The Pipeline： Slippery slope of the Trump indictment
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
176.18416
Summary
Western Standard Opinion Editor Nigel Hannaford and Senior Alberta Columnist Corey Morgan join host Derek Fildebrand to talk about the Trump Indictment, a proposed bike lane on the Trans-Canada Highway, and much, much more!
Transcript
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
00:02:18.320
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
00:02:32.520
As you scroll through the article, it starts pretty serious at the top. By the time at the
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
00:02:54.620
bicycle helmets. That sounds entirely plausible as well.
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
00:05:07.020
to do it. But they would not pay homage to some of the rhetoric around it. Well, defunding
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
00:05:56.780
sponsor, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association. I've been a member of the Canadian Shooting Sports
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,
00:06:28.560
you don't be getting the free ride on this. You need to support the fight and join the Canadian
00:06:34.680
Shooting Sports Association. Go to cssa-cila.org or do what I do, Google them, click on membership,
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
00:06:52.140
refused to take the federal government's bailout money. Go to westernstandard.news and click on
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
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.
00:13:46.260
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.
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
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,
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
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.
00:23:54.420
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.
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.
00:29:25.940
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
00:30:13.300
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.
00:30:34.660
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.
00:31:43.860
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.
00:32:10.740
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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.
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.
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
00:44:48.340
and the Western Standard. If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, please go to
00:44:51.780
westernstandard.news, click on membership. It's only $10 a month or $100 a year to join us to get
00:44:57.860
full access to all Western Standard content past that pesky paywall that I know you keep on hitting
00:45:02.660
against. You'll be supporting independent media. We are one of probably about three,
00:45:10.020
maybe four media in the entire country that refuse to accept the federal government's media bailout.
00:45:16.980
And we rely on advertisers like the Canadian Shooting Sports Association and direct support
00:45:22.980
from members like you. So sign up today. Thank you very much for joining us. God bless.
00:45:28.420
Canadian Shooting Sports Association. Without the CSSA,
00:45:31.700
our gun rights would have been taken long, long ago. These guys are on the front lines helping
00:45:37.060
to draft smart and intelligent firearms regulations and legislation in Canada. And more importantly,
00:45:43.780
educating the public about how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. We've become a
00:45:48.500
member. It's absolutely worth every penny. You can become a Western Standard member for
00:45:54.820
just $10 a month or $99 a year for unlimited access.