Western Standard reporter Jen Hodgson gives her thoughts on Canada's foreign minister Melanie Joline Jolie's trip to China, and why she should have been invited to China in the first place. Plus, a new Democratic candidate for president, Kamala Harris, and more.
00:04:09.300We're going to begin with China spanking Canada's foreign minister.0.56
00:04:14.720Let's bring in Western Standard reporter Jen Hodgson.0.90
00:04:19.280She's actually coming to us from the newsroom elsewhere in our building here in Calgary.
00:04:24.320Jen, you wrote a really great story that's up today.
00:04:31.280The media, the Canadian media, I doubt any actually went with or to China.
00:04:36.840Like the budget, to be fair, the budgets in the media are getting pretty small.
00:04:39.900So largely, the Canadian legacy media has reported more or less what the Canadian government told them happened.
00:04:47.240Why don't you tell us, give us a summary of what the Canadian government said happened slash legacy media reported happened.
00:04:54.320And then your work from the article you just put out today on what the Chinese Communist Party's media say.
00:05:02.900Hey, Derek. Yeah, that's right. So we have two different sides of the same story here.
00:05:08.080And of course, here in Canada, usually the kind of media that we have access to is what is put out by legacy media.
00:05:15.120Now, it's true that it doesn't appear that any Canadian journalist went along to China.
00:05:20.820there would have been a whole process to get approved for that, especially since this meeting,
00:05:25.600remember, was by the summoning of Beijing. Jolie was specifically requested to go and make this
00:05:32.720trip. So when she came back, she spoke with the Globe and Mail, and she told the Globe that
00:05:40.420actually she was very firm with China, her foreign affairs counterpart, speaking about the election
00:05:48.780interference that we have seen conducted by Chinese agents here in Canada. However, she did
00:05:55.360concede to the Globe and Mail that no progress was made and they sort of left it at that after a
00:06:02.540short meeting. Now, by contrast, in Chinese media and now as I was talking to Corey on his show
00:06:10.740earlier, let's keep in mind too that Chinese media, it's not independent like we have some of
00:06:17.980our media companies here, not the mainstream media, of course, but the Western Standard is an
00:06:23.140independent news outlet. That's not a thing in China. It's all state-sponsored. It all is a
00:06:29.560representative of the CCP, a mouthpiece of the CCP. Otherwise, it wouldn't get published.
00:06:36.780So what we've seen in actually, it's been brought to my attention, more than one outlet from Chinese
00:06:43.320media has published along the same lines reporting about how Jolie was actually
00:06:49.640reprimanded and not for the first time by her Chinese counterpart in the CCP.
00:06:58.040So she's been reprimanded for not being able to show any kind of political strength and not
00:07:07.080really understanding the new China, the new Chinese way of doing politics, is what the
00:07:14.040Foreign Affairs Minister Wong has said. So by that he means that Canada really needs to do a
00:07:20.120lot of reflection, is what was discussed in this article, in that there's a great misunderstanding
00:07:27.320about Canada and other Western countries, including the US, including Europe, that is doing this new
00:07:34.200kind of, quote, dirty diplomacy when China is trying to do things different. Now, of course,
00:07:40.580keeping in mind that this is from the perspective of Chinese media, but this is how the people in
00:07:46.300China would get this perspective and would perceive what would transpire during that
00:07:54.540meeting, of course. Like, we get our news, and in China they get their news. So the Foreign Affairs
00:08:00.820minister said that it was actually a very brief meeting and Jolie didn't have much to say and it
00:08:07.060actually sounded like it was um like she was being condescended quite a bit um saying that she needs
00:08:13.940to go and do all of this reflection well you use the term uh reprimanded uh in your story was that
00:08:19.060the term used by the chinese that's a direct quote from the chinese yeah you know how to say uh
00:08:24.340reprimanded or spanked and try and uh reprimanded or spanked i don't know what actually those words
00:08:34.020are that didn't need to come up too much in my rhetoric in my time there but you can say
00:08:40.260how it's a very bad perspective i actually only found out that you uh spoke uh mandarin uh i
00:08:46.180think like last week or a week before or something it was uh it blew my socks off in the newsroom
00:08:51.140that day. Corey, is it just me or do the liberal, do you think the Chinese just feel that the0.96
00:08:58.200liberals are being ungrateful for all the help that they've given them over the last few elections?
00:09:02.860Is that why the Chinese are so upset that the liberals just aren't grateful for all the help?
00:09:06.300I don't know. I mean, it's, the Chinese see the liberals as weak though. That's something that's
00:09:12.360clear. And I mean, well, look at it. They snap their fingers and the foreign minister comes
00:09:16.520at their beckoning. I mean, it's bizarre. They know that they can interfere with our elections
00:09:22.260as much as they like, and the Liberals will do everything possible to cover it up on their
00:09:25.520behalf. And, you know, we saw the leader of China chewing out Trudeau at a summit about a year ago
00:09:33.260as well. They have no respect for Canada. Jolie is not a strong minister. It might have been a DEI
00:09:40.300hire. Yeah, there's a lot of speculation as to how she got to her job and, you know, how well she
00:09:47.000may do it. But either way, it's being suddenly called out there and not really giving the public
00:09:52.260much information as to why a senior Trudeau minister went to China to have this sudden
00:09:56.340discussion. And then to have it coming out of them basically saying, yeah, we brought her over
00:10:00.080to tell the Trudeau government what to do and where to go. It's just more weakness on weakness
00:10:05.120with this government. Dave, I'm interested in the very different media reporting on this.
00:10:14.400We can blame the CBC maybe for not having a reporter there, assuming they didn't,
00:10:17.680I don't believe they did. CBC has essentially an unlimited budget from taxpayers. So they
00:10:24.080probably should have sent a reporter along. But you know, budget constraints make that extremely
00:10:28.720difficult proposition for those of us who actually have to run businesses.
00:10:31.440So, you know, they more or less have to go along, at least for the initial story, with what Melanie Jolie and the Trudeau government says happened.
00:10:42.800But it would appear, you know, when you read the Globe and Mail, you read Post Media, all these things, you know, CP, they're more or less just reporting what the government says happened.
00:10:53.700But there didn't seem to be, I don't think anybody actually looked at what the Chinese media said until then it occurred to me.
00:11:05.500I don't know if the Chinese are telling a more truthful story or not, but it's a much more complicated story than the Melanie Jolie and the Canadian press seem to have made it out to be.
00:11:56.740Chinese wield a lot of power in Canada because of what they did with the election interference.0.99
00:12:03.280And, you know, I don't know if they're correct in talking about Canada's got to be more reflective0.97
00:12:09.640around that, but, you know, the Liberals certainly know which side of the bread they're
00:12:15.460Jen, as usual, though, you know, a lot of the relationship between Canada and the CCP are wrapped up now in foreign interference issues.
00:12:30.380I mean, to be fair, both the Canadian Communist Party, the Chinese Communist Party and the Liberal Party have actually had the same story on foreign interference from China until it's become beyond deniable.
00:12:47.280Actually, the liberals still more or less deny it.
00:12:49.880They say, well, don't trust the experts when the experts disagree with us.
00:12:53.820But what came out of this on the foreign interference front?
00:12:59.480There's no word on that. So actually, Jolie, while she said that she firmly brought it up,
00:13:05.680she said, quote, very firmly broached the issue. There was actually no mention of this in the
00:13:13.280Chinese media article about this. So, I mean, they're not going to be giving credence to this
00:13:21.720accusation. I think that there was, there might have been a one line in this article,
00:13:26.380or perhaps it was another article out of the Chinese press that I was reading,
00:13:30.380that is just a mere simple denial of it. They don't really give it much discussion or much
00:13:39.580credit that it's a valid finding from Canadian investigators. So they're a little bit bold
00:13:47.580about this, right? They're not going to, they have a different kind of set of laws,
00:13:51.660a different political perspective and it's all about this power for them right and having that
00:13:58.540kind of authority that reaches out. I mean that's why we see organizations like the United Front
00:14:04.860which is a Chinese organization that essentially sets up agencies abroad that are working on behalf
00:14:14.780of the CCP. Is that the one that Stephen Gilbeau is an official member of? Yeah, I believe. Yeah,
00:14:22.940that's right. I believe he's on the board. Yeah. And we should be very clear. It's not even just
00:14:27.340a part of the Chinese government. It's a part of the Chinese Communist Party proper. That's right.
00:14:34.380Yep, that's right. Chinese Communist Party essentially?
00:14:38.780No, we don't know. It's more an honorary. They're probably looking for a job.
00:14:41.980Well, yeah. And it's important to remember, too, that as the Communist Party, all entities that are operating in China, whether they're directly under the command of the CCP or not, they are going to always be affiliated.
00:14:57.340There's always going to be that link. There's no such thing as an independent media or independent business.
00:15:02.900Well, I'm not sure we can lecture the Chinese on that from Canada anymore, you know, present company excluded. I'm not sure Canada gets the crow about our free press to the Chinese Communist Party anymore.0.83
00:15:13.540Jen, thank you very much for joining us and for your great story today. Everyone watching, you should go to westernstandard.news right now. Jen, give us the, what's the headline so they can find it easy?
00:15:25.980Sure thing. Thank you, Derek. It's Chinese media reports Jolie reprimanded after being
00:15:32.600summoned for unannounced meeting. Now, before I let you go, I did have a quick look at what
00:15:38.280is reprimanded, how to say that in Chinese. So it's chung jie. So you could say,0.90
00:15:43.360she was reprimanded. Yeah, a pretty good pronunciation.
00:15:49.980All right. All right. Keep giving us good stories. I'm going to shengjia you.
00:15:55.820Come on. Two weeks in China only learned ni hao.1.00
00:16:04.860All right. Au revoir. Auf Wiedersehen. Okay. Catch you guys later. Thank you very much.
00:16:11.180All right. Let's talk about weekend at Biden's. I'm sure there's a good meme we can find to put
00:16:17.340up there. They've been going for years, back when it was still a conspiracy theory and not
00:16:22.940official policy of the Democratic Party. So we're going to get into Kamala Harris in that,
00:16:29.580in the next little bit here, but let's talk about the milk carton president. Joe Biden
00:16:38.300just gone. I think a lot of us predicted he wasn't going to make it through the weekend,
00:16:41.900Sunday evening or afternoon if the hammer fell. And the way it happened has triggered some
00:16:49.260conspiracy theories and I'm not meaning to use that as a pejorative term anymore because conspiracy
00:16:55.340theory, today's conspiracy theories are tomorrow's news, too often at this point. But you know a lot
00:17:01.980of people analyze his resignation letter as, not as president, but as the democratic presumptive
00:17:09.900nominee. Wasn't on letterhead, not party letterhead, not presidential letterhead.
00:17:15.980A lot of people were analyzing the signature. I don't know what to make of that. I'm not in
00:17:20.160any position to say. But it was very short and terse, not what you'd expect for such a
00:17:25.360monumental, monumentous, literally earth-shaking announcement of that kind. And then he's just
00:17:35.100been completely not seen, which has led some people to think Joe Biden's dead.
00:17:42.040I didn't think he was dead, but, like, this is July 2024.
00:17:46.980I didn't put it beyond the pale that he had just died in there, like, pretending he was still going.
00:17:53.920But, like, Dave, I think it just shows you to, like, the almost Kafkaesque state to which U.S. politics in general and the Democratic Party in particular has come to that, I mean, the guy disappears.
00:18:09.900for a number of days and it becomes almost a legitimate question is he dead sure and it
00:18:13.900actually started a couple days earlier in in vegas when he dramatically cut his campaigning short
00:18:20.220uh looked very sickly walking up the steps of uh air force one looked even sicklier
00:18:26.780even sicklier uh coming down i had to be helped into the uh the beast uh and there were twitter
00:18:34.620rumors that day that major streets in Los Angeles or sorry Vegas had been blocked off because
00:18:40.660President Biden had a medical emergency and they were trying to get him to hospital. Of course
00:18:46.700didn't didn't go through and he flew back to the beach house and then he disappeared. You know he
00:18:55.240announced his closest aides didn't know about the resignation until a minute or two beforehand
00:19:03.000and then then things took a surreal turn uh i got an email from a buddy who said hey is biden dead
00:19:10.340what what do you mean well there's some weird stuff going on in washington you better check
00:19:16.080it out and i'm thinking well my saturday was ruined when he resigned is he gonna die on the
00:19:21.420next day and completely ruin my weekend so i check it out and yeah it's okay i think we think
00:19:27.800Biden has died. We think Biden has died all over. And, you know, obviously, I'm not going to publish
00:19:34.120that, so I didn't. No. I'd have had some words if you didn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure you would
00:19:39.800have, whatever it was in Chinese, you would have done that to me. Shenzhen, was that it? Yeah,0.84
00:19:45.060severely Shenzhen. Sounds less bad than spanking. Yeah. So, yeah, and it turned out to be just
00:19:52.520wild internet conspiracies. And, you know, on Monday or Tuesday, he staggered back onto the
00:20:01.540plane and staggered back to the White House. And he's supposed to be addressing the nation
00:20:06.400tonight, Wednesday night, six o'clock Mountain Standard Time. Our Michael Thomas is going to
00:20:14.280be monitoring, and I'll have the latest on that later on tonight. Yeah. Corey, obviously,
00:20:20.160I shouldn't even say obviously, apparently he's not dead.
00:20:24.920I didn't think he was dead, but, like, I thought, like, eh, could be true.
00:20:30.220I mean, Alex Jones has been right a few times this month.
00:23:42.740And it's not uncommon for it to accelerate at some point.
00:23:45.500So, yeah, you know, you've got to be concerned.
00:23:47.720Well, this raises, you know, there was a lot of theories about why that presidential debate was held so early before both candidates were even officially nominated.
00:23:57.600One obviously is not even going to end up being officially nominated.
00:24:00.600is a dud debate. You know, my thinking was that this was Democratic insiders wanted to expose him
00:24:07.520to the public to see him bumble and fall down so they could replace him. I think that's still a
00:24:12.960valid theory about why they did such a hugely early debate, like months and months earlier than
00:24:17.560any previous debate ever. The other theory I've seen, and I think holds water, and they are
00:24:24.700mutually contradictory, but this one also holds water, is that the Democratic insiders who pushed
00:24:30.360for this early debate, knew he was in such a steep cognitive decline that his dementia had accelerated to such an extent that they want to get a debate out of the way early because by October and November, he could be just totally gone.
00:24:51.160I think the operators realized this man isn't going to make it.
00:24:53.720But, I mean, if we remove him from the position without the public realizing just how bad it is, it's going to look like a coup.
00:25:01.020It's going to look like the knives are to a degree, but at least people can look and realize, okay, I mean, if I'm a Democratic Party member or operator, I realize this man just should not be in that role.
00:25:11.360But let's put it on public display just to say, look, you see, you know, I'm sympathetic.
00:25:14.920They can see how bad it is, how far along it is, and this is what we have to do.
00:25:18.500If he comes out tonight, stumbles, bumbles, mumbles, like he did in the debate, then, you know, I think the panic button gets pressed and maybe they start the 25th.
00:25:29.800Now, he's going to be reading from a teleprompter.
00:25:32.640Now, he even has difficulty with that, but reading from a teleprompter is a lot easier than sharing a stage with a man like Donald Trump, who's really good at getting in your head and you have to think on your feet.
00:25:44.300You know, Joe Biden ends up, you know, praising himself for destroying Medicaid, defeating Medicare like it was ISIS.
00:25:51.300Trump had the line of the night where he said, I don't think I didn't understand what Biden said.
00:25:55.300And I don't think he understands either. Yeah, like that clearly with that line.
00:25:59.300That was the nail. And I guess before I move on, I was to check debates in general.
00:26:05.300Generally, you know, in Canada, the big debate moment was 1984.
00:26:10.300Brian Mulroney, John Turner, you had a choice. There's been other debate moments since.
00:26:16.280Kennedy Nixon. Reagan did some good. Kennedy Nixon was the first televised leaders debate,
00:26:21.540presidential debate ever. And Reagan was good at them. Yeah. And especially in Reagan's second
00:26:27.980one with Walter Mondale, very similar topic where they're questioning, you know, are you told to do
00:26:33.040this? He said, well, I would, you know, to make age an issue is reprehensible. I would never use
00:26:38.100my opponents using him experience against them, brought the house down. He was already going to
00:26:42.760win the election. But then he went on to win a record, a near record landslide. But without a
00:26:49.920doubt, Trump Biden goes down in world history as the most consequential debate ever held. And I
00:26:56.500can't imagine there's ever going to be anything that can beat it. It's unbeatable. It wasn't that
00:27:04.180Trump killed him. This is just Biden walked out with his pants around his ankles, essentially.
00:27:09.460You know, it changed the whole thing. I mean, it removed him as a candidate for president.
00:27:13.680You don't get any more consequential than that. That's it. It changed the world.
00:27:18.240OK, so we'll keep the discussion moving along to Kamala. Now, the Americans have a different
00:27:26.900way of selecting their candidates than ours in that it's democratic. You know, in Canada,
00:27:32.480political parties are all private corporations. Most people don't know that. They're private
00:27:37.240corporations and really only their fundraising is regulated by law. Nothing else essentially is.
00:27:42.840Their nominations are just set internally and they're notoriously open to corruption and
00:27:48.720manipulation. That's how the Chinese Communist Party so thoroughly infiltrated the Liberal Party0.98
00:27:53.260because they're just private clubs and they can do whatever they want. The United States is0.94
00:27:58.240different. They're essentially pre-elections, these primaries, and they matter. They matter a lot.
00:28:05.080And, you know, when you have a sitting president running, the exception of Lyndon Johnson,
00:28:11.680they're almost never defeated. And actually, he wasn't even technically defeated. He just knew he
00:28:15.540was going to have a hard time, so he didn't go at it. But the primaries are done. Registered
00:28:20.860Democrats in America are done voting for their candidate. But not a single one of them, not a single vote has been cast to make the person candidate, the candidate who is now the candidate. And I mean, to call yourself the Democratic Party, and you have now the most undemocratic nomination of a candidate for the leadership of a party and country that has ever taken place.
00:28:50.860So it's going to be tough, Dave. How well do you think the Kamala Harris and the Democratic establishment are doing at getting the American public broadly and Democrats more specifically to accept as the Democratic nominee for president someone who has 0.0 Democratic votes cast for them?
00:29:13.560Well, I will remind you that she actually did run in primaries when she was running to be the Democratic nominee.0.77
00:31:05.320And so obviously she would be someone to take into consideration.
00:31:09.680But when talks started of replacing Biden at the top of the ticket, people were like, Democrats were generally not that enthused about Kamala Harris.
00:31:18.780But then as this became, as the conspiracy theory just became the news, they started looking at the rules.
00:31:26.900And Biden had raised a quarter of a billion dollars for the presidential war chest.
00:31:32.720And the only other person who could take that war chest over was Kamala Harris.
00:31:53.620They had two choices, and this has been happening fast.
00:31:56.020I'm not of the conspiracy that they planned or wanted this whole disaster to unfold for them.
00:31:59.900I think most of them are at a point of wishing that Biden's brain hadn't turned to pudding and they were moving ahead with the election as they expected and just carry on from there.
00:32:10.500They can go to an open nomination at the Democratic Convention and lose another month of campaigning while Democrats are fighting with each other rather than fighting against Trump.
00:33:37.460It'll segue into where I want to go next is, you know, those with ambition to be the Democratic nominee, you know, especially post Trump attempted assassination.
00:33:47.780they're probably looking around saying, wow, do I want to be, no one attended, do I want to jump
00:33:54.100in front of the bullet on this one? Like, it's... Well, and of all things I saw on X the other day
00:33:59.360was Kim Campbell tweeting out that this was brilliant tactics on the part of the Democrat
00:34:03.920party. The irony was just so beautiful. You know, I had to hit her with that. I hadn't seen that.
00:34:10.500Yeah, yeah, have a look. Like, she was trying to apply this was all tactical and Biden just built
00:34:15.480it up so he could hand it off to her and that it was brilliant. Okay, you're the woman who destroyed
00:34:20.820the biggest majority in Canadian history. Brian Mulroney's got to wear a lot of that. He certainly0.92
00:34:28.760does. But she jumped in front of the bullet to take it. And to hear her say that this is brilliant,0.98
00:34:35.300I think see that as a kiss of death. Okay, I hadn't seen that, Corey. When we're done here,
00:34:40.820when we're back in the newsroom, you've got to show me that. She probably hasn't tweeted since.
00:34:44.200Oh, my God. That is she should be one of the first purifiers. I think. Yeah. Oh, God. Wow. Wow. That is for those of you who know your history of Canadian politics. That is the kiss of death. If you've ever seen it. Let's talk about her chances. You know, Dave, you've already said you think Trump's going to make mincemeat out of her early polls, though.0.92
00:35:07.180I think there was an Ibsos poll showing her actually with a slight lead over Trump.
00:35:10.340I mean, people are always going to bump when they come in.
00:35:53.480Yeah, like, you can't tell when he's pulling your leg, lying, or being straight.
00:35:57.520I mean, it could be any of those three.
00:36:00.900But, I mean, Corey, I'll get your sense on Kamala Harris's chances.0.99
00:36:06.160She's weak. I don't think they're good, but American politics are tough. I mean, as much as you think that there's a difference, these elections always come down to just a couple percent. Like, it doesn't matter. There's not a big undecided sector in the state.0.68
00:36:19.920It's not a couple percent. It's a couple percent in a few select swing states.
00:36:23.600Yeah, the Democrat self-identified and registered Democrats and self-identified registered Republicans, they don't swing a heck of a lot at all.
00:36:32.060So whether or not she's going to be able to pull those few, I wouldn't rule her out.
00:36:37.080And I wouldn't. I'm taking the cowardly approach.
00:36:39.120I'm just saying it's going to be tight.
00:36:40.540I think it's not, as you said, it's natural for the bump right after the announcement, right?