Western Standard - The Pipeline： Slippery slope of the Trump indictment

00:00:00.000 Good evening, I'm Derek Fildebrand, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching

00:00:16.940 The Pipeline. Today is April 5th, 2023. We've got a great show for you today. I'm joined,

00:00:25.100 as always, by Western Standard opinion editor, Nigel Hannaford. How are you, Nigel?

00:00:28.880 Great, thanks. Pretty good to go. Actually, I realized we're having a blue suit convention today.

00:00:34.860 Yep. Well, I thought you were the one who sent the memo. Just so everyone's watching at home,

00:00:40.180 we do not coordinate what we're wearing, besides basic office dress codes. We've also got Western

00:00:45.780 Standard senior Alberta columnist Corey Morgan and host of The Corey Morgan Show with us. Mr. Corey

00:00:51.640 Morgan, how are you doing? Very good, Mr. Fildebrand. Did you get a new haircut or new glasses or

00:00:55.760 something? You look cool. Both, actually. Yes, I've tried a whole revamping. I'm glad you noticed.

00:01:00.540 The Botox was great. Thanks. Great. I'm going to do the lips next. Yeah. It's April 5th, so I'd be

00:01:06.320 remiss if I didn't note that on April 1st, we like to engage in a little bit of fake news on April 1st,

00:01:15.360 April Fool's Day. We've been doing this since we founded the Western Standard. We try to trick

00:01:21.700 the readers, especially those early morning readers. You're laying in bed, groggy, looking

00:01:25.680 at your phone, scrolling through the stories. And we had a great one. We'll pull it up on the

00:01:31.200 screen here, actually. It was that the federal government, federal budget was funding $100

00:01:37.320 billion to repurpose one lane of the Trans-Canada Highway to be repurposed as bike lanes.

00:01:44.700 Now, we had an unofficial vote on this in the newsroom here. And we came to that because

00:01:50.760 it sounded so damn plausible. And boy, we fooled a lot of people. It was pretty high-profile

00:01:56.440 people, too. We got them on the April Fool's. Because I don't think it was that... It is

00:02:01.420 outrageous, but it seems like something the federal government would do, which is why I

00:02:04.940 think it was so effective. I don't know whether you've looked at the stats, but we're still fooling

00:02:09.420 people on that. There's been 2,000 hits on that since April the 1st. I just hope these

00:02:16.300 guys actually do read to the end.

00:02:18.320 Because it's not April 1st anymore. They might be thinking this is just real. And you don't

00:02:23.700 know it's for sure until you get to the very last line, it says April Fool's. But I mean,

00:02:28.140 you should by the time... It's pretty outrageous by the time... It gets worse and worse as you

00:02:32.020 go through the article.

00:02:32.520 As you scroll through the article, it starts pretty serious at the top. By the time at the

00:02:36.800 bottom. You really should...

00:02:38.800 Daniel Spetz is going to invoke the Sovereignty Act and so forth.

00:02:41.800 Maybe not too bad, but Quebec Premier Francois Legault says he'll only allow it through Quebec

00:02:48.920 if Alberta pays for it. And Muslim women are not allowed to wear head coverings with their 1.00

00:02:54.620 bicycle helmets. That sounds entirely plausible as well.

00:02:58.120 To some people.

00:02:59.700 It's something Quebec would do. Something they would do. Okay, well, let's get onto it.

00:03:05.700 We've got a good show today. We're going to talk about... You all know that Donald, former

00:03:10.840 US President Donald Trump has been indicted on some kind of campaign finance charges related

00:03:17.280 to alleged hush money paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels. We're not going to talk about

00:03:25.880 that itself. But we're going to talk about the kind of the bigger term ramifications of

00:03:30.700 that because this is... It's not unprecedented that... Oh, let's say for instance, Donald

00:03:35.840 Trump did do this. He's guilty of a crime. He would be very far from the first US President

00:03:41.620 to commit a crime. I think you'd have a hard time mentioning a single US President who hasn't

00:03:46.840 committed a crime. But they don't seem to prosecute him. So this is changing a lot of precedent.

00:03:51.840 And it would... It has the potential to radically alter the nature of the American Republican

00:03:57.420 presidential system. So we're going to talk about kind of the slippery slope that couldn't

00:04:01.200 come with the Trump indictment. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she's going to sue the CBC.

00:04:08.980 Maybe. You've probably been following along the story where the Smith government in Alberta

00:04:15.800 has been accused of attempting metal with Crown prosecutors involving some of these kind

00:04:23.440 of crazy COVID cases where people have been facing charges for not obeying lockdown orders

00:04:29.840 and mandates and things like that. And a lot of what they've come up with, they've not provided

00:04:35.180 proof for. And Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she's going to sue the CBC. But they have

00:04:40.060 a month to correct the record and apologize. That's a bit unusual. And we're going to talk

00:04:46.560 about why. And defunding the police. Remember defunding the police, guys? Remember that?

00:04:52.160 That was all the rage, what, roughly two years ago? Defund the police. And we had it right

00:04:56.820 across Canada. Politicians, largely the municipal level, some of the provincial and federal level

00:05:01.540 with, you know, NDP types creeping a little towards the liberals. Liberals weren't that dumb 0.99

00:05:07.020 to do it. But they would not pay homage to some of the rhetoric around it. Well, defunding 0.99

00:05:12.520 the police. We've had, no one's, no one in Canada's gone full Seattle and totally defunded

00:05:18.460 the police, which, oh boy, Seattle worked out well. We're going to have to talk about the

00:05:21.940 Seattle example. That lasted a hot minute before it ended up in a Mad Max hellscape. But some

00:05:28.440 politicians did act on reducing police budgets. People like Alberta Mayor, Calgary Mayor Jody

00:05:34.640 Gondek, who it's kind of put in a tight spot now as we have this epidemic of urban violence,

00:05:41.140 particularly but not exclusively centered around areas of mass transit. We've got stabbing sprees,

00:05:46.640 people just being killed in random acts of violence. And I'm sure more social workers is

00:05:52.700 exactly what's going to fix this. Before we get into it, though, I want to thank my favorite

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00:06:00.700 Association for well over a decade, because I trust them as Canada's leading firearms rights

00:06:05.460 groups. Without the CSSA fighting for firearms owners, the federal government would have likely

00:06:10.000 seized virtually all of our firearms by now. They are leading the fight to, at the very least,

00:06:17.600 try to slow down the pace of gun confiscations and persecution of gun owners in Canada and doing

00:06:24.740 absolutely great work. And so if you're a firearms owner or just licensed for firearms,

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00:06:41.220 and join up. It's worth absolutely every penny. While you're at it, you should sign up for the

00:06:46.860 Western Standard too, eh? I think so. Good idea. Yeah. We're one of the only media in all of Canada

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00:06:56.900 membership. It's only $100 a year or $10 a month for unlimited access, supporting independent

00:07:02.400 journalism, and you'll have total access through our paywall to all of our content.

00:07:06.180 All right, let's get into it. We don't talk much American politics on the pipeline or the

00:07:12.700 Western Standard in general. There's enough going on north of the border, and we tend to focus more

00:07:18.060 on the West than elsewhere and federal issues affecting the West. But we just can't avoid it this

00:07:23.700 week. Former U.S. President Donald Trump has been indicted on, I think, 35 counts of technically

00:07:32.420 falsifying tax documents to- Business records. Business records to cover up the alleged-

00:07:40.020 34 counts. Yeah. All involving hush money to- alleged hush money paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels.

00:07:49.220 It's- we're not going to get into- I don't want to get into too much about if it's true or not. I've read

00:07:56.020 some stuff that this is bunk, you know, but there's always going to be two sides on this. It's very

00:08:01.140 political. I don't want to get into how legitimate the charges are or not. But we just have to keep in

00:08:07.140 mind, in the United States, in many places, the prosecution or district attorneys are elected positions.

00:08:13.780 This is something we're not really familiar with in Canada. These are elected positions, and it's not

00:08:19.540 all- they're partisan. You run as a Republican, and you run as a Democrat. In this case, it was a

00:08:26.820 Democrat, and he ran on a platform of indicting Trump. It's something kind of beyond the way we

00:08:33.700 think about these things, and I think we should probably elect more positions in Canada, but

00:08:37.780 electing prosecutors seems really dodgy to me, and this- seeing the consequence of it. We're seeing

00:08:43.700 the consequence of this. Now, I want to focus on not- first we'll talk- we know it's political. There's no

00:08:55.380 sense in getting into that. We know it's political. I don't think any side would deny that. Question is,

00:09:01.060 is this a good idea? And I- the way I see it, there's- let's just- so we can talk in- in the

00:09:09.060 abstract on this. Let's- let's take as a granted- which is not true. We'll take as a granted- Trump

00:09:14.100 is guilty. He has done something illegal. Okay. Well, there's almost certainly never been a president,

00:09:20.580 even a choir boy like George Washington, minus owning slaves, who's ever broken the law, and that

00:09:27.700 wasn't against the law at that time. Well, he was guilty of treason. Well, well, he was guilty of

00:09:33.700 treason against the British crown. That's entirely true. Yeah, so anyway. So virtually every president

00:09:39.620 has broken the law at some point, but none of them have ever been charged, let alone convicted of

00:09:44.740 anything. So there's- I think there's kind of two schools of thought. One is, well, they should be held

00:09:51.220 accountable. Presidents break the law. They should be held accountable like anyone else. Ben, that's a fair

00:09:57.060 argument to be made. But that means we would have to indict probably every living U.S. president,

00:10:04.100 a former U.S. president, except for maybe Jimmy Carter. He's probably a bad president, but he was

00:10:08.660 a choir boy. I'm not aware of any laws that he's broken. But Obama ordered targeted drone strikes on

00:10:15.220 American citizens, guys who did deserve to die, but were killed illegally. These were extrajudicial killings.

00:10:22.980 Obama could be brought up on first-degree murder. You know, Bill Clinton could be brought up on many

00:10:31.380 counts of perjury. But you don't do this in America. And I think the idea is that you don't- a lot of

00:10:37.220 these banana republics in parts of the other parts of the world, the former president is always thrown in 0.71

00:10:42.900 prison for corruption, abuse of power of some kind. Tax rule. Yes, something. And it kind of denigrates

00:10:51.380 the kind of people you're going to attract to the office. So I know there's been a long rambling

00:10:55.940 setup here. I apologize, but it's a big topic. If we just take for instance, as a granted, which is

00:11:03.380 not fair, but we take as granted, say Trump did break the law here, would it still be right

00:11:08.260 to charge him in this case? Depends what you think of the offense in question. I mean,

00:11:16.100 if a former president is arrested for drunk driving, yeah, he should probably face the charge.

00:11:22.500 However, in this case, it is so clearly aimed at the 2024 election and setting up the situation for

00:11:31.540 that. He's arraigned today. It's yesterday. So what are we talking about? April the 4th, 2023. Nothing

00:11:40.020 happens until January 2024, which is right when the next election starts. First with the primaries and

00:11:48.500 then with everything else. This case, I am told, now keep in mind, I am not an expert on American law.

00:11:57.540 However, those who I regard as credible in this matter, say that these charges are misdemeanors,

00:12:09.700 that the statute of limitations has run out on them, and that the only way that they could be brought

00:12:14.900 together is to say, ah, well, we're pursuing them because they were done to conceal a greater crime,

00:12:23.060 which would be a felony. Therefore, they can stand. Well, what's the greater crime? Well,

00:12:28.100 we're not going to tell you. So this is, I believe, on the basis of what I've heard, that this will not

00:12:36.180 stand up. It will fold. But meanwhile, the whole Republican Party, and Trump in particular,

00:12:45.060 has been put on an eight-month distraction. Just like so much of the rest of his presidency was

00:12:52.500 subjected to distractions, which seemed legitimate at the time. You know, the Russia investigation,

00:12:59.300 the Ukraine investigation, all turned out to be nothing there. But while he had to address that,

00:13:08.820 he was prevented from paying attention to other things that would have been better occupied at

00:13:14.020 the president's time. So the whole thing is political. That's not unusual, I guess, for things to be

00:13:20.420 political at the national level in any country. But the United States has always traded on being a

00:13:29.460 democratic superpower. The Second World War, massive production, arsenal of democracy. Democracy was

00:13:35.780 the fundamental virtue. In Iraq, what were they trying to do? Bring democracy. In Afghanistan...

00:13:41.220 No, that was the excuse after they couldn't find weapons of mass destruction.

00:13:43.620 Well, sure, but in Afghanistan...

00:13:45.220 It became their reason.

00:13:46.260 So, you know, if you're going to hold yourself up as a model of democracy,

00:13:51.620 you can't have a system where governments change and the new government prosecutes the old government.

00:13:58.660 That's how it happens in many Third World countries, some South American countries,

00:14:04.500 places where nobody pretends that they're truly democratic. The United States has to operate to a

00:14:11.220 higher standard. And this kind of political prosecution, boy, it can go both ways. You know,

00:14:17.940 in the saddle today, under the horses, hooves tomorrow. Right now, is Trump under the gun? Could be a

00:14:24.180 Democrat president when the power changes. This was a foolish, foolish move by the Democrats. 1.00

00:14:30.580 So, Corey, it's what I want to get into. This is with precedent. My reading of it, which is entirely 1.00

00:14:38.340 amateur, it looks pretty weak. They don't seem to have some smoking gun that he did anything wrong.

00:14:43.860 It looks more like when they got Al Capone on tax evasion. Yeah.

00:14:48.420 You know, like, maybe he did something. Maybe. I don't know. But it looks pretty minor. But, you know,

00:14:56.180 you look at, you know, even good presidents like Reagan. Reagan and George H.W. Bush, they had a Rand

00:15:01.540 contract. Clearly broke the law. But, like, nothing happened to them. Bill Clinton clearly broke the law.

00:15:12.500 Nothing happened to him. Obama clearly broke the law to kill some guys who deserve to be killed, 1.00

00:15:19.460 but clearly broke the law in doing so. And it's kind of just, it's been an unsaid thing that presidents 0.96

00:15:27.300 don't get charged. It was maybe epitomized by Nixon. We said, if the president does it,

00:15:32.020 it's not against the law. Something to that effect you said in his famous Frost interview,

00:15:36.740 which is kind of a maximalist view of presidential powers and a very dangerous view, I think. But it's

00:15:44.420 largely been accepted. Do you think this is win, lose or draw, whatever happens legally?

00:15:52.740 I think the the seals, the seals broken here. Republicans, there's also elected Republican

00:15:59.220 prosecutors in America do a lot of them. Do you think this is going to just start a huge round of

00:16:04.980 legal political recriminations where the legal system is now used to go after Biden, Obama?

00:16:10.340 Absolutely. I mean, you've opened that up. And it's, unfortunately, it's a reflection of how

00:16:14.500 vitriolic and divided the country has become. I know, you know, the listeners always get on my case

00:16:19.380 when I put it, I don't like Trump. I want to see that man in the rearview mirror. I'm sick of hearing

00:16:23.220 about Trump. I want to see a good Republican come up and have Trump in the history books. Now, this is,

00:16:28.340 this action has done two things. It's let him play victim. It's going to keep him in the news for the next six

00:16:33.380 months. And yes, the Republicans are going to be scrambling and distracted and won't be able to

00:16:37.300 deal with their primaries correctly. And as you said, it's unprecedented. I mean, we, you have to

00:16:43.060 use some judgment. A president isn't above the law. If a former president went out and stabbed somebody,

00:16:48.020 you take them in and you will be host being president. But presidents have killed people illegally

00:16:53.540 in office all the time. Like all, every president's killed people. Yes. Sometimes outside the law.

00:17:00.500 It's a case by case thing. This wasn't the pressing thing that they needed to turn the nation upside down

00:17:04.820 on and go after. It's pure vindictive approach. Going after a man that the Democrat establishment

00:17:12.500 despises is an unfortunate sign of what happens when you elect prosecutors. Yeah, they're gonna follow on

00:17:18.660 partisan lines when they really should, you know, be following that blind justice. It's a,

00:17:22.740 it's a disturbing precedent on all levels. And I'm saying this is somebody who again,

00:17:26.820 who has has no love of Trump, but this is not good for the United States at all.

00:17:31.700 Well, you hinted into this, Corey. Will this actually help Trump? So Trump, as a former

00:17:41.060 US president, obviously comes into the Republican primary or Republican nomination with a huge lead.

00:17:47.700 But Ron DeSantis has been making pretty good inroads. He wasn't in spitting distance,

00:17:52.740 but he was, he was in throwing distance, which is impressive. You know, Ron DeSantis really

00:17:59.060 distinguished himself during COVID as really one of the first leaders in the world. And first,

00:18:04.020 I'm aware of, at least in the Western world, to break the consensus around lockdowns and mandates.

00:18:09.620 And he threw it completely out the window. And he set off a chain reaction that kind of ended here in

00:18:15.860 Alberta, actually, in, in no small way, probably helped result in actually, Daniel Smith winning

00:18:23.220 the UCP leadership, quite the domino effect he started. And so he had, he's had a chance,

00:18:29.460 an outside chance, but a legitimate chance for the Republican nomination, offering some who said

00:18:34.420 Trumpism without Trump, that you can have a lot of the policies and things that he stands for without

00:18:39.780 kind of a narcissism that comes with Donald Trump. But a poll that came out that kind of did a kind

00:18:46.660 of an overnight poll after the indictment. And Trump's now just got a huge lead. Maybe that's

00:18:53.620 just short term here. We'll start with you, Nigel, is this going to help Donald Trump, I guess, maybe in

00:18:58.660 two parts, with the primary election, to get the Republican nomination, and then two, possibly with

00:19:04.820 the general election. Okay, if you want to be deeply conspiratorial about this, yes, it will help him in

00:19:10.660 the primary, because there's a huge sympathy factor. People who voted for Trump, people who like Trump,

00:19:16.420 are scandalized by the fact that the old convention, once you're out of office, they leave you alone,

00:19:22.900 with your conscience, you know, they're going to rally to his cause. He will probably sweep away

00:19:30.900 with the nomination. The second part of it is what you referred to about the actual election itself.

00:19:38.980 Now, the margins are incredibly, without getting into the whole, you know, January the 6th thing,

00:19:45.380 it was a close run election. You didn't need to move a lot of people from one side to the

00:19:51.940 other side, to bring about a different result. So, what do the Democrats do? They create this

00:20:00.500 massive paintbrush of a spear. It ensures that he gets the nomination. They, perhaps foolishly,

00:20:09.220 but they regard him as the weaker candidate, the one that they could more easily destroy.

00:20:14.740 Well, most of the data, most of the data supports that, that, you know, DeSantis would

00:20:19.060 wipe the floor with Biden. Many Republicans would, but Trump has got his hardcore base,

00:20:24.740 but he, a lot of Republicans have soured on Trump in the last couple of years.

00:20:30.020 So, you know, maybe they, maybe this is their, one of their, one of the spin-offs

00:20:34.820 of this would be get the candidate that they want. They better be careful what they wish for,

00:20:40.340 because I know there was a time when I personally, I can't speak for the conservative party,

00:20:45.220 when I say, oh yeah, let it, let it be Justin Trudeau. What a lightweight, you know, all hair

00:20:50.660 and teeth. And of course, now we've had seven and a half years of, of Justin Trudeau. It's been

00:20:56.420 a very, very bad thing for the country. So you can, you can call these things wrong. And I certainly did.

00:21:02.260 Maybe the Democrats would call that wrong too. You just don't know how these, like 10 months away,

00:21:06.500 man, that's a long time to, sorry, 18 months away for the, for the general, for the general election,

00:21:13.540 19 months. It's, who knows what can happen. For him to say he could have a heart attack and die.

00:21:18.100 So could Biden. You just don't know how these things are going to break. But the, the, I'm sure

00:21:24.820 that that's in the back of their minds. They'd rather face Trump the second time than DeSantis for

00:21:29.620 the first time. Corey, do you think this helps Trump, I guess, I guess, kind of two part,

00:21:33.940 win the Republican nomination? Is DeSantis got no hope now at this point? Or, and then second,

00:21:41.140 if Trump does get the nomination, is this going to help or hurt him? I won't go as far as saying

00:21:45.300 that DeSantis has no hope, but this is, this plays right into what Trump likes to do. He's

00:21:48.740 a victim of the establishment. They're coming to get me and they're rigging the game. They are

00:21:52.820 playing into the narrative he's building here. And that's how he loves to play. And that galvanizes

00:21:57.460 his supporters and it brings them out. And he campaigned in a sense as an anti-establishment

00:22:02.500 person, the time he won. I mean, Pennsylvania, areas like that, working class people say,

00:22:07.300 I'm going to stand up to the machine, the system. And right now the machine, the system does seem to

00:22:12.020 be coming after him and it gives him an ability to play that. Now that may or may not, if he wins the

00:22:18.340 nomination, I think it strengthens him for it, for sure. And if he does win it,

00:22:24.020 as we said, you know, it's hard to predict. As Nigel said, there could be an unintended consequence.

00:22:27.780 If he plays that right, markets it right, he could suddenly end up becoming president again.

00:22:32.180 And boy, what a wild four years we're in for then. And what do you want to bet that there's

00:22:36.820 going to be some Republican prosecutor somewhere who's now going to go look at those Democrat

00:22:41.380 prosecutor and try to find some grain to get him for malicious prosecution? I just, I think we're

00:22:50.180 entering a really dangerous period here. And I'm not sure what the right answer is.

00:22:55.300 Political recriminations and throwing all your ex-presidents in jail does not work for countries

00:23:01.220 to do that. But at the same time, you break the law, you should be held accountable. I'm not really

00:23:04.740 sure what the right way is to go. All I do know is if you're going to charge presidents, you have to

00:23:11.380 charge all of them for which we know they've broken crimes. And boy, it could get pretty crowded and sell

00:23:18.100 block P. Okay. We're going to move on now, bring it a little closer to home. Alberta Premier Daniel

00:23:26.500 Smith started as kind of a CBC story here trying to gin up a scandal. It goes back a while. Those of you

00:23:35.780 have watched the pipeline know the background of the story that Daniel Smith was accused by the CBC of

00:23:42.740 interfering with prosecutors who are going after people who were charged for violating lockdowns and

00:23:50.580 mandates and all this silly stuff that happened under the Kennedy government.

00:23:52.740 Prosecutors who weren't even elected.

00:23:54.420 Yes. Yes. We're still dealing with prosecutors here. Quite the segue. I didn't even put that

00:24:00.980 together. The CBC's whole story was based on emails from the Smith's Premier's office to the

00:24:09.220 prosecutors. After that story came out, the CBC was forced to admit they actually never saw the emails.

00:24:14.740 They just talked to someone who says the emails exist.

00:24:17.380 Okay. Well, I mean, that's not quite the solid story they were saying. I'm not saying the emails

00:24:24.180 don't exist. But it was an important detail the CBC left out of the original story. CBC's continued

00:24:30.100 on this. There was a call we talked about last week with Calgary Street Feature, Arthur Pulaski.

00:24:38.180 She says she doesn't have the power to pardon him and stuff. So I'm not really sure what the problem was.

00:24:41.700 But either way, the Smith now has come out and said, CBC retract the story or I'm going to sue you.

00:24:49.940 Okay, that sort of made sense. But what got me was, and you have until the end of April to do it,

00:24:55.860 a month. Now, if you've ever gotten a defamation notice before, you're normally given 24 hours.

00:25:04.420 That's pretty standard. You got 24 hours to meet this condition, this condition, and this condition.

00:25:08.820 Otherwise, we're going to sue your pants wire anymore. We're on cable. Crap. We're not we're

00:25:13.460 going to sue your behind. But they gave them a month. What's up with you, Corey? Why? Does that

00:25:19.620 look fishy to you? Like, is that weird? It's something I don't like saying very often, but I

00:25:22.980 don't know. It is weird that I'll grant. I mean, as you said, if there's something untrue, there's

00:25:28.500 something that's damaging, then you as the victim of it, you want that gone as soon as possible. You want

00:25:33.860 the retraction as quickly as possible, if you're going to get one. Or, you know, move forward,

00:25:39.060 you don't say, you know, that's really damaging and unfair and hurtful and wrong. And I'm going to

00:25:43.700 put up with it for another month until you reconsider it. So it's, it's unusual. And I can't see the

00:25:50.420 benefit in giving such an extended notice on this. I'm not drawing a line in the sand. Well, there is

00:25:56.100 another line in the sand that takes place around that exact same time, the writ drops for the official

00:26:01.220 election period to begin. Maybe it's because they want a story of like, okay, he gave the CBC all

00:26:07.540 this time, and we're going to sue him now. I don't know. Well, that's kind of the way I was thinking

00:26:13.140 about it. I was, I was, you know, that's brave of you to say, I don't know, because I was getting

00:26:18.820 ready to mouth those words. And then suddenly, I thought, wait a minute, this gives her a good story,

00:26:23.860 right as the election starts, right as the writ drops. Because this whole story, as it has played out

00:26:30.900 so far, and we don't know the end of it. But as it has played out, so far is a classic smear.

00:26:40.340 You put something out there. The other side denies it. The denial is never as persuasive as the original

00:26:47.940 allegation. And now there will be people who go to their grave, if they still care about this, saying,

00:26:55.300 they never could prove it, you know. Well, there was something there, or the CBC wouldn't have said it.

00:27:00.020 Well, look, it is possible the CBC is right. Well, it is. I don't think, I don't think it's

00:27:04.580 likely, but it's possible they are. I can't imagine why they would put themselves out there so far.

00:27:10.900 I don't have something. Some of, I know some of you are going to get angry, because I'm going to say,

00:27:15.940 there are some good journalists at the CBC. And I know some of the ones who worked on this story.

00:27:20.820 And, you know, they're serious people, serious journalists. But I kind of raised my eyebrow when

00:27:27.140 they published the original story saying, you know, emails show blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then

00:27:31.860 they had to correct their own story and say, well, we haven't seen the emails. We talked to a guy who

00:27:36.660 says he saw emails. So I don't have two minds on this. And also just, I don't know, I'm pretty confident

00:27:44.100 those emails don't exist. I mean, I think perhaps, you know, obviously, the CBC reporters were confident

00:27:49.140 that they did. But at this point, with the amount of grief, with the amount of stuff that's gone on,

00:27:54.340 I mean, if somebody could even take screen snaps of them and have forwarded them to the CBC or

00:27:58.100 something, you just hold the phone out for the CBC reporter. Yes. And that hasn't happened. They

00:28:04.820 never even could admit that they even saw them. So that's reporting on a rumor. And there's a lot

00:28:09.460 of danger in that, you know, so I suspect those don't exist.

00:28:13.300 No, I mean, it looks like a smear job that backfired. And it could, the best explanation

00:28:21.700 for the 30 days is just, it makes a better story as she goes into the election. 0.99

00:28:25.220 But is it a good story? Because, I mean, CBC backs down under threat of suit. I mean,

00:28:31.460 that's not a bad story. If the CBC backs down. But here's the thing about the CBC. They're not a real,

00:28:36.900 they're not a private company like the Western Standard. We get a defamation notice, even if we're

00:28:42.180 pretty confident in the story. I mean, there's a huge financial incentive to retract it anyway,

00:28:46.820 because we don't have a bottomless pit of money. But you know who does have a bottomless pit of

00:28:51.300 money? The federal government and the CBC. The CBC gets more than a billion dollars a year.

00:28:56.820 And do you want to bet for a minute that if Danielle Smith beat the CBC and got maximum damages,

00:29:04.340 that Justin Trudeau wouldn't turn around and just make them whole and cut a check?

00:29:07.940 They don't have any shareholders to answer to. They have no economic incentives to answer to.

00:29:12.580 The federal government would just turn around and say,

00:29:14.500 okay, Danielle Smith won $5 million. Here's a check for $5 million.

00:29:18.500 That's true. But boy, the reputational damage would be quite large.

00:29:22.740 Yes, it would.

00:29:23.940 If I were the CBC, I wouldn't want that.

00:29:25.940 No, but they have the ability to fight it in court to its maximum extent.

00:29:30.660 So if they think they've got any change, like, if you're, you know, if a big guy comes at you and

00:29:35.860 threatens to sue you, you've got to be pretty confident you're going to win. Because the

00:29:41.140 financial resources of going to court are so enormous. But you know, if a big guy is threatening

00:29:47.300 to sue a big guy, those things do go to trial, because they both got limitless resources to do

00:29:52.180 it. The CBC has limitless resources to pursue this. So if the CBC thinks they've got better than

00:30:01.940 a 25% chance of winning, they probably go to court. And the very least, it punts the issue out for

00:30:07.460 years before this thing would actually get solved. It'll go for years and years and years long after

00:30:12.100 the provincial election.

00:30:13.300 So somewhere down in the CBC office, there is a conversation that has either taken place or has

00:30:18.900 to take place at some point, where the people working on that story get pulled into the office

00:30:25.140 and say, who actually saw these emails? Did you see them? Well, actually, no.

00:30:33.380 Oh, they admit they didn't see them.

00:30:34.660 They didn't. That's right. So who was it who said that they had seen them? Well, I can't tell you that.

00:30:41.940 Look, we're all in the room together. This is serious stuff. Are we confident?

00:30:49.300 And there'll be a kind of a shakedown of who is, who is visibly sweating? Okay. You know, so

00:31:01.060 all of what you say is true about the limitless resource. But on a year to year basis, they still

00:31:05.460 have budgets to meet. And there's some, you know, I think the only damage would be reputational for the

00:31:10.660 CBC. Huge. As long as Trudeau is still prime minister, he would simply write them a check.

00:31:15.380 And also, you know, $5 million would be considered like record damages for defamation in Canada.

00:31:22.180 $5 million. The CBC doesn't sweat $5 million. It's nothing. They can afford even to pay,

00:31:30.500 even after legal fees, they can afford to pay maximum damages and not really have a significant

00:31:34.580 financial impact to the bottom line. Their only impact would be reputationally.

00:31:40.100 Well, that would be big.

00:31:43.860 I don't know, but is there a win for Smith in this? Because

00:31:47.300 I'm sure she just wants this issue to disappear though. I mean, this is one where they,

00:31:50.900 you could see they're trying to widen the crack. They're trying to build mistrust. I'm not talking

00:31:55.220 just about the CBC, but opponents politically. This is a case of mistrust. It's he said, she said,

00:32:00.980 or whatnot. And that was the intention of the smear in the first place. It's just,

00:32:05.060 even if there's nothing there, you create the, you create that a little bit of smoke.

00:32:08.660 Well, that's again, if it's a smear.

00:32:10.740 And that's what recently happened though, is they kind of brought it all up again and threw it in.

00:32:14.500 And that turns out there was no new revelations in this. You just regurgitated the story with a

00:32:20.260 video clip attached to it. I mean, Smith just wants this story out of the scroll, which again,

00:32:25.060 this is why I have surprises dragging out. Yeah. But, and I think there's a lot of parallel,

00:32:32.020 some, I don't take it as granted that this is a smear and that there is nothing here. I,

00:32:38.900 I will accept there's a possibility that it happened. I mean, it was a new government that

00:32:43.700 came in. They had like no staff. They kind of stumbled into the office because they had to get

00:32:48.340 Kenny out in 24 hours after she became Smith, after Smith became premier, because he was continuing to

00:32:54.340 govern in his own right, not act as an interim premier. So they kind of stumbled into the

00:32:58.500 premier's office. They expected to go in, but there was no transition that you didn't

00:33:02.180 traditionally have. We've talked about this before. It's possible an accident happened.

00:33:07.620 I don't know. On balance of things, it doesn't look like it was likely true, but

00:33:13.540 I think there's a possibility it is. Well, you'd have to ask yourself, well,

00:33:16.900 what's the CBC hanging onto it for if it's all true and they've got the proof? What did that mean?

00:33:21.780 Oh, are we holding it for the election? No, not necessarily. They, it is possible. CBC is telling

00:33:30.180 the truth, but they can't burn their source. And, and, and that's, that's a really dicey thing because

00:33:35.060 to defend yourself in court. You should be able to expose the emails without burning the source,

00:33:39.700 even a screen snap of them. Yeah. Or as Nigel said, just have one of the reporters say, yes,

00:33:44.820 the source showed me and I saw the email and they can't even do that. So yeah, no,

00:33:51.860 they haven't even seen an email held on a screen up to them. They can't even say that. And that's

00:33:57.940 pretty flimsy. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think we'd go for that in our newsroom, would we?

00:34:04.100 No, I want to float something really creepy past you. But I can see that. I've seen the email, Derek,

00:34:08.900 but I can, I can see the temptation, especially if, if the source is someone we trust. Like,

00:34:14.580 let's say it's someone we all know. This is a good guy. It's a friend. He wouldn't screw us.

00:34:19.940 And he comes and says, Nigel, I saw an email that says, I'm not even a joke. He'll get me sued.

00:34:28.180 I saw an email from Justin Trudeau to a guy admitting to murder. I'd be like, oh, that's a

00:34:36.740 big story. That's a big story. I want us to break that story. And we trust this guy,

00:34:42.900 but he won't even show you the email. I'm taking him on his word. I can see the temptation's there.

00:34:49.300 You're going to break a huge story, make a career out of it.

00:34:52.900 Or end one. Or end one. But like, you can see the temptation for a journalist to do that.

00:35:01.060 And, but that's part of our jobs is resisting that temptation as much as possible. Okay.

00:35:09.220 They say on cable news, time will tell. Yeah. Time will tell. All right. We're going to keep it,

00:35:17.860 uh, well, kind of go nationwide, but a little bit, some relevant here in Alberta. Um,

00:35:24.340 there were two years ago, uh, following the murder of, uh, George Floyd. This was,

00:35:29.300 um, he was a criminal, uh, being rightfully arrested in the United States, it seems,

00:35:34.900 but the police officer used bizarrely excessive force and put him in essentially a chokehold with his

00:35:42.340 knee guy saying, I can't breathe and he dies. And, uh, the police officer, Derek Chauvin convicted of

00:35:50.100 murder. And I think rightfully so, uh, but this sparked the black lives matter thing, which initially 1.00

00:35:55.700 I was like, oh, okay, well, you know, I think police brutality is a important issue and

00:36:00.740 some of this is relevant. And then it kind of spun way out of control and it became, uh, kind of a

00:36:06.900 racial social justice warrior woke mob and they started getting into defund the police. Um, and

00:36:17.860 defund the police became real, uh, really in vogue saying with a lot of lefty politicians and activists

00:36:23.140 for a while. We saw it right across, uh, Canada to different extents. You know, you saw Justin Trudeau,

00:36:29.780 uh, take a knee and bow to BLM. You had a lot of mayors or municipal politicians sort of adopt the

00:36:37.860 language around to fund the police. Here in Calgary, we had Jodi Gondek. Now she was a city 0.73

00:36:42.420 counselor at the time, not yet the mayor, but she, uh, advocated for and voted for measures

00:36:48.580 to as much as possible defund the police. They didn't, there was no proposal I'm aware of to go as

00:36:54.500 far as Seattle did, which was to defund the police, which resulted in, um, ganglords seizing power

00:37:03.140 within 24 hours, going around executing people. It was like a scene from Mad Max. Uh,

00:37:09.780 you know, uh, I think they had like what they're like vegan collectives and stuff in the streets

00:37:14.020 until they all starved and ran out of food. It was pretty funny. Um, we didn't go that far,

00:37:19.460 but they definitely, you know, they cut the police budget,

00:37:21.940 try to reallocate it to some squishier things. Uh, you saw this in Edmonton too. And, uh,

00:37:28.580 well now it's been, it's been two years and we've got lower police budgets. Uh, we've had an epidemic

00:37:34.740 of violence. We're now going through a stabbing spree across Canada, including right here in Calgary.

00:37:40.020 Uh, you just hop onto the LRT lines and you'll see just those LRTs become, uh, hold up that, uh,

00:37:47.780 you know, Corey's got a map here, just to kind of the crime, the crime, uh, I see that. Yeah.

00:37:54.100 So the, the crime lines, the heat map with the, the darker orange zones are actually coincidentally

00:37:59.140 all right along the LRT lines throughout the city. So it appears there's quite a correlation

00:38:04.500 between crime and, and, and the, uh, no, no one wants to go on this. You know, uh, city Congress says,

00:38:10.420 we're gonna spend billions of dollars for, uh, for the green lines, but more people use transit.

00:38:15.620 Maybe get the stabby meth heads off. That'll get people back on. Start there. Yeah. Let's start with

00:38:21.220 the stabby meth heads. Um, but no. So anyway, uh, this, this kind of came to what had yesterday, uh,

00:38:28.340 Alberta premier Danielle Smith stood with, uh, some police chiefs and, uh, Calgary mayor Jody Gondack,

00:38:35.780 who, um, has previously called for defunding the police. Uh, and she was asked a question.

00:38:41.620 I think it was a bit of a loaded question. It was the overall intent of the question,

00:38:45.140 I think was fair and relevant. It was a bit loaded, but, um, she didn't really like getting

00:38:49.140 asked tough questions. Uh, let's, uh, let's roll that question for mayor Gondack key in with the

00:38:55.060 counter signal. Uh, just a few months ago, a handful of months ago, you were fighting tooth and nail

00:39:00.340 again, against increasing the police budget and you were actively supporting defund the police

00:39:07.460 rhetoric. I'm just wondering when you realized that police forces were not optional, did it take,

00:39:13.780 you know, the random stabbings, wives getting stabbed, police officers getting killed to realize

00:39:18.580 that it was important to fund police departments and how can Calgarians trust you when you flip-flop

00:39:24.180 on basic issues like public safety? So, uh, yeah, you saw there that, uh, Calgary mayor Jody Gondack,

00:39:35.860 not very happy about getting asked this question. Again, it was a bit of a loaded question.

00:39:40.500 Overall, the intent of it was quite fair and relevant. Uh, just no response. I'll start with

00:39:45.700 you, Corey. What would have been the appropriate way for Jody Gondack, who had very clearly supported

00:39:51.220 the defund the police movement before she was mayor, but when she was a city councilor now 0.93

00:39:55.220 standing there, uh, beside, uh, provincial politicians and chiefs accepting more, more money

00:40:01.860 for the police? Well, I mean, a good, smart political answer would say circumstances have

00:40:06.100 changed from that time until today. And then we reevaluated things, but with the addiction epidemic

00:40:11.380 and other changing factors, the lockdowns have really, you know, shaken things up and clearly crime

00:40:16.740 has just become more acute. We obviously have to get some more boots on the ground to protect

00:40:20.820 Calgary is there. I could have written that and given it to her. It would look a lot better than

00:40:24.340 a blank stare for three seconds and storming away from the microphone. Be a BS political answer, 0.99

00:40:28.260 but at least be, I mean, as a mayor, she should be good enough to come up with that. Yeah. Any 0.99

00:40:32.980 politician could pull that out of the back pocket. Um, you know, Jody Gondack is, again, I don't want to

00:40:39.700 get too into the weeds for Calgary. We've got a national audience here. Um, but she's, you know, kind of a

00:40:44.740 symbol for that BLM and defund the police movement. Uh, where have these guys gone? I know, I know in

00:40:52.340 Seattle, they were murdered by their own gang lords who seized power and a few square blocks in their

00:40:57.700 vegan collective, but, uh, where have these advocates gone? Well, they very wisely stayed silent because

00:41:04.900 there really isn't the whole message of defund the police was misinterpreted by the criminal element.

00:41:10.740 It came out of the incident that you described with, uh, with the George Floyd murder and people

00:41:19.220 could get that an aggressive police force needed to be restrained if in fact it was aggressive.

00:41:26.020 And there has been a militarization of the police. Like you look at some of these guys,

00:41:29.620 they look like they're seal team six. There was, there was the video evidence of it. Uh, however,

00:41:35.220 what the criminal element heard is that defund the police, great. Anything goes. So if we got a

00:41:42.740 problem, we can work it out on the LRT. We can either go someplace and lift some property, call some,

00:41:49.700 call some damage, do some crime, whatever is advantageous. We can shoot up on the LRT. We can

00:41:56.340 make it shag on the LRT. Apparently so that's a well-watched video. Uh, so if you haven't seen it,

00:42:03.300 yeah, we've got the video up on the Edmonton LRT of a, of a couple, um, engaging in, uh,

00:42:10.020 they're having it away under a blanket right there on the LRT. And meanwhile, there's somebody

00:42:14.660 sitting back there thinking, I can't believe what I'm seeing. I got to film this. And we ended up

00:42:19.380 with the video. So, you know, defunding the police sends a message that nobody is paying attention to

00:42:26.580 what's going on around them anymore. Nobody cares. You can trace it all the way back to the broken window

00:42:32.980 theory that, uh, Rudy Giuliani brought in in New York. Once you start showing that you care,

00:42:39.140 the crime goes down. When you show that you don't care, that's what defund the police says

00:42:43.620 to the criminal mind. Well, then guess what? Up goes criminal, criminal elements,

00:42:50.820 criminal acts. So that's what's happened here. And I, you asked the question, where are these people gone?

00:42:55.620 They are stupid, but they're not so stupid as to stand by that original recommendation when 1.00

00:43:03.300 manifestly it doesn't work. They've just shut up. They shut up and let's hope they stay that way. 1.00

00:43:09.220 You know, when the defund the police thing happened, there was originally some interesting

00:43:14.020 writing that I thought was actually worth paying attention to. And these weren't people saying defund

00:43:18.180 the police, but it was like demilitarize the police said, you know, like you could talk about

00:43:22.420 reforming them. I mean, I think people would agree there were cultural problems. There were

00:43:27.860 structural problems and that's what's leading to police officers acting out. I mean, look to that,

00:43:33.140 but we're on earth with anything else. We say this system is failing. So the best thing we could do for

00:43:37.140 is to take the money away from it. You know, the healthcare system says we should defund it and make it

00:43:40.980 a little better. Education was defund the teachers and our children all get A's. I mean, it's,

00:43:45.540 it's absurd, but the trend went and the wave went and some politicians actually followed through with

00:43:50.500 it and we're seeing the fruit of it. What it did was demoralize police. And that also led to,

00:43:56.020 I think, further acting out on officers that weren't acting properly. It was an unintended consequence,

00:44:01.780 but I think as Nigel said, they realize how naive and how much this backfired and the wiser ones are

00:44:06.580 just, well, we'll just kind of slip into the background on this one and wait for the next issue.

00:44:10.740 I mean, there, there are instances, you get, you got a person with mental illness,

00:44:18.740 they're having problems, they have a bad day, they become suicidal and they want the police to shoot.

00:44:24.660 So they run out of the house with a dagger and threaten people and so forth.

00:44:32.180 The argument is, well, we need less police and more social workers, but you know,

00:44:35.860 the social worker who wants to jump into that situation is going to be a rare find. 1.00

00:44:40.180 Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to have to wrap it up there.

00:44:43.460 Nigel, Corey, thank you for joining me today. And thank all of you for joining us on the pipeline

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Western Standard - April 06, 2023

The Pipeline： Slippery slope of the Trump indictment

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