David Menzies and Anthony Fury dissect Rogers Media’s firing of Dave Wheeler after transgender backlash, comparing it to Bell Media’s 2017 dismissal of Stephen LaDrew for questioning "Two Spirit." They critique Justin Trudeau’s Liberals—labeling critics as racist—while Toronto Sun’s Joe Warmington links 2018’s 55 murders to police reforms and gang culture. Menzies mocks Hudson’s Bay’s Ivanka Trump boycott, prioritizing locker-room talk over Saudi feminist issues, and updates Tommy Robinson’s UK appeal, where judges may reduce his sentence due to procedural flaws, citing audience-funded efforts like SaveTommy.com. The episode underscores how free speech battles now hinge on corporate compliance and legal precedents, not just political rhetoric. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, a Winnipeg radio host is fired for offending the transgendered community.
It's July 18th.
I'm David Menzies, and this is The Ezra Levent 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.
Dave Wheeler, host of Wheeler in the Morning, was suspended and fired by the Killjoys running Rogers Media.
You see, Wheeler apparently uttered something so hateful, so odious, so egregious that, well, the Winnipeg trans community took to social media screaming, off with his head.
And what was it that Wheeler said, you ask?
Well, let's play the audio verbatim.
But before we run the clip, folks, here's the backstory.
Wheeler was having a discussion with his co-hosts, Reena Jay and Dave Turnbull, about Scarlett Johansson being pressured by the trans community to drop out of the film Rup and Tug because Scarlett is, well, 100% real female, and the role she was cast to play was to be a fake man.
Apparently, because this is 2018, only trans actors can accept trans roles.
I'm just, I am so, I don't think I'm the only one.
I am so confused.
I am so confused by the whole transgender community.
I mean, literally, there's nothing you can do to make them.
Not a goddamn thing.
Yeah, nothing.
It's a movie.
People act and they pretend to be different things.
Kind of like what you're doing, really, in the grand scheme of things.
Leaping lizards.
Did you catch that earth-shattering statement?
Here it is again.
Quote, people act and pretend to be different things, kind of like what you're doing, really, in the grand scheme of things, end quote.
And you know what?
That statement, I think, is equal parts clever and funny and, well, true.
I mean, the very essence of an actor is to portray someone else.
And really, what is a transgender individual but a man who thinks he's a woman or a woman who thinks she's a man?
Sure, people can get some surgical slicing and dicing of the genitals and inject some hormones, but at the end of the day, we are left with men pretending to be women and women pretending to be men.
So really, Dave Wheeler's comparison is hang on.
But true to form, some members of the Winnipeg trans community got their knickers and or boxer shorts in a knot.
And it didn't take long for Rogers Media to suspend and then later fire Wheeler, stating that his comments were contrary to the company's quote standards and core values.
Standards and core values?
Since when did gender bending become a standard and a core value for the cable company?
And if you're running a radio station, I should think that a standard and core value is to keep people entertained, not bore them into a coma by becoming an echo chamber endlessly reciting politically correct pablum.
But Rogers Media told the CBC that it has invited a member of the transgender community to speak on the morning show about issues faced by transgender individuals.
Oh, hooray, what joy.
That sounds like such captivating radio now, doesn't it?
I hope Rogers saves that content for Sweeps Week.
Now, it didn't take long for Rogers to completely kick Wheeler from the penalty box to under the bus.
That's how the big boring media companies roll these days, folks.
Well, at least he won't have to receive any sensitivity training.
Remember last December when former Liberal Party Prez Stephen LaDrew was suspended and then fired outright by Bell Media for upsetting the trans community when LaDreux appeared on Fox News.
It's very reminiscent of that.
And what was astounding about this story is that Ledrieu never actually ventured off the politically correct reserve.
He defended the idea of the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, referring to the LGBT community with a new 15-letter identifier, namely, wait for it, LGGBD T T T I Q Q A A P P. What does all that alphabet soup stand for, you ask?
Oh, come on, folks, life's way too short for that.
But alas, LaDrew made a fatal error in his interview with Tucker Carlson.
Check it out.
This is meaningful because teachers are being taught this, kids will be taught it.
And I think I have a right to non-judgmentally ask what they're talking about.
So for example, what's Two Spirit?
Well, Two Spirit sounds like there's someone they don't know whether they're, you know, fish or foul.
They don't know whether they're frick or frack.
So they're clearly confused.
And, you know, again, if you're confused, what better place to go than to be at school?
Whoa, did you catch that?
Ledrieux said fish or foul, frick or frack, that these people are confused.
And apparently the various non-binary gender-fluid asexuals went frothing mad over this remark.
After all, that almost sounded like they were being mocked.
And we can't have that because mocking or even saying something that seems to be mocking, well, that's hate speech.
And that must be banned.
And so it is that Bell actually threw LaDrew under the bus too in order to appease the spirit unicorn community.
Amazing.
And make no mistake, members of the Winnipeg trans community were out for Wheeler's blood.
The CBC story quotes various transgender females as saying that Wheeler's comments are tantamount to hate speech and that Wheeler should indeed be fired.
And you know what?
In a blink of an eyelash, he was.
That's right.
They had his career thrown into the dumpster for essentially doing what he is contractually obligated to do, to be funny and entertaining.
And really, how perversely ironic.
After all, the transgender community continually clamors that we should all be more accepting of their lifestyles.
Yet the same people who endlessly demand more tolerance often are the most intolerant members of society.
Indeed, when it comes to trans issues these days, it's not about acceptance anymore.
It's about affirmation, which is to say, if you aren't an all-out cheerleader for the trans community, then you are therefore a bigot and a transphobe and you need to be severely punished.
We saw that play out with Stephen LaDrew and we just saw it play out with Dave Wheeler.
Don't know about you folks, but I'm left pining for the good old days, you know, when tranny trouble meant that the gear shift was slipping out of drive and into neutral.
More of the Ezra Levent Show coming up.
Remember when the political pundits did their postmortems on the 2015 federal election?
How these analysts said that the Conservatives lost the election not so much because of bad policy issues, but...
but due to their less than pleasant demeanor?
Well, just look at how the Trudeau Liberals are behaving these days, especially whenever they're publicly criticized.
They've even dismissed their critics as racists who thrive on fear-mongering.
Indeed, the Liberals, according to my next guest, have kind of devolved into the mean girls of Canadian politics.
And joining me with more on how the Liberals are increasingly behaving badly is Toronto Sun columnist Anthony Fury.
Welcome to the Ezra Event Show, Anthony.
Hey, always great to be hanging with the menzoid.
Always great to have you, my friend.
Now, I have to admit, I've never seen mean girls, but I take it that as the title implies, these aren't pleasant people, right, Anthony?
I've never seen it either.
I think it was a phrase before it was a movie.
But yeah, sort of the general idea of the girls in class, the girls in high school who are always picking on all the other girls and they have a little clique and they make people feel bad about themselves and so forth.
I really see, David, that that is what's happening right now on the federal political scene.
Justin Trudeau has his close pals in the prime minister's office, people like Gerald Butz, and he has some ministers who he seems pretty tight with, like Catherine McKenna, the environment and climate change minister, as it is now known as.
And they're really not too crazy about people who aren't really in lockstep with their agenda.
And I think increasingly, it wasn't so bad in 2015 when it was all sunny ways and it was all smiles.
But now that things have gotten rather difficult for the Liberals and Doug Ford is now in office, and that means that the majority of Ontarians not so happy with the carbon tax, the Liberals, they don't know how to deal with the fact that they're no longer, that Trudeau is no longer necessarily the golden boy for everyone.
And rather than try to kind of, you know, find a way to kill him with kindness or whatnot, bring people on board, they're being pretty snippy and they're being pretty darn right nasty.
And I don't know if it's a good look for them.
And I'm certainly not sure if it's one of electoral success.
Yes, Anthony, it is quite a departure from Sunny Ways, as you mentioned.
But if we look at the chronology, where do you think things began to deviate in terms of the Mr. Nice Guys and Mr. Nice Gals?
I think you mentioned your column.
There was that elbow issue in the House.
Can you elaborate on that?
Well, that's one of them, Elbow Gate from quite a while ago now, when Trudeau wanted people to be voting on ramming through some electoral reform stuff.
And the clock was ticking and the speaker was trying to get people to take their seats.
And Trudeau, he wouldn't have any of it.
And he stood up and he went and he grabbed a couple MPs and tried to sort of drag them over to their seats a little bit.
And people thought, oh, that's a bit of an ugly look.
And it's not his place.
He's the prime minister, but the prime minister in the Canadian system, like in the British system, is just first among equals.
You're just one of 338 MPs.
It was the Speaker's job to do that.
So that was a big no-no.
Although he didn't get his backup so much about that.
I think that's when people first started to ask questions about him.
Where I think he and his team really got shaken was that few-week period where there was both the India trip and the people kind comment, which came right after, where that was just pure goof troop.
And you know, David, it's said that it's okay when people love you, and it's also okay when people fear you, but it's not okay when they start laughing at you.
And the problem is Justin Trudeau, I mean, conservatives have always disliked the guy, so whatever.
But I think regular people, the swing voters, the people who would normally seek him out for selfies, they've started to laugh at him.
And I think that's what really gets under their skin.
And that's probably the moment where the bus started to, where the wheels really start to come off the bus.
You know, I think you've zeroed in on something very important here, Anthony, and that is the idea of being laughed at.
People with big egos, and I think Justin Trudeau has an ego the size of the TD Center.
The one thing they really can't bear is to be ignored or even worse, to be laughed at.
And we are seeing that.
And you see the comments, the memes on social media.
It must be grating to him.
But it's gone beyond that.
You've seen in recent days senior cabinet ministers chastising their political opponents as being racist or un-Canadian for merely having the temerity to raise questions about border security.
Well, exactly.
And one thing that happened today, David, that's very interesting is that we had the cabinet shuffle, which is a bit of a snooze fest for regular folks.
It's just the insiders who talk about it.
One thing, though, I did find very interesting is sort of a two-part on that mean girl's note.
One, they didn't move Catherine McKenna, who's been a major mean girl in terms of deriding people who aren't on board with their carbon tax agenda.
So it's telling they're sort of endorsing her antics.
Number two, they created this new position, Minister of Border Security.
Now, at face value, David, I'm very much in supportive of that because it suggests they're acknowledging that the situation is serious and they need someone really working on it aggressively.
Former Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair is going to be the guy doing it.
But I got to wonder, David, is his job going to be to police them, the people who are crossing illegally, or is his job going to be to police us, to police the Canadians, the majority, the super majority of Canadians who say we have a problem with this situation?
Is he going to be in the front lines of calling people un-Canadian and alt-right and racist and whatever other terms that can come away with from the kitchen sink to deride people?
Or is he going to get serious on the issue?
I don't know.
He hasn't been part of the Mean Girls PAC yet.
So I'm going to call it as I see it.
And I certainly hope he deals effectively with the issue.
But we should wait and see.
And the pressure should be on him to perform well.
You know, that is a fascinating question to ask, Anthony, because in addition to being Minister of Border Security, that's only half the title.
The other half is organized crime reduction, whatever that means.
So I never thought of it in that context that this is going to be some ex-law enforcement guy virtue signaling to the rest of Canada, not to be mean ourselves to wannabe refugees and would-be migrants and what have you.
But what else I find fascinating here, Anthony, is that you would think that if the pundits were right, and I think you believe they were right, that there was a degree of maybe arrogance or sour demeanor by the Harper Conservatives in the last election.
If the Pundits were right about that, wouldn't the Liberals, for their own selfish reasons, try to avoid mean girls' territory because it saw what it did to a majority Harper government in 2015.
Well, yes and no, but I think Stephen Harper and the PMO also looked at the numbers too.
And a number of them immediately on election night after they lost, Jason Kenney, who was a major influential figure in the conservative government, he right away zeroed in.
You know, five minutes after the polls closed and they learned that they had lost in Trudeau at one, but that had been a decisive element.
So I mean, it's who you are.
It's in your nature.
Now, Stephen Harper, I mean, I've met the guy.
I've seen him speak a number of times.
I don't think it's fair to say that they characterized him as a nasty individual and so forth.
Trudeau's Icky Image00:04:06
I don't think that's fair, but he's not all chuckles and giggles.
He's a sort of low-key guy in terms of doing the big smiles and the hamming it up to the crowd.
So it was in his nature.
Likewise, I think being this kind of mean girl was in Trudeau's nature.
He smiles a lot for the camera, but David, he doesn't have a self-deprecating sense of humor, which we saw with, we can come up with, you know, Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan, for instance, had that a lot, where they laughed at themselves and they would tell jokes almost, you know, at their own expense.
When meeting with Gorbachev, Reagan would sort of tell funny jokes.
I've heard Mulroney make jokes at his own expense before.
I've never heard Justin Trudeau tell a real joke that gets the room laughing, particularly a self-deprecating one.
The smile is kind of an edgy smile.
It's, I want to be on the cover of GQ smile.
It's not a warm, inviting one.
No, I haven't heard anything self-deprecating emanating from the mouth of Justin Trudeau either, Anthony.
But here's what I think is a $64,000 question.
I'm going to pose it to you, Anthony.
I know the federal election's more than a year away.
In politics, that is three eternities wrapped into one.
However, this meanness that we are seeing, this mean girls attitude by the federal Justin Trudeau liberals, is it resonating, do you think, with the voters out there?
Well, I think it's certainly changed perceptions, not just for the sort of hardened political class, because they don't really matter.
They're stuck in their trenches and they're going to do what they do.
But I think for the average folks out there, for the swing voter, Trudeau's sort of seriousness has been called into question.
And the Kokene grope, that was a thing that was heard around the world.
The Because It's 2015 line was what endeared him to women, really, the world over and got him on the cover of all these fancy magazines.
And the Kokene grope was echoed in a pretty similar way.
So I think his whole kind of broader narrative and how people view Trudeau has shifted a little bit.
And it will be curious to see whether he can correct that to one more in his favor.
I think right now he's really just kind of a workaday politician and people are beginning to get a bit cynical about him.
And that's where you're certainly open to attack.
So we shall see, right?
It still stands, David, that both Andrew Scheer and Jagmeet Singh are pretty uninspiring guys and people don't know them.
So I don't know who the alternative would be right now.
But if I was Andrew Scheer, I'd really be looking to shore myself up.
Yeah, no kidding.
And by the way, I'm really glad you brought up the Kokeny Grope because it falls into the department of self-deprecation, the kind of humor we've never seen from Justin Trudeau.
And it's this.
He's never really apologized for that, has he, Anthony?
In fact, all his tearful apologies these past three years, you know, Ezra Levant has certainly gone on about this.
It's always for the sins of others that, you know, how the gay community is being treated, how Aboriginals have been treated.
He's always apologizing on the behalf of Canadians.
And yet when there's something that, you know, he really had to man up and apologize for, it's just not in his blood, is it?
Yeah, Ezra and I talked about this the other week, David.
And I think I won't sort of relitigate all of that because there's so many odd things about that apology or that lack of apology the way he addressed it.
But the one word that keeps coming back to me is icky.
There's something just really icky and off about the whole thing.
And I think even if you, you know, you can't perfectly articulate it, a lot of people out there, particularly women out there, go, there's something about this that just ain't quite right.
And that's not a position you want to be in if you're Trudeau.
Well, Anthony, I want to thank you for coming on.
I think the takeaway for me and I think for our viewers is if you haven't seen Mean Girls, go see Mean Girls.
It sounds like a newer version of Heather's, which was also about Mean Girls, which I did see and I enjoyed very much.
Thank you so much for joining me on the Ezra Levant Show, Anthony.
There you go.
Thanks, David.
Thank you.
And folks, keep it here.
More of the Ezra Levin Show to come right after this.
Why Police Refuse to Label Gang Wars00:07:25
Well, it might be hot and sunny in the greater Toronto area these days, but there is a dark side too, namely the homicide rate continues to rise.
Barely a week goes by in which someone isn't murdered in Toronto the Good.
As the city experiences yet another summer of the gun, to date, there have been 55 homicides in Toronto alone as the city is on track to break the 1991 record of 86 murders.
So what is behind this spike in violence?
And with more on this ominous story, we have Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington.
Thanks for joining us, Grawler.
And say it ain't so, Joe, but as I understand it, Toronto's homicide rate on a per capita basis is actually higher than New York City's right now.
That's what I've seen reported.
I haven't drilled in on it to see how it could be.
But if you think about it, particularly Manhattan and places like that, it's really difficult to commit a homicide.
They do happen, but not in the frequency that happened in the 70s there.
In Toronto, you're not safe anywhere.
I mean, anywhere.
Eaton Center, at the corner of Young and Dundas at the Dundas Square, anywhere they'll get you.
And you know, Joe, you, when we spoke off camera when we were setting this up earlier today, you corrected me when I said the summer of the gun.
You just said summer of death, because it's not necessarily a gun.
And certainly we had the van attack.
Well, I was with you.
Yes.
And we did a show right from the scene there.
And, you know, I remember us talking, if you ever rolled that back, it'd be interesting to see, you know, how we sort of foreshadowed what was going to come.
You know, that's the example that people say, and you hear it from politicians all the time, even this year.
We've got to get the guns off the street, more gun control.
It's got nothing to do with guns.
I mean, they'll kill you with even the story today with the wire.
A guy's been charged.
Have you ever heard of a wire as a weapon, weapons charge?
Yeah, Joe, that was one of your stories.
Knives and guns, vans.
Machetes.
I mean, but you know what?
For some reason, a homicide is a homicide.
I get it.
A loss of life is tragic.
But this one about the wire and the motorcyclist, it was so bizarre.
And I found it personally disturbing.
Can you tell us what you know about that story, Sophie?
Yeah, well, it's a shocking story.
And basically what you have is some guy walking along and he sees a wire that's hooked up.
It's sort of something to do with the hydro or whatever.
And he doesn't just leave it.
He decides to pull it across the street.
He waits for a motorcycle to come and then tightens it as taut as he can get it.
And the motorcycle, you know, basically went into it and kind of like, you know, fell, almost an attempt to decapitate him.
And I've never heard of anything like that in my years as a reporter.
And you know, Joe, what I think is so disturbing about this story is that this was not someone with a vendetta against another person.
This is a chance to hurt someone.
Yeah, this wasn't even a road rage in the sadistic psychopathic person.
And we're seeing it in Toronto in the last few weeks.
I mean, there's story after story of all kinds of, you know, I guess the mentally challenged people or people that have mental illnesses on the street jumping on hoods of cars and on the roof and it goes on and on and on.
And this falls into that category perhaps.
But the other thing is that we're not talking about is these so what I call dangerous injection sites, which is, you know, they get people to come into a particular area.
They don't supply them with the actual narcotic, but they give them the needle.
They help them do it.
Where do they think they get the drugs from?
The drugs aren't put together.
You just go to the ATM and get them.
You've got to commit a crime to get the money to go buy them.
And then the money fuels other crimes, including guns.
So, you know, these are indicators of where your city is at, where your society is at when you see these kind of crazy things happening.
And there's lots of it this year.
And, Joe, a lot of the crime, a lot of the homicides, I mean, these are gangbangers.
These are gang wars.
I always find it fascinating to see why the police are so reluctant to describe something that's clearly a gang war as a gang war.
But when we drill down to find out why we've seen this spike and why this might be a record-setting year, I know one of the reasons some of the experts in law enforcement have floated was we got rid of carding, which was a good intelligence tool for police officers, you know, to get a grip on what was about to occur.
What are your thoughts on the demise of carding and the homicide rate we have now?
I mean, you can sort of tie them together.
Of course, a lot of people don't want to do that.
But the carding and the whole concept of policing, the fact that we're going to treat it like a budget thing and it has to be run like a McDonald's efficiently and all this kind of stuff has technology changes and has obviously society changes and the criminal changes.
The reality is that it's not just that they eliminated street checks, but they've eliminated just the regular conversation.
So if I see you out behind the rebel and you're hanging around out there, if I go up to you as a police officer and say, you know, what are you doing here?
How are you?
Or whatever, however you want to start it, you can say that you're being racist or you're being homophobic or whatever it is, just like that.
I have to give you a card as a police officer.
Say, here's how you can complain about me.
Because if you feel that this interaction isn't comfortable.
So the police officers aren't going to do that because they don't need that.
They've got enough trouble as it is, have to go back.
So that's what they've done.
They've eliminated it.
Now, if you're a person of color or you have a religious garb, whatever, that kind of thing, then it's a no-go zone for officers altogether because they know that if they do get it wrong, they don't want to be deemed as racist when they're not racist.
Now, the other side of it is the interactions may be fine.
I mean, you can go up to somebody from any race or any religion and say something, and they might just say, oh, I'm just here to see so-and-so, and there's no problem.
But you're going to take that chance as a police officer.
And that's what they tell me.
They don't want to take the chance.
And, you know, I agree with you, Joe.
I mean, I've never seen such a racially charged environment.
And I think the pinnacle was reached a few weeks ago when Mayor John Torrey, rightfully and justifiably, referred to a couple of gangbangers who indiscriminately shot at two little girls who were in a playground, and he referred to them as sewer rats.
And by the way, didn't even know what the race of the people were at the time.
And you had the social justice warriors led by the likes of Desmond Cole, you know, everything is to be blamed upon white privilege and white supremacy and whatnot, saying that that was a despicable use of language, that he was referring to an entire community as sewer rats when clearly that wasn't what the mayor was doing.
But what I'm saying, Joe, is that when you have the left going to bat for murderers or want to be murderers based on racism, we've crossed the line here.
Yeah, and again, it's just Desmond Cole doing what Desmond Cole does.
And it's amazing how in the mainstream media he still gets to march on, even though he does something like that.
The reality is that they are scumbags or sewer rats.
The mayor was right to call them that.
Difficult Realities Facing Mothers00:03:46
He didn't talk about a whole everybody in society.
He's talking about these two people.
Two little girls were struck and a third one was grazed.
And there were 11 other kids that were traumatized.
So, you know, the problem is that if you call something for what it really is, then you get on your back foot and call it a name or racist, when in fact, we're calling it for what it is.
And we've called it out all year.
We're at 55 homicides.
We're on target.
You know, it's conceivable we could hit 100 this year, but certainly on pace for 90, which would obliterate the record.
And that's not okay with most of us.
Most of us that are raising our families here.
It's not okay.
But, Joe, and that's the thing, too.
I'm glad you mentioned family.
And I'm going to talk about a bigger picture thing for our last question.
But how can we even try to solve this problem if we can't even honestly discuss it?
There is a disproportionate percentage of offenders and victims for that matter who are black.
And also we know in the black community, there is a huge proportion of fatherless families.
But you can't even, you know that, Joe, and I'm going to get condemned by the usual suspect for bringing up the whole idea of not having a strong father figure in a family as being maybe a potential factor in leading to this.
What are your thoughts?
Well, I have thoughts on that.
I just want to say, you know, some of the names, Nambi Ogba, who was just walking to his car and he was taken out.
He was a really good guy.
And then recently it was Janice Nayarko, who was just at a funeral for a friend.
She was from Nigeria, but she lived here.
And not too far from where we're sitting in the city of Toronto here, there's a bowling alley where Rumah Amar was gunned down.
And she was just out with her fiancé and gunned down.
So those are three of the names, just in case people don't know that they're not real people.
I can name more.
I don't buy the fatherless family thing.
That's another one of those leftist constructs that they try to do.
A lot of the people that are killed, the young black youth, are fathers themselves.
They have fathers.
The fathers, they have mothers.
The mothers, I don't take off the hook for the gang activity.
A lot of the mothers and women are in on it or participating in it or aiding and abetting it.
I'm not saying all of them, some of them, but it's a difficult situation.
And also single mothers, you know, it's a very powerful thing.
There's been so many people raised by single mothers that have turned out just fine.
So I hear what you're saying.
It's another one of these search for solutions to the issue.
The issue is the reality is when you commit a serious crime, you have to do the time.
And we're not doing that.
We're not taking it seriously.
Every one of these cases, the people were either on bail before the courts or on parole.
And that's really what it has nothing to do with mom or dad.
It's the individual.
Well, we might.
In my view.
We might differ there, but I will, you know, to go back to your original points, I do agree that when you have a revolving door justice system and you have the tools being removed from police officers, I guess, hey, congratulations, left.
If this is your politically correct panacea, just check out where the homicide rate is going.
It's a sad disgrace.
And it's not just the homicide rate you have to look at.
It's the shootings.
The shootings are way up.
The violence is way up.
You know, the incidences that we've written about this week, quite a few of them, they didn't turn out to be homicides, including the motorcycle one that we talked about earlier here.
It could have been, though.
But it could have been.
But they all add up to the one thing.
And what that is, is it's not really a safe city.
It's not.
And you can try to sort of gloss it over.
Homicide Rates Soar00:02:25
And that's why this mayor's race, if it does happen with Blaine Lassman, if he does actually throw his hat in the ring, we'll have that conversation in there.
It's not that John Torrey doesn't care about crime and that.
He cares about it.
And he's not afraid to get in there and mix it up.
But he's the guy that made the decision to pull the carding, if you want to call it that.
He's the guy that sided with Desmond Cole.
And so he has to live with that thing.
And the voters need to decide, well, you know what, whose side are we on?
Are we on the thug side or are we on the cop side?
I think it's an easy decision for us.
Indeed, it is.
Joe, thank you so much for coming by and great reporting in the Toronto Sun.
Thank you, as always.
And folks, keep it here.
More of the Ezra Levin show to come up right after this.
On my monologue yesterday about Ivanka Trump's clothing line being pulled from Hudson's Bay, Muta Ween writes, This is the example of the modern leftist movement, which claims to be all virtuous and inclusive.
but are actually the worst bigots.
Well, Muta, they are free to utter their idiocy, of course, but you know what?
It's sad to see such a large retailer such as the Hudson's Bay actually acquiescing to the demands of these nutters.
Paul writes, Hudson's Bay are still in business.
I can't remember the last time I saw one and don't know anyone who shopped there since I was a kid.
An interesting business move, alienate a huge chunk of your customer base and hope it brings you more business.
I'm sure a government bailout is in the works.
Well, you know, you raise an interesting point, Paul.
Traditional department store chains are having a really tough go of it these days, primarily because of the advent of online shopping.
We've witnessed the demise of Sears and Target in Canada in recent years.
So it will be interesting to see what lays ahead for the Bay.
As for a government bailout, well, the Bay would really have to fail on the level of a bombardier to get cash.
After all, it's only the very biggest losers in Canada that get rewarded.
And Tammy writes, notice she couldn't compute the real-life example of oppression and misogyny.
Judges' Ruling on Appeal00:05:27
That is Saudi Arabia.
Great interviews, David.
Well, thank you so much, my friend.
And what Tammy is referring to, folks, are those statements uttered by a protester who was part of a group called the Peeved Beavers.
This group was pressuring the Bay to drop the Ivanka Trump line.
And the Mensa Club member I interviewed actually thought that Trump's locker room talk from many years ago was a bigger issue for feminists than how women are being treated today in Saudi Arabia.
You can't make this up, folks.
As you know, Ezra is in the United Kingdom covering the Tommy Robinson legal appeal.
And today, that appeal was heard at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
I'll say goodbye now and leave you with this very important update from Ezra on Tommy Robinson.
Thanks so much for watching and keep fighting for freedom.
I think if I had to read the tea leaves, I'd say the Lord Chief Justice himself seems sympathetic to Tommy.
He really honed in on the strengths of Tommy's appeal and he pointed out some of the weaknesses in the counter arguments by Mr. Mabley.
So I found that very encouraging.
There were two secondary or associate justices.
They were less voluble than the Chief Justice and maybe less supportive.
But if I had to tell you my guess, it would be that Tommy Robinson will be released.
Now, at the end of today's hearing, we're done, by the way, I thought it might proceed into tomorrow, but we're done.
The judges said, the Chief Justice himself said, that the three judges want to confirm.
And given how important this case is, not just for Tommy and his supporters and not just for the incidents at hand, but the precedent that this will set.
I mean, this will create many precedents, how journalists can treat trials, how contempt of court is handled procedurally, the kind of punishments that can be meted out to a contemner.
That's a word I learned today.
That's someone in contempt.
So there's so much law that will be created.
In any given trial, the precedent that's set is not necessarily strong.
But when you have the Lord Chief Justice himself with two associate judges weighing in on a case as political as this, it will cast a shadow for decades to come of precedent.
So it is wise and thoughtful for the Chief Justice to say, give us some time to write this properly.
Of course it is.
But what troubled me somewhat is that the justice said we might need the end of July.
Well, that's a long time for Tommy Robinson to have to continue to rot in solitary confinement.
I might have thought that the judges would have granted him bail while they take their sweet time in writing the appeal.
That did not happen.
Now, that said, the judges could return any time.
They could come back tomorrow.
I don't think they will.
But when they say they want the rest of July, that doesn't mean they need to take the rest of July.
I think that Tommy will get out of prison.
His lawyers asked for everything.
They asked for, you know, they criticized the length of the sentence, but they also criticized his convictions, not just the one in Leeds in May, but the one in Canterbury last year, if you recall.
That's quite a dramatic reach.
But when you throw everything at the wall, something might stick.
And I think Tommy just needs one of those things to stick, and he's out.
If he appeals the sentence and the judges say, yeah, that's too long, he's out.
If he gets the Leeds conviction quashed, he's out because he's already served so much time.
If he gets the Canterbury matter quashed, well, then surely the Leeds matter will be quashed too.
I think Tommy may win one or two out of these three things and be set free.
To you, our rebel viewers, you really helped make this possible.
Tommy Robinson was not appealing.
He was not going to appeal this case, but you provided the dough.
You crowdfunded the dough at savetommy.com.
And as you know, 100% of any surplus there will go to Tommy's family.
And you even crowdfunded my plane ticket and hotel fare to come here from Canada.
And I'm really glad I did.
You helped out at TommyTrial.com.
So thank you for chipping in twice.
So, and by the way, I met a lot of people here today who had chipped in also from the UK.
So this is a real grassroots rebellion, even the journalism we're doing here.
Well, I've gone on quite too long, but I'm just giving you the thoughts of the day.
I would say I'm optimistic, cautiously optimistic.
I think the legal team did a good job.
I think it was nice to see a broad variety of support for Tommy.
Tommy himself looked sharp.
He looked alert.
He looked upbeat.
When he recognized someone on the video phone that he knew, you could see his heart warm and he smiled and waved.
It was actually quite touching.
There were some family members of Tommy here today.
Obviously, they keep a very low profile for obvious reasons, but I think they were touched as well.
And they expressed through me to you, our viewers, their gratitude for your help.
It's not my help.
I mean, I chipped in a little bit, I suppose, but a minuscule amount compared to what our viewers have done.