Justin Trudeau’s $1.5M India trip in 2018—revealed via Parliament’s June 18th order paper but ignored by English media—saw $89K on luxury hotels, $59K on cars, and lavish meals while inviting Jazz Paul Atwall, a terrorist linked to an assassination attempt. His hypocrisy on U.S. immigration policies, where Canada detained 151 minors with parents in 2017 despite delays at the IRB (50,000 unprocessed claims), contrasts sharply with Trump’s UN Human Rights Council withdrawal, led by Nikki Haley, over its complicity with abusers like China and Venezuela. Skepticism lingers about Kim Jong-un’s nuclear concessions, with speculation that Trump’s "Godfather Summit" threats could force regime change, while the SPLC’s $3M settlement with Majid Nawaz hints at suppressed dissent. Meanwhile, calls for a Canadian "values test" to curb Al-Quds Day’s anti-Semitic rhetoric reveal deeper tensions over national identity and immigration accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, shocking details of how much of your money Justin Trudeau spent on his lavish India vacation.
But why is it only being reported in a Quebec newspaper?
It's June 20th, 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 for why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
How much did Justin Trudeau's trip to India cost?
Well, that's the crazy thing.
The bills are in, partial bills, more are yet to come.
And it's over $1.5 million, but not a peep about it in any English language media.
The Quebecor newspaper called Journal de Montréal published it today.
You can see it here.
Le Voyage de Justin Trudeau on end à coupé en moi.
$1.5 million.
Sorry, my French accent said, but you don't need to understand French to understand that headline, am I right?
The voyage of Justin Trudeau to India has cost at least $1.5 million.
But the spending information was made public.
This is not a scoop that some reporter at Journal de Montréal managed to dig up.
It wasn't even through an access to information document that they got first.
It was an order paper question filed in Parliament.
That's when a member of parliament writes a detailed question in Parliament and various departments have to give detailed answers.
It's like a written version of question period, but it actually generally gets some answers.
So this was not a secret or a scoop or an exclusive.
That written report came out two days ago, June 18th.
But every single mediality in English Canada, including, of course, the CBC, simply declined to do a story about it.
I note that late this afternoon, CTV did a quick follow on it, but the only newspaper in the country was Journal de Montréal.
I mean, who cares, right?
It's not like anything newsworthy happened in India.
Yeah, actually, just as a reminder, in case you were in outer space or in a coma at the time or work for the CBC and have deliberately forgotten about it, Trudeau's trip to India was the greatest train wreck of his prime ministership so far.
It was a fiasco, a disaster, literally the definition of an international incident.
Not just the cringe-worthy, embarrassing moments like this when Trudeau insisted on dancing.
Oh my God, dancing.
This one here, again and again, dancing, dancing in official events.
I mean, Donald Trump's foreign trips are about trade and military matters.
He's always wearing a suit.
Justin Trudeau really doesn't have any serious matters that he likes to talk about.
He passed his marijuana legislation.
That's pretty much the only policy he cares about in his bones.
So the rest of being prime minister to him is about selfies and parties and showing off his dance moves.
I mean, he went to Bollywood.
That's the India equivalent of Hollywood.
And he dressed up in a costume.
And look at the Bollywood star there.
He didn't dress up as, you know, in a costume.
That's weird.
It'd be like if someone from India came to Canada and walked around everyone dressed up as a mountie or something.
They all thought he was a shallow clothes horse.
The India newspapers were devastating.
Of course, he is a clothes horse.
That's pretty much all he does.
Eight-day trip, seven days of which was a family vacation, one day of which was work, and you paid for it all.
But it wasn't just the cringy, selfie stuff.
Like when Trudeau had the entire Taj Mahal cleared out of people for an entire hour, look at that.
There's no one else there.
10,000 pilgrims and tourists were kicked out for an hour so he could have just the perfect family vacation shot taken with his high-maintenance wife.
It was substantive disasters too, not just stylish disasters.
I like the bizarre and shocking fact that Trudeau actually invited Jazz Paul Atwall, a convicted terrorist, to an official event.
Here's a copy of that invitation.
Jazz Paul Atwall is not just any terrorist.
That's him with Sophie Trudeau.
He was convicted of trying to murder a cabinet minister from India.
A cabinet minister from India who was visiting Canada for a wedding.
Trudeau invited a convicted assassin to India with him as an honored guest, the guy who tried to kill an Indian cabinet minister.
That is shocking.
That is bizarre.
That is so weird.
But even weirder was the excuse that Justin Trudeau finally came up with.
It wasn't his fault, people, but rather, you see, it was a conspiracy to make him look bad, a conspiracy by rogue elements of the Indian government who set Trudeau up.
I know that is nuts, but that's what Trudeau said.
It was so nuts that the Indian government, which is a bit more serious than our lad, well, they issued a statement saying that accusation was unacceptable.
Oh, and then they promptly nuked a trade deal they had for various Canadian agricultural crops.
So yeah, thanks, Justin, you dancing fool.
Oh, by the way, we here, the Rebel, submitted an access to information request for all of Trudeau's costumes.
Do you see that there?
Provide copies of all documents regarding the planning for Prime Minister's trip to India, anything to do with the clothing in the wardrobe.
And look at what we have heard back in response.
I mean, we asked how many outfits did he bring, who paid for them, that sort of thing.
You can imagine how embarrassing that would be to Trudeau.
So he did what he always does.
He's stonewalled.
Look at the reply.
The government says they will not answer that question in the 30 days required by law.
They want a 300-day extension.
They will not answer until 2019 because they say that telling us how much money they spent on costumes for his dress-up party would disrupt the government's operations.
Yeah, no, you liars, but really, why does Trudeau need to lie and hide his costume expenses?
As we've seen today, $1.5 million in other expenses has been revealed in public, and only one newspaper in the entire country bothered to write about it.
And it was in French.
So really, no need to censor Trudeau's costume expenses.
It's not like the media party is going to report on it.
They're too well trained to even run with it when they have the facts in front of them.
Back to the order paper question that started the Journal de Montréal story.
Let me read a bit from the Journal de Montréal.
Let's give them some credit for their work.
I put their website through Google Translate, if you know what I mean.
So this is a machine translation.
It's not perfect, but you get the point.
So this is a website translated.
Justin Trudeau's trip to India cost at least $1.5 million.
The stay was qualified as a total failure because of PM's clothes.
Well, that's not quite true.
It was a total failure because of the terrorist incident and Trudeau's general vanity and then the excuses he made for the terrorist incident.
The clothes just made everything extra cringeworthy, but still.
All right, let me read from the translation.
Again, this is a Google translation of Journal de Montréal.
During the nine-day stay last February, the government paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the rental of rooms and meeting rooms and hotels, nearly $60,000 for chauffeur-driven car rentals, and even $17,000 for a Canadian chef's trip to India to prepare a meal at a party.
Isn't that crazy?
He literally spent $17,000 to bring an Indian chef with him to India from Canada, because I guess Indians don't know how to make Indian food, as well as Trudeau's Liberal Party chef friend, so drop 16 grand on him for that.
I've got an idea for Canada's wounded military vets.
They should retrain as Indian chefs.
Maybe Trudeau would have a few more bucks for them then.
First of all, why are we still fighting against certain veterans groups in court?
Because they are asking for more than we are able to give right now.
But nothing is too luxurious for Prince Justin.
Let me read some of the facts of how he spent your money.
I'm reading from Jernal de Montréal.
The most expensive bill, excluding the price of the plane of the Prime Minister, is definitely that of $89,147 paid to the Taj Palace Hotel for the accommodation rental.
Canadian wines, Ottawa spent $5,100 for the purchase of Canadian wines for official use.
Fruits and vegetables, $6,754 for the reception at the official residence.
Meat, chicken, and fish, $5,635 for the reception at the official residence.
Mumbai, $38,713 for the business networking reception.
Gifts, $3,581 in official presence.
Impression, $4,273 for the printing costs of the official program.
That's that fancy invitation that the terrorists got.
Chef, the government has invited all expenses paid at a cost of $17,044, Indian-Canadian chef Vikram Vidge to come and cook a meal at the Canadian High Commission in India.
That's a hell of a pricey meal.
Just to remind you, this was an eight-day trip, but seven days of it were a family vacation for him, one day of which was work.
So $1.5 million for one day of work and a lot of selfies and a lot of footage that the Liberals can use for ethnic advertising in the next election.
You paid for that.
And if we happen to nuke our diplomatic relations with India, the world's largest democracy in the process, by inviting a terrorist, well, do you think Trudeau even knows or cares about that?
But here's the thing.
Like I say, this is a public document.
It's not actually a Journal de Montreal scoop.
It's a public document released to the world by Parliament.
It was just ignored by everyone else in the media party.
So take a look on page 25.
All right?
It's the item-by-item breakdown of the $1.5 million.
Now you can see the chef in there.
You can see the printing in there, the wines in there.
But look, what's this?
What's this?
What's this?
Eric Mazinet, $14,898 to fly from Los Angeles to India.
And look at this, $9,649 to fly Benoit Cloutier to India.
Mario Lemire, $12,813 for a flight from LA.
Eric Tromblay, $10,547 for a flight.
Who are these guys?
Now that's first-class luxury travel.
$10,000, $12,000 for one flight.
I don't know if you remember a few years ago we sent four rebel staff to India in 2016 to cover a UN conference in New Delhi.
We spent $1,200 each on the flights.
And they were fine.
I mean, our staff got up and stretched a little bit.
$1,200 to fly from Toronto to New Delhi.
Who are these people spending 10 times that on a luxury suite?
They are junior staff.
They're tour staff of the Prize Council.
Look at that at the bottom.
You see that?
Privy Council Office, tour at the bottom.
They're with the tour group.
They're assistants.
This is the government's phone direct.
They're assistants.
Since when do junior assistants fly first class to India for $12,000 for a plane ticket?
Who on earth approved that?
Is there any private sector company in the world that would send a junior assistant first class to India?
They are asking for more than we are able to give right now.
Yeah, maybe Canada's wounded veterans should apply to work as travel assistants and bellhops for Trudeau.
Then he'd have enough money for them.
But there are even higher airfares there.
Look at this.
This is a flight for $18,202.
Here's some flights for $20,242 to India.
Because I guess there's two flights there, because I guess one flight isn't enough.
But you'll see there, you see the names.
I don't know, you see it says C Note 2.
You see CNOTE 2 doesn't have the name there.
And if you read Note 2 at the bottom, it says that it's a secret to protect the privacy of who was flying.
They're not telling you who it was.
Okay, hang on.
So it's a private thing who is billing Canadian taxpayers $12,000, $20,000 to fly to India with Trudeau.
So it's private enough that we can't know who went to India, but it's public enough that we have to pay $20,000.
$20,000.
Did you just rent the seat on the plane?
I mean, you didn't actually buy a plane, did you?
And sorry to be dumb, but I mean, I don't come from a world where you fly your own chef for $17,000.
So I just got to ask, why didn't these people just come on Trudeau's own jet?
Why did they have to book their own flights for $10,015, $20,000?
Even if they were in another city like LA, well, why not fly from LA to Ottawa for what, like $500 and then get on Trudeau's plane there?
Canada's Detention Dilemma00:14:40
This is gross.
This is shocking.
This is unacceptable from a government that is telling the rest of us to live smaller, telling veterans they're just asking for too much.
Telling the rest of us when it comes to carbon, like flying in a jet, to make better choices about energy and travel, telling veterans, na-na, too much for you.
But really, really, really.
Given how the CBC and the rest of the Canadian media is just fine with it, what possible incentive does Justin Trudeau have to stop this?
The media party wrote a thousand stories about Bev Oda, the Harper cabinet minister who expensed a $16 orange juice.
She was fired.
A $16,000 flight, though, in a $1.5 million vacation?
Yeah, not a peep.
I say again, you just can't believe a word the mainstream media tells you.
Stay with us for more.
What's going on in the United States is Rome.
I can't imagine what the families living through this are enduring.
Obviously, this is not the way we do things in Canada.
Well, that is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doing his best dramatic act or passionate explanation that we simply, simply don't treat people in the manner that the evil Donald Trump does.
This is an interesting approach to take during heated and after negotiations.
Of course, Trudeau is referring to the separation of minor children from their parents if they make an illegal entry into the United States.
But is Justin Trudeau right?
Do we not separate children from their parents if they're illegal immigrants who are detained?
Well, I went to the state broadcaster to find out.
Here's a story published just today.
Canada aims to avoid detaining migrant children, but it happens, well, it happens, people.
What are you going to do?
McGill's study on Canadian practice finds psychiatric and academic difficulties long after detention.
Let me read the first sentence in it.
The U.S. is the focus of international outrage for its policy of separating children from their parents and detaining them after they cross the border in search of asylum.
But Canada has also detained migrant children and in some cases has restricted access to their asylum-seeking parents despite its stated policy to do whatever possible to avoid it.
Last year, 151 minors were detained with their parents in Canadian immigration holding centers.
Joining us now to talk about this is our friend Giddy Mammon, an immigration and refugee expert.
He's with the law firm of Mammon, Sandaluk, and Kingwell.
He joins us now via Skype.
So, Giddy, which is it?
Is Justin Trudeau right?
We simply don't do that in Canada, or is the state broadcaster right?
We do that more than 100 times.
Well, we do that quite often, and we've been doing it for as long as I've been practicing, which is over 30 years.
In fact, my particular area of specialty is detention work.
So, I spend a lot of time at the immigration detention centers and the provincial holding facilities.
The truth is that not only do we detain migrant children, that is, children who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents, but we actually do house Canadian children.
And you say, How can that be?
The immigration authorities have no jurisdiction over Canadian citizens.
That's true.
But the practical reality is that when you arrest a couple that are here without its status, there's no one, quite often there's no one to look after the kids.
And so the kids are held in the detention center just like their parents.
And of course, children without status are held in our immigration, in our holding centers with their parents all the time.
Now, about a year ago or so, there was some litigation that led to the court ruling that the IRB, the Immigration Refugee Board, has to be more sensitive to the best interests of the children in the context of detention hearings.
They can't just simply decide that the family or the child or whatever is a flight risk or a danger to the public.
They also have to give attention to whether or not this is going to somehow impact on the best interests of the children.
The other thing is that in another context, we separate children from their parents all the time.
How many stories have you read in the Canadian media where we deport parents and their Canadian children are here?
And we say to them, Well, we don't care that your spouse can file a sponsorship or something and bring you back, but you're going to have to go nonetheless.
And those sponsorships can take a year to two years, and we separate children from their parents all of the time, let alone in the criminal context where somebody commits a crime and they're put in jail and they're separated from their children as well.
So I'm not so sure that Justin Trudeau is speaking factually in this context.
You know, and listen, it's such an emotional thing to see pictures of kids crying away from their parents.
Nothing tugs at the heartstrings more.
I understand the extremely strong temptation to virtue signal and chime in.
It's just odd coming from a prime minister who oversees our own detention of young people.
It's like for a pundit, that's fine.
A pundit could say, well, if Canada does it, it's wrong too.
It's so odd to me, Giddy, that Trudeau is saying this while he is doing it.
And by the way, I think it's okay to separate kids from parents in some instances.
You don't want kids being in jail.
You don't want kids being in a prison with grown-ups.
So, I mean, it's not an ideal situation, but in some cases, the alternative is worse.
We don't put kids in jail with their parents.
It's just weird to me that the prime minister gave in to his instinct to take a jab at Trump when he's doing the same thing.
I don't know if you want to talk about the politics of it, but that just seems gratuitous.
There is no question that there's a bit of mass hysteria going on right now over this issue.
And believe me, it's not that I'm insensitive to children crying, but I've heard all kinds of stuff that just sounds like nonsense to me, that the American government is now in the business of ripping children away from their parents and putting them in cages.
This kind of rhetoric is not helping anybody.
So let's really talk about what is actually going on.
And it's nowhere near as interesting as the rhetoric, in my opinion, but these are the facts.
The Homeland Security Secretary and the Attorney General in April said that we are now going to be enforcing the right to prosecute people criminally for entering our country.
When you cross the border without proper authorization, you try to sneak across the border, that is not only an immigration offense, it is a criminal offense, and we are going to charge you and we are going to detain you.
So this became known in April, and that became enforced in May.
And now we're two-thirds of the way through June.
So everybody knew that if you come to the border with a child, as of May, you could be arrested and detained.
Now, the fact is you cannot have children in a federal prison or a federal jail.
So obviously, the parent is going to be put in jail and the children are not.
Now, according to the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said that they are not going to be separating children from their parents if, in fact, they can establish the relationship.
But if they cannot establish the relationship and they need to make sure that these children are not being the victims of human smuggling, obviously the authorities should and do take those children until parentage can be established.
Now imagine if you are trying to run the border and you hear that if you are arrested, if you cross the border illegally and you are alone, you're going to go to jail.
And if you come with a child, you're not going to be detained.
So what do you think people are going to do?
People are going to simply use children to accompany them to cross the border in hopes that they will not be detained.
And of course, when they're released, whether or not they show up for any immigration proceedings or not is another question.
Now, this idea of children being held in cages, children are not being held in cages.
There is apparently this Walmart that was empty.
It's a massive cavernous place.
And what they did is they created sections of areas where people are confined.
Now, I have seen children detained and it's never pretty, but whether it's a chain link fence or cinder block or metal bars, it's all the same to me.
Detention is detention and it never looks pretty.
And at the end of the day, what we have here is a president with a real problem.
The real problem is that he has 11 million people who have no status who came into the country and remained there without status.
On the other hand, 38,000 people are entering the United States from the southern border every single month.
If that keeps up, you're looking at about over 450,000 people per year.
So instead of that number being held at 11 million, it's going to go up by almost half a million every single year.
And what he is simply saying, the same way he said to the Democrats when the DACA program was under consideration and the temporary protected status, the TPS program was being renewed for the Haitians and the Salvadorans, et cetera, et cetera.
He said we have to have comprehensive immigration reform and which must include the sealing of the border.
The Democrats will not entertain that discussion.
And so what he's doing is he's cranking up the pressure and saying, I'm going to make it very uncomfortable for people to cross that border in order to deter them.
And this is the place where we're at.
So is he holding children hostage?
According to the Attorney General and according to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, they're only doing that to establish identity and relationship of the kids.
And I think that that should be okay.
Yeah.
Well, I read that about 80% of the kids in those detention centers were not with their biological parents.
They were with traffickers.
And I've also read other studies, Giddy, and maybe you've seen them, that 40 to 60% of people who, of women or children who cross the border are sexually assaulted, either as some payment to the human traffickers or that that is why they are being sent across.
I can't imagine sending a minor child, especially, God forbid, a girl, along with some gangs.
God forbid.
I mean, in some ways, I think some of these kids are actually being rescued, not ripped away from parents.
Very interesting times.
I got to tell you, Giddy, I hope Donald Trump is distracted by the chorus of voices shouting at him and does not notice that Canada's prime minister was one of them, because I don't think he's going to take kindly to us criticizing him for something we do too.
Last word to you, my friend.
Look, we have a problem here in Canada also.
Some people may look at it as okay, and some people may think that, you know, it's not sustainable.
You and I have talked about this many, many times.
Last year, we received 50,000 people making claims at our border, and our Immigration Refugee Board is simply overwhelmed.
A system that was put into place to deal with refugees expeditiously is now almost grinding to a halt.
Instead of a few months, it's taking a couple of years.
And that delay is producing even a greater incentive for people to come to Canada.
Not only do you get to escape the enforcement of American immigration law, now you come to Canada and you have this guaranteed extended period of time in Canada where you can collect all kinds of benefits while waiting for your refugee claim to be heard, whether it's meritorious or whether it's completely without any foundation whatsoever.
Our government may think it's being cute by bringing attention to the American crisis, but all it's doing is really taking the eye of the Canadian voter and taxpayer off of the ball in our court, which is we also have a border problem.
And, you know, somebody has to deal with it.
But if our Prime Minister would rather talk about the American difficulties, that's terrific.
But me as a practitioner, he can't play with me that way.
has to understand that i know the numbers and i know those numbers are increasing and there is no way that our infrastructure is going to be able uh to support it so um you know i would strongly recommend that he worry about what's happening in our backyard before he's he becomes uh too obsessed uh making uh political mileage on the ills of the u.s uh crisis Isn't that the truth?
Well, Giddy, as always, we learned so much from you because this, of course, has been your lifetime's career, so you know far more about it than most, including, obviously, our own Prime Minister.
UN's Role in Human Rights00:13:34
Great to see you again, my friend.
Thank you for having us.
All right, what a pleasure.
That's our friend Giddy Mammon, an immigration and refugee lawyer.
He's with the firm Mammon, Sandluk, and Kingwell.
Stay with us.
more ahead on The Rebel.
Another of our goals was to stop the council from protecting the world's worst human rights abusers.
What happened?
The Council would not even have a meeting on the human rights conditions in Venezuela.
Why?
Because Venezuela is a member of the Human Rights Council, as is Cuba, as is China.
Similarly, the Council failed to respond in December and January when the Iranian regime killed and arrested hundreds of citizens simply for expressing their views.
When a so-called Human Rights Council cannot bring itself to address the massive abuses in Venezuela and Iran, and it welcomes the Democratic Republic of Congo as a new member, the Council ceases to be worthy of its name.
That is the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, Donald Trump's ambassador, explaining why the U.S. is pulling out of the UN Human Rights Council.
I couldn't help but think when I was listening to her saying, well, why didn't they investigate Venezuela?
Because Venezuela is on the Human Rights Council.
It made me think of Robert Conquest's third law of politics, which is the best way to understand any bureaucracy, is that it is being colonized by a cabal of its enemies.
And isn't that incredible, the way she lists the violators of human rights that have actually infiltrated the Human Rights Council?
Well, that's not news to our next guest, our friend Claudia Rossette, with the, she's a foreign policy fellow for the Independent Women's Forum, and she joins us now via Skype.
Claudia, I know that you have known these things about the Human Rights Council for ages.
It's sort of exciting to see the UN ambassador from the United States say the same things, isn't it?
Oh, it's refreshing.
It's bracing.
And you know something?
I think it's actually quite good worldwide for the cause of human rights.
I think so too.
Now, here's a question.
The United States has allies of different degrees of ardor.
Do you think that this will spread to anyone else?
Do you think any other countries that are more on the democratic side of the spectrum will say, yeah, you know, we're out of here too.
We don't need to give this place any dignity?
I certainly hope so, although that's really not the record.
In fact, one of the things that Ambassador Haley mentioned in her terrific remarks, along with Secretary of State Pompeo, who also was really clear and excellent on this, is that America's allies who share our values refuse to stand up for them in public at the Human Rights Council.
Behind closed doors, they may agree, but they won't.
They just sit there and go along with it.
She didn't actually name any individual countries, but if you look down the list of members, you'll find countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, countries that share our values.
But again, America really fights this alone.
And I think it's right to withdraw.
Well, I know the argument for staying in, which is, well, if we're in, we can have some influence.
If we're in, we're part of the discussion.
If we're in, we can maybe make some minor adjustments to their trajectory.
Doesn't sound like that's working.
I don't know.
I think there's a real peer pressure.
And it reminds me of other Donald Trump decisions.
Like when Trump removed the United States from the Paris Agreement on global warming, and this was something, oh, you can't do that.
The earth will fall.
The sky will fall rather.
And nothing happened.
Like Trump withdrew America from this UN process that makes the UN Human Rights Council look, you know, it's so dysfunctional, the climate change panel.
It's so much larger, too.
And nothing happened.
The sky didn't fall.
And I think that there's this peer pressure.
You can't leave these institutions.
No one's ever left these institutions.
It's the jungle out there if we leave these institutions.
No, you can leave these institutions and try something else, and it's not going to be a calamity.
No, in fact, there's this huge vested interest by these worst abusers in many cases.
But the U.S., remember, the Human Rights Council is particularly bad at the UN.
It's a magnet for the worst abusers because they exploit it to try and actually warp the definition of human rights.
You get them arguing all sorts of things that are really out of Orwell.
And they try to then sort of institutionalize that under the UN.
And it got so bad.
It was previously the Commission on Human Rights, you might remember, which ended up being chaired by Libya's Qaddafi's Libya in 2003.
And the U.S. finally said, enough.
The UN actually agreed and said, okay, we'll reform this.
Then they produced the current Human Rights Council.
The Bush administration said, in fact, with John Bolton as the ambassador who was there for part of this, said, no, we're not joining this.
It's going to turn into the same collection of abusers.
All the incentives are the same.
And didn't join.
President Obama then joined in 2009.
And here we are finally, thank goodness, with President Trump saying, no, this isn't working.
The incremental bits, the occasional good moment, is not worth effectively endorsing the complete perversion of any definition of human rights.
Well, I remember the last time I visited the United Nations building myself, and I was shown this absolutely exquisite lounge that faced the river.
And it would have been like if those were condominiums, they would have been like $10 million.
Like that property is so amazing.
And it was the most luxurious room I think I've ever been in in my life.
And I'm trying to remember if it was Qatar or the United Arab Emirates that had sponsored this room.
Like it was a plaque brought to you by, I forget which OPEC dictatorship.
And what I learned then was in the past America says, well, we're footing the bill.
We get to call the shots.
But I realize now that if America pulls out, like when Donald Trump threatened to pull his funding away from the PLO, well, that's nothing for some OPEC dictator to come in with 10 million, 100 million.
So it's not even the money anymore.
And that's another worry, though, is that Trump could say, well, we're paying three quarters of the bill or a quarter of the bill or whatever it is.
I don't think there's any shortage of bad guys that would take over.
And that would be the only one thing on my mind is if America were to pull out of certain things, that America would be replaced by an odious force.
Does that apply here?
Yeah, and at the same time, what America is also withdrawing is credibility.
You know, if the UN, even with its current budget, were operating out of, say, Novosibirsk, Russia.
It simply wouldn't have the effect that it does today.
It's the U.S. backing.
I mean, democracies carry credibility.
They're legitimate governments.
And when we withdraw that, that's important.
Now, we still fund the base UN where even if we don't fund, they say the Human Rights Council, we're paying for the brand, if you like.
We're paying billions, we the U.S., billions every year to keep the entire enterprise going.
And attached to it are all these agencies where whether we fund them or not, they thrive on the UN label.
But when the U.S. starts pulling out and says, we're taking our business elsewhere, we want to promote human rights.
We're not going to do it through this complete charade and mockery at the United Nations.
We take away some of the legitimacy that is falsely attached to an outfit like the Human Rights Council.
And I think that's, although you are certainly correct.
Yeah.
OPEC dictatorships, sure, they could afford to bankroll most UN agencies.
But what they want is the U.S. in there, not only paying for it, but blessing it.
Yeah.
You know what?
I sometimes daydream what would happen if the UN was actually physically moved from New York.
I mean, I'm sure Putin would want it in Moscow.
I'm sure, you know, any Gulf, I'm sure they'd want to move it to Doha Qatar.
But I think taking it out of that wonderful city, New York, would knock it down prestige-wise.
But that's, we should rejoice in this one baby step today.
Hey, before we go, I want to ask you a little bit about North Korea, because you and I have talked about North Korea half a dozen times, and we were so perplexed, and we were so, and I've talked to Gordon Cheng about it too, and we all thought it was such an intransigent, insoluble problem.
And then look at Donald Trump and what he's done.
I don't want to say that the deed is done, but I want to ask you if you believe that what is happening so far is real enough that we can at least have half a candle of celebration.
I'm incredibly wary.
I don't think that Kim Jong-un has changed his ways, and I don't think that his great concern is developing a thriving North Korea where people are free.
What I am hoping is that the real agenda here or the real effect will be a change of regime.
Ideally, Kim Jong-un just goes.
Perhaps that he is forced in some way to alter things to an extent where it basically is regime change.
I think it would mean his downfall.
But one of the big, I think there are pieces of the puzzle we may not be seeing.
And one of the big questions I have is, did President Trump find a credible way to threaten Kim Jong-un to such an extent, I mean, directly, perhaps through some message, perhaps through some set of targeting coordinates?
I don't know.
I'm guessing.
I'm asking, that Kim Jong-un has a real incentive to comply with some of this.
I don't think that Kim is going to cheerfully give up his entire nuclear arsenal and production facilities.
I do think there's a chance here of maneuvering in some way to basically bring him down.
And if that happens, we have the real, real start of a solution.
Yeah.
Yeah, let me throw one thing at you.
I mean, Donald Trump is criticized certainly by the left and even some on the right for his style, his braggadocio, his occasional vulgarity.
And there's a theory out there, and some say it with respect, some say it with a grudging respect.
He's such a bruiser, Trump, and he comes from New York real estate where you're dealing with unions and corrupt regulators and sometimes even in the past, I guess, the mafia.
It's such a voracious, rapacious world that maybe his battle scars and his bully style that people criticize, maybe that's he's the first guy who has the temperament to take on a kim.
And I mean, the thing about Trump is you flick his nose, he flicks you back 10 times harder, as our own Justin Trudeau is discovering.
And so maybe it takes the biggest, baddest, braggingest bully around to finally know how to deal with Kim.
Maybe I'm saying the obvious here, but I think it takes, I think a guy who's a nice guy, like George W. Bush was, and I think Obama sometimes was, I don't think they had a chance.
Maybe it takes a killer like Trump.
I'm using that phrase metaphorically.
What do you think of that?
Oh, I think so.
In fact, I wondered, was this sort of the Godfather Summit, a sit-down in which a threat had been issued when President Trump said, we understand each other, was he sort of talked the way the godfather would.
You know, we understand each other because we left a horsehead in his bed before he came to have his chocolate cake.
But we don't know.
We're really guessing on a lot of this.
The thing I see is that I have thought for years that it's very likely that the only real solution to North Korea requires military action.
No American president wants to do that.
There's no appetite for another war in Korea.
So they default to trying what they can with diplomacy.
And what you just described with President Trump's style, I think, has a far better chance at succeeding than all the polished, refined Ivy League fancy diplomats who have paraded through the negotiations with North Korea over decades and failed catastrophically.
Yeah.
I just don't think there's any person in the world who's older than like maybe grade two that John Kerry has ever scared.
Like former Secretary of State, like who would be afraid of John Kerry other than whereas Donald Trump, I think he could scare someone and we're all sort of counting on that.
Victory At The UN00:02:58
We'll keep in touch with you on this too, but it was nice to have a little bit of a victory to talk about together, namely Nikki Haley pulling out of the UN Human Rights Council.
So it's great to talk to you about that.
And I just had to throw in some North Korea questions.
It's nice to see you again, Claudia.
I appreciate your time today.
Great to see you.
Thanks, Ezra.
All right, you too.
Well, there you have it, Claudio Rossett.
A lot going on in foreign affairs, and Donald Trump is certainly at the center of all of it.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer feedback on my monologue yesterday about the Southern Poverty Law Center having to apologize to Majid Nawaz and pay out a settlement of more than $3 million.
Bruce writes, the SPLC feels entitled to back their hate speech by stifling dissent.
Fortunately, someone fought back.
Yeah, isn't that the truth?
I'm shocked how quickly they surrendered.
They must have had something awful they were hiding.
On my interview with Ian Lee on the NAFTA trade negotiations, Ron writes, Ezra, your interview with Professor Ian Lee on NAFTA problems was one of the Rebel's best ever.
Too bad Trudeau or Freeland will never see it and therefore learn something.
Well, I'm glad you think so.
I think we put the whole video on YouTube.
You know, we did that with Manny Montana Grino's conversation, and so far, Manny's, I mean, 17-minute conversation with Manny.
I don't remember if you remember that a couple weeks ago.
Over 100,000 people have watched that.
100,000 people are watching a 17-minute discussion about foreign trade barriers?
Like, this isn't the new Beyoncé video.
This is me and Manny talking trade policy for 17 minutes.
Yeah, 100,000 people have viewed it.
People are craving the other side of the story because all you get from the CBC is cheerleading.
On my interview with Candace Malcolm about Al-Quds Day, Liza writes, Al-Quds is a celebration of hatred and also has no place here.
Why have we allowed this poison into our peaceful nation?
And why do we tolerate this celebration every year?
It is an insult.
Those are good questions.
I guess at base, the answer is because we have freedom of speech, right?
But these folks are foreigners.
They're either foreigners, the Iran government sponsoring this, or they're immigrants to Canada who brought their hateful anti-Semitic ideas with them.
I think we need to have a values test for Canadians, not a racial test, not a religious test even.
There are plenty of liberal Muslims, our friend Rahil Raza, Majid Nawaz we talked about, progressive Muslims, people who believe in the separation of mosque and state, people who believe in pluralism, not Muslim preachers calling for the eradication, that was the word he used, of the Jews.
He used the code word Zionist.
Yeah, I think we need to close the border to people who hate us.
And that's got nothing to do with race, does it?
That's our show for today, folks.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night.