Catherine McKenna, Canada’s environment minister, visited China in 2018 yet avoided criticizing its record—largest CO2 emitter (4% global rise in early 2019) and source of the world’s most polluted rivers like the Yangtze, dumping 1.5M metric tons of plastic annually—while aggressively pushing domestic carbon taxes on provinces like Saskatchewan, whose emissions match China’s in just 15 minutes. Funded by Canadian taxpayers ($1.6M/year) to promote China’s five-year plans, McKenna praised Beijing’s climate efforts despite its coal expansion, exposing a double standard favoring authoritarian policies over democratic economic interests. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Canada's environment minister goes to the most polluted country in the world, but doesn't criticize them.
She saves her scolding for you.
It's November 5th, 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.
You know what the most polluted country in the world is.
I don't even need to tell you.
It's the People's Republic of China, Justin Trudeau's favorite country.
I don't have to tell you.
He'll tell you.
Because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say, we need to go green as fast as we need to start investing in solar.
So they can move really fast on the environment was what he liked about China's basic dictatorship.
I suppose there's some truth in that.
China can move fast as a basic dictatorship because they don't allow environmental groups to protest.
They don't allow environmental groups to sue.
They don't allow any property rights owners to sue.
They really don't even review projects for environmental effects at all.
It's the economy first, with the possible exception of the Chinese Communist Party officials getting their payoffs and commissions and kickbacks.
But China became the left's favorite country after the fall of the Soviet Union because it was the greatest counterweight to America.
It's also why the left is a soft spot for radical Islam, by the way.
They'll back anyone that's a danger to their own civilization.
But for environmentalists to back China is just bizarre.
But that's what they're doing.
Here's an example.
This is an article from Scientific American, so it's pretty legit.
Headline, stemming the plastic tide.
10 rivers contribute most of the plastic in the oceans.
And then if you can see the little sub-headline there, the Yangtze alone pours up to an estimated 1.5 million metric tons into the Yellow Sea.
And scroll down a bit.
Look at all that junk in what looks, I think that's a riverbed.
Now that is true pollution.
That's not the pretend made-up pollution of carbon dioxide in the air, you know, harmless, colorless, odorless carbon dioxide that people and animals breathe out, that plants need for photosynthesis.
That is absolutely garbage.
Look at that photo.
But scroll down a bit more on the story to this chart.
They call that top 10 polluters.
Do you see that?
This is about the rivers full of junk.
And it shows them in sort of a scale which river is more polluted than the other.
I don't know if you can see it, but that giant dot in the middle there in the darker color, that's the Yangtze River, which of course is in China.
And it's pretty much as garbagey as the next 10 rivers combined.
Look at that, eh?
The number two dirty river.
I don't know if you see that.
It's the Indus River, and that's in India, as the name suggests.
But then there's the Yellow River.
Do you see that right in the top in the middle?
That's in China.
And then the High River.
That's in China.
Now, Africa has two dishonorable mentions in the top 10 list.
They've got the Nile and they've got the Niger River, but nothing can touch China.
The Pearl River is on there.
The Amber River is on there.
That borders China and Russia.
There's not one American or European river on the list, obviously not one Canadian river.
Pollution is a Chinese problem mainly and a problem in India and Africa too.
But we're about as clean as it gets here in Canada because as Trudeau observed, a basic dictatorship can do what it wants and only someone as naive as Trudeau would think that it would want to act in the interest of its people.
It's pretty much a rule in the world, the freer the country, the cleaner the country.
Because dictatorships don't care about the people and neither do places without property rights.
No one cleans up a mess in publicly owned land.
But everyone cleans up a mess in their own private property.
If someone threw a beer bottle in your front lawn, you'd pick it up in a way you wouldn't pick it up on the side of a highway.
I acknowledge there are some instances of altruism where some people pick up, you know, they do clean up garbage on the side of a public highway.
In high-trust societies, sometimes local communities sometimes do band together to clean up other people's messes.
That's pretty much just a Western civilization thing.
In low-trust societies, that is everywhere else in the world, you'd be called a sucker.
Speaking of suckers, going back to Canada, Catherine McKenna, our environment minister, thinks the real problem in the world is that we use too many plastic straws.
Yeah, sister, I don't think that was what's clogging up the Yangtze River in China.
But hundreds of thousands of Canadians don't work in the straw manufacturing industry, so she declares war on them.
You know, it's weird, but it's not as dangerous.
She's declared war on oil and gas, where hundreds of thousands of people work.
That's more troubling to me.
And yet we're proceeding with our plans to economically damage ourselves in the name of environmentalist virtue signaling while the world goes the other way.
I mean, Donald Trump killed any chance of a U.S. carbon tax.
And of course, he pulled the United States out of the Paris-UN global warming scheme.
Remember this?
I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.
One of my favorite moments of the presidency.
That's the most important thing, of course.
America is Canada's biggest customer, our biggest market, our biggest competitor.
Brazil's new president, by the way, Yair Bolsonaro, he campaigned on getting Brazil out of the UN global warming scheme too, though it looks like he might have backed off that pledge a bit.
But we're still blazing ahead here in Canada.
And by we, I mean Justin Trudeau and Catherine McKenna, our environment minister, because province after province has announced that they're going to refuse to bring in a carbon tax and they might even fight Trudeau in court.
A couple years ago, it was just two forces fighting against the carbon tax.
Our massive rallies, as you can see, a rally here in Edmonton, 3,000 people.
We had lawn signs, we had petitions, and the little province of Saskatchewan fighting hard on their own.
Everyone was for the carbon tax.
Even Preston Manning, who led the fight against the Kyoto Protocol 20 years ago, he switched sides and started lobbying for it.
Everyone supported the carbon tax except the people.
Well, today you've got Saskatchewan and Ontario and Manitoba and now New Brunswick fighting against Trudeau's carbon tax and probably Newfoundland and PEI will join too.
And of course Alberta next year when Rachel Notley is replaced.
So yeah, the only suckers left on that file are Trudeau and McKenna personally.
So not even Canadians are suckers.
Just Canada's prime minister and environment minister.
It's weird.
But anyways, you knew all that, but did you know that Catherine McKenna went to China last week?
Of course she did.
She loves to jet around the world for environmental causes, doesn't she?
It's sort of weird.
Maybe it's good that she's flying to China.
If you're trying to clean up the world, go to the most polluted place, right?
Even if you think carbon dioxide is dirty, which it isn't, but even if you think, if you do think carbon dioxide is dirty, go to the number one emitter of CO2, right?
I mean, China now emits more carbon dioxide than the United States and Europe combined.
China's the top graph there.
U.S. is number two, India, Russia.
And China's growing, by the way, unlike the U.S., where CO2 emissions are shrinking under Donald Trump.
Here's a chart from the EPA.
Now, to be fair, as you can see, emissions have been falling for years, including under Obama.
They're now lower than they have been in America for 20 years, even though their population and GDP is at a record height.
That's because of fracking.
It's got nothing to do with Trump or Obama personally.
It's that fracking has allowed cheap, plentiful, clean natural gas to replace other higher carbon sources of energy.
So even though America is not part of the UN global warming scheme, they've reduced their CO2 emissions by the size of a whole Canada's worth.
Whereas Canada really hasn't done anything other than jet to conferences to virtue signal.
I guess the U.S. really does have the best of both worlds, eh?
They've got 4.2% GDP growth, and they're reducing their harmless greenhouse gases.
Trudeau really has neither.
He's got half that growth, and he's not reducing emissions.
But look at this.
McKenna went to China to talk about the environment, and what did she say?
Well, let me read here.
Canadian Environment Minister praises China's effort to combat climate change.
And as you can see there, this is from Xinhua.
That's Chinese.
That's the state news agency in China.
So it's communist propaganda.
But really not distinguishable from Canadian CBC propaganda, is it?
Let me read a little bit from this Xinhua story.
As Canada prepares to roll out a national carbon pricing system next year, the country's environment and climate change minister highlighted China's pricing system on greenhouse gas emissions on Friday as she concluded her visit to China.
China has been and continues to be an essential partner in the fight against climate change as a large emitter and producer, but also with its commitment to reduce emissions and its ability to scale like no other country, Catherine McKenna told Canadian journalists in a teleconference from Beijing.
Is that true?
Has China really been an essential partner in the fight against climate change?
It is the biggest polluter in the world, by far, of real pollution.
And if you're afraid of CO2, which I'm not, but McKenna says she is, they're by far the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide too, more than America and Europe combined.
I get why Xinhua would report her saying that.
It's propaganda.
But why would she say it in the first place?
Why would she say China is a leader in fighting climate change?
Let me read some more.
Here's an amazing line.
It is essential that we engage with China and China is committed to climate action.
What's climate action?
What do those two little words mean?
Does it mean actually changing the climate?
I don't think that's even possible for people to do, for governments to do.
But if you believe in various environmentalist superstitions like McKenna does, you'll think that they were changing the climate for the worst because of all their emissions.
I read this entire article in Xinhua and I didn't see a critical word in it, not a word about carbon taxes being foisted on China, not alone, not a word about banning straws.
One more line from the story.
On climate change, McKenna said that she and her Chinese counterpart discussed how Canada and China could collaborate on reducing emissions, phasing out coal, combating pollution, and protecting nature.
The conversation resulted in an agreement on pricing pollution, electric vehicles, and clean technology.
All right, but China isn't phasing out coal.
You know that, right?
It's phasing coal in.
I love this New York Times article.
I must have shown it to you half a dozen times before.
It's from last year.
As Beijing joins climate fight, Chinese companies build coal plants.
Well, which one is it, sister?
They're building hundreds of new coal-fired power plants in China and around the world.
They're getting so good at it, everyone around the world is buying a Chinese coal-fired power plant.
Look at these headlines.
And these are from liberal media.
This is from the New York Times again.
Why China wants to lead on climate but clings to coal for now?
Yeah.
Here's one from the South China Morning Post itself.
China helping push carbon emissions to all-time high.
Here's from the Financial Times.
China's CO2 emissions set for fastest growth in seven years.
They're amazing.
Just one more here.
Blow for global.
This was from the sub-headline there.
Blow for global climate change effort as Greenpeace data shows 4% rise in the first quarter.
4% rise in global warming gases in the first quarter.
It's just a fact.
But here's my question.
Why is Catherine McKenna friendlier to a foreign government on carbon dioxide than it is to Canadian provinces?
Why does Catherine McKenna not say a hard word towards China's dictators about their pollution, either real pollution, you saw that picture of the river, or about harmless CO2, but why does McKenna say she will punish, for example, Saskatchewan by withholding health and education transfers if they don't bring in her carbon tax?
China emits a Saskatchewan's worth of CO2 in about 15 minutes, if my math is right.
So why are McKenna and Trudeau bullying Canadians but sponsoring and subsidizing our Chinese competitors?
I said subsidizing because Canada still ships foreign aid to China in various ways, including this one.
Now check out these tweets from McKenna in China.
Let me read this one.
It says, Canada and China recognize the environment and the economy go hand in hand, and our two countries are committed to working together.
Always great seeing Minister Xia Zhenhua, my co-chair for the China Council executive meeting, and Art Henson.
And then it says, Canada in China at the end.
Let me read this next one.
The China Council had an incredibly productive discussion on taking climate action and how the circular economy can beat plastic pollution.
Oh, so she is talking about straws.
Good hearing from Vice Minister Zhao Yingmin, Administrator Steiner, and Special Representative Vider Helgeson.
Canada in China.
Okay.
Now, so I assumed that the China Council was the Canada-China Trade Council, Business Council.
That's what I assumed Canada and China meant.
We're trying to sell them things.
That's what we do, the trade missions, Team Canada.
We don't really sell a lot of things to China.
We import a lot from them.
The trade's very lopsided.
But that's not the China Council she's talking about.
I thought it was this business council here.
You look at its board of directors, you see senior businessmen, you see, you know, there is the ambassador.
But if you scroll down, you see some ex-politicians, you see some liberals, you see some Tories.
Stockwell Day is on there.
There's Martin Cauchon, former liberal.
If you keep scrolling down, you'll see James Moore on there.
So it's sort of this non-partisan friendship council trying to get business going.
You know, it's really just a chamber of commerce for Canada-China business.
Fair enough.
Fair enough, right?
Catherine McKenna's China Council00:05:22
That's not the China Council that Catherine McKenna went to.
She went to this weird, obscure thing.
This is what it's called.
The China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.
And that is not a Canadian council.
That is a Chinese government agency.
It is part of the Chinese government.
It is to promote the Chinese government's interests.
Catherine McKenna actually sits on a panel of an agency set up by the Chinese Communist Party to promote China.
I'm not kidding.
This is not an international group.
It's a Chinese group.
Look at their membership list.
The chairman is this guy, Han Zheng.
He's the vice premier of the National People's Congress.
So he's a top communist.
He's the chairman of this thing.
Look at the number two here.
The executive vice chair, Li Ganjia, his biography proudly shows that he joined the Communist Party in 1984.
And the next vice chair is Catherine McKenna.
What is she doing working on a Chinese government committee?
Scroll down, there's more Chinese communists.
There's a few international NGOs, but no one else has a cabinet minister working for the Chinese government.
What is this thing?
This is not the Canada-China Business Council.
It's got nothing to do with promoting Canadian interests.
It is a Chinese government council.
Let me read from their official charter the section called Mission and Tasks.
This is from their charter.
Now, it's written in that Soviet style, but bear with me.
This is the council that Catherine McKenna is talking about.
Ready?
CCICED will provide policy analysis and recommendations, technical support, best practice experience, and early warning in support of the national five-year plans, China's goal of building a moderately well-off society.
CCICED will support the implementation of the Chinese government's socioeconomic and sustainable development strategies, the accelerated development of a resource-conserving and environmentally friendly society, and an evidence-based approach to comprehensive, coordinated, and balanced policies covering the environment, the economy, and society.
Okay, so this has got nothing to do with Canada.
This is about promoting China and promoting the Communist Party's five-year plans.
And Catherine McKenna is the vice chair of this Chinese government committee.
What on earth?
She is literally co-chairing a Chinese Communist Party council on how to meet their five-year plan.
Are you ready to be grossed out?
Check this out.
Ready?
Canadian taxpayers are literally paying $1.6 million a year to the Chinese government for the privilege of sitting on their council to help them meet the Communist Party's five-year plan.
It's got nothing to do with Canon's interests.
We're paying $1.6 million a year to China so Catherine McKenna can sit on a Chinese government committee to help China.
What?
All right, let me sum up.
China is the world's most polluted country.
You know that.
The Yangtze River is basically as polluted as every other river in the world combined.
No Canadian river comes close.
China is the biggest carbon emitter in the world, if you care about that.
The biggest coal power plant builder in the world is China.
They're public enemy, number one, if you care about those things.
But Catherine McKenna goes over there, doesn't have a hard word to say about China, doesn't scold them for not having a carbon tax, doesn't call them deniers, doesn't tell them to stop building things like she says to Albertans.
She doesn't promote the Canadian interests.
She literally, according to the council's charter, promotes China's interest.
And she gives them $1.6 million a year of our money for the privilege of doing it.
She hates Canadians who oppose carbon taxes.
She hates Canadians who work in oil and gas.
She loves China for doing the same with coal times a thousand.
Let me close with a Communist Party tweet, or at least it reads that way.
I don't know who actually wrote it.
Ready?
We can act now.
We should act now.
We must act now.
Pleased to be speaking to global environmental leaders discussing how and why taking climate action is so important.
China Council, CCI CED, Canada and China.
Yeah, China's taking climate action.
They're building as much coal as possible and Canada is paying them money.
Can we switch that around just for a bit?
Can we call it opposite day just once?
Just for one day.
Can Catherine Kenna praise her fellow Canadians?
Can she praise how clean a country we are?
And can she instead speak truth to power about the most polluted in the country in the world that just happens to be a brutal dictatorship?
Just for one day.
Republicans Lose Ground00:11:05
Stay with us for more.
Republicans had lost 60 of their 238 seats in the House.
In the Senate, Republicans had dropped from 55 seats to 41.
Time magazine declared the Republican Party leaderless, rudderless, all but dead.
The grievances of the Tea Party originated with TARP.
That horrified us that D.C. would borrow money, hundreds of billions of dollars, and just send it right to Wall Street.
I had back-to-back 1,200 people, you know, type memes.
I've never seen anything before or after that in those numbers.
I have a message.
A message from the Tea Party.
A message that is loud and clear and does not mince words.
We've come to take our government back.
Well, that is from the trailer for a new documentary film called From the Ground Up.
I've watched this movie.
It is so well done.
It's very exciting.
And you can hear, I don't know if you could identify that beautiful, beautiful narrator's voice.
That's Kelsey Grammar.
I didn't know that until I got till the end of the movie and saw the credits.
It makes the movie even more beautiful.
But to me, it's a great story about how grassroots Americans took back their party and I think set the table actually for Donald Trump's victory.
And it's worth talking about this on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections.
And we've gotten a little bit involved with this film.
Joining us now to talk with us is the filmmaker, David Lasden, the director and producer who joins us now via Skype from LA.
Great to meet you over at Skype, David, and congratulations.
I watched the movie.
I don't have a lot of time for documentaries.
I feel busy.
But I started watching this and I couldn't stop.
It was a refresher of how to take your government back, how to take your party back.
Congratulations, by the way.
Thank you very much.
This is the film tells the story of the angry voter and when the angry voter became empowered.
The first time when the angry voter realized that change doesn't have to come from Washington, change can come from them.
And this is how they changed not just the 2010 election and brought a result that no one expected, but it's how they changed the way that elections are done and who controls elections and who can win elections.
And if not for what the Tea Party and Republicans and Libertarians and everybody who contributed in 2010 did, yeah, the angry voter never would have been empowered to help get Donald Trump elected.
And, you know, the angry voter is on both sides of the aisle.
We're seeing this year that the angry voter on the left side is pretty energized, too.
Yeah, very interesting.
Well, I should note that you're obviously coming from the liberty point of view.
And more congratulations for you.
I understand the film won the best libertarian ideals documentary feature at the Anthem Film Festival in Vegas.
And I've been to some of those libertarian conferences in Vegas.
It is very well done.
Could I ask you a question?
I mean, listen, there's a lot of great journalism in this documentary, and I don't want to emphasize the narrator, but I just was thinking the whole time, who is this voice?
It was Kelsey Grammer.
Can I ask you how you managed to get him to be a part of it?
I'm not downplaying any other aspect of the film.
The cinematography is great.
The editorial line is great.
The history telling is great.
But that's sort of the icing on the cake.
It definitely is.
I mean, all throughout making the film, I kept thinking, you know, we're going to need a narrator.
I need somebody who can be dramatic and funny and basically give the feel of what I wanted.
And there was one name that was the top of my list, you know, in terms of there aren't that many conservatives and libertarians out here.
And that name was Kelsey's.
And I got in touch with his agent.
And his agent said, let's see the film.
I sent them the film and they got back to me and said, we're interested.
And I was shocked.
I was really shocked about that because I didn't expect that they would just get back to me so quickly.
I have friends in the business who have told me, oh, yeah, these things take months and months and months.
And then they come and they haw.
And no, they wanted to do it.
And in fact, they wanted to do it sooner than we were ready.
And we were like, okay, we're going to get this done.
Kelsey was just a dream to work with.
He loved the film and wanted to help bring it out there.
Well, congratulations.
I love the fact that he's sort of paying it back, paying it forward, whatever you want to say, because there are not a lot of liberty-oriented voices in Hollywood.
They're often de-platformed or marginalized.
I mean, you could really count conservative or libertarian filmmakers on one hand.
I mean, we like Fellow McAlier, who's a little more on the social conservative side.
But this Tea Party, you know, watching it, I was reminded of it was really a bipartisan thing because both the Democrats and the Republicans were all for the big bank bailout.
They called it TARP, Toxic Asset Relief Program or something.
Like they really, it showed that both parties loved bailouts and they loved the lobbyist scene more than they loved the grassroots.
Would you agree with that assessment?
Yeah, a lot of people think that, oh, the Tea Party movement was a response to Barack Obama.
And that wasn't the case.
There was a Tea Partier that I met that gave me, it's not quote, not in the film, but he said, you know, when Republicans spent all the money they spent and did all the stuff they did with TARP, I was angry.
And then the Democrats came in and they spent four times as much in terms of debt.
I got off my couch.
And it really, you know, there was a lot of Republican anger going around in 2008 when I first started the film.
And TARP really stirred it up because at that point, these people were just mad as hell.
And what they needed was something to light the fire.
And Democrats coming in got them stirred up a little bit more.
And then on February 19th, 2009, Rick Santelli made his famous rant on CNBC.
And that just really got everything going.
I remember that.
It was incredible.
I mean, and to refer to the Tea Party, the Boston Tea Party that really lit the fuse 200 plus years ago in America, that was a very patriotic moment.
I remember that even though I'm a Canadian and we don't share the same history, obviously, it was a very, it felt like a moment of solidarity.
Now, there's some faces in the movie that are prominent to this day.
I mean, of course, Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, has been very strong.
And I think he's sort of come around to Donald Trump.
I think he was skeptical of some of Trump's politics, but I think they seem to be working fairly well together.
I mean, listen, Trump is, as they would say in Latin, he's sui generis.
He's a one-of-a-kind.
He's not like others.
But would you say that he's about as libertarian in his actual effects that a president could be?
Or would you take that back over his trade battles?
What's your assessment of Trump himself from the Tea Party checklist?
How does he stack up?
Well, to take it a step back, the Tea Party was very libertarian and very focused on finance and focused on debt and spending.
So it's not quite the same as the Trump movement, although a lot of people that were in the Tea Party joined the Trump movement.
The Trump movement was a little bit different in terms of some of the things that they focused on.
And so a lot of the people who were Tea Party who were very focused on libertarian ideas and small government and the debt and making sure low taxes, these people were a bit skeptical, and Rand Paul being one of them.
And I think that Trump has delivered a lot of the things that they hoped that the president would deliver.
He has managed to cut taxes, which was not, Republicans could not deliver on until he got in there.
They've managed to cut regulations, and the economy is just going incredibly well.
I mean, Trump said that we were going to be winning so much, we were going to be tired of winning, and I haven't gotten tired of it yet, but you can't argue with success.
The economy is going great.
And anybody, you know, they've got to look at what Trump has done and said, all right, maybe I was skeptical of him, but we're achieving what we want to achieve.
And in that way, Trump has achieved what the libertarians and a lot of the Tea Party people originally, their goals were to achieve.
That's a great point.
And I think sometimes people get distracted by Trump's style.
They focus the nitpick on his colorful personality and they're ignoring his actual achievements.
Folks, we're talking about a new documentary.
I have watched it.
And let me say it is a refreshing, exciting film.
You can get more info at from the groundup doc, as in documentary from the groundupdoc.com.
And we're going to help promote this film because we think it's important.
Hey, I got a question for you, David.
There's a lot of American values here.
You know, the revolutionary spirit, the Tea Party itself, the American system, which is open to grassroots fighting.
We're up here in Canada, which is, I say sort of splitting the difference between the U.S. and the U.K. We're not quite European in our thinking, but we're not quite full red-blooded Americans.
Do you think that the spirit of the Tea Party is an American phenomenon only?
Or do you think, looking at Brexit, looking at Brazil the past few weeks, looking at maybe continental Europe, do you think that there's something in all humanity that could follow the Tea Party example?
Well, I mean, the film, while the film obviously is focusing on the Tea Party, the film is about the angry votaries, about the little guy.
And I think anywhere in this world, the little guy can have the power.
Now, there are a lot of countries out there where the government is all powerful and the little guy has no power whatsoever.
But I think that this film shows that the little guy can be empowered.
So it doesn't have to be small government and individual liberty the way that the Tea Party was about in Canada or UK or Brazil or anywhere else.
It's about the government that I want and not the government that's imposed on me.
Social Media's Double Edge00:07:57
Now, a lot of the Tea Party momentum came when social media was pretty new.
I think Twitter had just been born and Facebook wasn't as big as it is.
And people still live their lives in real life as opposed to so much online.
In some ways, social media has made organizing and communication so much more grassroots.
But in other ways, I think it's become sort of the tone police and calling people radical and calling people, I don't know, racist or whatever.
Could the phenomenon be replicated now?
I mean, in some senses, I think it would be easier.
But if there was some sort of a grassroots Tea Party movement now, would the fancy people just kill it on Facebook, kill it on social media and defame it as a hate group now?
Have things changed in the last 10 years?
Well, I mean, I think that the left defamed it as a hate group then, and they would defame anything on the right as a hate group now.
But if anything, social media has gotten even better at organizing.
You know, coming back to the way that the left is doing it this year, I mean, there was just up in the Fresno area, a Facebook group, a left-wing FaceGroup group, got a lot of people together.
They bust them all from the Bay Area to go and volunteer for somebody they'd never heard of running for Congress in the Central Valley here in the Fresno area.
And, you know, social media is even better at organizing and communicating than it's ever been.
You know, what you're referring to, of course, is that people express some idea on Twitter and then other people go out there and just rake them over the coals and kill them for it.
That is something that certainly has evolved out there.
But social media still has a ton of power and it's an incredible way to connect people together.
I am reminded of recently we had Judge Kavanaugh now, Justice Kavanaugh, his hearings, and there were people that were rushing to his defense, and it was very easy for them to do it because there's a Facebook group with everybody who went to his high school.
And so all somebody had to do was send out one little message and everybody who went to the high school knew about it and said, hey, I can weigh in on that.
So social media can be really powerful and really, there's a lot of negatives, but it just packs a big punch.
Yeah.
Well, I'm so pleased with this film.
I want to ask you, and maybe it's too early, maybe you need a day off or something, but do you have plans for the future?
Because the phenomenon you detected and covered, the rise of the Tea Party, I think in some way, I mean, you mentioned to it, some of those people became part of the Trump movement.
Again, against all odds, against the establishment, Trump was outspent, outpolled, out-pundited, out, you know, experted by the other side, and he won.
Here we are in the midterms.
We won't know the result for a day and a half.
Are you following this movement?
Do you see similarities?
Are you thinking of a sequel?
I don't want to put the pressure on you, but I like the style of this movie.
And I would think that there's even more to tell now.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, I have ideas of something I'd like to do, but I'm going to hopefully get the film out there, get the film publicized to a lot of people and see what happens.
And if people want to talk to me about doing some sort of follow-up, and perhaps that might involve with what's going on with Trump and everything, it would be certainly something that I would enjoy doing.
You know, I'm not really thinking about that right now because, you know, nobody knows about this film.
I mean, until you and I are talking, the number of people that know about the film is very small.
And so we want to get the word out there and get people to watch it.
And if people watch it and people enjoy it, and I think they will, then we'll see what happens with me.
Well, listen, I mean, we have a friendship with Phlem McAlier, who you may know.
You're both Los Angeles who are a little bit on the politically incorrect side of things.
So there can't be too many in LA.
And whenever Phelum's got a new project, we'd like to tell our people and email it out.
So I propose to take this discussion we're having here, along with the link from thegrounduptdoc.com and send it to our people.
And hopefully we can spread the word.
We believe in this project enough that we want to help you push it out there.
If you had one thing to say to someone who says, well, you know what?
I think I know the story or I get my fill with daily Twitter videos.
If you had one thing to tell people that you thought was something special about the film that would make them go, wow, I'm really glad I watched it.
What's the one thing you think makes the film unique?
I watched it and to me, it was Kelsey Grammar's beautiful narration that made me feel great.
And it was the excitement of watching the history again told after 10 years.
I really liked it.
What's the favorite thing you think about your own film?
Well, the film features mostly people that you've never heard of before, that you will never hear of again.
It interviews average, everyday people who were not involved with politics, who were not famous, didn't have a lot of money, didn't have a lot of contacts, who got up off their couch and said, I'm going to change America.
And these people just impressed the hell out of me because at the time, I would have never thought I'm going to change America.
And these people just decided to do that.
And every single one of them just impressed me so much because they said, I'm going to do this.
And for the ordinary people who were angry and be able to vent that angry and direct that anger, every time I watch the film, every time I see these people, I'm just so impressed by what it is that they accomplished.
And I'm glad I'm able to present that.
Well, it's a little bit inspirational.
I mean, I remember how it felt back then.
I thought, who will fight back against this?
And from that rallying cry of the Tea Party, the answer came, David Laston, what a pleasure to meet you.
Again, our viewers, I recommend checking out from thegrounduptdoc.com.
I'm really glad I watched this, David, and hopefully we can catch up with you a little bit later.
And hopefully, this thing will be a runaway success.
I think a lot of people need to see it.
Thank you so much.
I hope so.
All right.
Good luck to you.
We've been talking with David Laston, the filmmaker.
The documentary is called From the Ground Up, How the Tea Party Changed America.
I'm a Canadian.
I follow American politics.
I found this a very gripping film.
I loved Kelsey Grammar's role in it.
But it was just a pleasure to have the reminder of what was done to save the world.
I really believe that.
Check it out.
All right.
Stay with us.
More ahead on the road.
Hey, welcome back.
On my monologue Friday about cultural appropriation on Halloween, Liza writes, all Halloween costumes are cultural appropriation.
We should stop teaching our children that there is something wrong with it.
There isn't.
I think you're right.
I mean, that's what a costume is.
It's like that debate in Canada that got a whole bunch of journalists fired for saying You can write fiction in someone else's viewpoint.
So you don't have to be a black man to write about a black man's experience.
You don't have to be aboriginal.
Well, that's what fiction is.
You can't write fiction without imagining you're somewhere, someone, someplace else.
And a costume party is that in a way even a simple child could understand.
But you have to have a PhD in grievance studies to understand how wrong that is.
New Videos Tomorrow00:01:49
On my interview with David Menzies, who was reporting from the caravan in Mexico, Ted writes, why are the caravans all heading to the awful capitalist hellhole known as the USA instead of heading for the socialist paradise of Venezuela or Cuba?
Can someone explain this to me?
Well, we've got a couple of new videos from David up today, and I highly recommend them.
And we've got a bunch more coming out tomorrow.
And some of the migrants he talked to are very honest, very candid.
They just say, look, America's where I want to go.
I want to make money.
Not a lot of jobs here in Central America.
And it's too long to apply regularly.
That's the truth of it.
They're not coming to America, as the Guardian newspaper said, for climate change reasons.
I swear they said that.
They're not coming because they're political refugees.
They're not refugees.
They're coming for free stuff.
And the Democrats know they'll vote Democrat.
And that's why this is being ginned up.
Eric writes, tremendous to see an organization, the Rebel, going to the very source of all the rumors and telling the truth.
Thank you for performing an extremely valuable service by simply exposing the truth.
Well, I like David's style.
He's very friendly, asks basic questions that, you know, ask the obvious question that all the fancy pundits in Toronto and Ottawa and New York and LA aren't even asking.
I like the fact that he went out there and saw things with his own eyes.
And I've seen a couple of his videos that we were putting out tomorrow.
They're very good.
One video, you got to watch it tomorrow.
It should be up on YouTube by midday tomorrow.
He talks to a migrant from El Salvador who says he's coming for Canada.
Well, you bet Trudeau would welcome him.
Well, that's our show for today.
By the way, if you want to see these, go to caravanreports.com, caravanreports.com.
That's where all of his videos are.
All right, until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.