Ezra Levant critiques Trump’s Syria withdrawal, arguing the U.S. mission lacked clarity—whether targeting ISIS or Assad—and warning of "degrees of evil" in the region, favoring strategic disengagement over nation-building. Sheila Gunn Reid describes Alberta’s 3,500-truck protest as peaceful but economically desperate, citing canceled $6B+ pipeline projects and Trudeau’s dismissive stance, contrasting it with Conservative support under Scheer. Amanda Head defends Baby It’s Cold Outside against progressive backlash, framing its 1940s humor as harmless, while Ezra Levant warns of a broader "tyranny of the minority" stifling cultural debate—even in government transparency, like Immigration Minister Hussain’s selective engagement. The episode reveals how ideological battles reshape policy, media, and public discourse, often at the expense of reason. [Automatically generated summary]
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, ladies and gentlemen, and the rest of you, in which we look back at some of the very best commentaries of the week by your favorite rebels.
I'm your host, David Menzies.
Well, with a simple tweet, President Trump says the U.S. is done with the war in Syria.
Cue the outrage.
Ezra Levent has all the details.
And the little Alberta town of Nisku was ground zero earlier this week for a pro pipeline protest that saw more than 2,000 trucks roll in.
Sheila Gunn Reed was there to capture the anger that's now reaching the boiling point.
And some good news regarding that ongoing war on Christmas.
Some radio stations are lifting their ludicrous bans on baby it's cold outside.
Amanda Head shall explain all.
And finally, we get your letters.
We get your letters every minute of every day.
And I'll share some of your responses about my attempt to get Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussain to come clean about the UN Global Compact on Migration.
And his response, well, he locked himself in a room.
And no, I'm not making this up.
Those are your rebels.
let's round them up.
Trudeau abandoned combat against ISIS while it was in the middle, while ISIS was still powerful.
He quit and ran away and the CBC loved him for it.
When I was in Iraq last year, I met a Kurdish general who helped beat back ISIS and he told me that he was very well aware that Canada quit the fight right before the final battle.
And he suggested that perhaps some of the men he commanded would still be alive now had they been able to benefit from Canadian jets coming in from the sky to take out clusters of terrorists.
But the CBC knew better.
It was wise for Trudeau to pull out.
So what does the CBC say about Donald Trump bringing the troops home?
They loved it when Trudeau did so before the final battle.
Well here's what CBC's flagship show called The National had to say.
Analysts fear the vacuum left behind.
President Trump is running his Syria policy as if it's a reality TV show.
Oh it's very deep, isn't it?
Did you learn anything from that?
Or was that just another anti-Trump insult spoken by some leftists in a think tank?
And so it is that the war ends in Syria, not with a big bang, but with a 240 character tweet.
President Trump is bringing home the 2,000 or so U.S. troops stationed there after the obliteration of ISIS.
Yet this announcement has brought forth criticism from the usual suspects on the left and in the media party because it would appear that no matter what decision Trump makes with regard to just about any file, this president just can't seem to catch a break.
And joining me now with more on this story is our very own rebel commander, Ezra Levant.
So Ezra, right off the bat, I have to ask, is the U.S. withdrawal from Syria a good move?
Well, it depends what the goal was.
And I don't think it's easy to find out what the goal was.
Barack Obama sent the troops there.
I'm not sure exactly why, because on the one hand, under Obama, one of the policies was to have regime change in Syria.
That means getting rid of Bashar Assad, who's a Soviet, Russian colony, an Iranian colony.
So how are you going to do that?
Because Russia had a lot more boots on the ground.
They have a naval base there.
They have an air base there.
There's a lot of Iranians there.
So are you really going to topple Assad?
And if so, like America toppled Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, okay, then what?
Because it's one thing to break something, but can you, you know, the phrase, you break it, you buy it.
So America broke Libya.
They toppled Qaddafi, and I don't think they fought through the second part.
And Canada was part of that too, by the way.
We sent a ship and some aircraft.
Okay, so Qaddafi's gone.
So you're expecting Johnny McDonald to emerge and say, I'm a great Democratic leader.
So what exactly are they there for?
Are they there to go after ISIS?
Okay, mission accomplished.
Under Obama, that wasn't what they did.
Obama didn't go after, for example, the oil tankers.
It wasn't until Donald Trump became president that the U.S. military went ahead and crushed ISIS.
Russia was doing its part too.
So why are they there?
And frankly, why is America still in Afghanistan 17 years after 9-11?
The longest war in American history.
Now, there could be a good answer to that, David.
I just don't know what it is.
And you know, I would, that's the thing, Ezra.
I see Afghanistan and Syria different.
I mean, there's tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, I don't see any hope on the horizon.
You even have Americans training people there that become cops and they end up turning into suicide bombers, stabbing Americans in the back.
You know, that's a quagmire and has always thus been.
But with Syria, we have to ask, is ISIS truly 100% eradicated?
Because the Kurds are saying no.
And this is the other troubling thing to me, Ezra.
The Kurds have always fought with us.
They have always been allies.
We sold them down the river twice with the two Gulf Wars.
And now I think we're doing it again.
And listen, a 2,000-member regiment out in Syria, that's not tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of troops.
That is not very costly.
This is the thing I'm worried about, somebody filling the vacuum when the Americans leave and the Kurds paying a huge price.
Well, that sounds compelling to me, and I've been to Kurdistan, and I've seen the Christian and Yazidi minorities that ISIS went after, and I've seen how Kurdistan is the closest thing to a democracy and the closest thing to a Western-oriented group you're going to find there.
And they have the right position on ISIS, the right position on Iran, the right position on the Turks.
I like the Kurds, at least the ones I saw in the week I was there in Kerbil.
I don't want to pretend that I know everything about the place.
But if we have a pro-Kurdish mission, let's say so.
But this wasn't a pro-Kurdish mission.
In fact, earlier this year, Kurdistan had a referendum on, or I think the referendum was actually, I don't remember exactly when it was, but it was fairly recently, on independence, and America really didn't back it.
So, yeah, David, I too want America to support the Kurds, and I think Kurdistan should be its own place.
But that's not going to be a decision based on troop deployments.
That's a much bigger political, geographic, diplomatic decision.
I think we should help the Kurds.
They're the closest thing to a friend the West has there, other than Israel, of course.
But having 2,000 soldiers, that wasn't their mission, I don't think.
And it's interesting you bring up Israel, Ezra.
Is that maybe part of the plan that Israel is going to pick up the slack?
I mean, they do have a presence there, and I mean, for self-interest in terms of their own national security.
And they certainly, I would imagine, not want what's remaining of ISIS digging tunnels to get into Israel.
So is that maybe who's going to be doing the heavy lifting in that region?
I think Israel is more worried about Iran and Hezbollah.
Those are the ones digging the tunnels.
ISIS generally hasn't focused on Israel much.
Israel doesn't have ground troops in Syria.
Israel sometimes shoots rockets or flies jets into Syria to blow things up that it thinks are a threat to itself.
But, I mean, Syria is basically a Russian colony and has been throughout the Cold War.
It's not like that was an area on the risk board that is switching sides.
They've always been in the Russian sphere of influence.
So unless, I mean, in the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton talked madly, crazily, about putting a no-fly zone over Syria.
Yes.
To say, okay, no Syrian jets.
That whole Russian air base, you just sort of forgot about that?
Like, you want to start World War III over what again?
And I think that policy should start with, well, what are the objectives based on national interest?
And there may be a national interest there, but it hasn't particularly been articulated.
I think maybe it needs to be refreshed because in Afghanistan, 17 years later, I don't know what it is.
But here's what's interesting to me, is the left has typically been the anti-war party.
And they really hate the troops also, but they pretend that they love the troops, hate the war, bring our boys home.
They hate the troops too.
But here's Donald Trump, who clearly loves the troops.
But he's bringing them home.
And so much of the dishonest left doesn't know what to do about this.
Because, in fact, Obama was a warmonger who did a lot more drone strikes than George Bush did.
And the left didn't really mind.
Donald Trump brings soldiers home and says Trump's not afraid to flex muscles when he wants to.
He attacked Bashar's side a couple times.
He's got big sanctions on Russia.
But the left shows that they don't mean a lot of their ideals because they should be rejoicing about bringing soldiers home when they're not.
My view is if there's something that's clearly in America's interest, or from a Canadian point of view, there's something clearly in our interest, go and fight it.
Can you tell me why we have men and women in Mali, Africa, right now?
What's the national interest?
What's the objective?
How do we know if we've succeeded or lost?
Yes.
And is one single Canadian life worth going to Mali for?
And I think I know the maps pretty well.
I couldn't find Mali on a map.
I know it's in Africa.
I know it's sort of Northwest Africa somewhere there.
I couldn't find it on a Mali.
Well, I think we did a streeter on that.
Nobody, all the educated intellects that Ryderson couldn't find in either map.
And it's not because they're dumb.
It's because there's 200 countries in the world.
And Mali's a small country that has almost no connection to Canada.
We have no big immigration from Mali.
We have no trade with Mali.
We have no cultural, linguistic, historical connection to Mali.
It makes no sense.
It would be like Vanuatu or Nauru, those teeny tiny islands in the Pacific Ocean.
You're not dumb if you don't know about them because they're completely irrelevant to us.
And that's my point.
What's the national objective?
There may well be a national objective for having American troops in Syria, but I haven't heard it in the last few days.
And more to the point, Donald Trump campaigned.
He said, crush ISIS and get out.
He kept a promise here.
And you might not like that promise, but it was a promise he made in the campaign pretty clearly.
What do you make of the reaction so far, Ezra?
And this is still an emerging story.
Things are still in play.
Defense Secretary James Mattis tendering his resignation to take effect in February.
And if you read his resignation note, it's basically, I thought it was kind of passive-aggressive in a scathing attitude that clearly I, you know, a 40-something year veteran of the military, don't know as much as you, so I'll let you run the show.
That's how it came across to me.
What do you think the unspoken strategy here is in his resignation, Ezra?
Well, look, he obviously disagrees with this.
And that's fine.
In America, as in Canada, we have civilian oversight and direction of the military.
And maybe Mattis is right, but the president is the commander-in-chief.
And this really shouldn't have been a surprise because Trump did campaign on crushing ISIS and getting out.
I think it's too bad because Mattis seemed to be a real serious military man and Trump could use someone with experience and competence and a track record.
But I think Mattis was also, I mean, don't think he wasn't.
Mattis was a part of the Washington establishment, the foreign policy establishment.
And for 20 years, they've had this idealistic dream that they can nation-build.
And, you know, after the Second World War, the Marshall Plan was an economic and political rebuilding.
I mean, the United States drafted Japan's Constitution after the Second World War.
In fact, it was an American general, MacArthur, who was the governor, if I'm not mistaken.
America helped rebuild Japan, Germany, helped fund it.
So America did nation-build, which was amazing because America was attacked by these countries, yet rebuilt them and helped them.
But there was something to rebuild.
There was a nucleus underneath it.
There was a seed of liberal Western democracy.
Japan was a little different because it's not Western and has a different tradition.
But Japan has grown into a wonderful, liberal, democratic, civil ally, a great country.
I've never been, I have no connection, but it's a wonderful place.
And Taiwan, I think, is similar.
And Hong Kong had roots in the UK, part of the British Empire.
And Europe had a great liberal tradition.
So you can nation-build a wrecked Germany.
You can nation-build Greece, Italy.
Can you really nation-build in Afghanistan, which has no history of liberalism, democracy, high trust society, the kind of Magna Carta, the traditions of the West.
You can't just graft that on to Afghanistan.
Syria is a little more modern.
And that's actually what's scary to me is that, and I'm sorry I'm going on here, but let me say one last word about Bashar Assad.
And his wife, Asma.
She was the subject of a beautiful vogue spread.
The desert roast.
That's my nickname for you, but that's actually what it was called.
And what's striking about Asma Assad is she doesn't wear a veil.
Like, not even the hijab.
She wears nothing on her head.
And if you look at family pictures of Bashar Assad's dad, the dictator, Hafez Assad, and his wife, she didn't wear a thing on her head.
And they're Alawites, which is a kind of Muslim, but not really the kind that we're used to.
They're a small minority in Syria.
They drink alcohol.
They are moderate in many ways.
And Syria has universities.
It allows Christians to be Christian.
It's a dictatorship.
I wouldn't want to live there.
Bashar Assad can be brutal.
His father was brutal too.
But in that neighborhood, he's the closest thing you're going to find to a stable, predictable tyrant as opposed to a zombie murdering Islamic jihadist tyrant.
And you can knock off Bashar Assad, like we knocked off Gaddafi.
ISIS's Horrific Practices00:02:39
Give me 30 more seconds on Gaddafi.
Gaddafi was a little bit crazy.
He would live in that desert tent.
He was a terrorist.
He knocked down the plane over Lockerbie, the Pan Am plane.
And I lost a dear friend in that.
I'm sorry to hear that.
But you know what he did after Bush invaded and talked tough, Gaddafi said, oh, I'm going to change.
He gave up his weapons of mass destruction program.
He paid more than a billion dollars in reparations to the people he killed on that plane.
Have you ever heard of a terrorist paying reparations before?
Oh, Ezra, on this point, I agree.
When the Obama administration went in to remove him, that was a declawed cat.
And when he was gone, Libya became a cesspool of the world.
And that's my point.
He said, Bashar Assad, I would not want to live under him.
But I know he's better than the alternatives there.
And Donald Trump knows he doesn't have an alternative.
Barack Obama didn't even think about it.
Let me close with this.
You know, the first time I ever heard about ISIS, and I don't propose to show the clip here because it's too terrible, I had not heard of ISIS before.
Remember the first time you heard it?
It was probably in 2014.
Really, yeah.
I heard about it from Vladimir Putin.
Not directly, he talked about it.
And he talked about cannibals.
And he said, because of course, there were Russians there and they had Russian bases.
And he talked about an offshoot of Al-Qaeda, ISIS came from Al-Qaeda, that is so radical that when they would kill a Syrian soldier, they would take out his heart and eat it.
And I thought, this can't be true.
This sounds like some zombie movie or some witchcraft.
But actually, this ISIS soldier, soldier, terrorist, videoed himself on a cell phone eating the still warm heart of a Syrian soldier.
And Vladimir Putin said, this is the depravity we're fighting.
And we'd like to hate Vladimir Putin, but I had never heard of ISIS before.
I couldn't even believe it.
And I saw the video with my own eyes, and I still remember it four years later, because it's shocking to see a human eating another human's heart.
That's how evil it is.
And you can say what you want about Putin, but he kills guys like that.
You can say what you want about Trump.
He kills guys like that.
Whereas Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and even John McCain try to, well, we'll broker and we can, you know, we can work with them or whatever.
I think that Americans should focus on America.
Canadians should focus on Canada.
If there's some good people there, let's help them.
But there are no good people in Syria.
There's just degrees of evil.
Convoy of Support00:12:04
Well, Ezra, we're going to have to leave it there.
And, you know, folks, I guess that's the Middle East.
It's one of those neighborhoods just when you think all the answers, somebody comes along and changes the questions.
Hopefully, I'm misreading this.
Hopefully, this doesn't create a vacuum for ISIS to get emboldened.
And again, my heart goes out to the Kurds.
They are ferocious fighters on the side of righteousness.
And we've let them down twice before.
I hope this isn't a third time we've let them down.
Time will tell.
Keep it here.
more of rebel roundup to come after this organizers of today's event say they are anticipating a 22 kilometer long truck convoy that will leave the staging area here at blackjacks and will continue through niscu loop back
and finish at the Enzyme drilling yard where Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer will be speaking later on in the day.
Now, NISCU has really been ground zero for many of the layoffs in the oil patch in the Edmonton area.
This industrial park is situated directly between Leduke and Edmonton.
It used to be home to trucking yards and drilling yards and fabrication facilities, but now it sees some of the same levels of vacancy and unemployment as the office towers of downtown Calgary.
The staging area for the truck convoy is right behind me.
I know why I'm here.
I'm a reporter for the Rebel.media, but I'm also an oil patch wife.
Let's find out why everybody else is here.
So why did you come down to the Truckers for Pipelines event today?
I just wanted to show my support for oil and gas and Alberta as a whole and the Canadian oil and gas industry.
Our industry seems like we always get to be kicked down.
And he always complained about oil and gas pipelines.
So it's time we stand a rally and hopefully it does something here today.
30 years in the Arpatch, we can't let this go.
But we've seen the ups and downs, but this is terrible.
This is sad.
The government's taking us for a ride.
We're an important, integral part of Canada.
This year, it's a killer on our economy in Alberta.
And it's just, it's ruining us.
It's causing everybody to be losing their jobs and getting laid off.
We need the pipeline built.
Well, the quote, the chorus from that great C.W. McCall trucker song, because we got a little convoy rocking through the night.
Yeah, we got a little convoy.
Ain't she a beautiful sight.
Oh, but that was no little convoy that rolled into the town of Nisku, Alberta.
It was huge, numbering more than 2,000 rigs.
It was all part of a protest regarding the federal government's outright incompetence in terms of getting vital pipelines built.
And our very own Sheila Gunreed, hosted the gun show.
She was there to cover this protest.
And Sheila joins me now.
Hey there, Rubber Duck.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup.
Hi, David.
Okay.
Hey, I love that song.
At least I didn't call you the other character.
I think it was Pigpen or something.
But Sheila, in all seriousness, getting away from 70s CB radio music.
First of all, that must have been one hell of a sight to take in.
I mean, more than 2,000 trucks in that little town.
What was the mood like in Nisku that day?
To be honest with you, it ended up being far greater than 2,000 because those were all the trucks that they could get into the staging area.
But there was such a traffic backup on Highway 2 just outside of Niskiu that it backed up just about all the way to Edmonton and it caused a traffic snarl for about six hours.
There were that many trucks from all over the province.
So, you know, best estimates say somewhere around 3,500 trucks at the end of the day ended up being funneled into that convoy.
But to answer your question, what was the mood like?
The mood was they just want to work.
You know, like, how do you describe the mood of people who are ready, willing, and able to work, are the best in the world at what they do, but there are just no jobs for them, and there are no jobs for them because of federal government and provincial government incompetence.
And you know, when I saw you interviewing these men, Sheila, I mean, my heart went out to them.
These are the salt of the earth guys.
They're such hard workers doing tough work.
They just want to work.
And even though the anger was at the boiling point, you didn't see any kind of Antifa crap here of vandalizing or starting fires or, you know, doing graffiti.
They were very angry, but they made an impassioned and very reasonable plea that they just want this government to get going on this file.
And Sheila, there is a lot of blame to go around for the Justin Trudeau government.
This is a majority government.
They have so many tools in their arsenal that they can employ, but it's a matter of will, is it not?
It is.
And that's the thing.
These guys are, like you said, the salt of the earth.
They've never taken anything from anybody.
They are the makers of Canada.
They work hard.
They create jobs.
They pay their taxes.
They always have.
They've never taken a penny from the government.
All they want to do is keep working and keep fueling the Canadian economy.
And, you know, it's so heartbreaking to see these guys who just want to work really, really hard and they can't.
But these are the same guys that Justin Trudeau said are a potential threat to any community that they come to.
And I'll tell you, I never felt safer than I did amongst all those truckers that day.
You know, that's a very good point, Sheila.
And certainly, I think one of your best commentaries of the year was from a few weeks ago where, you know, talking about your husband who is in that sector and how you felt personally maligned by Trudeau's comments.
It's a different issue than the pipeline thing.
But what the hell was this guy talking about, especially since you were completely immersed in all these so-called predators, according to our prime minister, and yet, like you just said, you never felt safer?
Yeah, I'd have a real problem heading into a left-wing protest of 2,500 people.
I would have to have security with me and probably not just one security person, but two.
But when I was there, you know, it was very friendly.
A lot of people telling me to say hey to my husband.
And these guys are just doing what they can to send a message to the government.
I mean, these are people who've never attended a protest in their entire life.
And in 36 hours, they managed to stage what could be the world's largest truck convoy.
And if this had happened anywhere else in any other country or jurisdiction in the world, there would be political resignations because of the message that was sent that day.
And yet, Justin Trudeau hasn't even commented on it.
Yeah, you know, and by the way, you raise a very interesting point.
I guess you have to worry about your personal safety at a feminist rally when some effeminate little man with a nose ring comes up to you and slides you in the head.
I mean, it's the bizarre world, you know.
But, you know, Sheila, getting back to the political issue here of pipelines and what that means, Alberta.
And I mean, for goodness sakes, this is just about getting all this liquid gold to market.
You know, it's not rocket science here.
If there was some kind of terrible thing, a calamity that happened in the Quebec dairy industry or in the Ontario auto sector, would the Trudeau Liberals be having this, hey, what you going to do, kind of laissez-faire attitude?
Or would we see action to get this problem fixed within a few days?
You know, I asked the truckers that.
I said, do you think that if there were this many Quebec dairy farmers or this many Ontario otter workers out there protesting for their industry?
And we're not asking for handouts.
We're asking for market access, which is under federal government jurisdiction.
I asked them, do you think the Liberals would move heaven and earth to help you?
And they said yes.
They feel that sense of Western alienation.
They absolutely know that Alberta is being treated far differently, like the ugly stepchild in Confederation.
Yeah, and conversely, Andrew Scheer was out there, leader of the Conservative Party, and he delivered a speech that seemed to almost look like he was growing that which is known as a spine.
You know, it was very, I mean, there was a little emotion and it almost sounded like a campaign-style speech.
But what he was saying was right on the money, as far as I can tell.
And what was the reception to Scheer like?
Everybody was really happy that Andrew Scheer was there and speaking in what used to be NISCU itself, used to be one of Western Canada's busiest, most productive industrial parks in all of the country.
And instead, he spoke at a drilling rig yard where many of the drilling rigs are sitting idle.
And I think that was an important message to send to Alberta that he's there to fight for us.
And it was great to finally see him with some passion and emotion because all these men are looking for him, looking at him to be the one to fix this mess.
And he needs to make some promises that he will.
Indeed.
And Sheila, again, I go back to these men that are just trying to provide for their families.
They don't want a bailout.
They don't want welfare.
They don't want unemployment insurance checks.
They just want to open up the economy.
And I can't think of any other oil-producing region on the face of the planet that this is happening to other than Alberta because of spineless politicians, Sheila.
Well, Venezuela.
Well, that's incompetence, I guess, right?
Yeah, that's government incompetence there, too.
But this is a free jurisdiction.
This isn't a dictatorship.
So there's no reason why we aren't getting our resources to international markets if not for the lack of political will by the federal government.
And I'm not a conspiracy theorist.
I'm more of a conspiracy fact-based person.
And all the facts line up that it seems as though, while Justin Truro makes these public pronouncements about how he supports Alberta's oil patch, all indicators point to the fact that he doesn't.
And he's thrown up every roadblock along the way to prevent us from getting our oil to market, including changing the regulations halfway through the game on these companies.
We just saw a massive liquefied natural gas project from Northern BC get canceled yesterday.
Multi-billion dollar project.
Nobody even seems to be talking about it because it's becoming so frequent, this evacuation of capital from the oil patch.
That is just so sad what you said, that indeed that is something that should be on the front page, but it just gets lost in the wallpaper of all the other multi-billion dollar canceled programs.
You know, Sheila, we're going to have to wrap it there.
Going ahead into 2019, we know for sure, I mean, I would bet Cassamenzoid on this, that we're going to get regime change in Alberta.
I know 10 months is an eternity in terms of politics.
Let's hope there's a regime change in Ottawa too.
And maybe moving forward into 2020, we can start getting some of these projects off the ground and getting those great men working again, which is all they want.
Petition Success!00:11:08
So thank you again so much for this report, Sheila.
Thanks, David.
You have a great Christmas, hey?
You too, my friend.
And folks, keep it here.
More of Rebel Roundup to come right after this.
As I reported last week, CBC in Canada, as well as radio stations here in the United States, have re-added the popular and classic Christmas tune, Baby It's Cold Outside, back to their playlist and rotations.
We here at the Rebel ran a petition last week and we are very pleased to announce that even though some Scrooges out there complained about the song initially, sales for the song have been through the roof, up on the rooftop.
It's currently my ringtone actually, so I'd like to think that I contributed to that.
As reported by Billboard, their holiday digital song sales chart dated December 15th.
They had three interpretations of Baby It's Cold Outside appear, the most of any other title, and they make the survey's three largest gains over the cycle, respectively.
Dean Martin's version performed the best with a 257% increase with 7,000 sold.
Idina Menzel, who is a Broadway star, she made the role of Alphaba famous in the musical wicket.
Her version is up 165% with 2,000 sold.
And Redbone and Zoe Deschanel's version from the movie ELF shot up 130% with 2,000 sold as well.
The three version sales have sent the song up the charts and their sales gain is up 34% collectively.
Now on streaming services, Dean Martin's version is up a whopping 54% and many other versions are doing exceedingly well on streaming services too.
Hallelujah.
It seems that if there was a bridge too far moment in terms of both the never-ending war on Christmas and the Me Too movement, then it was surely the attempt by the usual suspects to put the classic tune Baby It's Cold Outside on the naughty list.
After all, somehow these nattering nabobs of negativity came to look upon this song not as a whimsical diddy about the art of consensual seduction, but rather some foreboding ballad hailing the merits of rape culture.
But the backlash has been massive since some radio stations began banning this tune.
Baby It's Cold Outside has hit the top 10 in terms of digital sales.
And get this, one Kentucky radio station decided to play this song over and over for two hours straight.
Take that, Generation Snowflake.
And with more on the ongoing lunacy regarding this innocent tune that was falsely rebranded as something sinister is our very own Hollywood conservative, Amanda Head.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, Amanda.
Why, thank you.
Merry Christmas.
And Merry Christmas to you, too.
None of that happy holiday stuff either.
Now, Amanda, here's my take.
I'm going to run it by you.
If this song had been recorded by, say, a transgender artist and it was about trying to engineer a romantic moment with another trans person, well, I think the progressive elite would be hailing this as empowering and daring and all the rest.
But because this song is focused on a timeless ritual of heterosexual courting, it is being viciously maligned by some.
What do you say?
Yeah, you know, the reason that I decided to do a petition about this is because, you know, we have seen this ever-so-subtle increasing war on Christmas.
And this song was the main target this year because people felt that the song's lyrics were predatory and date rapey.
But I always tell people, you know, in any instance like this, you have to look at the cultural context and you have to look at it through the lens of the time and the place in which it was created.
And this pertains not just to this song, but any song, any movie, really any piece of art.
A lot of people attacked this song because they felt like it was predatory.
And in this climate of the Me Too movement, of course, that is a concern.
But what people didn't take into account is the context of the time and the humor that was utilized within that time when the song was written.
So this was written in the 40s.
And this was actually a stock joke that was used at the time.
And I quoted this in my petition video, but an English teacher went online and she explained the joke.
And there have been a lot of people online who have gone further in the explanation.
But she said in the song, you know, the woman, she's having a really good time.
She really doesn't want to leave.
She likes this guy and she wants to spend more time with him.
So she's kind of excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior by saying, hey, what's in this drink?
But the joke of it is, is that there might not actually be anything in the drink.
And if there is, it's a negligible amount.
That's the joke.
The joke is that there isn't hardly anything, if anything at all, in the drink.
It has nothing to do with date raping someone or anything like that.
But we're moving into this era where people are offended by so much.
You know, we hear every year this story turns around and comes about every Christmas season.
It's a different city every time, where a city's manger scene, you know, they receive complaints about it.
This happened.
I covered a story about this happening in Washington.
And people complain about this.
And it seems like it's only because it's Christmas and it's a Christian holiday.
If someone put up a display of Dumbo in their front yard from the movie Dumbo, but your favorite movie is Snow White, are you going to complain about it?
Does it offend you because that's not what you subscribe to?
Of course not.
But it's because it pertains to Christmas.
It's a Christian holiday.
And I think that this snowflake generation, very appropriate for this time of the year, where you guys in Canada have lots of snow, it's just appalling and it's sad, but I think we won.
Oh, wait.
Because after we put out, yeah, after we put out that petition video, we had thousands and thousands of signatures.
And then a lot of the radio stations here in the United States, as well as CBC and Canada, re-added the song to their rotation.
So score praise hands.
There is hope indeed.
And that's the thing on the loony left, they seem to be going after things, Amanda, on a nitpicking basis.
I mean, you mentioned the whole in-joke about the drink.
You know, I think if Bill Cosby was the original artist that recorded it, maybe then you've got something to hang a complaint on.
Right.
But until there was a complaint, until this ban began, I never listened to that song and interpreted it as some kind of nefarious date rape anthem.
And I would argue that even if that was a brand new song that had been recorded this year, I still think it's completely appropriate.
It's all about the art of seduction, the dance millions and millions of heterosexual people and all kinds of, regardless of orientation, get into around the world.
And so, and I want to talk about, you know, what you said when people complain.
And that's the other nub of the argument that really gets me energized, Amanda.
The Cleveland radio station, one of the ones that started this, they were acting not on hundreds, not on dozens, not on three or four complaints.
One complaint to the program manager there got this ball rolling.
One voice from the lunatic fringe was enough to put the kibosh on this song that goes back some 70 years.
What do you make of this gutlessness on behalf of those in management that listen to these people in the first place?
Well, this is the tyranny of the minority.
This has been emerging for the last half a decade or so.
One of the first and I think starkest instances of that was when Target allowed transgenders to go into the bathroom.
Transgenders account for 0.05% of the generation, or excuse me, of the population.
But Target catered to them.
And so this has had a snowball effect all along.
You have a very, very vocal minority, a tyrannical minority, and they have been able to control things all the way into policy.
And it's astounding.
But like what you were saying, the lyrics of this song, if you listened to it before you were in this current context of being perpetually offended, you wouldn't take offense to it.
And even I covered this in my video earlier.
Joan Collins, legendary actress, she gave an interview in the UK and she said, you know, what is this going to do to the art of seduction?
Is this going to be carried out so far where you have to ask a parent's permission to kiss a girl?
And this is something, it speaks to a broader issue of male-female or male, male, female, female, whatever, relationships where there's this era of flirtation.
And that's how relationships begin with this type of like, you know, coy flirtation.
And that's what this song is about.
It is about flirtation.
It is about, you know, the beginnings of a relationship during a magical time of the year.
And it just seems like liberals want to destroy it all because they are miserable and they are bitter and they are perpetually offended by everything and they don't want anyone else to have any joy during the holidays.
Oh, and Amanda, I only say this half-jokingly, but I'm sure the progressives, and this might even happen in our lifetime, that when it comes to developing a relationship on someone, when it comes to the art of courting, that you actually have a clipboard with a contract that the person signs and initials.
And even then, it might be challenged in court based on did she have any kind of alcohol in her system so she wasn't signing it under her full merits.
So it is so sad that they are trying to wage war, not just on Christmas, but on the human condition itself.
Yeah, and you know, it's sad and it affects relationships.
You know, my boyfriend is an actor, and in Hollywood, he has become so keenly aware and to such a heightened degree that anytime he corresponds with a female colleague, an actress, a producer, you know, he's on high alert because he's not sure what he says or what he does or the way that he interacts with them.
He can't be certain that they're not going to misinterpret that either intentionally or unintentionally.
So it comes to the place where you almost can't even have one-on-one.
You know, if I had to have a meeting with a male colleague or, you know, David, you, if you had to have a meeting with a female colleague, I think that there's this hesitation now because you don't want to be in a one-on-one situation where you can possibly be accused of something.
Hesitant Meetings00:05:09
So right, Amanda, and we have to wrap it here.
And by the way, and this is what's going to hurt women in the long run, you know, in terms of getting into the employment market.
A guy's going to say, listen, if I have to go on the road, do traveling with her, have a closed-door meeting with her, it's just not worth the risk.
Heck, we're not even going to be able to get dates.
I know.
It's perverse.
But, Amanda, at the end of the day, congratulations on you taking a stand on this.
And it is a good news story.
For once, instead of the tyranny of the minority triumphing, the majority spoke out, mocked this, demanded change, and we got it.
So a Merry Christmas to you indeed.
Merry Christmas.
And thank you so much for taking up this worthy cause.
My pleasure.
You got it.
And folks, keep it here.
And more of Rebel Roundup to come right after this.
So last Friday night at Ryerson University in Toronto, media were invited to a press conference staged by Minister Hussain prior to his Ryerson speech.
But once he saw us standing outside the meeting room with other media, Hussein panicked.
He made a B-line to another meeting room.
And when he finally faced the music, he was more than half an hour late for his own press conference.
If you could call it a press conference, that is, given that the minister decided not to take a single question.
And after a speech, another curveball, questions were only taken from adoring Ryerson students.
After the event was over, Hussein tried to give us a slip.
We followed him back to that private meeting room of his while attempting to ask questions in a very polite fashion.
Minister, could I grab you for a quick question, please?
David Menzies, wearable media.
Minister?
Sir, can I just grab you for a quick question on a clarification point?
Just trying to find out: does it mean that the legal rights of migrants that are being given in the compact are already in Kinesi?
Well, sir, we actually tried to private room.
Well, we tried.
His only response was, quote, contact my office, end quote.
And we did so, emailing the minister those three important queries.
I've been trying to ask him for two weeks now and knock me down with a feather.
It's been radio silence ever since.
How odd.
Immigration Minister Ahmad Hussain says he's open to fact-based debate pertaining to the UN Migrant Compact.
But whether we follow him all the way to Marrakesh or just down the road to Toronto's Ryerson University, Mr. Hussein just won't answer our very important questions about this pact and about what it potentially means for Canada.
So much for transparency.
In any event, here's what some of you had to say about Minister Hussein literally running away from us.
MTB Mickey408 writes, according to the left, asking any questions about migration is xenophobic and racist.
Well, Mickey, you have grist for the mill here.
Remember when Conservative leader Andrew Scheer asked legitimate questions about returning ISIS fighters to Canada, only to have Prime Minister Trudeau smear him as an Islamophobe?
So yeah, with this government, we even have to tread carefully when it comes to being critical of hardened terrorists.
West is Best writes, if the Compact is not legally binding, why sign it in the first place?
Well, two points here.
One, it seems to me that bits and pieces of the Compact are already enshrined in Canadian law due to Canada's previously stated obligations.
And if that's not the case, could the Right Honorable Mr. Hussein stop trying out for the track team and simply answer our questions so we can get a measure of clarification here?
But secondly, and ultimately, I would argue this, the Compact doesn't have to be binding for the likes of Trudeau and Merkel and Macron.
After all, they've already bought into the program that more mass migration is indeed the way to go.
And Quebec Patriot writes, Menzoid, you are number one on their media re-education camp list.
Oh boy, I always wanted to go to camp, Quebec Patriot.
But really, do the federal liberals have to re-educate anyone in the mainstream media to play nice?
I would say those journalists are already governing themselves accordingly, given that $600 million media slush fund that's coming down the pike.
If you were someone employed in a sunset industry, would you dare bite the hand that now feeds?
Well, that wraps up another edition of Rebel Roundup.
Thanks so much for joining us.
See you next week.
And hey folks, never forget, without risk, there can be no glory.