Maxime Bernier accuses the CBC of "despicable fake news" after they falsely linked his tweets on Trudeau’s divisive immigration policies—backed by a 2016 poll showing 8% of Canadians wanted more immigration—to Charlottesville’s anniversary, despite no racial context. Anthony Fury exposes Ikra Khalid’s ties to extremists like Amin El-Mu’ad, whose anti-Semitic chants (e.g., "Battle of Khyber") Peel Police dismissed as non-criminal, while Trudeau met figures like Kalistani terrorist Jaspal Atwal. Meanwhile, Rand Paul and Joel Pollock argue John Brennan’s revoked security clearance was justified due to his politicized leaks, communist voting history, and alleged lies to Congress, including downplaying ISIS threats. Bernier’s defiance of media bias contrasts with Scheer’s perceived weakness, suggesting the CBC’s narrative risks undermining Conservatives’ credibility while Trudeau’s selective legal favors—like retroactive charity pardons—highlight partisan overreach. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, a telling example of extreme bias at the CBC.
It's August 17th, 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.
Earlier this week, I took you through Maxime Bernier's tweets about the cult of diversity pushed by Justin Trudeau.
Bernier took a pretty nuanced approach.
I think 80%, 90% of Canadians would agree with him.
Bernier said he's fine with people of different skin color or different religions or different sexual orientations.
He just said we need to come together as Canadians.
That has to be a core set of values.
And diversity for its own sake forces people into silos, into ghettos, he said.
You know, I think that's true.
I don't even really think that's even a matter of opinion.
It's almost a tautology, as they say in math or logic.
If you emphasize what makes people different, you will emphasize our differences.
That's sort of a truism.
He's for unity, not diversity.
He's for unity from diversity.
I liked the tweets, and a lot of other people did too.
I'll wait to see an official opinion poll on the subject.
I bet there's one or two in the field right now.
But we know already, for example, that two years ago, a government poll commissioned by the Trudeau Liberals, only 8% of Canadians said they wanted more immigration, and yet that's exactly what Trudeau did.
Trudeau is watering down the citizenship guide for new Canadians.
He's shortening the time you need to be in Canada before you can become a citizen.
He's devaluing citizenship by letting convicted terrorists with dual citizenship retain their Canadian citizenship.
He's emphasizing a history of shame and scolding.
He ripped John A. MacDonald from our $10 bill, for example.
So yeah, I think that Bernier speaks for a lot of people.
I'm not going to say he speaks for 92% of people, but the liberal opinion poll would suggest that 92% of people support at least part of what Bernier is saying.
I know that Bernier's comments were framed on criticisms of Justin Trudeau.
Remember that?
You'll recall from our show earlier this week, it was based on a vacuous comment by Trudeau.
You can see it at the bottom there, where he was at Danforth, where the mass shooting was.
And Trudeau was telling people that diversity is the solution.
Yeah, I don't think that's the right message in the right place, especially when a Pakistani Canadian whose family was allowed to stay here, even though they were implicated in drug crimes and gun crimes, and even though police say this shooter, Faisal Hussain, visited Pakistan and Afghanistan, even though ISIS claimed the responsibility, I don't think more diversity is the right lesson to learn from the Danforth terrorist shooting, but that's what Trudeau said it was.
I think it's a bit tired and people are wising up to it, including more and more new immigrants themselves who come here lawfully and follow the rules as opposed to Trudeau's own open borders policy, where we take any illegal immigrant, any criminal who simply walks up from the U.S. before Trump can deport them.
So yeah, Bernier is right.
He's saying something most Canadians support.
He was actually pretty moderate, giving a shout out to diversity himself.
He wasn't poking at Andrew Scheer at all.
He wasn't mentioning Scheer.
He was poking at Justin Trudeau.
I liked it.
Showed a bit of pep and a bit of courage.
And it was interesting to watch the CBC and the Liberals respond.
The Liberals were actually, in my view, fairly restrained.
They got that Adam Vaughan, an MP from Toronto, to come on the national to badmouth Bernier as a racist.
But you know, it's not hard to get Vaughan to say anything.
He will literally say anything or do anything to get media attention.
Just yesterday, he was actually tweeting that Toronto should consider separating from Ontario.
The guy's a gold mine for journalists, but not because of his good judgment.
He's just because he'll say anything.
I thought that Justin Trudeau's response to Maxime Bernier was fairly restrained because Trudeau knows that he has a lot of weakness here on terrorism, on open borders, and especially where Maxime Bernier is strongest, in Quebec.
Remember, it's the Liberal Premier of Quebec who is bringing in a Berkaban, the Liberal Premier.
It's the Liberal Premier of Quebec who is bussing Trudeau's migrants out of the province into Toronto, where they'll take anything.
Quebec has had it up to here with Trudeau's diversity baloney.
So Trudeau was fairly mild in his reply to Bernier.
And Andrew Scheer, too.
Remember, the Conservatives just won a surprising by-election victory in Quebec a few weeks back.
Remember when Eric Duane came on our show, Eric Duem, and told us about what happened there?
It was very interesting.
One of the key issues that helped the Conservatives win that riding was illegal immigration.
Another way of saying extreme multiculturalism or too much diversity, I guess.
Here's Andrew Scheer campaigning in Quebec for the by-election by going down to that unguarded border crossing and shooting videos there.
He knows why he won in Quebec.
It wasn't his scintillating personality or his raw charisma or his beautiful command of the French language.
It's because Quebecers are sick of Trudeau's diversity is our strength, vacuousness.
But more to the point, they're sick of what it actually means in real life.
So Trudeau's reaction to Bernier was fairly mild, I think.
And Andrew Scheer was fairly mild too.
His statement, I read it the other day, it didn't even go after Bernier by name, didn't discipline him in any way, just restated his own support for diversity, whatever that means.
Frankly, it was a statement that I think Bernier himself could probably have signed.
So naturally, the attacks on Bernier were left to the CBC itself, Canada's state broadcaster.
They have done story after story on the evil Bernier.
First, trying to exacerbate the rift between Bernier and Scheer.
Now, I get it.
Look, there's obviously a tension there.
There's tension between the two men.
There has been since the day of the leadership vote.
Andrew Scheer has insisted on the dairy cartel and policies like that.
Bernier was kicked out for calling for an end to protectionism for Quebec farmers.
So yeah, there is tension.
Fair enough.
The CBC went at it, well, like the Liberals, they are.
I haven't seen them do the same thing to Trudeau, though, about, you know, going to every single Liberal cabinet minister, every single Liberal MP, and asking them what they think about Trudeau groping the tush of a female reporter in BC.
I haven't seen the CBC going to every single Liberal MP and asking them what they think should happen to Ikra Khalid, the Muslim extremist MP who was caught giving a high honor to an anti-Semite, not once, but twice.
And wouldn't you know it, there he is with Trudeau too.
Khalid apologized yesterday.
We'll talk more about this today with Anthony Fury.
It was an accident, she said, an accident both times she said.
That's good enough for the CBC.
No need to flog a dead horse.
But let me show you the lowest part here that shows you the deep corruption of journalism at the state broadcaster.
After going on about Bernier, look at what the CBC said.
Also significant is the timing.
Bernier chose to send his messages on the first anniversary of the riots in Charlottesville, Virginia.
A milestone for people who believe whites are under some kind of cultural attack.
We did reach out to Maxime Bernier today to see if he'd talk Rosie, but he didn't respond.
What?
Nothing in Bernier's tweets talked about the United States or about race, other than to positively say he supports all races and ethnicities.
Why on earth did the CBC say that Bernier chose to make his comments on the anniversary of a U.S. racist march?
Bernier has made similar comments before and after that arbitrary date too.
But the CBC, in true state broadcaster propaganda fashion, true Pravda style, they said that Bernier chose that anniversary.
Now they immediately admitted that they hadn't spoken to him, as you saw, but so what?
They just made it up and they showed that racist riot video just in case you were too thick to understand their insinuations the whole time.
Bernier is a racist, you guys.
I wonder who he's trying to talk to.
Let's play some racist riot footage.
Yeah, maybe it's that.
They're sick of the CBC.
They're sick.
They're fake news, aren't they?
Well, we're talking about tweets.
Let me end with three tweets.
Here's Bernier replying to that fake news smear.
He wrote, just saw this report which implies a timing between my tweets last Sunday and some violent demonstration in the U.S. How do you know that I chose to send my messages on the first anniversary of the riots in Charlottesville?
This is despicable fake news.
It is despicable.
It is fake news.
But then again, when Rosemary Barton is such a fangirl of Justin Trudeau that she literally takes selfies with him and puts those selfies in, I don't know, in her scrapbook or in her hope chest under her bed.
I don't know, maybe she puts that picture up in her locker in high school.
He's so dreamy.
What do you expect from a journalist like that?
That's super gross.
Well, she replied to Bernier, and it's amazing.
She wrote this.
How do we, she misses a word, no, how do we know you didn't time to coincide with that anniversary, given you won't give any interviews to anyone about anything?
You tweet.
How about you answer some questions and defend your position in front of people that we can talk about was fake?
Thanks for watching real news.
How do we know you didn't do it to coincide with some U.S. neo-Nazis?
How do we know that you didn't?
We couldn't ask you, so we just invented the answer.
How do we know?
Did you stop beating your wife yet?
You didn't say no, so we assumed you had.
Unbelievable.
Here, last word to Bernier.
He said, whether or not I give interviews, your job is to report facts.
Not unfounded and calumnious speculation.
You admit you have no idea if there was a connection.
I tweet almost every day and was not even aware of this event in the U.S. You were biased and unprofessional.
Absolutely true.
And I love that Bernier is calling out the CBC as fake news because we all know they are fake news.
And Barton more or less admitted it in this exchange too.
Now, you might not agree with Bernier's tweets.
I'm guessing you probably do, but you might not.
And you might not like him quarreling indirectly, maybe, if that's what he's doing, with the duly elected leader of the Conservative Party.
Or you might recognize that he isn't quarreling with Scheer.
He's quarreling with Trudeau and with the CBC and with Ikra Khalid, which is a good thing.
But you must concede that it is nice to see a conservative who finally doesn't cower in the face of the media for once, who speaks clearly, not in a fog.
Yesterday, Andrew Scheer was still talking about this.
He took questions on this.
I watched this scrum you see here on the screen.
11 minutes.
It felt like an hour.
That's problem number one here.
It should have been a 90-second comment that Scheer chose, not that the journalist chose.
Scheer's poor Stafford, you see that?
It was that guy right there to the right of him with the glasses?
On at least two or three occasions, he said, last question, trying to extricate his boss, but Andrew Scheer kept going.
He loved the punishment.
In that scrum, Andrew Scheer allowed himself to be talked over again and again by some reporter to be interrupted relentlessly, to be asked the same questions again and again in a condescending tone.
And the whole time he just took it with that rictus grin on his face.
I want you to watch a little bit of it.
This is almost chosen at random.
Maybe even just forget the substance of what he's saying here.
Just ask yourself, where's the royal jelly?
Where's the sense of command of leadership?
Who's the boss in this exchange?
Not even about Bernier.
About these schmuck reporters.
I mean, seriously, who allows themselves to be pushed around for 11 minutes like this?
Mr. Scheer, how hard is it going to be for you to go into the next election with someone creating division like this?
As I said, you know, he's an individual member of parliament.
He doesn't speak for the party.
I think Canadians know where we stand for.
He doesn't speak for the party.
He speaks for himself.
Is that the case for every single member of the conservation?
As I said, you know, when we approach these types of issues, we have our lead spokespeople on it.
We have shadow ministers that are heavily engaged in files.
They've studied all the documents.
They do the deep research.
They work with their colleagues on community.
So they are the lead spokespeople for the party.
And everybody else is there just to total the party along.
And other members of parliament who occupy other roles have other roles to play, whether it's the deputy shadow minister who help in that work as well or people on committee.
So that is the position that our party holds.
What the role does Mr. Bernier play in the party right now?
What does he bring to your party at this point?
Look, my challenge to any member of parliament is specifically to any member of parliament is we all have different backgrounds.
We all represent different parts of the riding and we all have different expertise.
That was a fairly short clip.
I know it felt like half an hour.
I'll tell you it was painful to watch the whole 11 minutes.
He didn't lean in.
He didn't talk about, I don't know, free speech, giving MPs freedom to speak, unlike Trudeau.
He didn't go on the offensive.
He didn't pivot and talk about what Trudeau is doing wrong.
And he didn't push back at the hypocritical lying media.
He just assumed the position.
They're morally right.
He's on the defensive.
They can be rude with him.
He has to take it.
I'm not even talking about the substance here.
What's troubling here is not Scheer's stance towards Bernier.
We don't even really know what that is.
What's troubling here is how easily the mainstream media, especially the CBC, can kettle Andrew Scheer, can put him in a box, can tell him what to say and do and think.
A peer pressure of a few reporters can wobble him.
You might think Bernier is wrong substantively.
Mainstream Media's Grip00:12:48
I don't think you do.
You may think he's wrong to be noisy when he's not the leader.
Could be.
Whatever, but you cannot deny that Maxine Bernier is one of the few Conservative MPs with the courage and the ability to put the media party in their place.
If Andrew Scheer doesn't learn that skill pretty quickly, he will not only not be prime minister in next year's election, he won't be opposition leader anymore either.
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, the media party is obsessing over the Bernier-Scheer feud.
I'm not even sure if the feud is a hot war that the CBC wishes it was.
I mean, obviously there's some rivalry between the two men, but I don't think it's quite the fight they want to see.
But it allows them to not talk about another member of parliament, Ikra Khalid.
She's the Muslim MP from Mississauga.
And I mention that she's Muslim because that has been the centerpiece of her career as an MP, introducing M103, a motion that was passed by Parliament condemning Islamophobia with a whole-of-government approach.
We're not sure exactly what that means, and she won't define it.
But she's made the news again by giving not once, but several times, certificates and awards to a man who has been described as a virulent anti-Semite.
Well, joining us now is the one journalist in this country who has not ignored what Ikra Khalid has done, our friend Anthony Fury from the Toronto Sun.
Anthony, great to see you again.
Hey, Ezra.
You know, I would like you to take a minute, if you would be so kind, to give our viewers a bit of a briefing on Amin El-Mu'adh and his relationship to both Ikra Khalid, the MP from Mississauga, and Justin Trudeau, because they certainly won't have heard the news from the CBC or the Toronto Star.
So can you give our viewers the briefing?
Well, what's kind of interesting is actually last night I did see there was a story by CBC saying that Ikra Khalid was apologizing and rescinding an award that she gave to this fellow, Amin al-Muad, just last week after pressure rose from B'nei Bereth, Canada, and they posted an online, sort of an online petition to get her to rescind the award.
And she said, okay, I'm doing it.
I was unaware of his negative views, which are seen as sort of very anti-Semitic and aggressive.
Didn't know about that.
So anyway, I'm going to be a good MP here and rescind this award.
End of story.
And I was reading this, and I just thought, is this an old story?
What is this from?
I'm very confused because I had written a story, Ezra, earlier this year, back in April, about Ikra Khalid's association with Amin El-Mu'ad, who is sort of the PR head of communications for an organization called Palestine House, where she had given him awards previously earlier this year, in around April of this year, and last year in September of 2017.
Now, what's very interesting about all of that, Ezra, is the September 2017 award giving came one month after police opened an investigation in Peel Region, the Peel Regional Police, into a rally that he participated in, what was actually a leader, and he was holding the bullhorn for the chants and so forth, where maybe it seemed like just a Palestinian-Israeli pure politics rally.
But then they started doing bizarre chants, including to call to bring back the Battle of Khyber, which was a battle that Muhammad was present at many, of course, hundreds of years ago, where Jews were killed and a whole Jewish community was taken over.
And this was what brought the police to investigate it.
And after him doing this, a month later, Ikra Khalid gives him this award.
And I'm told that Atacophysik groups had already gotten in touch with her to say, by the way, we see you're palling around with this guy.
We'd like to draw these views to your attention.
So I was very perplexed by that CBC story where just yesterday Khalid said, oh, I just gave an award a few days ago.
Didn't know about these views.
Sorry about that, folks.
When it seems like that is just not correct, Ezra.
So the news that CBC gives us is fake news, or more specifically, spin accepting her excuse, oh, I didn't know.
It was an accident.
An accident that I keep on making by keeping on giving him these awards.
You know, you mentioned that Khaibar thing.
I mean, it's a real important narrative in the Quran about Muhammad killing a whole community of Jews that don't submit.
So to our, you know, regular viewers who've never heard of Khaibar before, they say, well, that's a weird thing to mention.
But an analogy would be if someone were to, you know, if a German person, let's say, were to say, I'm going to bring an Auschwitz on you.
That's sort of the analogy that I would suggest if the head of Palestine House is at a rally calling for another Khyber.
It would be like someone saying in a German accent, I'm going to bring another concentration camp on you.
Like, that's crazy.
And I don't believe in censorship for Canadian citizens in Canada, but that's not even what we're talking about here.
We're talking about Ikra Khalid positively championing, rewarding, admiring this person.
And by the way, that message comes through to police.
If this crazy guy is calling for, you know, indirectly a massacre of Jews and he's got a powerful ally in parliament, maybe the police get the message to back off a bit.
Yeah, I spoke with Peel Regional Police at the time.
I'm looking at the quote right now, and they told me it was investigated and deemed that there was no criminal offense.
So I guess they decided alluding to this historical event.
And when I studied it, I think the Auschwitz comparison is pretty apt, although I guess because there were so many Muslim warriors who showed up, like 20,000 of them, but there were only 1,000 Jews, the Jews kind of immediately surrendered.
So they didn't need to slaughter them all.
They just forced them to submit and took over the land.
So maybe they say, oh, we only killed two guys.
It wasn't comparable to Auschwitz.
I don't know if that's why the police decided this wasn't actually incitement to violence.
They never described their rationale to me.
But yeah, it's certainly someone calling for this historical thing where they triumphed in a rather violent and aggressive way over a different ethnic religious group.
That is 100% what's going on here.
And you're right that the CBC, I mean, buying the spin, I guess Ikra Khalid said, this is my statement.
And they said, okay, fine.
Whereas if you'd done a very simple thing, you'd gone into Google and you'd Googled Ikr Khalid and Amin al-Mu'ad, you would have found my story.
It probably would have been the first top hit if you want to research any association between the two.
I appreciate that CBC journalists probably aren't, you know, apt fans of mine waiting to see whatever my next piece is.
But you just simply Google it, you're going to find that I had already done the legwork, which calls into question the sort of answer and rationale that she's giving.
Yeah.
You know, this reminds me a little bit of Jazz Paul Atwal.
That was the Sikh terrorist who tried to murder a cabinet minister from India in BC some years ago and then just found himself on Justin Trudeau's entourage to India earlier this year.
And they said, oh, we didn't know, we didn't know.
And because, like you say, not only did Ikra Khalid on several occasions give this man awards even after she was briefed by groups that it was a bad idea, even after your story came out, but we've got a picture, and we'll show it, of this same upstanding citizen schmoozing with Justin Trudeau.
And I wonder if there's any filter at all or if there's anyone he won't meet with.
He met with that Joshua Boyle who went to the Taliban with his wife.
He used to be Omar Qader's brother-in-law.
He'll meet with Jazz Paul Atwal and take him to India.
He'll meet with this fella.
I just want to get the name right here.
Amin Al Muad.
Is there anyone Justin Trudeau won't meet with on the identity politics extreme left, including people who promote violence?
Well, it's a very good question.
And I've had a number of people from different dissident communities approach me in the past couple of years.
And the Iranian community, for instance, the people who came to Canada in the 80s and 90s to flee the excesses of the Iranian regime, they're a little concerned that people who are pro-regime are powling around with Justin Trudeau right now.
And they have a variety of evidence to back up those statements.
There are concerns that people connected to the Chinese Communist Party are welcomed into the liberal fold.
And then Jaspal Atwal is, I guess, is or was.
I mean, he says those are his old ways, but is a sort of Kalistani extremist character.
And of course, let's not forget, he also assaulted.
He beat Ujal Dussange with a lead pipe back in the 80s.
Ujal went on to become a federal liberal cabinet minister.
So there are a lot of associations there, and it's unclear exactly what's going on.
It is as simple as ethnic pandering, where you go, okay, who are these people collected into groups and numbers?
I can get their votes easily by just appeasing this power broker, and then he'll bring me the 500 votes.
Is it sort of as simple as that, just using people?
Is there other stuff going on, somewhat overlap of ideologies?
I don't know.
But the question is that the evidence is mounting that there are people with, I think, kind of dubious affiliations who have found themselves welcomed into the federal liberal fold.
Yeah.
You know, I think the real problem is that Justin Trudeau and his party are so chummy with these folks.
The secondary problem is that the media party shows so little interest in it.
And I can assure you, if there was this kind of talk by an alt-right group and if some conservative MP gave a certificate to them, not once but twice, it wouldn't be so easily brushed off by the CBC.
I have one last question to you.
And I saw that Norman Specter, who I follow on Twitter, he's a former chief of staff to Brian Malruy.
He's a bit of a cantankerous fella out in Victoria, but I like following him.
And he said it was ironic that the MP who was promoting the M103 anti-Islamophobia censorship motion is the same MP that had a tolerance for the anti-Semitism here.
And I wrote back to him, I said, I don't think it's a coincidence.
I don't think it's ironic because those things I don't think are opposite.
I think if you're for banning speech critical of Islam, but you support an extremist Muslim who has hate for Jews, I think those two things are not necessarily opposites.
I think Justin Trudeau has an extremism problem in his party.
Last word to you, Anthony.
What do you think?
And you know, Ezra is a very good question because M103 was later sold to us about being this sort of ecumenical denounciation of all forms of intolerance, all forms of hate speech, including denouncing anti-Semitism.
And that was kind of the in for why we should all buy into it, because who can complain about that?
But the origin story of it, and Ikra Khalid had previously acknowledged this, was it came from an e-petition on the House of Commons website where a person was focusing on Islamophobia and wanted to see action against that.
So, yes, to say that to say that somehow it is sort of anti-Semitism is not necessarily included in these denunciations, I think is a fair point.
Yeah.
Well, Anthony, it's great to see you again.
And I'm so glad that you were doing the journalism on this last year because I think it proves that her claim that she just didn't know, well, it proves what we all suspect, which is that's not true.
Great to see you again.
Keep up the fight.
Thanks, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Anthony Fury.
He's the one who broke the story last year about Ikra Khalid's bizarre endorsement of this man.
And he's the one blowing the whistle today.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Welcome back.
Well, one of our favorite commentators is my friend Joel Pollock.
He said today, Ezra, I'd love to come on the show, but I'm going to be down at the beach.
I said, you know, if you're willing to jam us into your recreational time, let us push aside your other stuff.
We'd love to talk to you down at the beach.
It'll make us a little bit jealous up here in Toronto.
But he joins us now via Skype from the Santa Monica Beach.
So great to see you.
I'm so jealous.
Just to clarify, this is my office, actually.
That's your office.
You know, that's what I say when I'm on the beach also.
Security Clearance Controversy00:09:50
And anyhow, people don't believe me.
I'm kidding around.
I have something serious I want to talk to you about.
I just wanted to explain to our viewers why we got you where we got you.
I want to talk to you about James, sorry, John Brennan.
John Brennan, a former CIA director who has just been battling Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump took away his top security clearance from John Brennan.
And John Brennan has been squawking.
And liberals have been squawking about this.
Can you tell us what's going on and who's right and who's wrong?
Sure.
Well, just to give you some background, John Brennan has been attacking the president for the last 18 months or more.
And recently, last month, he accused the president of treason for his press conference with Vladimir Putin.
Now, you might not like the press conference.
I thought it was fine.
You might not like it, but on the list of things that amount to treason, a press conference probably doesn't rank up very high.
So Brennan is a little bit off the rails.
He's a little bit gone, okay?
And yet he has top security clearance because he's a former director of the CIA.
Trump threatened to do this some time ago, and now he's actually done it.
He removed Brennan's security clearance.
Now, many Americans are surprised that former intelligence officials would have any security clearance at all.
Why would you need to know top secrets if you're no longer working for the U.S. government?
The White House actually explained that this had been done in the past in case the new president needed to ask older or retired intelligence officials for advice and counsel.
So if he wanted to get their advice, they'd have to have security clearance so they could see the information about which he was asking them.
But in this case, there's just no reason Brennan would ever give Donald Trump advice, nor would Donald Trump seek advice from him.
Brennan is trying to overthrow the government.
Perhaps by legal means, we don't know.
In one of his recent tweets, he left it rather open-ended.
He said that it was time for Republican patriots to do something.
Now, probably he meant impeachment.
Maybe Republicans should join Democrats in impeaching the president.
Again, over a press conference, over a policy difference, that is to say, no high crimes or misdemeanors, just a policy difference.
But he left it open-ended, so we don't know what he means.
And when the CIA tells you that he wants your head of state removed from power, you don't have to be a conspiracy nut to start thinking that's a little inappropriate.
Maybe that person shouldn't have access to sensitive intelligence, to classified information.
The White House outlined their reasons.
Let me show a brief clip of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who read out a statement from Trump.
And I thought it was very clear and very persuasive.
Here, we'll take a quick look at that.
First, at this point in my administration, any benefits that senior officials might glean from consultations with Mr. Brennan are now outweighed by the risks posed by his erratic conduct and behavior.
Second, that conduct and behavior has tested and far exceeded the limits of any professional courtesy that may have been due to him.
Mr. Brennan has a history that calls into question his objectivity and credibility.
You know, Joel, that's very calm reasoning.
And I mean, I remember reading that after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Eisenhower met privately with John F. Kennedy and basically tore his strip off him, but did so in private and was trying to guide the new young president on the right path.
Obviously, Eisenhower still had the ability to see the top secrets.
That's the kind of older brother mentoring I think you were alluding to.
But this John Brennan, along with James Clapper, who I think is even worse, these guys, you used, I think you said the word off the rails.
They're so extreme.
Their advice is, it's like Rosie O'Donnell shrieking on Twitter or something.
There's no chance they could be useful for the government, but they use that top secret security clearance as like a business card.
Oh, CNN, you should have me on because I have talk secret information and I know things.
So it's almost like he's renting it out.
He's making financial gains off that privilege.
That was the case made by Senator Rand Paul.
That's why he actually initially urged the White House to drop the security clearance of Clapper and others.
There are a number of intelligence officials, former intelligence officials, I should say, who have contracts now with media companies.
Well, there's a huge conflict of interest there.
I mean, you wouldn't give classified intelligence.
You wouldn't give high-level security clearance to a member of the media.
So it's not clear why this arrangement is allowed to happen.
That's another point, a good one that you make.
But the other thing is that Clapper and the people who are defending him are saying this is about freedom of speech, that he's being punished for criticizing the president.
Well, it's kind of hard to see national security clearance as a free speech issue.
I mean, if you start saying things in the streets like, I want to bring down the government, you're not going to get security clearance in the first place.
These are the kinds of statements that would cause you to be denied access to classified information.
Well, it's funny you say that, because I want to throw something at you that the first time I learned it about Brennan, I couldn't believe it.
He was a communist.
And I'm not just throwing that as an insult.
Well, he voted for a communist.
He voted for a communist, and he admitted that when he was being screened at the CIA, they hired a communist or someone who voted for the communist in the Cold War.
They hired him, and they made him the head of the CIA.
How does that even happen, Joel?
Well, it happens because he was appointed by Obama.
I mean, Obama believed the Cold War was distant past and communism was just a bad idea, or a good idea, I should say, badly implemented.
And, you know, Clapper and Brennan and all of these guys, they have shown in their statements about Trump just how politicized the intelligence services of our country became under Obama.
Remember, they didn't just spy on the Trump campaign based on this idea of Russia collusion, which began, by the way, as Brennan admitted this week, with a misinterpretation of a joke when Trump joked about the Russians getting Hillary's emails.
This began with Brennan not getting a joke and being so left-wing that he had to get something on Trump.
But it's not just that.
They lied to Congress about spying on congressional staffers who were doing an investigation.
He lied to Congress.
This is in a fight with Democrats, actually, with Dianne Feinstein.
He also, and the intelligence services generally downplayed the significance of ISIS.
They covered up the poor performance of Obama's strategy abroad, whether it was Iran or Syria or other places.
So we are seeing in their conduct post-Obama how they probably never should have had these positions in the first place.
I think Brennan is right to lose his security clearance.
It was correct for the president to take it from him, and he should take it from other people as well.
These are people, they claim that what the president is doing is what authoritarians do in third world countries.
Well, what people really do in third world countries is when they lose elections, they refuse to give up power.
And that's what Obama's intelligence chiefs are doing here.
So I think Trump's absolutely right, and I think the public actually sides with the president.
I want to let you get back to your busy work there at the office.
It looks like you've got a lot of office work to do.
But I want to show one last clip.
And this is, I think this is James Clapper, who is another one of these guys, this anti-Trump extremist.
Their language is off the hook, really revealed themselves.
And this is him saying that they don't spy on Congress.
Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
No, sir.
It does not.
Not wittingly.
There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.
Joel, that's another member of what people have called the deep state.
These are ex-CIA guys.
Some of them are NSA.
They're all sort of the secret spies that we're supposed to trust completely, and most people do.
But he was lying there.
He actually did spy on those politicians.
And if he would spy on Democrats, of course he would spy on Donald Trump.
And, you know, it used to be only in Alex Jones' conspiracy that the deep state was trying to have a coup.
I got to say, every day, these kooks like Brennan and Clapper make it easier to believe, well, maybe there is a conspiracy.
Maybe.
Yeah, and that's what they're doing.
And they're undermining the independence of the intelligence services.
A lot of these people who've come out in defense of him are members of the intelligence services from the past.
Not one of them has directly condemned Brennan's accusation of treason.
They're basically defending the military and intelligence establishment, and they're forgetting how damaging what Brennan has done is to the country.
He's putting politics ahead of principle.
And I'm just surprised that there seem to be so few people able to get past that, you know, to get past the politics.
Scheer's Political Calculus00:06:45
I mentioned Eisenhower before.
It was Eisenhower who came up with the phrase, the military-industrial complex.
I see we've caught you at your busy beach office.
We'll let you go, my friend.
But thank you so much for joining us.
I'm sorry to intrude on your beautiful day at the beach, but it was nice to get your advice.
The office, that's right.
We've got to keep saying that.
Take care, my friend.
It's great to see you.
All right, there you have it.
Our friend Joel Pollock.
He's the senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News.
And I thought, even though it was a little bit unusual to have him at the beach, his comments are always so wise.
Frankly, I was grateful to him that he managed to jam us in.
And it does make me slightly jealous because he's joking about it being his office, but that really is how beautiful it is where he lives.
All right, folks, stay with us.
more ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about Justin Trudeau giving environmental groups charity status and retroactive pardons for breaking tax laws.
Jonathan writes, Trudeau should really rethink this charity law.
Not only does it give the rebel the right to claim charity status, but also allows conservative-leaning charities like churches the license to be political.
Hey, that's a good point.
I mean, wasn't it Trudeau who banned any Christian group from getting summer jobs grants?
But I think that what he wants to do is have the law applied unevenly.
Look, the CRA, I think, is a pretty nonpartisan institution.
I think auditors and bureaucrats there generally try and apply the tax laws regardless of your political leanings.
I really think so.
That's why it's so gross for Trudeau to reach into the CRA and just flick a couple of the auditors off the files of his friends.
That's what he's doing here.
I actually don't know if they would even allow conservative groups to be charities.
And my deeper worry is that conservatives in Canada wouldn't give to them.
Deborah writes, I wouldn't bother applying for charity status because you're potentially opening the rebel up to being audited by the CRA.
Trudeau would like nothing better than to find out who is supporting the rebel.
You're right, but if we had a separate, if the rebel was over here and we had a separate rebel foundation over here, and you could choose, you could support the rebel over here, and it would remain confidential, or you could support over here and you get a tax receipt, you could choose.
So if people were concerned, could be a valid concern, they don't have to give to the charity, but if they wanted to, they could.
It's an idea.
I'm going to get some legal advice on it, but if it just costs us a thousand bucks in filing fees to set up a rebel foundation, and if we can make very, very sure that we're compliant with the law, I don't want to break the law, of course, if we can follow these new rules and have a charity over here that supports proper aspects of our work over here at the company, I'm tempted to do it,
especially if we let viewers have the choice of whether they want to give directly to the rebel or to the rebel foundation.
I'm still thinking it through.
I've only been thinking about this for about a day or so.
Liza writes, Bernier has to stay in the game and fight for us.
They're going to try hard to push him out.
I don't really trust many in the party, and Bernier is saying exactly what most Canadians are thinking and feeling.
Well, that's the thing.
You know, I think that, I mean, I know that Bernier and Scheer obviously are rivals.
That's obvious.
Bernier led the first 12 ballots of the leadership and Scheer only won it on the last ballot by about a percent.
That's got to still stay, and I bet Bernier is thinking coulda, shoulda, woulda or what if.
And he's clearly still very much engaged in politics.
He hasn't gone away.
And I think that's the right move, because who knows if Andrew Scheer doesn't win in this next election, the party may well want to have a do-over of its leadership.
But that said, acknowledging that natural rivalry, which may still and probably still does exist, I don't think Maxime Bernier did anything wrong here.
You could even say by criticizing dairy cartels, he was sort of poking at the leader.
Yeah, you could, because that was Andrew Scheer's way he won.
But by poking at Justin Trudeau and his diversity is our strength, BS, how's that poking at Andrew Scheer?
By going after Ikra Khalid, that's what Bernier's next tweets were about.
How's that poking at Andrew Scheer?
By going after Rosemary Barton and Trudeau State Broadcaster, how's that going after Andrew Scheer?
And how is that mowing the lawn of any particular conservative shadow cabinet minister, opposition critic?
It's not.
The reason this is an issue is because it demonstrates that Bernier has a style and a charisma and a voice and a clarity of speech that can command attention.
Can I ask you, what was the last thing Andrew Scheer did that commands attention?
And unfortunately or fortunately, whatever, that's one of the qualities in a leader.
You have to be able to command attention.
And I don't know if Andrew Scheer has done that.
And that's a problem for Andrew Scheer because I don't even think most conservatives know who he is.
There are people who have been fighting hard in the public square for the Conservative Party for years, even decades.
Jason Kenney was a famous name like that.
I put Pierre Polyev in that camp.
Whether or not you like everything Pierre Polyev has done, he is a fighter and he's sort of a hero within the Conservative Party because he fights.
Andrew Scheer can't say that because for 10 years he was really out on the sidelines as the Speaker of the House.
He was nonpartisan.
So he doesn't have that folk love of the party that Pierre Wood, that Jason did, that Maxime has, because Maxime is at least known in the party.
He's not perfect, but the mistakes he's made are outweighed by the fact that he wins in Quebec, that he cuts a charming figure, he speaks French, he is libertarian, which many people in the party like.
So I think that Andrew Scheer has to be careful, and he has to be careful that he doesn't succumb to his number one weakness, being bullied around by the press.
And you know what I think could get Maxime Bernier in trouble?
Not what he does, but if Andrew Scheer is so susceptible to peer pressure from the CBC that they cause him to throw Bernier out, that's the risk.
And it's what I've been saying all along about Andrew Scheer.
He's too susceptible to being pushed around by the CBC.
That's our show for today.
Until Monday, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.