Since December 1, 2018, China has detained 13 Canadians—likely retaliation for Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver—with Ottawa’s Global Affairs confirming ties to Huawei’s influence and alleged Iran sanctions fraud. Critics claim Trudeau’s delayed response and Liberal Party connections to China (like his brother’s propaganda work) reflect weak leadership, while Canada spent $500M on Chinese infrastructure projects despite rejecting domestic energy pipelines. Meanwhile, Trump’s shutdown standoff over border security risks setting a precedent for military intervention, with Democrats facing internal divisions as radical figures like Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib push divisive agendas. Trudeau’s media funding proposal targets dissenters like The Rebel, raising concerns about state control over free speech ahead of Alberta’s election. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, 13 Canadians have been taken hostage by China, but Trudeau doesn't care enough to call their president.
It's January 9th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government.
Why doesn't Justin Trudeau care that China has taken 13 Canadians hostage in the past few weeks?
I have learned about this in the mainstream media, so there's not a total blackout about it, but you'd think this would be screaming front-page news and top of the broadcasts until it were resolved.
Here's a Globe and Mail story from a week or so ago.
13 Canadians have been detained in China since Huawei executives' arrest, says Ottawa.
13.
Let me read a little bit from this story.
13 Canadians have been detained in China since the high-profile arrest of a Huawei executive, Hmong Wanzou, in Vancouver on December 1st, Ottawa says.
Global Affairs Canada spokesman Guillaume Beiroubei said in a statement to the Globe and Mail that the government is aware that 13 Canadians have been detained in China, excluding Hong Kong, since December 1st, 2018.
Previously, only Michael Kovrig, Michael Spavor, and Sarah McIver were publicly known to have been detained in China since Canada arrested Ms. Hmong, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Company Limited.
They were taken into custody after China promised retaliation for Ms. Hmong's arrest.
They're talking about this woman, I think I'm pronouncing her name right, Meng Wanzhou.
She's the chief financial officer for Huawei.
That's a big Chinese cell phone company.
You've probably seen Huawei phones for sale in Canada.
It's actually China's largest private company, they say.
180,000 employees.
Her dad was the founder of the company, but reading the financial press, it looks like Heng herself, his daughter, is regarded as competent, not just a nepotistic hire.
By the way, Apple, one of the leading U.S. high-tech firms, only has 130,000 employees.
Imagine if China arrested a senior executive from Apple, who happened to be the daughter of Steve Jobs.
That's sort of the analogy.
I mean, it's controversial.
Of course it's controversial that she was arrested.
But according to the United States, who asked Canadian police to arrest her when she touched down in Canada, they say that she deceived international banks into clearing transactions with Iran by claiming that two companies in Iran were independent of Huawei when in actual fact Huawei controlled them.
So it's a banking thing, a securities thing, a fraud thing, a sanctions thing.
Look, I'll be candid, I'm sure it's politically motivated by the United States, as the sanctions obviously are.
But if it's against the law, it's against the law.
Chinese companies, and by the way, when I said Huawei is the largest private company in China, there really is no such thing as a private company in China.
They may be technically private, but they are all under the domination of the Communist Party, of course.
So Chinese companies break the law all the time.
Our laws, that is, Western laws, international contracts all the time.
China is the world's largest thief of industrial secrets, of technology.
They're the world's largest counterfeiters.
Of course they do business in regimes like Iran that are subject to Western sanctions.
Sudan, for example, is practically owned by China.
Of course China supports the dictatorship of Iran in important ways.
When there were global sanctions against Iranian oil, China bought all they could, and they did very well off it because they bought their oil at a huge discount to world oil prices.
They didn't care.
They got rich by buying cheap illegal oil from Iran.
So I don't know what Huawei did or didn't do.
Of course not, how would I know?
This arrest had to do with sanctions and with banking matters, but there is also a long-standing accusation against Huawei that it uses its telecom equipment to spy on us, to spy on their users, and to pass that info on to China's dictatorship.
That's why the United States won't let Huawei build any of its new 5G cell phone system.
That's why America is trying to convince Canada not to let Huawei build critical telecom infrastructure in our country either.
I mean, would you ever sign up for a Chinese version of Facebook or a Chinese version of Gmail?
I mean, Facebook and Gmail spy on you enough as it is.
It rings true to me that Huawei would spy on its users in the West for its government.
Doesn't it sound likely to you?
Anyways, that's the background.
I don't know if Hmong is guilty or not.
She's out on bail in Canada.
The Americans want to extradite her.
It's a legal matter now.
But in China, everything is linked to everything.
And thus, the 13 retaliatory arrests of Canadians.
Now, most of them were let go shortly after they were picked up and harassed to send a message to Trudeau.
But a number of them remain in detention, including a former Canadian diplomat.
I should point out the obvious here, that China did not seize any Americans, even though it was America that requested Hmong's arrest and extradition.
Isn't that interesting?
Of course China didn't seize an American citizen.
Trump has been extremely forceful in repatriating Americans from around the world who were seized by foreign regimes.
He got North Korea to release this pastor who was illegally detained in North Korea.
And Trump went and met him in the dead of night when he arrived back in America.
He actually got North Korea to also send back to America the remains of American war dead from the Korean War from, what's that, 70 years ago?
That's how adamant Trump is about bringing back Americans from foreign lands.
The Chinese would never do anything like this to Trump, but they know they can walk all over Canada and Justin Trudeau with impunity because we're the weak link, because Trudeau is so weak and so stupid.
And so in the tank for China, I bet this video clip here, you know, you can personalize a ringtone.
I bet Huawei and the Chinese ambassador to Canada probably uses a Huawei phone.
I bet his Huawei phone ringtone plays this audio track.
Remember this video?
There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime.
Ring, ring, ring.
I admire China's basic dictatorship.
Hello?
He would listen to that every day and think, I've got the easiest job in the world.
The Chinese ambassador to Ottawa, don't you think?
I mean, when a prime minister says that he deeply admires a country, it's his favorite in the world, because they're a basic dictatorship.
Not because he likes Chinese food or Chinese people or Chinese culture, Chinese history, Chinese architecture.
He loves a basic dictatorship.
Well, then, he's not just stupid.
He's easily taken advantage of, isn't he?
And what does our ambassador to China have to say?
The old fool John McCallum.
Well, here's what he said a few months ago about our trade negotiations with China, a country that not only spies on Canada, according to CESIS, there are more than 1,000 Chinese spies in Canada, mainly working on stealing our technology.
But it also trades with us in an abusive, one-way, one-sided, erratic approach.
They don't respect contracts.
They don't respect property rights.
They don't allow our goods unfettered entry to China.
I mean, forget about the trade balance.
Here's what our diplomat to Beijing, John McCallum, has to say about that.
Within 24 hours of arriving in China, I was invited to present my credentials to President Xi Jinping, and I conveyed to him a message from our prime minister that can be summarized in three words.
More, more, more.
Or in Mandarin, gungdua, gungdua, gung dua.
Oh my god, that's embarrassing, isn't it?
Yeah, John, you're supposed to be negotiating for Canada.
Not for China.
They already have the Chinese ambassador here.
We still don't have a Canadian advocate over there, do we?
Imagine starting off by saying, whatever you want, guys.
All I'm going to say is whatever you want and more.
You'll recall that in the revised NAFTA treaty, Trump injected a novel poison pill.
At least I'd never heard of it before.
Did you know that in the new NAFTA renegotiated treaty, Canada must now give the United States notice and disclosure of any substantial trade negotiations with China?
And Trump effectively has a veto over it under the new NAFTA.
That is humiliating for Canada.
We're a sovereign country, except we've got to report to dad if we're talking to China.
It really turns us into a child, doesn't it?
But Trump felt he needed to do that because Trudeau really is like a child, and so is McCallum, and frankly, most of the Canadian foreign policy establishment and foreign policy journalists when it comes to China.
They just keep saying, more, more, 13 hockey, more.
The Liberals are the worst.
I don't know if you remember this news story from way back in 2004.
I remember it.
This is from the Globe and Mail, originally published in February 2004.
The headline is, it's about John Kretchen.
Literally weeks after he stepped down as prime minister, weeks, not months or years, he immediately went to work with the Chinese government.
Look at that headline.
Kretchen builds links with Chinese conglomerate.
He went to work with the Chinese government with his son-in-law's family, the Demare family.
Sorry, don't tell me that that wasn't set up in advance, wasn't discussed in advance when Jean-Kretchen was still prime minister.
Don't tell me that Jean-Kretchen didn't tailor Canadian policy towards China with his future lucrative position in mind.
He joined the Chinese lobby five weeks after stepping down as prime minister.
And I point out that Justin Trudeau is just as bad.
His chief in the Senate is a former China lobbyist named Peter Harter.
And Trudeau's brother, who was his policy advisor during the campaign, Alexandre, he worked for the Chinese government, producing a book of political propaganda for him.
He always does that.
He did that with the government of Iran, too.
So how does this compute?
I mean, Trump is so tough on China, it's almost comical.
I love this clip put together a couple years ago of Trump just never stopping bashing China.
Remember this clip?
Let's say China.
China China China You go over to China China China China China You take China.
China.
China.
I love them.
China.
I have to have my China.
China.
China because China.
China.
China China.
China.
You know, China.
I know China very well.
China, Northwest Wisconsin where I'm from.
It's China to me.
China.
You want to buy from China?
That's great.
Buy from China.
Buy toys from China.
China in particular.
China.
China.
I have people that I know in China, China, China, China, China, China, you know, what's that called?
The boxers.
Where they work that bad?
Is that called the speed bag where they go, boo, you know, the really fast boxing practice?
That's Trump and China.
China, China.
He never stops.
But look at how they treat him.
When he went there, they literally rolled out the red carpet for him in China, China, China.
You know, they have a nickname for him.
They have a nickname for everyone over there, just like Trump gives out nicknames.
They call him, I'm not making this up, Donald the Strong.
They've never met anyone like him before, Democrat or Republican.
Not since Richard Nixon have they had a real negotiator come over from America.
And I think they're a little bit afraid of him.
And I think they respect him.
Donald the Strong, they call him.
They're worried.
Do you remember what their nickname is for Justin Trudeau here?
We're quite proud the prime minister has been given a font nickname in China.
He is called Tudo, which I believe means potato.
And he is, I can't say the Chinese word, it's Xian Tudo, little potato, because his father, Pierre Elliot Tudo, was senior potato.
So we feel we are off to a great start.
Trudeau's Global Stance00:14:38
Yeah, that wasn't a compliment, Christia.
I mean, it's like when Trump called Jeb Bush low energy Jeb or calls Hillary Clinton crooked Hillary.
They don't say, he gave me a nickname, guys.
Yeah, little potato is not a compliment.
They know we have a clown as a prime minister, which is why they knew they could take 13 Canadians hostage with impunity, and Christia Freeland would just be thrilled.
Speaking of Christia Freeland, it literally took her 11 days, 11 days, to issue this little tweet objecting to the first Canadian being taken hostage.
Hostage was taken on December 10th.
It took until December 21, 11 days for her even to, oh, you know, do a tweet.
What took so long?
That was before Christmas.
Where's our national self-respect?
Was the little potato just, you know, on a bender somewhere or something?
By contrast, and this is important, Christia Freeland and Justin Trudeau himself, look at this.
10 tweets, 10 times, day after day after day, about a foreigner, a Muslim Brotherhood spin doctor, paid by Qatar to undermine Saudi Arabia.
His name was Jamal Khashoggi.
He wrote propaganda columns in the Washington Post, financed by Qatar.
He was killed by the Saudis in their Turkish embassy.
It's a sad story.
It's always sad when someone is killed, even if they are a terrorist sympathizer.
But there was no connection to Canada.
He wasn't a Canadian citizen.
He had no links to Canada at all.
It was a battle between the Saudis and the Qataris with Turkey in there too in the Washington Post.
But Justin Trudeau and Christia Freeland went to battle for this foreign spy.
I mean, here's a picture of the guy posing with the Talbot.
That's him there in the middle holding weapons.
Why did Trudeau and Freeland make such a fuss about him 10 times?
But haven't lifted a finger to help Canadian citizens, innocent Canadian citizens taken hostage in China, 11 days before Christie Freeland even uttered a tweet about the Canadians.
And over the Christmas break, what did Trudeau do?
I don't know.
You know, I mentioned Richard Nixon when he would send Henry Kissinger on secret trips to China to negotiate them to break with Stalin to turn towards the West.
Maybe, I don't know, did Justin Trudeau take an unannounced private flight to Beijing?
I don't know, to meet face to face with President Xi.
Did he even make a phone call?
Are you kidding, little potato?
He was partying in Whistler.
Dude, dude, I'm terribly partying in Whistler.
I'm snailboarding.
And I'm going to guess he was enjoying Whistler's famous marijuana scene, just a guess there.
So he was partying, partying, partying, posing for selfies while Canadian hostages were entering their second month in prison just for being Canadian.
And he still won't call the Chinese.
What is wrong with him?
Why won't he make the phone call?
Hey, apropos of nothing, look at this news story from Blacklock's reporter.
The Department of Finance says it's unaware of a single Canadian company to land work as a result of a half billion dollars in federal spending with a Chinese investment bank.
Cabinet approved the spending in 2017 on the promise of thousands upon thousands of Canadian jobs.
Yeah, did you know that Trudeau gave half a billion of your dollars to a Chinese infrastructure investment bank?
Trudeau has put the Transmountain pipeline in the freezer.
Trudeau has scared off LNG.
Trudeau is destroying our infrastructure, but he's taking Canadian tax dollars, your money, to China to build pipelines and airports and railways there.
What on earth?
What on earth you'd think?
That would at least give him the confidence to pick up the phone and say, hey guys, hi, it's me.
I just gave you half a billion dollars.
Can you please release the Canadians?
Or we're going to ask for our money back, or at least we're not going to give you any more lunch money?
Hey, what do you think Donald Trump would do?
If not one, not two, not three, not four, not ten, but 13 Americans were seized by China in what they clearly say is a tit-for-tat.
Oh my God, I'd hate to think of what Donald Trump would do.
And so does President Xi of China, which is exactly why he hasn't laid a finger on a hair of an American.
He hasn't said a peep about it to Trump, at least not in public.
So what about our diplomat of the year, the world-famous Christia Freeland?
Well, she asked the Americans if they could maybe make a phone call for her, because I guess she's not really the world's best diplomat after all.
What's this?
The extradition process is a criminal justice process.
This is not a tool that should be used for politicized ends.
I can't say much about the process because we have a U.S. judicial process that is underway, an extradition process that is underway.
I can say this.
The unlawful detention of two Canadian citizens is unacceptable.
They ought to be returned.
The United States has stood for that, whether they're our citizens or citizens of other countries.
We ask all nations of the world to treat other citizens properly, and the detention of these two Canadian citizens in China ought to end.
It's nice to ask America for help, and they are the most helpful nation in the world, I actually think.
Even that clip was helpful to have Secretary Pompeo speak about it.
Probably more helpful than anything Trudeau has done.
In fact, has Trudeau even made a public statement about the Canadians like Pompeo did?
I don't think he did.
All of a sudden, weird and childish Canadian moves.
Like, remember this weirdness when Christy Freeland landed in a bizarre t-shirt that she wore during the NAFTA negotiations?
Just really, really weird.
It just doesn't seem as effective anymore, does it?
Here's Kim Campbell.
A disgraced footnote in Canadian history.
True.
But Trudeau has revived her career, appointed her to a senior government position, advising Trudeau on the judiciary.
So she works for Trudeau now.
I don't know if you know that.
And here she is tweeting about Donald Trump, calling him a terrible name.
She hasn't corrected or apologized for that.
That's what she says about Trump in public.
And Christy Freeland, if you recall, went to a campaign event in Toronto called Taking on the Tyrant.
So she's really, really brave taking on the tyrant Trump, isn't she?
But when a real tyrant pops up, the Chinese basic dictatorship, and all of a sudden, Kim Campbell has nothing to say about that tyrant.
And all of a sudden, Christy Freeland has nothing to say about that tyrant.
And Freeland is running to Trump for his help.
Pretty embarrassing.
Will Trump help Canada?
Maybe.
I bet he will, actually.
But Trump has Americans to care about.
He believes in America first.
He says that, and Trudeau and Freeland condemn him for that.
But Trump is busy in the highest stakes negotiation of our age.
He's trying to get a trade deal with China.
He talks about it all the time.
He has done the unthinkable already.
He has put hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs on Chinese imports.
He has frozen China out of so many things.
That's part of the Huawei thing, by the way.
He's battling China.
He's battling against their tech company.
He's trying to hurt them.
Of course he is.
He's battling China for the future of North Korea.
Of course he is.
He's battling China in the American heartland, banning Chinese steel and other cheap imports.
It's a multi-trillion dollar high-stakes battle, bigger even than NAFTA, potentially.
And then there's the military rivalry, True, as well.
Is Trump going to interfere with his master plan, taking on China politically, geographically, militarily, economically?
Is he really going to interrupt that to help some Canadian taken hostage that Trudeau himself won't even pick up the phone for?
What's it meant for America if he does?
I mean, if Trudeau and Freeland are so smart, I don't know, why doesn't Trudeau give some speech about feminism or global warming?
That's his response to everything, isn't it?
Look, I want those Canadian hostages back home.
Of course I do.
And the other 200 Canadians held in China.
Some of them are real criminals, by the way.
There are real crimes committed by Canadians.
I mean, the case of someone charged with drug smuggling.
They're not all political pawns.
But those 13 hostages in the last month sure are political.
The Chinese say so themselves.
And Trudeau is a child who has no clue on what to do.
Or rather, he knows what to do, but he can't or he won't.
Look, this Liberal Party is so deeply entwined with China, Peter Harter, Jean-Cretchen, Trudeau's own brother, they won't let him get tough.
They make millions of dollars, probably billions of dollars if you count the Demire, off China.
They don't want Trudeau to get tough.
I mean, so a few hostages are taken.
But that's just what a basic dictatorship does.
I'll say this about Stephen Harper.
He was tough with China and tough with Russia and tough with Iran.
But they never took hostages under his watch because they respected him.
They disagreed with him, but they didn't do this.
This is Trudeau's place in the world.
An errand boy for dictators and a punching bag for them too.
What a shame that Canadian citizens have to pay the price.
And what irony that even Trudeau knows only Donald Trump can fake that.
Stay with us for more.
Democrats in Congress have refused to acknowledge the crisis.
And they have refused to provide our brave border agents with the tools they desperately need to protect our families and our nation.
The federal government remains shut down for one reason and one reason only, because Democrats will not fund border security.
My administration is doing everything in our power to help those impacted by the situation.
But the only solution is for Democrats to pass a spending bill that defends our borders and reopens the government.
This situation could be solved in a 45-minute meeting.
I have invited congressional leadership to the White House tomorrow to get this done.
Hopefully, we can rise above partisan politics in order to support national security.
That is an excerpt from Donald Trump's first ever Oval Office Address to the Nation.
It's amazing to think that in two years he hadn't done that before.
A very emotional speech.
You didn't see a lot of emotion in that clip there, but he touched on the emotions of defending people who have been murdered and raped and the massive amounts of drug trafficking across the border.
I thought it was actually a touching speech, but I'm a Canadian.
How did it go over in America?
Joining us now, our top American political correspondent, our friend, Joel Pollock, the editor-at-large at Bretbridge.com.
Great to see you again.
Joel, what do you think of the speech?
I thought it was a brilliant speech.
I thought it was the case that Americans needed to hear from the president.
It was a compassionate case for a barrier on the border.
And he pointed out that Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, had supported a barrier on the border in the past.
So I think it was very effective.
He talked about the victims of crimes by illegal aliens.
He talked about the dangers to the migrants themselves.
He talked about the drug problem in the U.S., including heroin, 90% of which comes from our southern border or smuggled across our southern border.
So I thought a very effective speech.
The Democrats chose to rebut that speech afterward, which I think was a mistake.
They should have waited till the next day because they could not compete with the setting of the Oval Office, and their message was all about politics, whereas Trump's message was about people.
And it was an absolute knockout by the president.
I think the Democrats did themselves no favors.
Today they're scrambling to catch up.
I think Trump put his case very well and already a plurality of the American public believes or believed before his address that there is a crisis at the border.
I think he strengthened that case and I think it will have an effect in the long run on this negotiation.
But it's going to be a long run.
This is not going to be over soon.
Yeah.
You know, he had some good lines, as he always does.
He said, look, we build walls because we love the people within them, not because we hate the people out.
And he pointed out that fancy people, Democrats, have walls around their own homes.
These are sort of obvious points, but he made them.
He talked about the impact of cheap foreign illegal labor on American citizens, especially black and Hispanic Americans.
I thought it was a good speech, but I wasn't hard to persuade.
Last time you and I spoke, you said that for Republicans, this is a top-of-mind issue, but not for all Democrats, and certainly not for those who would be far, not for all Americans, not even for all independents, and certainly not for those not near the border.
I think I recall our conversation.
You said that.
Do you think this will help flip the switch on for independents or even Democrats for whom this was not a top priority issue?
I don't think the speeches are going to have that kind of impact.
Democrats Have an Alternative00:03:10
I think what is really going to decide the fate of this negotiation is ultimately the fact that the Democrats have an alternative to their current position and Trump does not have an alternative to his.
There is no way Trump can compromise on his demand for border wall funding.
He has staked his entire presidency on it.
And so if he compromises, he will lose his political support and Democrats will be able to basically steamroll him on every other issue.
So he's going down with the ship if this thing does not work out.
Whereas Democrats could compromise on this and they would still retain their support because what motivates their base is not this particular issue, but the desire to get rid of Donald Trump.
So they could do a deal and still walk away and fight another day.
I think ultimately the fact that Democrats can compromise and Trump cannot is going to decide this particular contest in Trump's favor.
What the result is in the long run, that remains to be seen.
But I think Trump, ironically, by leaving himself no alternative, has created a very strong bargaining position in this negotiation.
You know, I enjoy Ann Coulter.
I think she's smart.
I think she's a provocateur sometimes on purpose.
She's an entertainer sometimes on purpose.
But I think she was one of the few people to early on grasp Trump's chances and his appeal.
And of course, she wrote a hagiography of him almost in Trump We Trust.
She has essentially said, if you don't do the wall, you've lost me forever.
And she's been critical of some of the people in Trump's team, including Trump's son, Jared Kushner.
So she, I think, in some ways represents the Trumpiest part of the Trump base.
She seems, and I'm not putting everything on Ann, but I think she's a very good elocutor of this point of view.
She's still worried that there are forces around Trump that would cave in in a second.
In the Senate, Jared Kushner is son-in-law himself.
You seem to think there's no way Trump can compromise.
Is that true?
I couldn't hear everything you said, but I think just to comment on Anne Coulter, she essentially laid out the shape of Trump's address.
She said he should make the compassionate case for the wall, and he did.
In terms of her criticism of the administration, I think, look, it's a repeated refrain among conservatives, this idea we're going to be sold out by the people we've elected to office and the people they've hired to advise them.
I think given the history of the last several decades, especially on this issue, that's a reasonable fear.
And I'm not saying that her criticisms are necessarily unwarranted, but I think the White House is pretty unified on this issue.
The Senate Republicans are united on this issue.
Ironically, because Democrats won the midterms in the way they did by wiping out the moderate Republicans, there's going to be very little dissent from Republicans on this issue.
Government Shutdown Threats00:07:35
Maybe one or two senators, maybe one or two representatives, but you would have seen a couple of dozen maybe agitating for an end to the shutdown before border wall funding had been provided.
So ironically, the Republicans, by losing so many seats in moderate districts in the House, don't have the same degree of internal opposition and are basically in lockstep with the president on this.
They also realize their own political fate hinges on his success in this negotiation.
The idea of a government shutdown is not an idea that we are familiar with in Canada because the nature of our parliamentary system, it just wouldn't happen.
The checks and balances aren't there.
What we would perhaps have is what we call a vote of non-confidence and the government would fall and there would be an election.
So this kind of government shutdown is fascinating and also strange to us.
Of course, we have viewers around the world, but many of our viewers are based here in Canada, Joel.
Can you tell me how this plays out?
I saw a report that when Chuck Schumer met with the president, Chuck Schumer, the senior Democrat senator from New York State, that he said Trump threatened to have the shutdown take months or even years.
Is that even possible?
How does it work?
Is the entire government shut down?
How does it end?
Right.
So right now, it's a partial government shutdown.
The reason they call it a shutdown is basically federal agencies can't operate unless the funding to operate those agencies has been appropriated by Congress.
They can't pay their employees.
They can't buy office equipment.
They can't do anything.
So what typically happens is both sides agree to fund the military.
So that will be funded.
There are also laws requiring some federal employees to go to work, whether or not they are paid.
They are called essential services.
That tends to cover most federal employees.
So even in a total government shutdown, the most essential parts of the government will still function, even though the employees won't be paid.
They will be paid eventually once the shutdown ends.
They're given back pay.
But what happens is the budget has to be approved every year for all federal agencies.
Republicans have approved the budget for something like three-quarters of those federal agencies through September, through the end of the fiscal year, which ends September 30th.
So actually, this is only a partial shutdown, and it's covering a few agencies.
It'll spread a little bit over time.
This could last months into the next budget talks, which would be scheduled for the fall of this year.
And if there's an impasse still, this could go into next year.
I think, Ezra, this could go well into the presidential election, and then you'd see the government basically not functioning except for basic services, and those employees wouldn't be paid.
It would become a pretty serious situation, but I just don't think Trump is going to give in on this.
I think the first priority of government is national security.
He has framed the border issue as an issue of national security.
If you can't deal with national security, there's no point to opening the government because the purpose of government is to provide national security.
So I think Trump will hang on.
I think this could go until the summer of next year.
I'm not joking.
This could be an 18-month shutdown until finally, with a presidential election looming, the two sides might agree to come together.
Or not.
That's incredible.
I mean, that's incredible to me.
And I need to, I mean, we don't have time to do it today, and I know you've got to get back to things there, but the idea of people not being paid eventually, they would have to leave to find other work.
I mean, the idea of a semi-permanent shutdown is so fascinating, and the fact that you say it's a real possibility is amazing to me.
I have one last question for you.
I've been looking into the powers of the president under a national emergency and what the president can do through the military.
And I want to ask you if you think it's realistic that President Trump can just say, look, I'm not getting anywhere with the Democrats.
They're the ones who are dragging this out.
I'm going to act using my constitutional and legal powers, statutory powers, and I'm just going to build the wall myself using the Army, and we're just going to do it.
I mean, in Canada, we use our Army for social purposes all the time.
At one point in time, they actually shoveled snow in a big snowstorm in Toronto.
It was a national humiliation, I must say.
But this is really a national security job, as you say.
Do you think it's likely that Trump will say to heck with it, I'm just going to do this.
I'm going to take the action.
I'm a man of action, and I'm a builder, and I can get it done.
I think he could do it.
I think he would do it if the political cost of keeping the government closed became really big.
I think he would do that.
There's a dangerous precedent, of course, because once Democrats control the White House, they'll just declare national emergencies for everything.
They'll call climate change a national emergency and just force coal plants out of business on that basis.
So you don't want to create that precedent.
But I think Trump could do it if the government shutdown becomes a big political problem.
It isn't yet.
People are used to these shutdowns by now.
We've had them for almost a decade.
They don't change anything at all.
They inconvenience a few people for a few days or a few weeks.
That's it.
If this goes on and on, yes, Trump could do it.
And I think he'd be entitled to do it.
I'm not sure it's a good precedent.
Very interesting.
Well, Joel, we're so grateful to you for giving us the feedback.
And it's nice to see you.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Oh, well, it's a pleasure.
And there's going to be a lot to talk about in 2019.
Give us 30 seconds on some of the new incoming congressmen.
I know you've got to go, but you've got Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York.
And you have two Muslim congressmen, Ilhan Omar, if I'm saying her name right, from Minnesota, and another congresswoman from Michigan who actually called Trump a mother, F-U-C-K-E-R, on camera.
Shocking.
What does this portend for the Democrats going forward?
Just give me 30 seconds on this before we say goodbye to you.
Well, I think the Democrats are fast losing control of their caucus.
And I think privately they're frustrated because the radicals in the new House majority are saying things that frighten voters.
70% tax rate, that's what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is proposing for her green program, whatever it is.
She can't even tell you what it is, but it's going to cost you 70% of your income above a certain level if you are a high earner.
Yes, then Rashida Kleib, one of two women Muslim members of Congress, the first two female Muslims in Congress, she's been tweeting anti-Semitic things and calling Trump names that you can't repeat on the air.
All of it very bad for the Democrats.
They've got off to a very difficult start, left the wrong impression, I think, in the minds of many voters.
It's clear they just want to get rid of Trump.
It's clear they have no agenda, and so the vacuum is being filled by the radicals.
It's clear they have no interest in civility, which is why they use foul language.
They're just about impeachment and destruction.
And they're going to have to turn it around pretty quickly to change that impression, but the shutdown is making it hard for them.
Look Forward to Updates00:04:19
Very interesting.
Joel Pollock, senior editor-at-large of Breitbart.com.
Keep up the fight down there.
Look forward to your updates throughout the year.
Thank you.
Happy New Year.
All right.
Thanks, you too.
Well, isn't that interesting?
And we'll do more reportage on those two congresswomen, Rashida Taleba.
I forgot her name temporarily.
She's from Michigan.
Very radical.
Palestinian heritage.
And Ilhan Omar.
And when Joel calls the Manny Semitic, he's just not messing around.
I mean, these women have said extreme things, and now they're in the heart of Congress itself.
Stay with us.
My final thoughts ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
It has been far too long since I've been in the studio.
I took a little bit of a break over Christmas, and then I had a little bit of business to do, if you can believe it, over the last couple days.
So I was traveling, and it just added up to too much time away, but I am thrilled to be back.
It's so good to be back in the Rebel World Headquarters.
And what do you think of our fancy schmancy new set?
Now, as you probably know, it's not actually a glamorous glass and steel loft studio overlooking the CN Tower.
No, that's all a computer-generated background in front of what we call a green screen.
We just thought we'd freshen it up with a new look for the new year.
It does feel pretty fancy, though, doesn't it?
Look, I think 2019 is going to be an amazing year for the Rebel and an amazing year for Canada, but amazing doesn't necessarily mean great.
I think it's going to be a terrible year by certain measures.
I think Justin Trudeau will proceed with his plan to nationalize the Canadian media.
By that, I mean his $595 million plan to effectively nationalize the few remaining private journalists in the country.
He's not going to outright buy McLean's or outright buy the National Post, but with that slush fund, he'll say, if I can trust you, you'll get the money.
If I can't trust you, you won't get the money.
And believe you me, I know journalists enough to know they will all take the money, all of them.
So I think you're going to see the colonization of the few remaining political reporters in this country.
I think you're going to have that carrots matched with a stick.
I think you're going to see litigation against independent voices under the guise of hate speech or, I don't know, we know Justin Trudeau is pressuring Facebook to crack down on what he calls fake news, which is what he calls anyone who disagrees with him.
I think you're going to see an attack on the Rebel ramp up from Trudeau in the year ahead.
They've already done that.
I think you're going to see an insane collusion with the media and Trudeau in the 2019 election campaign, which has officially begun.
And Rachel Notley, too, in Alberta, although I think it's quite certain she's going to lose no matter what the media does there.
So that's the Rebel.
I think we have a very important place, certainly an important role to play in both the Alberta and the Canadian election campaigns.
I think it's critically important that we cover the substantive news, but it's just as important that we live to be a dissenting voice to tell the other side of the story.
I think having one voice telling the other side of the story is an enormous antidote.
I guess what I'm saying is, even if there are a thousand lying paid-off journalists over there, even just having one voice telling the truth makes all the difference as opposed to no voices telling the truth.
That's what we're going to try and do.
In the months ahead, I hope to unveil and reveal to you new talent that we're going to hire at the Rebel.
In fact, one of the things I was doing out of town the last few days was meeting with one of those prospective talents, and I was on the phone this morning with another.
So we hope to add to our team of journalists in 2019.
I think it's going to be a good year.
Of course, it always comes back to you.
We depend on you to keep us alive because YouTube has demonetized us and Trudeau, well, we're not going to take his cash.
It's down to you, my friends.
And if you think that this mission is important as I do, please continue to support us not only with your monthly $8 subscription fee for our premium services, but also for our crowdfunded campaigns.