Kurt Schlichter, Ezra Levant, and Sheila Gunn Reid dissect Canada’s handling of Robert Lloyd Schellenberg’s death sentence in China—ignored by Trudeau’s government despite past advocacy for Omar Khadr—while Sheila Gunn Reid exposes bureaucratic delays hiding RCMP asylum-seeker questionnaires revealing migrant views clashing with Canadian values, like support for Sharia law. Schlichter contrasts this with U.S. Democrats’ potential ideological collapse over border walls, where Trump’s base remains loyal, and media like CNN dismiss local reporting as propaganda. Art Lightlauer’s absurd breath test for returning too many empties under Liberal "random testing" laws highlights overreach, proving even well-intentioned policies risk public backlash when pushed too far. [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, a Canadian now sits on death row in China, but it seems that Foreign Affairs Minister Christia Freeland is just too busy going to bat for assorted other foreign nationals as opposed to taking an interest in a Canadian citizen who might pay the ultimate price.
Ezra Levant, we'll try to make sense of it all.
And remember how back in 2015 the Trudeau Liberals promised to be the most transparent federal government in Canadian history?
Well, that was then and this is now.
Sheila Gunn Reed will explain how the Trudeau Liberals are all about suppressing information that should be made public and talk about your Mexican standoff as President Trump is insistent upon receiving funding for a wall on the southern border.
The Democrats are refusing to compromise or negotiate.
Kurt Schlichter will offer his take on what is likely to play out in the days ahead.
And finally, we get your letters.
We get your letters every minute of every day.
And I'll share some of the feedback we received regarding my commentary about a police officer who inexplicably concluded that a senior citizen who was returning about nine bucks worth of empties to a beer store was surely a drunk driver and was threatened with a $2,000 fine unless he submitted to a breathalyzer test.
Just will you hear this one folks?
Those are your rebels.
Let's round them up.
China sentences a Canadian Robert Lloyd Schellenberg to death He wasn't originally sentenced to death there, but they kicked it up a notch after Canada arrested Hmong in December.
Let me read the first sentence from the New York Times.
Ready?
China's diplomatic clash with Canada escalated sharply on Monday, that's today, when a Chinese court sentenced a Canadian to death for a drug smuggling at a one-day retrial ordered weeks after a Chinese executive's arrest in Canada.
That's how they roll in China, a one-day retrial, a do-over in one day to kill a guy.
I have no idea if he really is a drug dealer, but I do have an idea about Chinese courts.
They are not independent.
They're really just window dressing for whatever the Communist Party says.
There are some lawyers in China, but they're really symbolic.
The fix was in.
Maybe he really was a drug dealer, but it's certain that this was an escalation.
China is saying, you arrest one of ours, we kill one of yours.
So that was the news that Christia Freeland was facing today.
So why not scoop up a bounty, a prize, and make sure that she hugs you and make sure she doesn't say anything.
Only you get to talking.
Isn't that weird?
Now, as I do my research for this video, Christia Freeland has yet to put out a public statement on the death sentence in China.
Now, the last thing I see, and maybe this will change between when I speak this and when it goes to air, but the last thing I see on her Twitter feed is indeed about Thailand.
You see that thing, that Thai Pong Dao thing there?
That's just typical political pandering to some Thai ethnic festival of some sort.
So I scrolled back a few days and I saw nothing about this death sentence.
I saw this tweet by her a few days ago.
Canada is seriously alarmed by today's court decision in Myanmar, that's Burma, to uphold the imprisonment of Reuters journalists Wa Loan and Kia So.
Now I'm sure that Wa Loan and Kia So are good people.
I'm sure they've been mistreated.
I mean, I'm not sure, but let's assume that.
The problem is they're just not they're just not Canadian.
They have no connection to Canada.
They work for Reuters and so used to Christy Freeland work for Reuters before she ran for office.
So maybe this is a favor to her old company that, I don't know, that would be how the liberals work.
But maybe she just really likes to virtue signal to show how much she cares to people, about people, just not people she has any responsibility for or can do anything about.
Well, talk about having your priorities in order.
Sure, Foreign Affairs Minister Christia Freeland loves to don her supergirl cape when it comes to championing the violated human rights of foreign nationals.
But when a trial redo is carried out in China that results in a death sentence for a bona fide Canadian citizen, well, suddenly the minister is apparently too time-pressed to get involved.
How disturbing is that?
Join me now with more about Ms. Freeland's apparent vow of silence with regard to a Canadian who now finds himself on death row under some very dubious circumstances is our very own rebel commander, Ezra Levant.
Welcome to the Rebel Roundup, Ezra.
Thank you very much.
Good to be here.
Good to have you.
And Ezra, tell me, I'm just wondering, the potential fate of Robert Schellenberg is about as dire as it gets.
Do you think Freeland and company are furiously working behind the scenes to get some justice done here?
Or is this a case of paralysis by analysis given that they simply don't know what to do when it comes to this crisis?
As far as I know, Justin Trudeau has not phoned the president of China, either for this Robert Schellenberg, who I believe is a drug dealer, because he had drug convictions and all sorts of criminal convictions in Canada.
And, you know, he should have stuck to Canada where we're extremely lenient and we have liberal judges.
And you get this.
I don't know why anyone who is a serial criminal, which I think he was.
I think that's what the criminal record shows.
Don't go to China and do crimes here.
So, I mean, I don't believe the Chinese legal system.
It's not independent.
That's not controversial to say that.
They convicted him and they sentenced him.
Okay, fine.
But then what happened is after this current spat with China, they had a do-over trial.
Now, they got a conviction.
So they have another trial.
That's just not a thing.
And the second do-over trial was in one day.
And obviously, lawyers in China are more like for window dressing.
They're not, and judges really.
So they took this guy, retried him, and gave him the death penalty.
And I mean, that's a scam, that's a sham.
I acknowledge that China ought to have the right to have the death penalty for a drug dealer.
But I point out the obvious that this guy didn't get that until it became a political pawn.
But let me say this.
The Liberals pressed extremely hard to have a convicted murderer and terrorist named Omar Cotter.
Five counts of war crimes, 40-year prison sentence under Guantanamo-based military commission by a jury.
The Liberals wouldn't stop saying, bring him home, bring him home, even though he was a murderer and a terrorist he said on the streets.
Even if it was just to have this guy serve his sentence in a Canadian jail, he's been sentenced to death, and I haven't heard a word in public from Trudeau on this.
And again, I'm not in favor of this guy.
I think he's a bad dude.
But he shouldn't be murdered as a political spar at us.
And Trudeau and Freeland are too timid to say anything.
But, you know, Ezra, at this stage, how do you unravel this mess?
I mean, we all go, it goes back to last month, the Wawei CFO, Meng Wenzhao, arrested to be extradited to the U.S. That's what started this going.
It's funny, the Chinese say that the trial redo of Mr. Schellenberg has nothing to do with that issue, which is a jawdropper, to say the least.
But when it comes to this, as it's being labeled by some in the media, death penalty diplomacy, how do you fix this to begin with?
Well, look, just because Canada is a smaller country, a middle power, let's use that word, doesn't mean that we can't command respect around the world.
I note that even though Barack Obama was against the Keystone Excel pipeline and was never going to approve it, he didn't actually kill it until right after Stephen Harper left.
Because he knew that Justin Trudeau could push around.
Stephen Harper took on Vladimir Putin in ways that no one had imagined.
Stephen Harper took on the Francophonie and their anti-Israel bias.
Stephen Harper did a lot of things as prime minister with a small country, and he earned respect for it around the world.
So you can do that.
I think, how does respect around the world come?
I think it's speaking clearly, speaking the same way publicly as privately, keeping promises, doing what you say, showing self-respect.
To me, the perfect summary of Trudeau's China policy is not even when he said when he was running for office, China is my favorite country because of their basic dictatorship.
That was a shocking thing to hear.
But when he sent his Chinese ambassador, John McCallum, the former member of parliament, when McCallum was before a Canadian committee talking about free trade and he was asked what's the Canadian stance, he said, I would say to China, more, more, more.
Like, he basically said, whatever China wants, we're down for.
So if you have so little self-respect, have so little savvy, that you're going to negotiate with one of the most, I mean, the Chinese have been into diplomacy and negotiating for 5,000 years.
I mean, it's like Persia, Iran.
These people have had empires and kingdoms and intrigues for millennia.
And to think that some dopey trust fund kid could say, I'm just going to go in and I'm going to say I love them.
And whatever they want, I'm going to give them more, more, more.
So that's your opening position is whatever they want.
That's your opening position.
And I'm not even kidding.
Canada invested half a billion dollars of Canadian tax money in China's Asian industrial infrastructure bank.
Why are we putting half a billion Canadian tax dollars in a Chinese bank to build infrastructure in China and around the world?
How about in Canada?
Like, why did you just give them half a billion dollars?
Is that like a thank-you gift or a pre-thank you?
Like, when you don't respect yourself, when you have no self-confidence or self-respect, other people can detect that in about a second and they'll take advantage.
I mean, the irony is Donald Trump has made it clear that other than Mexico, China is the country he most despises.
I mean, count the number of tweets he's made on China versus Mexico.
There's this hilarious clip, I think the Huffington Post put it online.
It's just a montage of Trump saying, China, online.
It's very funny.
But when that China hater, let's call it like it is.
I mean, Trump says he likes the Chinese people and Chinese food in China.
Sure, he does.
But he hates the Chinese government.
When he landed in Beijing, they rolled out the red carpet.
They treated him like a king.
Why would they treat a guy who hates them like that?
Because Donald Trump, you know they give him a nickname.
They have two nicknames for Trump, according to the New York Times.
Uncle Donald, or Donald the Strong.
And strength garners respect, obviously.
Whereas, what's the, do you remember their nickname for Justin Trudeau?
Little potato.
Is something being lost in the translation?
No, it's a homophone, xiao, kudo or something like that.
It means little potato because it rhymes with his name.
So what?
But you don't, but so what?
A lot of things would rhyme with Trump, but they call him Donald the Strong is not a rhyme.
Yeah.
And Trudeau, it's Trudeau the weak, Trudeau the lesser, Trudeau the clown, Trudeau the child.
I mean, throughout history, there's, you know, there's Ivan the Terrible.
You know, there's Vlad the Impaler.
You know, there's so-and-so the fat, so-and-so the thin, so-and-so the elder, the younger, Plato the Elder, Plato the Younger, you know.
There's all these historical names that we give people.
So-and-so the weak.
Trudeau's nickname must be the lesser.
Trudeau the lesser.
The little potato.
And you know, and yet, here's another, you know, spanner into the works as far as I see it.
Ezra, in a very rare public appearance, China's ambassador to Canada, Ambassador Liu, he said, and I wonder how the likes of a social justice warrior like our prime minister would handle this.
He said that Western nations are showing their, quote, Western egotism and white supremacy, end quote, in their approach to China.
First of all, I think that's a little rich coming from a country like China.
But these are the kind of, these are the words, this is the language of the Trudeau and his ilk.
And I wonder how they fight that.
I mean, like I said, Ezra, this to me is a crisis, it's a mess.
And I don't know if you can put Humdi-Dumdi back together.
And I wonder if we are actually going to see Schallenberg, he might very well be a drug dealer, as you said.
Certainly it's stupid to flaunt any law in a foreign regime.
But is this going to end up with him paying the ultimate price?
Well, that would be shocking.
But listen, Canadians are murdered all the time overseas, and Trudeau doesn't care.
There's a Canadian murdered in, I think, Burkina Faso just a couple days ago by a Muslim terrorist.
I didn't even see a word on it by Trudeau.
Maybe he said something and I missed it.
Well, I think there was some Syrian hipster in an airport somewhere that they were going to bat for him.
Yeah.
So I think that Trudeau, at any given time, there's hundreds of Canadians in prisons around the world.
Most of them actually did a crime.
Canadian policy is to, if the country's legal system or prison system is too barbaric, we try to bring them home.
And we actually have treaties with other countries where we say, okay, we will accept your sentence, but let him serve it out in Canada.
Now, our parole laws kick in, so they generally get out quickly.
Trudeau's Prisoner Policy00:02:50
And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
If someone is convicted of, let's say, drugs, should they die?
We don't think so as Canadians.
Should they come back to Canada and serve other prisons from here?
You know, it's not a bad policy to have.
But Trudeau is silent on ones where the captor is his friend, like China, or he admires, he's sucking up to.
And he's also silent, usually, when it's a Muslim terrorist that's killing our people.
Like, I think there's a couple of Canadians in the Philippines.
He didn't lift a finger to kill to rescue the Canadians from the terrorists who captured them.
In fact, even Joshua Boyle, the Taliban-loving friend of Trudeau's.
Who got an audience with him?
Yeah.
Of course, it was the Americans who rescued him, not Canada.
And Trudeau was not even told about the rescue until afterwards because he was recalcitrant.
By the way, so was Joshua Boyle.
He refused to get on an American airplane in some country because he was worried he would be taken to Guantanamo Bay.
So certain is he of his own guilt.
How sad we didn't grant him his wish of not getting him on.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, he was already, he was rescued from the Taliban.
There's so much.
Justin Trudeau.
See, the thing is, everyone's oh, Stephen Harper was a cowboy.
Stephen Harper was so rough.
Stephen Harper doesn't know you need nuance.
Stephen Harper doesn't understand.
Really?
Because all these pros and experts and woke speeches about feminism and woke speeches about global warmingism.
How can you name me a single country that today has better relations with Canada than five years ago?
Not even Cuba.
Cuba's bombarding our diplomats with sound waves.
Iran, even the countries that Trudeau loves, China is further away from us.
They're about to kill one of our citizens.
India, Trudeau brought a terrorist to India.
Saudi Arabia is practically at war with us.
Donald Trump eats us for breakfast.
I cannot think of a single country in the world that is closer to Canada now than when Trudeau took over.
And Russia, I mean, not that, I mean, Russia, you have to be very careful with, but Russia's actually banned Christian Friedland from setting foot in their country.
So where is this super diplomat?
Where is this professional?
Canada's back.
I don't see Canada back.
I think Canada has never been this isolated in the world.
I can't think of a country.
Name one.
One country that's closer to us now than three, four years ago.
It's been completely aggression.
I'm so sorry we're out of time.
I didn't even get it into the angle that the title sponsor for Hockey Night in Canada, if you can imagine, is indeed Huawei.
Redacted RCMP Records00:12:44
So how do you like that?
Yeah, well, give me 10 more seconds.
Huawei is also a major donor to Justin Trudeau's personal think tank called Canada 2020.
I didn't know that.
Canada 2020 is basically the liberal in-house think tank.
It's run by Trudeau's old buddy.
Huawei has given a ton of dough to Canada 2020.
Incredible.
There you go, folks.
What was the name of that Meryl Street movie?
It's complicated.
We'll see what happens in the days ahead and keep it here.
more of a rebel roundup to come right after this in november of 2017 we filed an access to information request with the rcmp This is what we asked them for.
It's pretty clear.
Please provide copies of all of the survey responses collected from those crossing the border with personal information redacted as reported here.
And then we linked back to a mainstream media report on the subject.
Then we sent a second access to information request about two weeks later.
We asked the government to provide copies of all documents, including emails, text, or instant messages, memos, media lines, briefing notes, backgrounders, et cetera, regarding the use and creation and the pullback of the RCMP questionnaire for asylum seekers crossing the border as reported here.
And then, of course, again, we linked to a mainstream media report on the matter.
So to be clear, we wanted the survey responses themselves because we wanted to see what the government is fully aware that migrants are saying with regard to equality and human rights and religious freedom.
But we also wanted to see the government's planning and their frightened eventual pullback on the questionnaire.
We wanted it all.
So we waited and we waited and we waited.
January 10th, 2019, we get a response to our requests.
So to be clear, we waited all of 2018 and all of December 2017 to bring us to nearly 14 months wait time.
But we don't actually get the documents.
Oh no.
Look at this line here.
The RCMP bureaucrat says to us, please let me know if you still require the files.
What?
Remember how during the 2015 Canadian federal election campaign, the boy who would become prime minister promised that this liberal regime would be the most transparent government ever?
Well, turns out the precise opposite is true.
So much information that should be public is hidden, and so much information that is acquired through the official freedom of information process is redacted.
And then there are the delays, the endless, endless delays.
And with more on trying to get the very important information regarding the immigration file we should all be entitled to, is the host of the gun show, Sheila Gunread.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, my friend.
Hey, David, thanks for having me on.
Always a pleasure.
So Sheila, correct me if I'm wrong here, but the information you're currently seeking, I think should have taken minutes, not months, to produce.
So why is the bureaucracy ragging the puck on this issue in the first place?
Well, yeah, that's a really good point.
The RCMP actually has people in their office whose only job is to redact personal information from their files.
That's their only job.
So the information I'm seeking was redacted.
All the personal information was removed as it became part of the official greater RCMP bureaucracy.
So it was redacted a long time ago.
I asked for this information 14 full months ago.
I just got a response saying, hey, do you still want it?
Well, yeah, of course I still want it.
What a crazy question.
But they are clearly dragging their feet, kicking the can down the road, trying to delay this until it no longer is the election issue that it really should be.
And Sheila, you know, that's an important point.
You've been waiting for this for 14 months.
As you said, it's already been obtained, redacted.
And they say, do you still want this information?
I mean, I don't want to be insulting here, but are they simpletons or something?
I mean, this is the very reason for your request.
I've been waiting 14 months for something that should have taken 14 minutes to produce.
I think sometimes, you know, it's the inverse of that old saying, never attribute to malice what you can attribute to stupidity.
I think this is the inverse of that.
I would attribute malice to this.
We know that the greater bureaucracy of the federal government is sort of infested by liberal partisans, especially those belonging to the Peace Act Union.
And we know they actively campaigned for the federal liberals last time.
And this is just another, I suppose, campaign effort from the larger unions of the federal government to delay the release of this information.
This is really dangerous information if we get it and it comes to light.
If these migrants crossing the border had answered these questions from the RCMP at the border in any other way, like if they answered these questions saying, yeah, we believe in equality between the sexes.
And yeah, of course we believe in freedom of religion.
And yeah, you know what?
Let those girls let their hair down.
If they had answered questions that way, I would have seen them already.
But the fact that they're hiding this information tells me exactly what's in these docs.
Yeah, no, I think you and I and our audience are really now waiting more so with bated breath to find out what this, you know, what these documents state, Sheila.
But you know, I want to talk about the ethical part of this.
And to me, this is a complete breach of ethics.
And I'll tell you, Sheila, over my career as a journalist, I have filed FOIs to government ministries and crown corporations and government agencies.
And I have found for the most part that the FOI people are really good people.
They want to do the right thing.
They recognize the separation of church and state, if you will, and that their job is to access this information and give it when requested, because legally, that's what we're allowed to receive, and that's what they're obliged to do.
They're not supposed to be told by their higher-ups, oh, sit on this or pretend it doesn't exist.
So it looks like the kettle of fish you're dealing with at the RCMP, they're not subscribing to these ethical standards.
That's my viewpoint on this, Sheila.
I don't want to be rude here, David, but you're a little longer in the tooth than I am.
I've been only at this journalism thing about three and a half years, and it has been my experience, my overwhelming experience, both at the provincial level and at the federal level across several bureaucracies, across several ministries.
It is all delay, delay, delay, and obfuscate.
And we've seen different ministries take measures to hide what they're doing, to say, oh, let's take this offline and discuss it offline.
I've seen that happen in Alberta.
I've seen that happen at the federal level.
So what may have been your experience when you were a bit of a younger gentleman is certainly not my experience now.
This has been one of the most cloistered and secretive governments I would suspect ever.
Well, you know what?
That is such a sad statement, Sheila.
And I'm not disputing that it's not true because this is at the end of the day, and I don't want to sound too dramatic here, but it's an attack on the democratic process.
I mean, we live in a democracy, and we, the people, have a right to this information.
It is public information, and it shouldn't be clamped down and redacted the way it is.
And I just find it dreadful that this is the new normal now.
So why don't, you know, aside from the fact-finding process, Sheila, we are, of course, left to speculate now that we're heading into month 15, waiting for this information requested.
What do you think it is that they are so obviously hiding that is potentially so toxic to Canadian citizens to hear?
Well, I think they're clearly hiding the fact that the migrants crossing the border are not expressing things that are in line with Canadian values.
And I know the Liberals like to say that we don't have Canadian values except when it suits them.
But I suspect there are a large portion of the migrants who are crossing the border who are saying, yes, I believe in Sharia law.
Yes, women should have their hair covered.
No, I don't believe in freedom of religion and all other manner of things that are not in line with the free and small liberal society that Canada really should be.
That's what I think is the problem.
I think if the Canadian public realized that we were importing en masse a large swath of people who fundamentally disagree with Canadian rights and freedoms, I think the Canadian public would have a real problem with it.
And you know, Sheila, we know where Justin Trudeau stands on this.
Going back some five years ago, I'm sure you remember his condemnation of the Stephen Harper government because of the, it was the immigration guide at the time that was condemning so-called barbaric practices.
And this prime minister in waiting actually had a problem with things like, oh, I don't know, female genital mutilation being described as barbaric.
In other words, he had a problem with barbarism being described as barbarism.
So I think you're dead on.
I think there are a lot of people or a significant number of people that are coming in that do not subscribe to Canadian values.
And yeah, you know what?
That's a problem.
I don't want people like that in this country, Sheila.
Well, and, you know, we've seen that evidenced.
The CBSA has said that they have found people coming across the border, primarily women, with what they would describe as cutting kits.
And this is to practice female genital mutilation in Canada.
So these people travel into our country with these kits to cut girls here, as opposed to sending girls away for the quote-unquote procedure.
So we know that that is a problem, but the liberals have a problem saying that it's a problem.
And they don't want people to know that that's happening.
And that's why they redacted all these questionnaires.
That's why they won't give me the questionnaires.
And that's why they stopped doing the questionnaires.
You know, it's absolutely appalling, Sheila, because please square this circle for me.
How is it that our so-called first feminist prime minister is okay with the idea of FGM?
Or maybe he's one of these really outrageous progressives that has rebranded FGM as FGB female genital beautification.
Is that what's going on here?
Well, how do we square that circle in any other matter?
How do we square that circle when we are giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the developing world for what they call reproductive health, which really means avoiding baby girls in the developing world?
How do we square that circle when we have a feminist prime minister who's perfectly fine with importing Saudi oil in the Irving Oil Refinery?
Some 40% of the oil that comes into that refinery, Canada's largest refinery, is 40% from Saudi Arabia where women are stoned, where women cannot go outside without a male relative who can't really drive, can't really vote.
He's not a feminist in the true meaning of I believe in equality for all women.
He's just a first world busybody using the word feminism to hide his own bad behavior.
Wow.
Well, Sheila, I agree.
And I think we're going to have to wrap it here.
We're just out of time.
But I will say this.
One Month Mark Shutdown00:10:48
Hopefully, you're going to get these documents, ASAP, and that these people would not have the audacity, although I wouldn't put it past them, to delay this request until November so that it's after the next federal election.
But you keep on them.
Let's get that information out there before the election in October.
So once again, Sheila, great work on this file.
And thanks so much for joining me here today.
Thank you, David.
You have a good weekend.
You've got it, YouTube.
And that was Sheila Gunread in Alberta.
Keep it here, folks.
more of Rebel Roundup to come right after this.
Today it's the day 25 And America says, who gives a damn?
Nobody cares.
No one cares.
Some people around Washington, D.C. care.
Some decent people who work for the federal government, they care too.
But most of us, yeah, I don't see it.
Do you see it?
I don't see it.
Nobody's talking about it.
No one cares.
Now, look, there's polls out, but that's part of their strategy.
They've got kind of a two-pronged strategy.
And let me tell you how they're going to try and break Donald Trump because they've got to break him, right?
They've got to make him say, read my lips, no new taxes, then raise taxes.
They must make him go back on his promise to build a wall because that will destroy his base.
And they know it.
And that's why they're doing it.
They voted for walls 100 times.
This time, they won't.
All because they don't want to give Donald Trump a victory.
They want to use it to break us, his supporters, off from him and leave him isolated and alone.
So as we head into the one month mark of the U.S. federal government shutdown, the rhetoric continues to amp up.
President Donald Trump is committed to fighting for funding for a wall on the southern border, whereas Democrats, even those Democrats who just a few years ago supported the idea of a border wall, well, they're simply refusing to negotiate.
The question arises in the days and weeks ahead: which side is going to win this politicized version of the proverbial Mexican standoff?
And joining us now with more on this ongoing story is our U.S.-based rebel, Kurt Schlichter.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, Kurt.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Always a pleasure.
So, Kurt, as this saga drags on and on, who do you think is going to blink first?
Is it going to be the president or is it going to be the Democrats who have so far indicated they are in absolutely no mood whatsoever to compromise on this issue?
I don't know if the I don't know if that's a good assumption.
The fact is that a lot of these Democrats, the ones that gave them the majority, come from purple districts.
They don't come from hard left districts.
They come from districts where people want to see compromise.
They want to see border security.
And they are not interested in committing ritual suicide on behalf of Nancy Pelosi's constituents in San Francisco.
So I think there's some pressure there on Trump.
The only pressure from his own voters, from his own base, really seems to be to not do anything at all.
Yeah, you got the soft, weak sisters like Lisa Murkowski and a few other wimps in the Senate.
Why are we going to end the shutdown?
But, you know, normal people like me and you and most of the other people around here are just kind of like, who cares?
Shutdown's been going on for four weeks.
I have not noticed the number of people.
Now, I live in California, but I've traveled to both Virginia and Texas since it started.
The number of people who brought up the shutdown in front of me who are not RA political is zero.
It's not one, two, 10, 20.
It is zero.
No one here cares.
These federal employees are largely Democrat voters.
There are about 800,000 of them.
Not all, but many of them.
The Democrats are the party of government workers.
And Trump's got nothing to lose.
In fact, he has everything to lose if he gives in because he's made a promise and he's got to keep it.
So why not?
You know, this is, I think, a fascinating angle, Kurt.
The idea that this stonewalling is really going to hurt the Democratic base more so than Trump.
And as far as Trump is concerned, I mean, his brand, if you will, is promises made, promises kept.
This is promise numeral uno going back to 2016.
So the way this is going to play out, there might be, I guess what you're saying is more internal pressure in the Democratic Party to get a deal done.
I think that's going to start developing.
And the way it'll happen is eventually the Democrats will decide, well, we'll just go to be the bigger people.
You know, we have to give in to this blackmail.
We don't want to, but we've got to, and we'll get him.
We'll impeach him or something.
Trump has no reason not to.
His base isn't going to move.
Base doesn't care.
Base is for him.
Yeah, I think some moderates are probably going to hold it against, are probably going to hold it against the president for a little while.
Then they'll forget about it because it isn't affecting them.
At the end of the day, Trump has got to keep his promise.
And they know that.
And that's why they're going against the very things that they voted for just a few years ago.
This is a political move to try and destroy Donald Trump's political connection with his base.
And that's simply it.
But on that note, what I find disturbing about how things have evolved on the left in the U.S. to paraphrase that old General Motors ad tagline, not your father's Oldsmobile.
These aren't your father's Democrats.
These are the Sanctuary City Democrats.
These are the no one is illegal Democrats, at least the mouthpieces getting the airtime on the national cable networks.
What I guess I'm saying, Kurt, is they seem so ideologically committed to doing the wrong thing that I'm just wondering if reason can prevail in that party, such as it is right now.
No, what we need to do is break them.
We need to continue to nurture the cracks in their facade.
They've got a tougher problem than us.
Now, it's kind of the, you know, we're surrounded.
Good.
We can attack in every direction problem.
If you're surrounded, it really makes your combat planning simple.
Democrats, and Trump's surrender.
His base is united, but they're in a minority.
It's 45%, 43%, something like that.
The Democrats have to hold together a coalition.
The coalition is not all dedicated to committing ritual suicide over open borders.
It just isn't.
And you can see some of these new Democrats are in a really tough place.
And we know what they did during Obamacare.
A lot of them agreed to commit suicide for Nancy Pelosi and to vote for Obamacare, and they were wiped out the next election.
That's what's going to happen here.
There's a lot of campaign ads.
At the end of the day, you chose Nancy Pelosi and the San Francisco Democrats against your suburban Philadelphia district and border security.
You chose them over us.
And that's a powerful message for Republicans running to take these seats back.
This is a bigger problem for the Denmarks.
And Kurt, let's talk about the other angle here.
And I speak of, and you addressed this in your commentary too, the useful idiots.
And by that, I mean members of the media party, if you will, who are basically the propaganda machines for the Democratic Party.
You know, it's funny, I did a commentary earlier this week where I talked about how a TV station in San Diego, KUSI, which has been around since 1982, they invited CNN to pick up footage they had done, a series of reports with border patrol agents who go after illegal aliens on a 24-7 basis.
And CNN, because of their narrative allegedly, said, no, thanks.
We'll pass.
We'll do our own narrative from Washington and New York.
What do you make of this kind of media narrative that we're getting, Kurt?
And is it going to work?
I don't think the media no longer acts as gatekeepers.
We have social media.
We have alternative media sources like the Rebel.
And people are not dependent on ABC, NBC, CNN to get their news.
You know, they flip over to Fox and see a whole different perspective.
But a lot of the, you know, the media seems to think it's still 1985.
And it just isn't.
Yeah, I mean, they're still powerful.
They still speak to some people.
Do you know anyone who's watched a network news show in the last decade?
I haven't.
I have no idea who, and I'm politically in tune.
ABC, NBC, CBS, I could not tell you who their anchor is.
Yeah.
No, certainly.
You couldn't even venture a guess.
Certainly in this day and age, their monopoly has been broken.
You're right.
It's not 1985 as much as the media wishes it was 1984.
That was a bit of a joke there on my part.
Kurt, one last question, because this comes up from time to time, and I want to get your perspective.
Why didn't Trump and the Republicans push this idea of border wall financing before the midterm elections?
My answer is: what thing that they did push through would you have rather them put chosen instead?
You know, you have to prioritize.
That's the essence of leadership is figuring out your priority.
If it wasn't this, maybe it would have been tax.
Maybe we'd have gone a wall, but not tax reform.
I don't know the answer.
They prioritized other things.
I know the Senate spent a lot of time confirming judges.
You have a limited amount of time.
You have a limited amount of options.
And you have to prioritize.
And they did.
They went for things that they could get.
I don't know if the Republicans could have passed a wall bill.
I think they probably could have.
But what did we have would we have rather given up?
Is my question.
Yeah.
No.
In retrospect.
No, I mean, my personal take, Kurt, is that the Republicans from time to time seem to lack a killer instinct.
Empty Bottles and Drunk Driving?00:04:47
They're playing by the rules of Gainsbury, and they're up against a bunch of back alley street fighters.
So, well, Kurt, we're out of racetrack here, but it'll be a fascinating timeframe ahead in terms of the days and weeks to come to see what happens, who folds, and what the outcome of this is.
It really is a fascinating chapter in terms of the Trump administration.
So thank you again for weighing in with your expertise.
Thanks.
Gotcha.
And that was Kurt Schlichter in the U.S.
And keep it here, folks.
More of Rebel Roundup to come right after this.
Now, I'm not making this up, folks, but apparently the police officer had been staking out the local beer store.
And he had duly observed that Art had just returned an excessive amount of empties to that beer store.
Well, one needn't be blessed with the detective acumen of Sherlock Holmes to crack this case, right?
Lots of empty beverage alcohol containers obviously means the person returning the containers is a drunkard.
What else could it mean?
Only drunk drivers return empty beer bottles, right?
You know, I would have loved to have heard that conversation play out with dispatch.
Stedenko here, we got a code too far in progress.
Observing suspect Mr. X, approximately 70 years old, currently entering a beer store.
Suspect is returning an inordinate number of empty bottles.
Dispatch here.
Go on, Stedenko.
This sounds interesting.
How many bottles is Mr. X returning exactly?
Precisely three cases of beer bottles and eight wine bottles.
Good God, Stedenko.
That adds up to, let's see now, 80 empties.
Do you need backup?
Geez.
And so it was that after Art Lightlauer exited the plaza, he was pulled over and requested to provide a breast sample.
Art planned to refuse until he was informed that doing so would result in an automatic fine of $2,000, a considerably higher sum than Art earned from returning those empties, namely $8.80.
Well, in case you haven't heard, folks, under changes to the criminal code passed by the federal Liberals, police across Canada are now allowed to randomly stop and administer roadside alcohol breath tests on any driver, even without a reason to suspect that the person has been drinking.
And apparently, that includes someone flaunting their alleged liquor consumption by returning an inordinate number of empties for refund at a beer store.
Look, like most reasonable people, I want drunks off the road and I want convicted drunk drivers locked up for as long as possible.
But what occurred to Art Lighthour was a complete abuse of process, one that followed a logic process that I'd referred to as being moronic, except that I really don't want to insult the moron community.
Police have been entrusted with new powers thanks to this legislation, but surely they must use these powers wisely as opposed to losing the public trust by jumping to preposterous inclusions, i.e., someone returning a lot of empty beer bottles for recycling is obviously a drunk driver.
Give me a break.
In any event, here's what some of you had to say about the Art Lightlauer story.
West Coaster writes, Those bottle drive kids are in trouble now, them cubs and brownies.
They must be real boozers.
Indeed, I guess charities are going to have to think of other ways to stage fundraisers.
A bottle drive is just too fraught with pearl nowadays.
And Alan Wood writes, so it's now illegal to recycle in Canada?
Well, not illegal, Alan, just a potential big waste of time if any other cop out there comes to the conclusion that returning empty beer bottles is a telltale sign of impaired driving.
Incredible.
And Joe Groh writes, but they can't ask a little punk for his ID where he's roaming the streets at 2 a.m.
WTF is wrong with Toronto.
Well, you know, good point, Joe.
But alas, the folks at Black Lives Matter are dead set against carding.
And as you know, what Black Lives Matter wants, Black Lives Matter gets.
Oh, and in case you weren't paying attention, 2018 also happened to be a record year for homicides in Toronto.
Embracing the Three R's00:00:23
So yeah, sounds like a great plan to stake out those beer stores in the meantime, clamping down on drivers who aren't drunk, but doing the right thing by embracing the three R's.
Jeez, I think I need a drink, folks.
Well, that wraps up another edition of Rebel Roundup.
Thanks so much for joining us.
See you next week.
And hey, never forget, folks, without risk, there can be no glory.