Ezra Levant’s June 12, 2018 episode defends free speech amid government inaction on carbon taxes, then critiques Trump’s North Korea summit—Kim’s "bait and switch" tactics, canceled after six weeks, contrasted with Trudeau’s G7 focus on climate over trade. A CIA propaganda film targeting Kim’s ego (NBA, luxury goods) is praised as strategic. Doug Ford’s hiring freeze and 1.5% spending cuts are highlighted, while Iran-funded Al-Quds Day protests in Toronto—permitted despite anti-Semitic chants and Hezbollah flags—expose double standards. Levant warns Ford against bureaucratic resistance and media bias, mocking Trudeau’s trade failures and past scandals like a 2000 groping incident ignored by Canadian media. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Donald Trump leaves the childish gossip of the G7 and makes the most powerful case imaginable to North Korea's tyrant.
If it's possible to do a deal, he'll get it.
It's June 12th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Donald Trump flew to Singapore for a one-on-one meeting with Kim Jong-un, the dictator of North Korea.
The two men were by themselves, just the two of them, for almost an hour.
Then their teams met.
Donald Trump has done many deals in his life with many difficult characters.
This is obviously the most important of any of them and quite likely the most difficult too.
If it works, the Korean War will finally be over.
It's technically still on the war.
You know, it's just in a ceasefire.
That's since 1950.
That's a 68-year war.
A million people died between the two sides at least.
Canada was an official combatant in that war too, don't forget.
Trump isn't the first U.S. president to try.
Here's Bill Clinton, Secretary of State, Mandelin Albright, trying back in the year 2000, the last year of Clinton's presidency, so desperate for a deal, for a legacy, so many concessions given to Kim Jong-un's father, who just pocketed the concessions, signed whatever piece of paper, and then reneged.
Again and again, perpetual Grinksmanship, I've heard it called.
Misbehave, panic the West, the West makes an offer, pocket the offer and behave for a little while, and then misbehave again and rinse and repeat.
Well, Donald Trump thought he'd break the cycle first by being tougher than Clinton or Obama or George W. Bush for that matter.
Remember his Twitter comments mocking Kim Jong-un as a little rocket man.
I'm sorry, I'm laughing.
It's so outrageous that he said that and mocking his nuclear button, saying Trump's was much bigger and more powerful, and my button works, he said.
Now, all the fancy people, all the experts said Trump was going to start World War III over Twitter.
No, no, he was just showing that he's not a fool like past presidents, not a pushover, not easily gulled into a compromise, and willing to use military might up to and including nukes.
The Western elite saw craziness.
They said Trump was crazy, he was rogue.
As if those were not calculated tweets thought through word for word to do a hard reset on North Korean policy.
Follow up hard with some of the most massive war games ever scheduled for the region.
Training exercises with the South Koreans.
This was no Obama piecenik.
He was talking about war and he was rolling out the war machines.
And wouldn't you know it, it worked?
It worked, at least so far.
Six weeks ago, Kim Jong-un walked across the border at Panmoon-Jom, the demilitarized zone, and he shook the hand of his South Korean counterpart.
And they had a historic meeting.
It was historic, but it wasn't what Trump wanted.
He wanted full denuclearization of North Korea, not a photo op.
Now, Kim promised that he would do that, but he hasn't done it yet.
But he did start doing a few things.
He unilaterally released all remaining hostages of Americans that North Korean held.
This was what Kim agreed to do even before he had his meeting with Trump.
He was making concessions to Trump in advance of the deal.
He promised to denuclearize.
He promised to do so fully and quickly.
And Trump was clearly happy with this.
So Kim did what he always did and what his father always did.
Did the bait and switch.
He saw that he got Trump hooked, right?
So he started trash-talking Trump.
Well, not Trump specifically, but the United States.
Because Kim has played this game for years, just like his dad did.
But then Trump shows this ain't his first rodeo.
He wrote a very polite letter to Kim Jong-un.
Your Excellency, dear Mr. Chairman, we greatly appreciate your time, patience, and effort.
He was very nice in the letter.
And it was published on the internet, as Trump does.
And it basically said, hey, man, thanks for releasing the hostages, but we can't have the meeting because you're being belligerent.
The Singapore summit is off, he said.
If you change your mind and get serious, you know where to reach me, he said.
Now, this letter was a shock to Kim.
We have reports from journalists who were there in North Korea with senior North Korean aides who, when the journalists read this note to these senior Kim aides, they were visibly shocked and terrified.
Kim had misjudged Trump.
They had misjudged everything.
Now, what if the whole thing was ruined because Kim was playing his games again?
Trump knew rule number one: never want the deal as badly as the other side does.
Or if you do, keep that a secret.
Play poker a little bit.
What a contrast to Barack Obama, who made it known he would literally do anything for a nuke deal with Iran, including flying a pallet of cash, more than a billion dollars in banknotes.
He just flew it to the regime.
I mean, that was bad enough, but the provocations from Iran, like seizing and kidnapping and humiliating U.S. Armed Forces in the Persian Gulf, really, there was nothing Iran could do that would make Obama not love them even more.
Trump canceled the whole deal over a perceived slight.
And Kim jumped right back to attention.
Again, all the fancy people roared.
First they roared that Trump's mean tweets about nuclear buttons would start a war.
Then they roared that Trump walking away from Singapore made it a lost cause.
It's almost like these journalists have no idea what they're doing.
Well, Kim Jong-un buckled, of course, and he sent a senior advisor to the White House, and the summit was back on.
And indeed it was.
Now, before I show you how the summit went, let me remind you of where Trump spent a day or two right before going to Korea.
He was in Quebec with Justin Trudeau and the rest of the G7 talking about, I am not kidding, gender quotas and global warming with leaders that if he wanted to, he could pick up the phone and talk to at any moment.
Imagine wasting his time like that.
The media mocked Trump for coming late to the meeting on gender equality.
Here's a picture of him arriving late.
Yeah, you know, Trump could get that politically correct blather anywhere, anytime.
He didn't need to sit and listen to our shiny pony talk about being a great male feminist.
He had a few more important things to do, like prepare for a once-in-a-lifetime negotiation with a very unusual and eccentric and reclusive counterpart who happens to have nukes.
But no, Trudeau wanted to chat about him about intersectionality and feminism, man.
Trump talked a bit with Trudeau about trade.
That went off the rails famously, and Canada is still fussing about Trump's mean words on Twitter.
Meantime, Trump got right on a plane, flew, what, 25 hours to Singapore, had a serious and heavy negotiation, and he's on the plane, I think, right now even, flying back for 25 hours.
That's a hell of a grueling schedule for someone who just turned, I think, 72.
By contrast, Trudeau, who is 46, needed not only Sunday off, but he needed yesterday, Monday off as personal days to recover.
Trudeau is 46 and lazy.
Trump is 72 and not only has stamina, he actually reads his briefing notes because with Kim Jong-un, you are dealing with someone who is so unlike anywhere else, anyone else on earth.
It's almost like he's an alien.
He's a dictator, son of a dictator, son of a dictator.
Three generations of dictators, but not just dictators, cult figures, semi-divine.
I mean, we have royalty in Canada.
Queen Elizabeth, the princes, they are special.
They are born for that purpose, but they are not above the law, and they do not claim to be God-given.
North Korea is atheist, of course, but their propaganda is virtually religious about the power and intelligence and morality of the Kim family.
So imagine three generations of that.
A billionaire, of course.
All-powerful, though.
He can command that anyone be murdered.
He lives in paranoia.
He even executes family members.
He has delusions of grandeur mixed in with the harsh reality of his failed state, starvation, technological backwardness.
But he has a big enough conventional army to destroy South Korea.
But his nukes make him world-class, if only as a potential mass murderer.
That's Kim Jong-un.
I mean, he has traveled abroad, but not much and not in a normal manner.
His father was a film buff.
He had 20,000 movies.
And of the real-to-reel style, you know, he was a film fanatic.
They imported all sorts of luxury items from the West while their own people starved.
His father kidnapped a movie director from South Korea.
These are deeply weird, weird people.
How do you even negotiate with such people?
Trump has negotiated with anyone and everyone in New York real estate.
I mean, I can only imagine.
Crooked city inspectors, crooked union bosses, tax collectors, lawyers, anyone, everyone.
Never with an alien like this, though.
Well, how's he going to do it?
Well, that's what Trump was doing when he wasn't listening to Justin Trudeau ramble on about being a male ally to feminists.
Trump was surely reading every note, every scrap of intelligence about Kim Jong-un so as to have an effective meeting with him, learn everything about him, learn anything about him.
And you can see that in some of the iconography of the meeting.
Take a look at this.
Look at how equal the two men are depicted there.
We know that's not true.
I mean, we know that's not true politically, militarily, morally, financially, in any sense.
But Trump wasn't making that video for you or me.
He was sending a message on the day of the meeting that to Kim, they were equals.
This is a historic moment.
Do you really believe Trump regards Kim as an equal?
But he was treating him regally, royally, because he's got nukes.
He was allowed to get nukes under the last guy.
And Trump is just trying to talk a guy holding a bunch of nukes, trying to talk him down with the power of persuasion, not the power of America's nukes.
And he's using Kim's ego and paranoia as emotions as tools.
Look at this panel on CNN.
Oh, they wish Obama was having this meeting.
They wish they didn't have to praise Trump for potentially ending this 68-year war.
So they nitpicked.
They were furious about the menu.
Sam, you're shaking your head.
You agree.
You want to see some substances.
I do, but I want to bring it back to the menu for a second, not just because I'm hungry, but because typically the White House releases these kinds of details after, for example, the French president comes to the White House or another head of state comes for a state visit.
So by releasing the details of the menu, this is again legitimizing Kim Jong-un and putting him on equal footing with other world leaders, which is what he wants.
One particularly interesting thing about the menu is I was thinking as you were reading all that out, Don, the poor North Korean people, if they knew what is being dished out there, they can't even imagine the types of foods that you rolled off your tongue.
Right, because they just don't, it's a poor country, and because of Kim Jong-un himself and his family, again, you're right, beef short ribs, combination of sweet and sour crispy pork and yanggu fried rice, yangzoo fried rice, soy braised codfish.
I mean, that sounds really yummy and very expensive.
That really aired on CNN.
That's not like satire or anything.
That woman, Sam Vinograd, used to work for Obama.
Do you think she really cares about the menu, or do you think she's just begrudging Trump his achievement?
Now, the deal's not done yet, but let's have a comparison.
The CNN and Sam Vinograph, they weren't fussed when Obama gave de facto diplomatic recognition to Cuba in his final term, desperate for a legacy like Clinton was.
America literally got nothing in return for that, but the media loved it because they're, you know, sort of socialists themselves.
Trump's not a socialist.
Trump's not a communist.
I'm sure Trump actually despises the little rocket man, but you put on a show of respect for someone who's holding a nuclear detonator, at least until you can take the detonator away from him.
But I want to close by showing you a masterful video, much different from the short one I just showed you.
This next video is obviously created by the CIA.
It pretends to be a real movie studio, Destiny Pictures.
It sounds like a movie trailer, same kind of voiceover, but it's a movie made for just one person and one person only.
It is made for Kim Jong-un to convince him to let go of the detonator.
Look at the fascinating details of the movie, the references to the NBA.
We know Kim loves the NBA.
He loves Dennis Rodman, the NBA player.
A Moment to Change History00:04:30
Sylvester Salone, other movie imagery, things that we know Kim wants or likes or is obsessed with, and other real-life problems like basic electrification.
Most of Korea's dark.
Food on the shelves.
Korea has been starving.
Things that he doesn't want, the stick, not just the carrot, U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups.
There is imagery that I don't quite understand.
The sun and the earth and the moon is shown at least five times.
I've got to think that's a reference to some cult-like legend about Kim.
There's references to changing the course of history, to letting go of the past.
There's references to personal luxury, like the speedboat.
I bet Kim indicated somehow that he wanted one, and the CIA heard that and they said, well, push that button in the movie.
North Korea, a failed state, is put on par with mighty civilizations like Greece, Rome, Egypt, the British Empire in this film.
It's a hell of a thing.
And all Kim has to do is accept the hand of peace from Donald Trump, as it said.
This is the most amazing movie I think I've ever watched because it's how to talk to an alien.
Here, let me show you this movie in full.
Take a look.
Seven billion people inhabit planet Earth.
Of those alive today, only a small number will leave a lasting impact.
And only the very few will make decisions or take actions that renew their homeland and change the course of history.
History may appear to repeat itself for generations.
Cycles that never seem to end.
There have been times of relative peace and times of great tension.
While this cycle repeats, the light of prosperity and innovation has burned bright for most of the world.
History is always evolving.
And there comes a time when only a few are called upon to make a difference.
But the question is, what difference will the few make?
The past doesn't have to be the future.
Out of the darkness can come the light.
And the light of hope can burn bright.
What if a people that share a common and rich heritage can find a common future?
Their story is well known.
But what will be their sequel?
Destiny Pictures presents a story of opportunity.
A new story.
A new beginning.
One of peace.
Two men.
Two leaders.
One destiny.
A story about a special moment in time when a man is presented with one chance that may never be repeated.
What will he choose?
to show vision and leadership or not there can only be two results One of moving back or one of moving forward.
A new world can begin today.
One of friendship, respect, and goodwill.
Be part of that world where the doors of opportunity are ready to be opened.
Investment from around the world, where you can have medical breakthroughs, an abundance of resources, innovative technology, and new discoveries.
What if?
Can history be changed?
Will the world embrace this change?
And when could this moment in history begin?
Trimming Alberta's Budget00:15:05
It comes down to a choice.
On this day, in this time, at this moment, the world will be watching, listening, anticipating, hoping.
Will this leader choose to advance his country and be part of a new world?
Be the hero of his people?
Will he shake the hand of peace and enjoy prosperity like he has never seen?
A great life or more isolation?
Which path will he chosen?
featuring President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un in a meeting to remake history, to shine in the sun.
One moment, one choice.
What if the future remains to be written.
Weird, right?
Well, do you think there's a weirder person alive on the planet than Kim Jong-un who is not in a psych ward?
Trump has the toughest negotiation of his life with the highest stakes imaginable.
And so far he's done well.
I mean, there's that whole menu thing.
CNN's got a great point there.
But Trump has got some concessions in advance.
He showed he was willing to walk away.
He was strong.
But he's offering a hand of peace.
Let's see if it works.
If it doesn't, I truly don't believe anyone could ever get a deal, certainly not Obama.
And we know that Clinton already tried and failed.
This was Donald Trump being a serious president.
I've said it before, and it is true.
Canada, thank God, is just not that high on his to-do list.
China, Mexico, Iran, North Korea, build the wall, keep out terrorists, strengthen the military, bring back factories.
He really does what he says he's going to do.
We are lucky that Trump doesn't pay too much attention to us because it seems like all the Canadian establishment does is whine about him and insult him.
And this weekend, he finally noticed it and he slapped back for the first time.
But while our pundits will talk about that Twitter slap for the rest of the year, Trump already moved on to solving the North Korean crisis or not.
Either way, it's fascinating.
And either way, it's best to ignore the know-nothings who keep counting Trump out right before his victories.
At this rate, you'll have the Israeli-Arab wars all tidied up and the media will be complaining about the menus.
Yeah, let Trudeau have his male feminism lectures and let Barack Obama have his Nobel Peace Prize.
I'm not sure for what, for droning or something.
I'm more interested in the leader of the free world tackling problems nobody thought could be solved.
It's not a done deal yet in Korea, but I'm betting it will be.
I mean, would you bet against it?
Stay with us for more.
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To restore accountability and trust.
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After a hard-fought campaign, we know the hard work has just begun, but we intend to act fast.
Welcome back.
Well, the world is riveted by Donald Trump meeting with Kim Jong-un in Singapore and the possibility of peace for the first time in 68 years on that Korean peninsula.
Remember that Canada actually fought in that war too, officially.
We were part of the battle.
So there are still Korean vets in this country to this day.
I think a lot of people don't want that to succeed because, of course, Donald Trump would be the hero and people would rather, some people would rather have the war continue than for him to actually be successful.
But that's not the only important news in the world.
I think a major Canadian election happened last week.
And if things go well there, our country will be changed for the better.
And speaking, of course, of the election of Doug Ford as the new Premier of Ontario, The more I think about that, the more I think that it's not just a win for Ontario, but for the entire country, not just because Ontario is such an important population and economy, but rather what it also telegraphs to Prime Minister Trudeau and other provinces about what's possible on issues ranging from taxes to the carbon tax to federal provincial relations to just how to deal with the media.
I think it's so interesting.
And someone who got the Doug Ford phenomenon right, not many did.
Joe Warmington did.
Sue Ann Levy did.
And so did our next guest.
You know him well.
His name is Anthony Fury, and he's a columnist with the Toronto Sun.
Anthony, great to see you again.
There's been a lot of exciting international news and the G7 in Canada, but really Doug Ford's election, I think, is a watershed moment of this political season, don't you think?
I completely agree.
And Ezra, we're seeing something of a paradigm shift here, whether it's in Donald Trump dealing with Iran and North Korea, or whether it's even Doug Ford back home.
I think shifting away from this shaky moral relativism where we never know where we stand to people articulating really firm positions that put the best interests of their own electorate at heart.
And that's what the Doug Ford election, I think, has done.
He's a guy who has some common sense views on a number of important issues, like balancing the books, for instance, and getting rid of this darn carbon tax, which is why in my column I released something of an action plan.
I think there's three things that he's got to do from the get-go right away, because you better believe that there will be a lot of entrenched interests and perhaps some of our colleagues in the media who are not interested in seeing Doug Ford succeed and will take a lot of great effort to go and derail his agenda that he has a very firm mandate for.
He's got a four-year majority term, but Ezra, that year can go by really fast, those four years.
Yeah, you're so right.
Well, you referred to your column.
I have it in my hands here.
It's called Ford Agenda Needs to Commence Quickly and Decisively.
And I'll just read three bullet points and maybe you can expand.
The first is enact a hiring freeze.
That's an interesting one because one of Tim Hudak's promises in the last election was to lay off 100,000 public servants.
Your second advice is convene an efficiencies panel consisting of the top talent in cabinet.
I'm going to ask you what you mean by that.
And the third one, I think, is the easiest to understand, defeat the carbon tax.
So why don't we take those one at a time?
A hiring freeze.
Yeah, right now there's about 21% of the entire Ontario public service that is due to retire throughout Doug Ford's term.
That's a lot.
And we know the number one cost, Ezra, of governments all across the Western world is people, people and transfers to other levels of government.
So if you want to save money, you got to do it with people.
Now, there's always fear-mongering that conservatives are going to get rid of your kids' teachers.
They're going to get rid of nurses and doctors.
Doug Ford said, I'm not getting rid of a single person.
So let's take his word at that.
How then do we actually decrease the headcount at government, which is the big cost?
Well, this thing called attrition, where there are people, many thousands of people who are retiring every year are leaving to pursue other opportunities.
I say hire freeze.
Don't rehire any of those people until you've done an exhaustive analysis of exactly who you need to rehire to fulfill those core public services that Ontarians rely on.
And if it doesn't fit that watermark, you don't rehire them.
Yeah.
I think there's two ways to cut.
One is to trim a little bit of everything.
And the other is to, and I don't know how successful that ever gets.
Another is to look at an entire department, an entire agency, and say, that whole thing doesn't need to be here.
So we don't just have to roll that back 2% or 3%.
We can say goodbye to it.
We can privatize it.
We can sell it.
We can just shut it down and declare victory.
And I'm not saying that we would treat those workers who have been doing what they were asked to do.
I'm not saying we would treat them poorly.
We would give them a severance.
I mean, follow the law and maybe even be generous with it.
But if you shut down an entire crown corporation or sold it, I think that's probably a quicker way than just trying to nibble around the edges.
That's my own instinct.
And I'm thinking back to Ralph Klein's days when he would, for example, he privatized all the registries in Alberta, like driver's licenses and phishing.
He just, boom, he just did it.
And liquor stores, he just did it.
And the place hasn't fallen apart.
So that's probably better than nibbling.
That's my view.
What do you think?
Yeah, you can do that as well.
There's about 600 agencies, boards, and commissions in Ontario.
And I think there are a few things that you look at them and you appreciate why they do need to be arm's length agencies of the government, things that sort of manage our nuclear power and so forth.
But then there are most others, I would say, you either privatize them so you get rid of them or you eliminate them and just fold them into government.
We've been doing this thing called e-health for a decade now, which is they've brought in hundreds of people to try and digitize the health records.
It was a scandal a number of years ago.
It still exists.
A lot of people don't realize this thing's still kicking.
Just fold down operations and hand the digitization over to the Ministry of Health.
So tons of examples where I think you can find a lot of stuff there because outsourcing, it drives me nuts, Ezra, that the Liberal government created so many of these because I think they knew that if there's a success, you can say, oh, look, we were so brilliant by creating that.
If there's a scandal or failure, they go, well, this has nothing to do with us.
This is an arm's length agency.
So they were trying to get the best of both worlds.
Yeah, huh.
You know, I remember during the campaign, people said, well, you can't abolish the carbon tax.
Where are you going to come up with the money?
And Doug Ford said, look, there's no business I know that can't look through its accounts and say, well, we could save a few percent here.
And that rung true to me.
I mean, one of the things we do here at the Rebel, besides me yapping, is we try and run it as a business.
And we have to make, you know, there's no business, especially one as flabby as a government, that can't find a few percent here and there.
And you talk about an efficiencies panel.
Now, I think we've got to come up with a zippier name than an efficiency panel.
It's not just a make-work project.
I know.
It sounds like convene a committee to create a report that reports a report.
It's not that, I promise you.
But I mean, you know, another phrase I've heard is zero-based budgeting, which is, all right, start from zero and try and justify everything instead of start with the default where we are.
Start from scratch and can you really justify these things?
I don't know.
I mean, I think if you brought in someone, and they don't even have to be like a guru, just someone who's, in fact, maybe even a small businessman's better because they're used to counting every dollar and they don't say, oh, that's just a million.
You know, a guy who has a corner store, you know, he sweats every dollar.
I'd rather have a guy who's run a convenience store and makes his money 50 cents at a time in selling candy bars.
I'd love to have a guy like that going through the budget.
It reminds me of that old movie, Dave, where Dave became the president.
He brought in his frankly, I'd rather have a guy who is a small businessman go through because he'd be appalled by just a million, whereas professional bureaucrats say, oh, that's just a million.
Yeah, you can do that as well.
I mean, the idea I write for, I say you get the top cabinet ministers because the bulk of the expenses of Ontario government, aside from people, are in health care and education and debt servicing payments, but that's another story.
So you get those cabinet ministers in a room.
You tell them, okay, you guys have, I don't know, three months, and here are your specific targets.
I need to see that, whatever it is, 1.5% cut found within three months.
We can do more later, but I'm just saying baby steps, let's get this done because every few months there are new bonds that are being reissued.
They're sort of coming up for maturity and then they're going to get reissued and they're going to get reissued at 2%, 3% higher.
It goes a lot higher than the spread is for basic Bank of Canada rates.
If Doug Ford doesn't cut now, costs are still going to skyrocket on his tenure simply because of rising interest rates.
And we've seen Moody's actually downgrade the Ontario credit rating once again.
So I think if he shows this really polished way to do it, it'll send a message to Bay Street and to Moody's that they can actually increase their credit rating again.
And that in itself will actually save us probably $100 million a year just by improving the credit rating.
Yeah.
You know, I think Doug Ford should tell all his cabinet ministers, come up with 5% cuts, 10% cuts, and 15% cuts.
Show me that.
Now, you got to be aware because sometimes a bureaucrat will say, oh, fireman first.
Oh, you want me to cut that much, eh?
Well, I'm going to cut the fireman in the ambulance as a way.
But I remember, and I'm showing how old I am now.
But back in Alberta, the minister who privatized a couple of things I mentioned, the licenses, liquor stores, his name was Steve West, and he boasted about having cut more for his own department.
There was like an internal contest, and Steve West boasted that he cut more than the other guys.
And you know what?
He didn't cut services.
He just gave it to the private sector.
And Albertans love getting their driver's license now.
They don't have to line up.
And they love getting their.
I'm just telling you is that ex-Pat Albertin, it's better having privatized beer and wine and licenses.
You're still in the Alberta mindset because I always say the big difference, Jason Kenney, respect the guy and all the hard work he's doing to unite the right in Alberta.
He's got it easy, though, because there doesn't need to be a culture change in Alberta.
They're just going to, after Notley's gone, they're just going to revert back to their sort of natural way of being.
Whereas here in Ontario, I got to tell you, you know what it's like?
You're in the latte shops and so forth.
And the things they're saying in the lineup, I mean, it would make an Albertan blush quite heavily.
So Doug Ford's got to, I think you can do 15% right off the bat, but I'm happy to just go slower a bit year by year to inoculate people to the idea.
Although it can't be too slow, because the problem is you got to get the dirty work out of the way to begin with.
So it's kind of balancing that whole issue.
Well, you know, I'm going to give you a more Alberta-ism.
Jim Dinning, who was a key architect of Ralph Klein's revolution, said you can't leap a chasm in two jumps.
So his advice was take a running leap in the first one because you got to get her done as fast as possible.
Let me ask you one last question.
I know I've taken up a lot of your time.
What do you think is the greatest risk to Doug Ford?
What's the greatest likelihood of becoming an impediment to him doing these things you talk about?
It's a good question.
I would say, because there's going to be media resistance and there's going to be protesters coming up with sort of silly excuses about why he's so evil and so forth.
Protesters and Counter-Protests00:11:59
But that's really just something you need to ignore.
I think the actual challenge is fighting government inertia.
And to your point, you really need to get in and do the deep dive.
And when the bureaucrats say to you, okay, we found 4%, that actually means there's 6% or 7%.
You need to push them to that.
And when the bureaucrats say, here's option A, B, and C, there's an option D.
And you need to find a way to push for them to get that to you.
Because government inertia, I think, is a powerful thing.
And a lot of times, you know, Kathleen Wynn, Dalton McGuinty, I'm sure they'd like to pretend that they were aspirationally, fiscally conservative, showing fiscal restraint, but they never tried to combat that inertia.
So I think when a deputy minister told them we have to have a 3% increase, they just said, oh, do you really?
And they said, yes, we do.
And they said, okay, fine.
And that was how we got a lot of this creeping growth.
Probably just a lot of throwing up their hands, kind of laziness on the part of the overseers, the political overseers.
And that's what Doug Ford's really got to be on guard against.
Yeah.
If I may be permitted 60 seconds to answer my own question, I think the big three are the bureaucratic inertia.
I think unions, activist unions, and their NGO front groups that are going to have days of rage and days of protest and they'll make it seem like Doug Ford's election was not legitimate.
And I think the number one threat to Doug Ford is the media.
And if they can get into his head and make him bend the knee and make him self-conscious and make him think they're the center of attention, to me, those are the three threats that Doug Ford faces.
It'll be fascinating to see how it goes.
All right, Ezra.
Thanks very much.
It's great to have you.
Thanks for this column.
Let me just read out the headline one more time for our folks at home who might want to tune in.
It's on the Toronto Sun website.
It's called Ford Agenda.
Needs to commence quickly and decisively.
Ain't that the truth?
Anthony, thanks for being here.
Take care.
All right.
Stay with us, folks.
more ahead on The Rebel.
Welcome back.
Well, once a year in Canada, a foreign embassy or foreign agents from Iran have a provocative extremist event in downtown Toronto.
They have it in other cities around the world as well.
It's financed by the Iranian regime.
It's called Al-Quds Day, which is a way of saying the day to reconquer Jerusalem from the Jews.
It's an explicitly anti-Semitic day.
The speakers couldn't be plainer about their meaning.
And we sent our own David Menzies down to Ontario's Queen Park legislature to see how it went.
Well, I'll let you see for yourself.
What are these dolls about in this period?
You know about that, right?
Excuse me.
You touch me again.
You will speak.
Okay.
You grab me.
You do that again.
You're touching the woman.
You do that again.
That's pathetic when you're going to be.
I'm not.
I'm in their personal speech.
You put your hands on me.
I'm sorry.
That's it.
Sorry.
I'm sorry.
That's why we're asking.
You're not in your personal speech.
Amen.
Let me be crystal clear.
This is financed by Iran.
It would be bad enough if this was an organic event.
I put it to you, this is the equivalent of the Charlottesville alt-right racist protest in Virginia.
How is this any different?
It's racist.
It's a protest.
It's funded.
But not a beep from the mainstream media because, you know, it's Muslims and it's Iran.
And, you know, it's only David Menzies or Jews who care.
Joining us down in the studio is our friend David Menzies.
What was it like?
I mean, there was a quick part.
You being jostled isn't the most important part of the story, but it's an indication that these folks don't care about niceties, about not assaulting people or free press.
They're Iranian agents.
Oh, 100%.
And this is almost 40 years in the making.
Ezra goes back to 1979.
Ayatollah Khomeini is the one who started this in Iran, as you mentioned.
By the way, the trigger for that altercation was, as you notice, I was trying to get a comment from some of the female marchers.
And that fellow, who I guess is one of the marshals, he was basically telling me that I was invading their personal space.
I got the sense that he didn't like the idea that I was going to a female Palestinian and treating her as an equal human being as a male Palestinian.
It was kind of like I got the vibe.
You're messing with our livestock, okay?
Well, I mean, they believe in Sharia law.
They don't believe in equal rights.
It bugs me when you have foreign meddling in Canada.
It bugs me that Justin Trudeau wants to normalize relations with Iran.
It's not just Iran and anti-Semitism.
I don't like it when Communist China roughs up Democrat, you know, Chinese democracy activists or Falun Gong activists here.
I don't like it when American money comes in to meddle with our oil sands by funding radical groups.
It's bad enough that we have to deal with ruffians and ragamuffins who are Canadian citizens, but this is a foreign-funded stunt.
Indeed.
And to bring it back to the local Ezra, let's not forget that as per usual, no permit was applied for nor given by the city of Toronto.
And of course, we have a milquetoast mayor, John Torrey, who said, well, you know, we'll let the police monitor, you know, the usual hatred, pardon me, that erupts at these Al-Quds Day rallies.
And it was kind of funny to juxtapose the Al-Quds hatred, there was also a naked bike ride in Toronto.
I know, and once again, Ezra, it's the old adage, why is it the people that you don't want to see naked are the ones taking their clothes off all the time?
And so they had this sausage fest going around Queen's Park just before the Al-Quds Day rally.
Again, no permit.
And it seems to be we have, if there's going to be a critical mass of people, well, the rules don't apply.
But you know, I kind of wonder, if that was a neo-Nazi group assembling on the Lansa Queen's Park, if that was Klansmen, right, odious groups like that, do you think John Torrey and the Powers That Be would go, well, you know, they don't have a permit, and we know things might get a little hot under the collar, but we're just going to monitor it.
Well, you don't have to get as extreme as a neo-Nazi.
I mean, you could, I remember a couple years ago when some men's rights activist pickup artist named Ruch Velizade came to town, and he was practically, I mean, he was denounced by the mayor, by the alderman.
It was practically a manhunt for him.
You don't even have to go that far.
You could look at Lindsay Shepard, the young teaching assistant and master student at Laurier University.
She's not even allowed to have events unless she pays thousands of dollars in security fees.
So you don't even have to use the neo-Nazi example or the Rouche pickup artist example.
Just plain old conservatives.
Look, the rebel, we've had events, and we've had signed contracts with conference centers in Toronto.
The Monte Cassino Hotel Convention Center on Leicester Drive, sorry, on Chesswood Drive, for example.
They get roughed up by some threatening calls from Antifa.
They rip up the contract.
So that's private property paying a contract, let alone a school.
It's complete double standard.
But what irks me the most, I think, is all the so-called hate police and feelings police that come for guys like you and me with human rights complaints.
These folks call for the extinction of Israel, the genocide of Israel.
They use the word extinguish or extinct or I forget.
I mean, they're not even hiding their goal is to kill Israel.
And the Human Rights Commission people couldn't care less.
No, great point.
And as a matter of fact, before the parade began, I began interviewing this one fellow there before the gatekeepers realized he was a bit on the Looney Tune side and it's not good publicity for him.
He was wearing the Hezbollah flag as a cape.
That's a banned terrorist group.
It's a criminal group in Canada.
It's like ISIS in Canada.
Exactly.
And so he's got the green and yellow Hezbollah flag, which has as part of the motif a semi-automatic gun.
And he's holding two framed photographs of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
And he kept interrupting my line of questioning, and he kept asking me, do you believe in human rights?
And I, does this guy own a mirror?
Oh, my God.
Yeah, it's literally there.
We saw him for a bit there.
The flag of Hezbollah is literally, it's a yellow background and a green machine gun.
Yes.
And you know what?
The police, from what I understand, didn't do a thing.
Is that correct?
Well, you know what?
About the flag.
I mean, I wonder if you could an ISIS flag.
I mean, listen, they say boycott Israel.
That's free speech.
I don't like the fact that they're bringing their anti-9-11 was an inside job or a hoax.
We saw these are the looniest of the loony tunes.
I just don't like the fact that we're importing folks with these views by the hundred of thousand.
I don't like the fact that we're importing terrorist supporters.
I actually personally don't think it should be a crime to hold up an odious flag, whether it's a swastika, a hammer and sickle, a Shea Guevara shirt, or an ICE flag.
I find them all odious.
I don't think that should be a crime.
But the folks, the liberals, believe in thought crimes, believe in feelings crimes, but they're silent when it's their friends on the hard left.
100%.
And Ezra, I want to tell you too, the media, I noticed, I think I saw CP24 there in terms of television media.
No global, no CTV, no CBC.
Now, wait a minute.
This is a group of at least 500 marchers spewing hatred with no permit, holding up traffic going down University Avenue.
I guess the Blue Jays were playing or something.
We have to cover that.
And I think what it comes down to is this isn't the kind of diversity they like, right?
We kind of like, you know, a bunch of Ukrainians in their native dress doing that kick dancing routine, you know, and everyone's getting along eating pierogies.
But when you see, you know, Zionist conspiracy and drive Israel into the ocean and all this kind of stuff.
Another thing I noticed too, and I should tell you, there was a counter protest, the pro-Israel people, who were lovely.
I mean, you know, you had women in shorts and tank tops, just enjoying their freedom, waving the Star of David.
And so just full of love there.
And what the saddest exclamation mark on the Al-Quds protesters were those families that brought kids as young as six or seven, right?
And I spoke to one of the counter-protesters.
I said, what is the worst thing you've seen?
And he said, well, he says, I haven't seen it yet this year, but last year I was here and there were kids about seven or eight and they were doing this with their throat.
They were looking at the Jewish counter protesters.
And so already indoctrinating them, you know, to hate at that youthful age, absolutely despicable, Ezra.
Yeah.
And I put it to you again, if these were, we've seen cases in Canada where a mom or a dad has a stupid swastika tattoo.
I'm obviously not for that.
And the kids are taken away by child services.
Here you've got kids being taught to make the ISIS slit the throat sign.
And of course child welfare would never even touch these cases.
They don't even intervene when the kids are being abused with honor violence.
Of course they're not going to intervene in that case.
You know, and I mean, I got to tell you, this is, I grew up in this city, Ezra.
This is not my bag.
This is not my Toronto.
I don't remember a time when you would have hundreds of people, you know, marching, saying the most vile, hateful things.
You pointed the guy with the t-shirt, you know, Zionist inside job for 9-11.
Critiquing Trudeau00:08:37
I tried interviewing him.
He just kept calling me filth.
And that was the other thing.
If you're going to have a demonstration to make all these signs, can't you articulate your points a little better than just doing ad hominem attacks on people that, I don't know, are just trying to report the facts.
And as far as I've seen, not a word from the mayor, John Torrey.
Doug Ford, though, the Premier came down pretty hard on it, saying he'll do his best to stop it.
Oh, wasn't that a breath of fresh air?
You know, this, to me, it was, you know, I mean, Ford has said so many things.
I mean, he's still premier-elect.
He said, you know, they say, hey, are you going to march in the Gay Pride Parade?
He goes, okay, as long as you bring the cops back, right?
And, you know, he's going to reform the sex ed curriculum.
So, you know, a win for Tanya Grannick Allen there.
And everything's going out for tender, including the pencils at Queen's Park.
And then the fourth home run was saying, that's it.
And he has got the legislative power behind him, Ezra.
You don't have a permit.
It's an illegal conversation.
And you know what?
The government of Iran can have all the protests they want in Iran.
Actually, they have a lot of protests there, but they're unsanctioned.
Listen, David, I'm glad you went down there.
It looks like they pushed you around a lot, but they didn't do any harm to you.
I'm like my time ex Ezra.
Takes a licking and keeps on talking.
You've got to be a little more forceful than that.
But you know what?
I'm getting tired of the violence.
Next time I'm actually going to lay down the law.
Touch me again like that.
I'm going to drill you.
You know what?
Make sure we have some security guards with you because a bunch of our reporters are being assaulted by radical leftists, whether it was Sheila Gunread in Edmonton or when he used to work with us in New York, Gavin McInnes or Lauren Southern.
So many of our people have been attacked.
No other journalists are attacked.
You were asking tough questions, but fair questions.
And if the police want to arrest these guys, we need private security to help you.
And I noticed they tried to block the camera, too.
Oh, it was more than blocking.
He was trying to rip the lens off.
It was screwed in too tight.
And Ezra, I can tell you this.
I know we're out of time, but if I had thrown a punch back in self-defense and connected, who are they going to come down on?
Yeah, right.
Well, and that's the thing.
We don't want you in trouble.
We don't want you to get into fisticuffs.
But next time we want you to keep covering al-Quds and other things like it, because as you point out, the mainstream media was absent other than CP24.
We just don't want you.
We'll have security with you, and we'll have another camera to film the attack on the first camera because you need to do that with these guys.
I'm glad you were there, David.
Thank you so much, boss.
All right.
Well, thanks for being there.
Stay with us.
More ahead on the ripple.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer feedback on my monologue yesterday about Canada's disastrous trade war with the U.S. Paul writes.
Trudeau is throwing Canada under the bus to be a white knight to Mexico.
He refuses to make a separate deal with the U.S., but wants to help Mexico more, but wants to help Mexico more than he wants to help Canada because his loyalty is always to foreigners first.
You know, there's some truth to it, but I read today that someone who's familiar with the facts, I just read this earlier today, that Trump privately made a concession to Trudeau, agreed to give up the five-year review.
I didn't know that until today.
And so Trump left the G7 thinking, well, I just gave Trudeau something he wanted.
I'm being confidential about it.
I'm throwing him a bone.
I want some deals on Dare Steel.
But Trump left the G7 thinking, I had a good talk with him.
I gave him something.
We'll get this tidied up.
So we didn't know that until today.
And so Trudeau goes out, tough guy, has a press conference when Trump's gone and says, we're insulted and we're sick of being pushed around.
After Trump just made a private concession to him, yeah, no doubt that Trump lashed out on Twitter.
And I think it's a correct point that was made by one of Trump's advisors in the States that right before this North Korea meeting, which was obviously the top of Trump's mind, to have a negotiation get off the rails and to have Trump embarrassed that way.
I'm absolutely sure that was on Trump's mind.
I just hope we don't capture Trump's attention again.
Let him fix Iran and Mexico and China and North Korea.
I don't want him interacting with Trudeau anymore.
He'll wreck the country.
Ron writes, excellent interview with Manny.
Not taking Trump seriously will be the kiss of death to our economy.
Trump doesn't bluff.
Spread the word.
Trudeau and his cabal of anti-Canadian ministers have to go.
You know, we got so much positive feedback on that interview with Manny that we put the whole thing up online for free outside the paywall.
I do that about once a month, right?
Actually, I haven't done it in a while.
I want to keep the good stuff for you guys who pay the eight bucks a month subscription fee.
Thank you.
Sometimes there's stuff that's just so good, and hopefully that'll encourage people to sign up.
Yeah, Manny was spun on.
Amy writes, Ezra Levant has full-on Trudeau derangement syndrome.
I don't know if I'm deranged.
I think that I'm calling it like I see it.
I criticize Andrew Scheer when I think he's wrong.
I criticize Jason Kenny when I think he's wrong.
They're conservatives, mainly.
I think that there's a deficit of criticizing Trudeau.
I think you see that with so many stories.
The People Kind gaffe, the India fiasco.
Both of those were dominated by foreign media.
Canadian media are too kid-glove with Trudeau.
You'll notice that other than the Sun newspaper, no one in Canada has written about the groping incident with Trudeau back in the year 2000.
I haven't talked about it on my main show here.
I mentioned it on Twitter and in passing on my 12 noon show.
I'll do a proper show on it.
There's just been such huge news between the G7 and this Korea thing.
But all the tough stories about Justin Trudeau are written by Americans, Brits, or Australians.
The reason I tell you this is I believe that we here at the Rebel have a duty and an obligation and a requirement to be critics of Trudeau, because number one, he's the most powerful politician in the country.
And number two, the rest of the media is sleeping.
They're not watchdogs, they're lapdogs.
Eric writes, while the leadership is busy posturing and chest beating, it is real people and their jobs that will pay the price.
Yeah, I just don't understand.
I read today that the average Quebec dairy farmer has a net worth of $3.7 million.
So these are not poor family farms.
These are industrial farms that have dairy quotas as like a stock, like an investment.
These aren't just, you know, ma and pa milking a cow or two.
These are serious businesses that have powerful lobbies.
And that's one of the things that is getting in the way of a free trade deal with the states.
We all know we've got to get rid of these dairy cartels.
There's no reason to prop up this elite industry.
Agriculture does just fine in Canada, the ones that don't have these marketing boards.
And I think we've got to give it up.
And I think a smart negotiator, if you're trying to think like a Trump, you'd say, well, why don't I bargain away the dairy cartel to Trump, get a concession from Trump in return, because he's trying to make things fairer for those Wisconsin dairies.
So give the dairy cartels up to Trump, get something in return from Trump.
And the secret is you actually wanted to get rid of the dairy cartels.
You just didn't want to spend the political capital doing it.
So now you can say, I had to do it to get the deal with America.
So you're actually getting two wins.
You're not even trading with Trump.
The thing you're trading away to him is the thing you want to get rid of anyways.
That's how a negotiator would work with Trudeau.
Yeah, he can't even negotiate a pipeline through Canada when he has constitutional jurisdiction.
A guy who gets taken to the cleaners by Bombardier and John Horgan and BC, yeah, he's not really up for negotiating with Donald Trump, is he?
Who knows?
Maybe Donald Trump should do a special movie just for Justin Trudeau.
I don't know, maybe something like a puppet show or something to get through to him.
That's the show for today.
What do you think of that special movie for Kim Jong-un?
I've watched it three times.
I'm fascinated by it.
Let me know what you think.
Give me your feedback.
You can see how the sign behind me.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night.