.860 policies and that kind of stuff and so what you see now is you just have a very

01:17:04.580 very divided province like it is it is remarkable how close that election was one

01:17:08.760 of the closest elections in provincial history was our 2024 provincial election and

01:17:14.100 so something has to change like some someone like either the NDP has to get

01:17:18.460 better or the conservatives have to get better because I think right now both

01:17:21.560 parties seem like they're quite stagnant like that they've kind of like

01:17:24.420 reached a natural limit of how much they can sort of expand before they start to hit

01:17:31.080 up against a natural ceiling of people that are just deeply deeply skeptical of the

01:17:35.260 NDP or deeply deeply skeptical of of the conservatives and what the

01:17:39.260 conservatives have become and I think the main the main mistakes the BC

01:17:43.240 conservatives made were just in my opinion because yeah you every once in a while got

01:17:48.340 the kind of somewhat crankish element who would be in the who would be kind of

01:17:52.000 like the not to face the party in terms of they're a hired member of the campaign

01:17:56.020 but of certain kind of more PPC ish type people who represent themselves as like

01:18:00.540 the hardcore base but I think the bigger problem was just like it was honestly and

01:18:05.440 I'm not trying to make an excuse for them it was probably it was the money and it

01:18:09.520 was the allocation of the money they already had you know how many people follow

01:18:13.180 them on Facebook still only 18,000 people which is nothing and it's like why

01:18:18.800 didn't you spend something growing the page before the election you can't gather

01:18:22.560 your forces mid-writ you need your forces on social media and other places gathered

01:18:27.160 then you do stuff with them don't just try and get them on the fly

01:18:30.820 the money is an excuse a little bit because you can do it with no money at all it's

01:18:37.480 very easy to do this stuff with like zero dollars and I found that there's a lot of

01:18:41.540 zero dollar solutions to problems that were just not pursued because you ended up actually

01:18:47.360 frankly getting too many united people sort of sticking around who had the same

01:18:51.340 kind of very stagnant bureaucratic ways of doing things but they didn't have the money

01:18:56.260 associated to carry out any of the plans yeah but uh maybe so uh I guess that's probably

01:19:02.040 it for us today but the last parting question is what hairstyle are you going to be going for

01:19:07.540 next in 2025 because you've gone through about three to not even three what am I saying I'm

01:19:13.500 like probably eight different hairstyles over the past yeah it's funny that you ask that because

01:19:20.420 I was actually thinking about this last night I'm I like having long hair I mean people like

01:19:26.240 people respect you when you have long hair I must sort of say like it's it's an interesting sort

01:19:30.620 of phenomenon you know men women people respect a man with long hair because I think it it sort

01:19:35.660 of signifies a kind of like rebelliousness that a lot of people don't have the courage to pull off

01:19:39.820 themselves but I often kind of flip-flop on this because when I have long hair I want short hair

01:19:44.960 when I have short hair I want long hair so I've been thinking about going back to uh you know having

01:19:49.640 my hair short again even though I know it'll be controversial with my uh with my audience but

01:19:54.520 I'm just I'm just a man who likes who likes novelty in his own appearance so you kind you kind of have

01:20:00.200 a bit of a uh you know a Noah Antwiler Spoonie vibe right now okay I grew up in that era of like

01:20:07.080 2000 like 11 12 you know 10 YouTube of all those like critics who were just up against their beige

01:20:12.680 wall talking about movies I was literally watching a cinema snob movie before this if you know who that

01:20:17.540 is oh of course of course yeah so I don't know if you're kidding about that or not people need to

01:20:24.400 people will will stay tuned I don't know it's uh it's it's fun I mean like it's fun to be able to

01:20:29.700 we're at the end of the day we are in a visual uh medium we are creating uh sort of visual stimulus in

01:20:36.860 addition to our hard-hitting intellectual uh analysis and so I I do think it's important that

01:20:42.000 to anybody that's engaged in this kind of uh practice has some kind of sense of visual flair

01:20:48.380 and is willing to mix things up a bit to keep it interesting I attempted to shoot a video not wearing

01:20:52.900 a coat at one point and I felt weird the entire time and I eventually had to go upstairs and get one

01:20:57.200 it's it's a tick it becomes a brand thing even though I don't usually wear it out of the house

01:21:02.960 it's weird but I actually have too bad you don't film like videos where people can see your feet

01:21:07.880 because I have like a really like big shoe collection that oh yes underappreciated I own

01:21:12.640 a pair of Victorian button boots where I have to take a hook and like button them together or whatever

01:21:17.740 that's amazing on that very strange note that's probably it for this interview everyone go check

01:21:25.020 out JJ's videos there is literally probably over a hundred hours of content to consume if you haven't

01:21:31.300 watched it yet all great stuff it will not remind you of anything I do in a good way I have the low

01:21:37.500 effort channel he has the high effort channel that makes me very insecure so make sure you go check

01:21:42.800 him out because I guarantee we actually have little crossover between our audiences but uh thanks for

01:21:47.500 coming on JJ and is there anything else you're working on this week uh I'm just actually as soon

01:21:52.260 as we end this I'm gonna get cracking on my uh my latest video which is a history of presidents

01:21:57.720 standing in rows together so standing in rows together you know how like when when the presidents

01:22:03.480 kind of like all line up it's like Obama Clinton Bush and you know Trump and all that those photo ops

01:22:08.700 I've always liked those photo ops so I wanted to make a video that was kind of like documenting the

01:22:13.060 history of those photo ops and see who were the first former presidents to stand in a row together

01:22:17.360 that's so obscure but that's actually interesting to me and also I want to know the weirdest lineup of

01:22:26.060 which presidents you didn't assume would ever be in the same room together hmm yeah I think that

01:22:31.740 people are the longest what is the like the longest historical lineup they've ever had in terms of

01:22:37.360 the like the the latest age and then also like the amount of presidents in one room I think that

01:22:43.960 probably goes to like the one where like Ford and Nixon are there yeah well I mean you'll you'll have

01:22:48.740 to you'll have to watch the video to find the answer but uh one thing I would say is that it's uh

01:22:53.040 people forget how long Harry Truman lived like Harry Truman didn't die until 1973 so like he was

01:23:00.120 around for like Nixon and Johnson and Kennedy and and all of that kind of uh sort of set so uh

01:23:06.680 there was kind of there was kind of an era of presidents that after they became president they

01:23:10.960 had the good sense to get like botulism and die like four years later you know Chester A. Arthur

01:23:17.220 you know Calvin Coolidge all these sort of other people you know just you know exit quietly

01:23:22.780 kind of a thing but I mean I think we're gonna we're gonna enter an era I think where uh you know

01:23:27.780 it might just be Obama for a while because all the other former presidents are really getting up there

01:23:32.120 in age they're all not to go off on a tangent to do this at the last minute but did you know that

01:23:36.920 like anyone watching this long probably doesn't mind more content Bush uh like George W Bush Bill

01:23:43.520 Clinton and Trump were all born within a few weeks of each other in 1946 so they're all more or less

01:23:50.140 exactly the same age you know Biden is a little bit older than those so that's like you know you

01:23:55.500 have four of the four of the five living former presidents are all like pushing 80 or already in

01:24:01.520 their 80s so and you know some of them are looking a little rough whereas Obama is still just in his

01:24:05.600 early 60s so it's it's not hard to imagine a scenario in which uh you know in just a few years

01:24:11.340 Obama might be the only living former president. That means we basically only had like two

01:24:17.140 real boomer presidents in a certain sense so and I there might be like an indictment of the boomer

01:24:23.580 age that all the hippie stuff that had gone on in that kind of generation ended up kind of ruining

01:24:29.420 them in terms of political relatability uh where all these other guys were very like career focused

01:24:35.720 get into office build a legacy and then run for president because you don't really get that many like

01:24:40.980 boomer Bob Dole type people that are around where it's like that guy's a statesman you get a lot of like

01:24:46.620 you know flash in the pan guys who pop up suddenly you know Jimmy Carter was kind of one of those

01:24:54.300 people but obviously not from the boomer generation but Bill Clinton's like the one. Yeah yeah no Bill 0.54

01:24:59.300 Clinton was the one and it is it is I don't know like generationally the presidents have been have been

01:25:04.400 weirdly non-diverse right like just the idea that we just have all these presidents from sort of the

01:25:09.300 the late 1940s and like yeah no no like sort of no boomers in the sense of like people from the 50s

01:25:16.900 no like like Gen Xers either like Obama kind of is a Gen Xer but kind of not it's he's like right on

01:25:23.860 the line he's right on the line 1961 was when he was born so like yeah he's technically like just a

01:25:30.100 really old you know I guess a really young boomer so I don't know it's just it's an odd mix but I think

01:25:35.680 that that does suggest that once this sort of crop dies off and once Trump is gone you could have a

01:25:41.320 very dramatic gear shift in terms of the youth of the presidents because I do think it's just going

01:25:45.820 to switch straight over to millennials and you'll have sort of people of sort of you know J.D. Vance,

01:25:50.660 AOC you know that kind of crew will be the next sort of lineup of presidents in their 40s.

01:25:56.200 Fair enough well anyway so make sure you guys stay tuned for that video

01:25:59.860 and on that note see you guys all later.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - January 20, 2025

JJ McCullough： Awful Liberal leadership, Jagmeet Singh, and Zoomer politics

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