Donald Trump’s release of Andrew Brunson—a U.S. pastor held in Turkey for 20+ years—contrasted with Obama’s $400M ransom for Bo Bergdahl, a deserter later convicted as a traitor. Ezra Levant critiques Erdogan’s authoritarianism and Trudeau’s prioritization of repatriating terrorists over Canadian hostages, like Jihadi Jack’s $10M payout. Meanwhile, a $12K crowdfunded effort sends six journalists (including Avi Yamini) to London to cover Tommy Robinson’s trial, aiming to counter mainstream media bias by engaging fans, Antifa, and rival reporters while exposing double standards in celebrity endorsements—from Kanye West’s unchecked truths to Kim Kardashian’s political influence without substantive impact. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Donald Trump brings home the 17th American hostage from overseas without paying a penny in ransom.
How does he do it?
It's October 15th, and this is 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.
I don't know if you saw it, but over the weekend, Donald Trump managed to free another American citizen who was being held hostage in a foreign country.
It was a Christian pastor named Andrew Brunson, originally from North Carolina, who has been leading a tiny church in the Turkish city of Izmir for more than 20 years.
Of course, Turkey used to be a mighty Christian empire.
Constantinople used to be the largest city in the world, the richest city in the world in antiquity.
But it was conquered by the Ottomans, the Muslims, in 1453.
The city was pillaged.
Constantinople was renamed Istanbul.
The mighty Hajiya Sophia Church was turned into a mosque.
And the jihad against Europe itself began in earnest.
So yeah, bit of a dangerous place to be a Christian missionary, especially under the authoritarian Turkish leader, Recep Erdogan.
Erdogan has been slowly re-Islamizing Turkey, undoing the life's work of Turkey's great 20th century leader, Kemal Atatürk, who secularized Turkey.
Ataturk turned his country's focus to the West, and he even said to his whole country, and that's what this picture is here, he said, we're going to write the Turkish language in English letters, Latin script, as it's called.
No more Islamic style script, no more squiggles.
We're going to write it like you write English.
Ataturk also discouraged hijabs on women and fez hats on men.
He really wanted to modernize Turkey, not Erdogan.
He wants to be an Ottoman sultan again.
And the terrible thing for the whole world, and Turkey especially, is that Erdogan came along right when Obama was president and Angela Merkel was the de facto boss of Europe.
So Erdogan pushed the West around in a dozen ways that he couldn't have if it had been Reagan or Trump at the time.
Whether it was supporting ISIS terrorists in Syria or pushing millions of Muslim migrants into Europe.
Look at this huge rally for Erdogan and his Islamist political party.
But here's the thing, as you can see by the church in the background, that rally ain't in Turkey.
That is in Cologne, Germany.
That's the big dome cathedral in the background.
Seriously, Turkish political parties campaign in Germany with rallies in Germany, as you just saw.
And that's totally cool with Angela Merkel.
Yeah, I don't mind.
Erdogan positively agitates Muslim masses in Germany, insisting that they retain their Turkish identity and Turkish loyalty, and they obviously do.
So he pushed Obama around, he pushed Merkel around.
The one guy Erdogan couldn't push around this past decade was Vladimir Putin.
In 2015, I don't know if you remember this, a Turkish F-16 jet shot down a Russian fighter plane that strayed into Turkish airspace for a grand total of 17 seconds.
That's a hair trigger, isn't it?
It was the first time a NATO jet, remember Turkey's in NATO, first time a NATO jet shot down a Russian jet since the Korean War.
It was reckless by Erdogan.
Putin slapped Turkey so hard.
Putin immediately put business sanctions, economic sanctions, and brutally tough diplomatic language, of course, and trade sanctions.
Erdogan issued a groveling apology to the family of the Russian fighter pilot and later had his own Turkish pilots arrested and investigated.
He arrested his own fighter pilots, claiming they did this as some rogue action.
This was part of a dissident group led by a shadowy figure named Fatullah Ghulan, implying that they shot down this Russian fighter as an act of sabotage against Erdogan.
Talk about blaming your staff.
Anyway, sorry for the digression, but I wanted to give you a bit of a background on Turkey, on their authoritarian Islamist president Erdogan, how he loved pushing around Obama and Merkel, how he takes advantage of NATO, how he uses modern U.S. jets to pick fights, but how he immediately buckles to a bigger bully like Vladimir Putin.
And I mentioned Gulen.
That's a funny name.
I'll explain who that is again in a moment because it's relevant.
Anyways, I tell you all this because that is the world how it has been for the past decade under Obama and even under George W. Bush in the past as well.
Do you remember the shocking footage released by Iran when they literally hijacked and boarded a U.S. Navy vessel in 2016?
This is Iran propaganda TV of them boarding a U.S. Navy ship.
Actually, I think those are Marines.
Barack Obama and John Kerry just accepted this.
Just fine with it.
Now that's an act of war.
But Iran knew they could get away with anything with Obama, and they used that to show the world quite accurately that they were in control of their relationship with America, not vice versa.
They also hijacked British Royal Navy ships at least twice with impunity as well.
Now, it wasn't just Obama.
Don't just blame him.
I don't know if you remember, but in 2001, a Chinese fighter jet was buzzing around a U.S. propeller plane that was moving more slowly, and the Chinese fighter jet actually bumped into the U.S. propeller plane, forcing it down.
China held that U.S. plane and its crew for 10 full days and only released them when George W. Bush made a sort of apology to China.
An apology to China.
Outrageous.
So it wasn't just Obama.
This is America for decades.
Well, how is it now with Donald Trump?
Does he apologize easily?
People say that's his flaw.
Well, look, here's some news about harassment of American warships.
It ain't happening anymore.
Countries don't try those things with Trump, do they?
They don't push America around, do they?
Even when Bashar Assad of Syria was accused of using chemical weapons, and there is quite a bit of controversy over whether or not he actually did.
Well, Trump launched a short, sharp military attack against him.
Trump attacked Syria before as well.
And remember this because it was important.
His earlier attack against Syria was timed for when Trump was sitting down for dinner with the president of China.
I love this headline in The Guardian.
Dinner time missile strike leaves China having to reassess Trump.
Yes, I think that's accurate.
Pass the salt, President Xi.
Here you go.
Oh, I should tell you what I'm doing right now.
Yeah, that's Donald Trump for you.
Trump was showing not just Syria, but China, that he ain't no Obama, and he has serious business to do with China, including their bad behavior, their bad influence over North Korea's Kim Jong-un launching an attack against Syria over dinner at a point.
Maybe another thing that isn't a coincidence is that North Korea has since agreed to release hostages.
Do you remember this from a few months ago?
These are hostages who are American citizens.
There's Trump and Melania Trump.
And that was in the dead of night, as you can see.
North Korea has released all the American citizens that were hostages there.
North Korea also agreed to send home the remains of U.S. soldiers that have not been returned to America since the Korean War in the 50s.
Imagine that.
And Trump says, and I think we can believe him, that he gave nothing in return.
No promises, no money, certainly not the pallets of cash.
This is actual footage.
You see that picture there?
U.S. bills that Barack Obama loaded into a plane to release the hostages at least $400 million and another $1.3 billion in unmarked bills, literally paying a ransom as if to a kidnapper, which it exactly was, except you don't normally get $1.7 billion in ransom, do you?
Yeah, it's a bit different now with Donald Trump, ain't it?
So when the Turks, here's my point.
Here's the news, okay?
I wanted to give you that background on Turkey, and I wanted to give you that background on Obama and George W. Bush.
Because here's the news.
When the Turks seized this American pastor just recently, they thought they were living in the pre-Trump era.
They weren't after cash.
They were after the deportation of that guy I mentioned.
I think I'm saying his name right, Fatullah Gulen.
I mentioned him before.
He's a former ally of Erdogan.
He's a Muslim preacher, but they had a falling out, and now Gulen lives in the U.S., has for about 20 years.
But that made him actually the perfect enemy for Erdogan, a real live enemy, but hiding out in a foreign land, undermining Turkey from abroad, obviously in the pocket of evil America, any conspiracy theory you like.
He was the perfect scapegoat for everything that went wrong in Turkey.
Like I said, Erdogan even blamed those pilots who shot down the Russian fighter jet.
They blamed them of acting on the behest of that Gulen fella in America.
In the fake coup of 2016 that Erdogan used just to smoke out all his enemies and kill him, really, Turkey used the menace of Gulen as an excuse to sack hundreds, thousands of people in public life, from the army, from the courts, even journalists.
It was the perfect excuse, the Reichstag fire, as you could say.
And I think that was pretty clearly what this kidnapping of Pastor Brunson was about.
It was part of the same crazy scheme.
Kidnap the pastor and then pull China, pull an Iran.
Bargain with Trump to swap the pastor for this Turkish leader, Gulen.
I mean, hadn't Barack Obama basically done exactly that for a prisoner named Bo Bergdahl.
Do you remember him?
He was a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan who just deserted.
Just one day he got up, left his base, and walked over to the Taliban.
He just walked over to the enemy.
Sounds a lot like that Canadian kook, Joshua Boyle, who took his pregnant wife hiking in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and was captured, and she was raped.
Bergdahl was captured almost immediately and kept as a prisoner.
And Obama finally got him back by releasing five very senior Taliban generals.
They don't have that rank, but these are senior Taliban.
They were all deemed high risk by the Pentagon.
They were all in Guantanamo Bay, which is where the worst of the worst terrorists are kept.
And Obama set those five senior terrorists free in return for getting Bo Bergdahl the deserter back.
And who knows how much cash was paid to the Taliban, too.
You listen to Obama at a ceremony in the Rose Guard of the White House talk about Bergdahl.
Just to be clear, keep this in mind as you listen to Obama, because I'm going to play about two minutes of it.
He was a deserter.
He was not captured in a battle with the enemy.
He was not seized while fighting.
He walked off his base to join the Taliban voluntarily.
Six other soldiers died trying to get him free, by the way.
Six other soldiers died.
And five terrorists were released in return for him.
And yet Obama talked about him like a hero and had a proud moment with Bo Bergdahl's parents.
And check out Bo Bergdahl's dad.
Okay, watch for two minutes.
I'll come right back.
Good afternoon, everybody.
This morning, I called Bob and Janny Bergdahl and told them that after nearly five years in captivity, their son Bo is coming home.
Sergeant Bergdahl has missed birthdays and holidays and the simple moments with family and friends, which all of us take for granted.
But while Bo was gone, he was never forgotten.
His parents thought about him and prayed for him every single day, as did his sister Skye, who prayed for his safe return.
He wasn't forgotten by his community in Idaho or the military.
He wasn't forgotten by his country because the United States of America does not ever leave our men and women in uniform behind.
As Commander-in-Chief, I am proud of the service members who recovered Sergeant Bergdahl and brought him safely out of harm's way.
As usual, they performed with extraordinary courage and professionalism, and they've made their nation proud.
Right now, our top priority is making sure that Bo gets the care and support that he needs and that he can be reunited with his family as soon as possible.
I'm also grateful for the tireless work of our diplomats and for the cooperation of the government of Qatar in helping to secure Bo's release.
We've worked for several years to achieve this goal, and earlier this week, I was able to personally thank the Emir of Qatar for his leadership in helping us get it done.
As part of this effort, the United States is transferring five detainees from the prison in Guantanamo Bay to Qatar.
The Qatari government has given us assurances that it will put in place measures to protect our national security.
I love that last nine.
You know, Qatar, of course, is one of the biggest funders of ISIS.
And Obama said, they've assured us they're going to protect America.
Qatar Security Concerns00:02:30
Oh, my God.
Anyways, you wouldn't know that Bo Bergdahl was a criminal, was a deserter, violated his oath of loyalty, broke the law, and defected.
You wouldn't know that from what he said there.
Oh, and he missed birthdays and Christmases and holidays.
You wouldn't know that.
You wouldn't know that six men died trying to free him, would you?
That Bo Bergdahl was later prosecuted and convicted by a U.S. military court.
He was a traitor.
So, of course, Obama loved him and had a special ceremony for him at the White House.
You saw Bo Bergdahl's dad?
He looked a bit odd, didn't he?
That beard?
Something not quite regular there.
Well, take a listen to his response because he spoke next after Obama.
I'd like to say to Bo right now, who's having trouble speaking English, Bismila Rahman Arrahim, Zay Abayim.
I'm your father, Bo.
Should people of Afghanistan the same?
Khalifa Al Thani.
The complicated nature of this recovery will never really be comprehended.
Yeah, I think he converted to Islam.
Pretty obvious.
As part of, what, following his son's ideological path?
Was it part of the bargain of the release?
I don't know.
But even after Bergdaw was free, so he's not under compulsion anymore, his dad spoke in Arabic and he praised Allah.
And who did this dad thank first?
Did you hear it?
He thanked Afghanistan first and the dictatorship of Qatar first, not the six men who died trying to free his traitor's son.
That's Obama's world.
That's Obama's perfect family.
Let me play you one more clip.
Now, this is from a different setting.
This is Obama admitting that, you know, maybe he's not so good at this hostage thing.
Maybe he's not really the art of the deal kind of president.
But listen to the elusive bureaucratic language here.
I've got to play about two minutes here, but you really need it.
And try to understand what he's saying.
I'll sum it up for you afterwards in about five seconds, but try and understand what is Obama saying here.
We're so used to Donald Trump's extreme bluntness, say everything that needs to be said in a short tweet.
Trudeau's Global Challenge00:11:03
Too blunt, right to the point.
Remember what Obama was like, that oleaginous peregrination, that Odyssean style of circumlocution?
This is what I mean.
The terrorist threat is evolving.
The world's been appalled by ISIL's barbaric murder of innocent hostages, including Americans.
Moreover, the families of hostages have told us, and they've told me directly, about their frequent frustrations in dealing with their own government.
How different departments and agencies aren't always coordinated.
How there's been confusion and conflicting information about what the government is prepared to do to help, how they've often felt lost in the bureaucracy, and how, in some cases, families feel that they've been threatened for exploring certain options to bring their loved ones home.
That's totally unacceptable.
As I've gotten to know some of these families and heard some of these stories, it has been my solemn commitment to make sure that they feel fully supported in their efforts to get their families home and that there is a syncing up of what I know to be sincere,
relentless efforts within government and the families who obviously have one priority and one priority only, and that's getting their loved ones back.
These families have already suffered enough, and they should never feel ignored or victimized by their own government.
Diane Foley, whose son Jim was killed by ISIL last year, said, as Americans, we can do better.
I totally agree.
We must do better.
And that's why I ordered a comprehensive review of our hostage policy.
So he's upset with how things are going.
Maybe he should talk to someone in charge.
And his solution is to order a review and an investigation.
And his priority is that people feel heard and supported.
Do you even remember?
It was so, it was duckspeak, as Orwell would say.
Just a lot of process words.
Felt good for the second age.
Do you know what he said there other than, well, he would never say he's failing.
He's saying America has failed.
You could tell he's never been in business.
You can tell he's never made a decision, never taken responsibility.
You know, Donald Trump would never say those words.
He would just do something or say he's not going to do something, but to say, I'm upset by what we've been doing and I want to get to the bottom of this.
That was eight years of Obama.
Trump, in two years, he's brought home 17 hostages, plus the remains of U.S. soldiers from 65 years ago, bringing them home without releasing any terrorists in compensation, without paying billions, without humiliating America.
And so it was with Pastor Brunson.
Under Trump, America doesn't beg.
It acts.
Trump smacked Turkey so hard with sanctions after their kidnapping.
Trump hit Turkey's industries, the steel industry.
Trump put personal sanctions on individual Turkish politicians who had a hand in seizing the pastor.
Trump literally pushed Turkey into a recession.
The lira, their currency, plunged.
Trump made Putin look like a pussycat.
And Turkey finally caved in.
And when the pastor was finally on his way home, first to Germany, to a U.S. military hospital there, and then back to Washington, look at Trump.
He was tweeting about it, tweeting about it in real time.
He was obviously excited about it, and he obviously went on the weekend to greet him.
That's the thing about Trump.
He actually works weekends, unlike our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, half Trump's age, who doesn't even work on weekdays.
He has so many personal days, so much personal time.
And sure, part of that is Trump bragging.
Trump met those Korean hostages in the dead of night.
That's actually hard work.
It's also good domestic politics, but it also shows the world how important Trump views the safety of Americans.
Isn't it?
Trump wasn't just campaigning domestically in America.
Trump was sending a message to everyone from the Taliban to North Korea to Russia itself.
Don't you touch an American.
Even an American who looks Korean, is a joint citizen like those guys were coming back.
Don't you touch an American, or I'll come for you hard, and I'll trash your whole economy if you're a country, and I'll do what it takes militarily if I need to.
17 men he's freed.
Americans, not Taliban men, like Obama freed.
So how about us here up in Canada?
How about Justin Trudeau?
What about the hundreds of Canadians languishing overseas?
There's actually over a thousand.
I don't know if you know that.
Come on, Trudeau doesn't really care.
Canadians are hostage around the world.
Some Canadians, like Robert Hall, for example, were kidnapped by Muslim terrorists.
He was beheaded by a Muslim group in the Philippines called Abu Sayyaf.
Others, like Hussain Salil, is a joint citizen of China.
He's a Canadian citizen.
He continues to language in a Chinese prison.
Trudeau doesn't care, and the media don't care to press him.
Trudeau cares more about bringing home Muslim terrorists, the perpetrators, not their Canadian hostages.
Right now, as we speak, Trudeau's staff are talking with jihadijack.
That's the nickname that Fleet Street gave to a British Muslim convert who butchered his way and raped his way in ISIS through Syrian Iraq.
Now he wants to come home to Canada.
Trudeau has already brought back dozens of terrorists, just like Jihadi Jack.
And he doesn't attract them once they're back.
He sure doesn't prosecute them.
He just brings them back.
He even pays some of them, or at least pays alleged terrorists.
$10 million a pop is a going rate.
He's paid at least four of them, including Omar Cotter.
This story here in the state broadcaster says how Trudeau is doing it.
Let me quote, What we're doing with the analysis that we've conducted is, in fact, build a series of podcasts and counter narratives through art-based pedagogy and poetry to empower the broader population in understanding how ISIS is using and abusing religious interpretations.
So the Canadian government is spending millions of dollars on poetry and podcasts to tell these terrorists, you guys are totally wrong, okay?
Can we sum up here?
Donald Trump does not pay any kidnappers any ransom.
He kills the bad guys when he has to.
He slaps them with massive sanctions if he can.
And he gets Americans back in America.
That builds respect from friends and from enemies.
No one doubts Donald Trump now, even if they hate Donald Trump.
That's a pretty big deterrent for capturing an American now, don't you think?
You're not going to get rich off it.
You'll probably get dead.
Justin Trudeau, he doesn't lift a finger for friends, for citizens.
In fact, believe it or not, it was Donald Trump who rescued Joshua Boyle in 2017 and gave him to Trudeau.
Did you remember that?
That's Joshua Boyle.
He took his family to Afghanistan.
It was the Americans who rescued him.
Trudeau had a lovely family visit with Boyle, who was later charged with violent sexual assaults.
So no punishment for kidnapping and murdering a Canadian in the Philippines.
Rewards for terrorists.
Lots of friendly time with a Taliban sympathizer who allegedly raped his wife.
And helping to bring these ISIS thugs back home.
So an incentive to kidnap or kill Canadians.
An incentive to be a terrorist.
Get 10 million bucks.
And no disincentive.
You can come back.
And the worst that'll happen is you have to listen to Trudeau's bad poetry.
So we're going to get more.
You pay $10 million for something.
You're going to get a lot more of it.
Let me end with a beautiful scene.
Now, this will be mocked by the liberal media.
It already is.
It's of Trump with the pastor in the White House Oval Office, same place, the same White House where Obama praised that deserter, Bo Bergdahl.
Here's the pastor praying for Trump in English to Jesus, not in Arabic to Mohammed, as Bergdahl's dad did.
Lord God, I ask that you pour out your Holy Spirit on President Trump, that you give him supernatural wisdom to accomplish all the plans you have for this country and for him.
I ask that you give him wisdom and how to lead this country into righteousness.
I ask that you give him perseverance and endurance and courage to stand for truth.
I ask that you protect him from slander, from enemies, from those who would undermine.
I ask that you make him a great blessing to this country.
Fill him with your wisdom and strength and perseverance.
And we bless him.
May he be a great blessing to our country.
In Jesus' name, we bless you.
Amen.
Yeah, you know what?
I'm not Christian, as you know, and I'm not particularly religious.
But I hope for every captive American and Canadian who will be rescued by the Americans.
I hope for every captive around the world that Donald Trump continues to succeed and be blessed.
Don't you?
Stay with us for more.
Hey, welcome back.
Hopeful Reporting Mission00:12:37
Well, as you may know, on October 23rd, next week, that is, Tommy Robinson will be heading back to court for a retrial for contempt.
He's already served 10 and a half weeks in solitary confinement for contempt of court, but that was thrown out by the Court of Appeal.
But instead of letting the man be, they're demanding he be tried again and possibly imprisoned again.
Now, when I was in London on September 27th for his last hearing, there were eight mainstream media journalists there from the BBC, from the Independent, all these first-rate UK newspapers.
But what I saw come out the other end was not first-rate.
What I saw was insane bias to the point I'd even say journalistic malpractice.
And I thought, what can I do?
I mean, I'm going in there and doing my best to report the facts from Tommy's case, and people can judge based on those facts, but it's eight against one.
And so we came up with the idea, and Tommy approved it.
Why don't we crowdfund some real reporters to come in to London for the day from Canada, from the United States, from other countries, not only to do proper reporting, but to spread the reporting around the world.
Well, we've already had four journalists accept this crowdfunding offer.
Candice Malcolm, Tarek Fatah, Andrew Lawton, Cassandra Fairbanks of Washington.
And today I'm delighted to introduce to you the fifth journalist who will be coming all the way from Melbourne, Australia to London for Tommy's trial next week.
Please join me in welcoming Avi Yamini from Down Under.
Avi, what a pleasure to meet you via Skype.
Thanks, mate.
Thanks for having me.
Well, I love that Australian accent and I've been following you a bit on YouTube.
And I'd say you're sort of a spiritual cousin of ours.
You're like a rebel in your own way.
Tell our viewers a little bit about yourself.
You're a citizen journalist.
You're a pundit.
Who are you, Abby Yamini, and how did you become interested in the case of Tommy Robinson?
Well, I kind of fell into it all because I served in the Israeli Defense Forces as a marksman or a sharpshooter in the Gaza Strip for about a couple years.
When I got back home, I actually opened these gyms called IDF Training and I started commenting on political issues, especially around Israel at the time there was Gaza thing.
And from that, I kind of found a voice and I found people like Tommy.
And I became a really strong supporter of Tommy for the last few years because I saw Tommy was being consistent.
He wasn't a hater.
He wasn't a big, and you know, I come from a very strong, proud Jewish background that I have no time for real haters.
I have no time for those real neo-Nazi types.
And what I saw with Tommy was that he was actually genuine and he really cared about the issues.
And I found straight away that the media kept giving this twist to him to give it some sort of flavor of a bigoted person.
And when I saw what happened with Tommy and the organization that I ended up with, the organization that actually supports me, which is the Australian Liberty Alliance and their Australian news network, they jumped on board and straight away when we saw what was happening there, we decided we had to do something about it here as well.
Well, that's amazing.
You know, I'm in the same vein, I think.
I'm Jewish as well.
And I heard these terrible things said about Tommy and I thought, uh-oh, I don't want to support someone who's racist or an anti-Semite.
But as I investigated, I found out that's the opposite of the truth.
And I think that that smear has been put on Tommy so that people of good will and good faith won't come to investigate him and let alone support him.
I want to play for our viewers a short clip of some of your work just so that folks here in Canada who haven't been to your YouTube page yet can know some of your reporting.
Here, let's take a quick look.
Out of the only today is no matter what.
And do not think that he chooses only one group.
Remember, he quit the EDL because his own people started to cross a line he did not want to cross.
So this is a man of principle.
This is a journalist who stands for what is right and reports what is right and true.
Boy, I love that.
Abby, I can see it all.
You're an organizer.
You're an activist.
You're a journalist.
And you've got some great skills on the YouTubes.
That was beautifully produced.
That's pretty exciting.
So what do we see?
Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane.
What else?
That's a lot of us.
And Perth, yes, we traveled the country, essentially the entire country within, it was 24 hours.
It was to coincide with the rallies in Britain at the time.
And it was unbelievable.
Australians love Tommy.
You know, many didn't know who he was before what had happened now, which is, I think, is the case with many people around the world, which is ironic because they tried to shut him down.
And they've only elevated and given him a bigger stage now, which is good because I think we need more Tommies in this world.
If everybody was really like Tommy, we'd have a lot less hate in this world.
That's my true belief.
Yeah.
I think you're right.
So let me just remind our viewers what the deal is.
And you and I have spoken about this privately, but obviously transparency is part of what we do here.
We here at the Rebel are crowdfunding with Tommy's approval to buy flights, economy-class airfare, economy-class hotels, three-star hotels, £100 spending money on the ground, and cab fare.
And that's it.
So that we're not paying any fees to journalists.
We have no editorial oversight.
So I here at the Rebel won't be your editor.
I won't direct your coverage in any way.
The only condition is you got to come to the court and you got to do some journalism.
So we're just helping to remove that travel barrier for you and four other journalists.
I'm really thrilled that you agreed to do it.
And thank you for buying such an economy class travel all the way from Australia.
You really found an affordable fare.
Thank you for doing that.
I'm excited to meet you in person in London.
Well, I want to thank you and I want to thank everyone that's supporting this campaign because at the end of the day, what we've seen with Tommy in the last, you know, the last 10 years has been unfair on Tommy.
And the organization that I'm with, the Australian Liberty Alliance have launched the Australian News Network, which I'm going to come on behalf of them to report for them, the Australian News Network.
And yeah, I'm honored to have been offered this.
And I know I do have an election next month.
I'm running in a state election here.
But everybody was thrilled when I got the offer and said, you know what, I'll fly in for a few days and fly straight out.
Actually, when I arrive after the 25-hour flight home, I've got an event that night.
But that's a little bit of personal sacrifice I'm willing to make for the cause for Tommy especially.
I look at Tommy as a person who is actually genuine and we need more people like him, especially on our side of politics.
You see too often, and I keep drilling this into people, you see too often our side, the so-called right-wing, seems to be hijacked too often by real people who are nasty pieces of work.
And the media try to lump us all together and they try to lump Tommy with them.
He's not like that.
And I'll be honored to be there at the court to show that, show the real side of Tommy.
And I look forward to meeting you and meeting the others there that'll be there as well.
So I hope everybody gets behind this campaign and especially my followers as well.
Please support and ensure this happens because hopefully it ends up a massive success that we can show the mainstream media that we don't need them anymore.
And the people, the everyday working class or every person in Australia, in the UK, in Canada, will be willing to fund real news and to make the fake news obsolete.
I think you're right.
And so you'll be the fifth journalist, and I guess me, that's six.
And together, our total crowdfunding budget to cover everything is about $12,000.
And if folks want to chip in, they can go to realreporters.uk.
In addition to the six journalists, we'll have three cameramen for the six of us to use on ground.
Now, feel free to bring your own camera and your cell phone or whatever you like, Abby, but we're going to have a bit of a true crew between us all.
There's going to be nine of us.
So that's actually outnumbering the eight hater journalists on the inside.
I feel glad that we're coming in good numbers.
I'm joking around a bit about those mainstream media from the UK, but I really think that they're biased against Tommy.
Let me ask you, what kind of reports do you think you might do from inside, you know, reporting inside the court, talking to fans, just sitting down with Tommy?
I'm very fluid.
One thing I definitely do want to do is I do want to confront those mainstream journalists that are there because I think it's disgraceful.
And, you know, coming from Australia where we've fed this stuff from Sky News, from the BBC, and everybody loves to bring up these reports as evidence that Tommy is some sort of criminal.
So I look forward to confronting them.
I look forward also to meeting some of his fans and hearing why they're there and hopefully meeting some of the Antifa there chatting to them.
I was in London for one of his rallies, I think the last Free Tommy rally, and I found it unbelievable because the day before that, there was the rally against Donald Trump's visit.
That was exactly the weekend Donald Trump arrived in London.
And I actually thought London had no hope when I saw what happened.
It was about 10 of us.
It started with two of us.
Debbie Robinson, who's actually a good friend of Tommy's for a lot longer than I have.
She put on a Make America Great Again.
And there was about 100,000 of them protesting against Donald Trump's visit.
And I thought there was no hope for London until the next day when the free Tommy rally actually happened.
And there were thousands there.
And it gave me a glimmer of hope.
So I'm looking forward to seeing the vibe, the different groups chatting to everybody.
I hope to get as much as I can.
And obviously also hearing from Tommy as well in Australia.
I don't get to hear from Tommy himself, besides obviously what he put on his Facebook.
But for those 13 weeks or whatever it was, there was nothing.
Well, that's great.
Thanks very much for accepting this adventure.
I think that's what it's going to be.
I look forward to meeting you in person.
And we're going to put together a global force of real reporters.
Nice to talk with you and finally meet you via Skype and looking forward to seeing you next week in London.
Staying here.
Good on you, mate.
Right.
Thanks very much.
Well, there you have it.
Avi Yamini, who's a leading citizen journalist in the UK.
And as you can see from that clip, he's also a great speaker and an organizer who I think has really fought the good fight down under.
So it'll be great to have him join the other journalists I mentioned who will be coming primarily from Canada and the United States.
And of course, we'll have a three-person video crew in London.
Because if there's five of us journalists yapping, six of us yapping, we'll need a lot of cameras.
So it's a whole thing.
And if you want to chip in, please do, because obviously we're crowdfunded and we're crowdfunding our friends from around the world.
Go to realreporters.uk.
So thanks very much.
And that's where I'll be on Tuesday of next week.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer feedback on my monologue on Friday about the liberal media reaction to Kanye West's visit with Donald Trump at the White House.
Tammy writes, Kanye dropped a lot of truth bombs.
Kanye's Truth Bombs00:03:42
No wonder liberals are losing their minds.
Most mainstream media coverage of Kanye's visit was sickening.
Yeah, I've never seen, you know, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Jay-Z, all these pop stars on the left.
I've never seen their words parsed and subject to fact checks before, have you?
Like, I mean, Lena Dunham, Katie Perry, every, Taylor Swift most recently, who utter banalities in support of the Democrats.
Have you ever seen a leftist celebrity fact checked before?
No, you have not.
That's not something the media does unless it's someone who dares to support the Republicans.
And then they must not be just fact-checked.
They must be destroyed.
Tyler writes, Jim Brown was fantastic as usual.
People should really listen to his wisdom.
Yeah, I've heard Jim Brown talk before.
I like his style.
I like his pace.
I like his thoughtfulness.
Maybe it comes from being, I think he's 82.
He's not looking to impress anybody.
And he's had a tough life, but he's made a lot of good choices.
And he's taken a lot of good lessons from it.
I just, you know, when you're asked about Black Lives Matter, you're asked about kneeling for the flag.
When a guy's answer is, when his first answer, his starting point, his first principles is, well, I'm an American.
Wow, my God, I'm going to love whatever comes after that.
I think that that's such a refreshing change from the identity politics extremism of the Obama years and what Clinton would have brought.
Lance writes, Kim Kardashian is more serious than people realize and would do a good job as president.
I haven't satisfied myself as to that question.
She's obviously a canny businessman who has made a fortune.
I mean, she started off well.
She started off in a well-to-do family.
But she hasn't flickered out or burnt out as so many ephemeral pop stars has.
And you can say she's famous for being famous, but she certainly managed to build up a bit of an empire.
It's turned into a sort of a family business.
Kanye West is no slouch in the business department too.
I don't know how thoughtful Kim Kardashian is.
I honestly haven't spent a lot of time listening to her.
And in fact, I don't think when fellas follow Kim Kardashling, it's the ears that do most of the work.
But I guess my point is I would be open to learning more about her politics because I know she was effective in a very particular lobbying effort to get a commutation of a sentence for a very particular criminal who got an inordinate sentence.
And in that, I put it to you, she has achieved more. than any of those other celebrities I mentioned from Lady Gaga to Lena Dunham to Katie Perra to Perry to the rest of them.
Can you tell me what Jay-Z actually got?
Can you tell me what Beyoncé actually got in return from Barack Obama, other than some cool party invites at the White House?
Can you tell me what they actually got from Barack Obama for the black community?
And I say that because, as you now know, because Trump never stops talking about it, if you asked Barack Obama, say something about black issues, he'd go straight for identity politics, Black Lives Matter.
He'd talk about police brutality.
He'd emphasize the negative.
You asked Donald Trump, the number one thing he talks about when you say the word black is jobs, And it's a fact that black unemployment has never been lower.
Who is truly helping the black community?
On my interview with Mark Morano, Jerry writes, bookmarkingclimatepot.com.
What Jay-Z Got?00:00:59
Yeah, it's a great little site.
It's an aggregator.
I mean, there's not a ton of original content there.
And the nature of the website, it feels sort of low budget, low production value, but that's fine.
It's like the Drudge Report, just a bunch of links.
Mark Murano is the most informed person I know of about the state of the media political debate over global warming.
As you may know, he used to work on Capitol Hill for a senator.
I'm sorry, I've forgotten which one right now.
On the Global Warming File.
So he has some experience actually in government itself, but he just follows every single day the people, the abates, the pundits, the scientists, the skeptics, the lobbyists, whatever.
So I actually think he's the most informed person in the world.
And I love the fact that he does an interview with us whenever we ask.
He's such a friendly fella, even though he was doing it sort of from a restaurant there.
And he told me later on the staff was sort of shooing him away.
I don't know if you noticed that, but it was great to have him.