Western Standard Opinion Editor Nigel Hannaford and Publisher Derek Fildebrandt discuss the U.S. presidential debate, the continuing fallout from the Toronto-St. Paul's by-election, and the growing scandal surrounding Justin Trudeau.
00:00:00.000Good day. Today is July 3rd, 2024. I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of The Western Standard,
00:00:28.580and you're watching The Pipeline, special Stampede edition of The Pipeline. I'm joined, as always,
00:00:35.900by Western Standard opinion editor, Nigel Hannaford. Hello again. Nigel actually did not dress for
00:00:40.480Stampede. He just kindly removed his tie so the rest of us didn't look like total schmucks. This
00:00:44.920is my Trudeau impression. Ah, well, yeah, you got the sleeves. Yeah. You got to do a dance. You got to do a dance. Yep. And Western Standard senior Alberta columnist, Corey Morgan. County partner. Who did get the memo. Ah.
00:00:57.960No, he wasn't in the office yesterday. He got the memo. Yeah, you just did that yourself, didn't you? No, no, I got a memo from Nico. Oh, okay. He gave me a heads up. Okay, good, good, good.
00:01:08.060All right. Well, you know, today is not very Western or Alberta focused. We're zooming out today. The closest we'll get is Ottawa. That'll be the closest to home.
00:01:19.620Today is, well, there's a pretty common theme about some politicians circling the drain, so to speak.
00:01:29.660You know, I try not to follow U.S. politics too closely, but God, I was out at the family cabin in the woods.
00:01:38.520I started, you know, we got a decent phone signal there now.
00:01:41.560I just started seeing clips of the U.S. presidential debate, and I just had to watch it.
00:01:50.440This might go down as possibly the most consequential U.S. presidential debate in history.
00:01:56.060Donald Trump versus, I don't know, some drooling old man that they pushed on the stage.
00:02:01.040So we're going to talk about the U.S. presidential debate and the continuing fallout for who will, in fact, be the Democratic nominee for president.
00:02:13.020Apparently not the sitting Democratic president who has won the primaries.
00:02:17.680And speaking of circling the drain, Justin Trudeau, the continuing fallout from the Toronto-St. Paul's by-election,
00:02:31.120writing, conservatives had no business winning, and winning it.
00:02:35.640And the crisis this has created, now finally, Justin Trudeau's had the country in crisis for years,
00:02:41.820but now, finally, the Liberal Party has been plunged into crisis, as they similarly look around and find that the leader of their party does not seem to be a winner at this moment.
00:02:53.540And compounding this, which should be a screaming national scandal, but really just hasn't got the attention because,
00:03:02.140I mean, I think Canadians become kind of almost immune to Trudeau scandal at this point.
00:03:09.720But Trudeau's defense minister at the time, Narjit Sajjan, I'm sure I'm not pronouncing that correctly,
00:03:18.560very significant scandal emerging now, as we find that when he was Trudeau's defense minister,
00:03:24.860and Afghanistan was falling to the Taliban, he diverted Canadian forces' resources away from rescuing Canadians
00:03:33.600and Canadian allies, people who had served the Canadian forces, people like translators,
00:03:39.520away from their duty and towards rescuing Sikhs.
00:03:48.240Now, this is obviously nothing against Sikhs, but these were just Sikhs who were in Afghanistan.
00:03:53.680Probably won't fare too well under the rule of someone like the Taliban,
00:03:58.060but, you know, these were not Canadians and Canadian allied assets who had served the Canadian forces,
00:07:15.740No one's ever been so well prepared for a debate.
00:07:17.200And, you know, every question that came up, he would say, oh, three points.
00:07:23.380And he would lead off for the first one, get mixed up on the second one, and forget the third one entirely.
00:07:31.020And obviously somebody had been saying, all right, sir, when they ask you about this, these are the three things you need to, these are the talking points.
00:07:39.300And he couldn't do it under the most favorable conditions imaginable.
00:07:44.040But with all that preparation, it was just sad.
00:07:48.840Corey, just, we're going to get to why this happened and the fallout and everything in a moment.
00:08:32.560And to his credit, I mean, it was both strategic and I think hopefully showing a bit of sign in a character that a man typically doesn't show much mercy for others.
00:08:40.720Trump did just kind of sit back and let Biden take care of himself.
00:08:44.620Because, you know, had he just been in and poking or beating on him, you know, I mean, Trump was still being his usual blowhard self.
00:08:51.640But he laid off on doing anything for Trump.
00:09:09.680But, you know, Trump's not a fool, whatever he is.
00:09:11.580And he's just realizing, well, just let this go.
00:09:14.240Like, this is taking care of it on my behalf.
00:09:17.180But it was just a terrible performance.
00:09:18.820It's a mismatch of people with cognitive ability that you really did.
00:09:24.860And I'm not a fan of Biden, but you felt sorry for the man in that situation.
00:09:28.360So the most fascinating part of it, to me, was immediately after the debate, you know, the hours and 24 hours after the debate, when all of the kind of left, Democratic-aligned media, all of a sudden were shocked.
00:09:57.660I mean, it's either massive self-delusion on the part of all these people, on the part of all, you know, the MSNBC, CNN types, Democratic pundits.
00:10:15.260It was either mass self-delusion or they were lying.
00:10:18.320And I generally try to be charitable towards those I disagree with.
00:10:22.200But it has been painfully obvious for at a minimum two years, probably going on at least three.
00:10:29.980I mean, he was already pretty slow and stuff in the 2020 presidential election.
00:10:34.480But he could plausibly be able to hold it together.
00:10:39.300For two years now, it has been painfully obvious this man is just not there anymore.
00:10:46.040This is not the Joe Biden, even if you're a big Joe Biden fan, this is not the Joe Biden you knew.
00:11:04.900But his man has been a senator longer than I've been alive.
00:11:06.960And they've all acted as if age and cognitive ability is not fair grounds, that it's somehow prejudiced towards this man and elderly people.
00:11:20.080But in the 1984 U.S. presidential election, it was fair grounds because Ronald Reagan was how old?
00:11:42.860Let's roll the clip from that very unforgettable clip from the 1984 presidential debate between Ronald Reagan and Mondale, where this was an issue and Ronald Reagan's unforgettable response.
00:11:56.840Mr. Truitt, and I want you to know that also, I will not make age an issue of this campaign.
00:12:03.700I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.
00:12:09.840If I still have time, I might add, Mr. Truitt, I might add that it was Seneca or it was Cicero, I don't know which, that said,
00:12:34.840if it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state.
00:12:40.360So when you've got the moderator and your opponent keeled over on laughter, you know you've won.
00:14:00.680But when you look, the most telling things are people showing Biden four years ago and putting it next to where he is today.
00:14:06.680This has been progressing for a while.
00:14:08.480People close to him, people behind closed doors knew how bad it's been getting.
00:14:13.160I mean, maybe they were crossing their fingers hoping it was going to be a good night rather than a bad one.
00:14:17.040But I think along the lines of others are saying they realized we're up the creek.
00:14:20.980But the only way we can pull the pin on this and kind of pull a mercy rule and quickly get a new candidate in by the convention is to show not only the Republicans but the Democrats, he just can't do it anymore.
00:14:40.340So, Nigel, you and I, you know, we chatted earlier this morning in the newsroom about this.
00:14:45.360I mean, I'm pretty good with not being in a tinfoil hat crowd.
00:14:50.160But you can't help but see pretty strong signs that Biden was set up for this by people not just in the DNC but probably it is pretty close inner circle that, you know, because previous to this debate,
00:15:05.400the earliest U.S. presidential debate ever was in September.
00:15:11.160This is three months earlier than the previous earliest debate.
00:15:16.320And the DNC was pushing for an early debate.
00:15:22.060They got CNN to host it, fairly favorable moderators.
00:15:26.620Although they didn't do a terrible job, but, you know, fairly favorable moderators.
00:15:31.220Mike's cut so that you can't really interrupt.
00:15:33.320I think that puts a huge disadvantage on Trump.
00:15:35.400Who, you know, with Hillary Clinton, he says, you know, because you'd be in jail, like little one-liners like that that he's good at that sting.
00:15:44.800But still, they had this early debate.
00:15:47.520And I can't help but think that they wanted this pre-convention so they can nominate someone else.
00:15:55.800And, you know, the thinking would be, why didn't, you know, the power brokers in the Democratic Party do this?
00:16:05.280Talk to him earlier so we could leave with a little more dignity than he's being pushed out right now.
00:16:09.380And I got to think it's because, you know, the kind of crony capitalist establishment of the Democratic Party, they're afraid of an open primary because the radical left could win in its own right.
00:16:21.340They could elect, you know, someone from kind of the AOC wing and that would make the Democrats unelectable.
00:16:26.440Well, also, crony capitalists need to at least be some capitalism for the cronyism to work.
00:16:32.520So that doesn't work with the far left either.
00:16:34.440So they wanted a Biden type, but they needed to wait until after the primaries are done, but before he's nominated.
00:16:41.720It sure just looks like this is a setup for the power brokers to bring in someone that they've probably already got in mind, doesn't it?
00:16:51.240Yeah, I think you've got a pretty fair summary of the whole thing there, Derek.
00:16:57.320Certainly, to take you back to your earlier point about the media, if you only watched what we refer to as the mainstream media, the MSNBC, the ABC, the CBS, those guys,
00:17:11.720then you would have only had a very sheltered portrait of Joe Biden in the time of his presidency.
00:17:19.840If you were a Fox News watcher, you would have almost seen an excess of Biden falls and fails in times when he misspoke himself,
00:17:34.060almost to the point where you started to disapprove of it.
00:17:38.200There's one thing to say, OK, this is the problem with the guy, but I don't want to see quite that much of it.
00:17:42.020I don't want to see so much exultation over his failings.
00:17:46.760But the truth was out there, thanks to Fox News, if you cared to look.
00:17:51.400The other place where the truth was, was in the immediate circle around the man in the White House.
00:20:55.500For those of you at home who do not know what the 25th Amendment is, that's the ability of the Cabinet to essentially remove the President if he's incapacitated or unable to serve.
00:21:05.760And there's the Speaker of the House actually just called on the Cabinet to do it.
00:22:30.900But the Democratic one could be very different.
00:22:33.740Now, you could have the convention increasingly likely looking like the convention is going to pick it.
00:22:39.680But all of these candidates, so all the delegates to this convention, they're all, well, not all, but they're overwhelmingly Biden delegates.
00:22:49.640So they're going to be a part of the Democratic establishment.
00:22:51.560There'll be a ton of horse trading, like we've never seen before.
00:23:01.820Obviously, Kamala Harris is very, probably deeply wounded that very few people are talking.
00:23:06.600He's the vice president, and everyone's like, ah, no, not her.
00:23:09.500But there, there is at least one major compelling reason to pick her is money.
00:23:17.100They've already, the Democrats have raised a lot of money for the presidential campaign.
00:23:20.000And from at least what I've read from experts in the States, the money raised for the presidential campaign can only be used by people who are on that ticket.
00:23:28.780So only if, only if she's on the ticket.
00:23:31.720Now, perhaps they'd be able to find a way.
00:23:33.220If they keep her as the VP, keep her at the bottom of the ticket, maybe they keep that in there.
00:23:37.600I mean, man, that'd be a slap in the face to just stay at the bottom of the ticket with a new person.
00:24:58.900But, as for Joe, this is what we're looking at now is a time of max danger.
00:25:07.120If you were hostile to the United States, if you were, shall we say, a major Far Eastern superpower with eyes on an island just off your coast,
00:27:01.000But, I mean, there's a case for, if they're going to switch it to her, they have reason for Biden to formally, he can call it retire instead of resign, say, I'm retiring.
00:27:14.920And then the Democrats get the claim they had the first woman president.
00:27:19.800I mean, she might be the Kim Campbell of America.
00:27:22.340I can see it, because, again, if they're making the case that he's unfit to be a candidate, the case is equally valid that he should not be in the presidential role.
00:27:28.940And she is, technically, the person who's supposed to fill it in that circumstance.
00:27:38.640And it gets her out of their hair while they worry about who the actual incoming longer-term president, vice president, potentially could be as candidate.
00:27:47.400But if they do set her up, like, she is going to be a potential for the top of the ticket.
00:27:52.760I mean, the Democrats don't seem enthused about it because she's so unpopular.
00:27:55.960Well, she's weird, and she's not that bright.
00:28:31.140And some Americans will not want the first woman president to be a Kim Campbell.
00:28:38.980No, I mean, maybe some of them will just accept we're going to let another electoral cycle go to the Republicans and just let her take the fall and rebuild.
00:28:49.640But they're not giving this as another cycle.
00:29:28.620But now, after that court ruling which declared presidential immunity, oh, well, now we're talking about a fascist state and the authoritarian.
00:29:37.560So, this is the kind of tenor that it's going to have.
00:29:40.980Well, we've taken well over half the show on justice.
00:29:44.340But, I mean, it's such a fascinating topic.
00:32:22.300I mean, they've maintained incredible loyalty in keeping the cracks from leaking in the ship and moving along and convincing themselves, even though similar.
00:32:32.200Again, it's a similar situation to the south, as you said, with the parallels.
00:32:37.380You can see that this ship is sinking.
00:32:39.180But now the hole is just blown out and it is gushing.
00:32:42.800There's no denying anymore that not only are they in dire, dire straits of hopes of re-election, but no matter which leader they have, but without doubt, that Prime Minister Trudeau isn't anchored.
00:32:56.500They have to either sync with that man, I know I was really hitting the analogies, or get rid of him.
00:33:13.900But the liberals are still navel-gazing, and I imagine Canadian support is just continuing to plummet in light of it.
00:33:20.560So, Nigel, I want to go more to the second question to you.
00:33:24.020So, the liberals are probably kicking themselves right now.
00:33:28.560And funny, no one's talked about this.
00:33:30.320Maybe this would be a good column for you.
00:33:32.680The liberals broke the law immediately after the last election by not having a vote on adopting the Reform Act.
00:33:40.340So, most people don't know too much about this, but the Reform Act was a private member's bill brought in by a conservative named Michael Chong.
00:33:47.400It was designed to reform how Parliament is done a bit, give some more power back to members of Parliament, and away from the centralization of the leaders' offices.
00:33:56.800And everybody, all the party leaders were opposed to this.
00:33:59.700Harper was prime minister when this happened.
00:34:01.840He was probably not too pleased about it.
00:34:08.800And one of the watering down provisions was that if provisions within caucuses are not automatic, but that after every election, the new caucus votes on if it applies to them or not.
00:34:19.320I mean, so it was a pretty watered-down bill.
00:34:21.180But you have, by law, to have that vote.
00:34:23.820The liberals never had the vote on if the act applies to them.
00:34:26.720So, what's the most important thing that act does?
00:34:29.900It gives the caucus the right to fire the leader.
00:34:33.340And that was used for the first time during the Freedom Convoy to fire Aaron O'Toole.
00:34:39.680Aaron O'Toole started to, well, he had a pretty weak performance all the way around.
00:34:44.620We don't need to recount his political sins.
00:34:46.340But he was making some moves behind the scenes against certain people who ended up being leader after him.
00:34:53.320And the caucus revolted against him, and they fired him.
00:34:56.300It was, I mean, compare that to Alberta, where we had a drawn-out, bloody fight for two years.
00:36:21.500And there would pretty soon come a point where the Prime Minister would not have the support of enough of his caucus to keep the thing going.