Ezra Levant’s episode dissects Canada’s January 25th terrorism arrests in Kingston—20-year-old Syrian migrant Hassam Edin Al-Zahabi and a teen charged with IED plotting—while criticizing the RCMP’s resource allocation, refugee vetting failures, and Trudeau’s $50K-per-family resettlement costs. He ties these cases to broader institutional bias, comparing them to controversial Syrian migrant incidents like Ibrahim Ali’s Burnaby murder and a West Edmonton Mall acquittal, then contrasts Canada’s response with the FBI’s actions against Roger Stone. The episode warns of liberal ethno-politics overshadowing security, questioning whether Trudeau’s concessions on immigration prioritize optics over safety. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, one of Trudeau's Syrian refugees is charged with terrorism in Kingston, Ontario after an investigation involving 300 officers.
It's January 25th, 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 to the government of a wire publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Two suspected terrorists were arrested in Kingston, Ontario.
One of them is a 20-year-old man named Hassam Edin Al-Zahabi.
The other is a teenager who cannot be named.
The terrorism charges suggest that al-Zahabi and his friend were going to build IEDs, improvised explosive devices, or in plain language, they were building bombs.
Here, listen to the police.
Earlier today, the RCMP charged one young person with the following criminal code offenses.
Knowingly facilitating a terrorist activity, contrary to section 83.19 of the criminal code, and counseling a person to deliver, place, discharge, or detonate an explosive with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injuries, contrary to section 431.2 of the criminal code, which offense was not committed and did thereby commit an offense contrary to section 464A of the criminal code.
No further details will be provided due to the age of the individual.
A second individual, an adult male, has also been arrested.
There are a few things about this that trouble me, aside from the fact that there are terrorist plots afoot here in Canada.
The first is we did not detect this crime.
The RCMP said they were told about it by the FBI and they followed up and it's great to have good friends like that.
But how did the RCMP miss it in Canada, but the FBI caught it in Canada?
I'm glad, I'm grateful, but why did we miss that?
Is it because the man in charge of our security, Ralph Goodale, has told the RCMP to stop spying on possible Muslim terrorists and to focus on fake threats that are more politically correct, like right-wing terrorism.
You know all that.
Here's the CBC state broadcaster thumping the tub for that last year.
Does Canada take the threat of far-right extremism seriously?
And let me just read a little bit.
While right-wing extremism, including the activities of neo-Nazi and other racist groups, is monitored by CISIS and the RCMP, it doesn't receive the same amount of resources as threats from ISIS or al-Qaeda.
Yeah, yeah, I think it's because al-Qaeda knocked down the Twin Towers and Muslim terrorists, including ISIS, have killed literally tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people around the world since 9-11.
Oh, and including here in Canada, where ISIS murdered Corporal Nathan Cirrillo right outside our parliament and then entered parliament itself in a blaze of gunfire and mowed down warrant officer Patrice Vincent with a vehicle.
Yeah, I think maybe that's why.
Imagine telling our security agencies to take resources off of real terrorism and put them on a right-wingers, whatever that means.
It's politics, of course.
I mean, look at this story from just last month.
Public safety minister Ralph Goodale said Friday he would have his officials review use of words like Sikh, Sunni, and Shia, those are Muslim terms, to describe terrorist threats after a report suggesting Canada was again at risk from Sikh extremism sparked fierce criticism.
Yeah, so we have liberal ethno-politics trumping what our actual cops are saying.
I wonder why, I wonder if that's why we miss these accused terrorists in Kingston, but the FBI caught them.
Thanks to the FBI, I guess.
One of the fascinating details was that it took 300 lawmen to catch them.
300?
From different agencies, of course, but still 300?
I can confirm at this time that the RCMP has required over 300 resources to support this investigation.
Investigations of this nature require extensive cooperation and collaboration with our domestic and international partners.
He later clarified because people said 300, he meant 300 people.
My point is, if it takes 300 police and others to monitor one jihadi or two, how do you monitor 100?
And we know there's 100 ISIS returnees to Canada.
How do you monitor 1,000?
Well, you can't, of course.
There just aren't that many police.
We don't have the resources.
Maybe the thing is to let in fewer of them in the first place.
The accused 20-year-old here, Hassam-ad-Din al-Zahabi, is one of Trudeau's Syrians.
He came here a year and a half ago, so he was a grown man already.
He was an adult.
Now, they put him in high school in Kingston to learn English.
But why are we bringing in young, adult, single, unattached, military-aged Muslim men from Syria, terrorist central, to Canada?
Trudeau specifically said he wouldn't do that, but he did, and he put them right in our high schools.
And now one of them is accused of terrorism.
Same thing with Ibrahim Ali, a 29-year-old Syrian refugee that Trudeau let in.
He's the one accused of raping and murdering 13-year-old Marissa Shen in Burnaby, BC.
Again, Trudeau said he wouldn't let in young military-aged single Muslim men into Canada from Syria.
Too much of a security risk, but he did let them in, and yes, they are a hell of a security risk, aren't they?
But look at this.
This is from the CBC story.
RCMP charged Kingston Ontario youth with terror-related offense after security probe.
I love that touch.
He's a Kingston man.
He's a Kingston youth.
Yeah, I know.
Let me read this quote from the story.
They talked to the father of the accused terrorist.
That's who they're referring to here.
Al-Zahabi said his family, originally from Syria, has been living in Canada since July 2017, following time spent in Kuwait from 2008 to 2017.
So he is one of Trudeau's Syrians.
And look at this headline.
Father of man arrested in Kingston, Ontario probe says, maybe it's about terrorists?
You think.
You think.
Gee, it almost sounds like he knew that was coming.
Almost sounds like he expected it.
Oh, is this about the terrorism thing?
Almost sounds like he knew all about it.
Well, the CBC quickly changed that headline of the story.
I don't know, maybe Ralph Goodale called them.
And look, I mean, they changed it to Kingston Man.
And look at this weirdness from a CBC newscaster.
This is what's coming in on our CBC news sources now.
20-year-old Hassam-ed-Din al-Zahabi arrested, according to his father, who confirmed, as you said, to yourself and to Phil, currently completing high school upgrades at Loyalist Collegiate and Vocational Institute.
And his family, as you said, from Kuwait, they do not consider themselves Syrian refugees.
This is all part of the interview that we will get on the air just as soon as we can.
It's just been completed.
She repeated that several times.
They do not consider themselves Syrians.
They specifically said we're not Syrians.
Yeah.
Hey, guys, the family only got to come to Canada by saying they were Syrians.
That's how they were fast-tracked here.
But now that they're an embarrassment to Trudeau, they want you to know they don't consider themselves Syrians.
At least that's what the CBC says.
Well, maybe the CBC is right.
I mean, after all, they haven't set foot in Syria in over a decade.
They were living in a little oil-rich enclave called Kuwait.
It's an OPEC country, tiny country, absurdly rich.
Actually, their per capita GDP is not much lower than ours here in Canada.
Looks pretty nice.
This is their gleaming capital city.
So why did we move them from oil-rich Kuwait to Canada?
They were already in a great place.
Rich country, Arab, they speak Arabic.
They weren't refugees there.
Under refugee law, you have to apply for asylum in the first safe country you get to.
That would be Kuwait, where they've been for a decade.
And even on their own terms, they're not at risk.
The UN definition of a refugee is someone who has a well-founded fear of imminent danger because of their race or religion or something like that.
There is no persecution of Muslim Arabs in Kuwait.
It is a Muslim-Arab country that is at peace.
They're fake refugees, as all of Trudeau's were.
Remember, we actually took no people who were fleeing.
We took no people who were in jeopardy.
All of Trudeau's Syrians were already safe in Jordan, Turkey, or Lebanon, and I guess Kuwait.
Here's a senior civil servant in Trudeau's government in charge of the Syrian migration program telling this fact to parliament.
Most of the 21,000 refugees that have made it to our borders were now housing in camps.
They have been living in theater for a number of years, renting apartments.
So I just want to that further precision.
They're not housing camps administered by the UNHCR.
Can you give me a breakdown?
How many from camps?
I wouldn't be able to tell you the 21,000, how many, but very, very few came out of camps.
Most of the people were already living in the countries where we are operating.
So they had jobs, they had apartments, they were living in Beirut, Amman.
They're living in Turkey.
I think that line that the CBC was putting forward about him denying he's a refugee, I think that either came from the liberals or it came from the church that sponsored this family, the family accused of terrorism.
And you know who the real victims here are, right?
You know who's the real victims of this bomb threat?
Of course you do.
According to the CBC, the victim are the Syrians themselves.
Let me read this headline.
Community leaders work to head off anti-Muslim backlash after Kingston terror arrests.
Let me read some more.
Groups want to send message that terror plot allegations have nothing to do with Islam, folk, not N. That's not what the terrorists say, though, is it?
They say it's all about Islam.
That's what Ralph Goodale says, what the CBC says, though.
That's not what the terrorists say.
Let me read some more.
Islamic community groups, mental health workers, and police officers met today to calm fears and discuss ways to prevent an anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant backlash in the wake of two arrests related to an alleged terrorist plot in Ontario.
Great.
So Syrian refugees are having their fears calmed.
They're getting mental health.
But who is calming our fears about being murdered by Syrian terrorists?
Can you imagine having a kid in high school with this 20-year-old terrorist suspect?
I mean, weren't the charges today about a bomb threat against infidels?
Where's the mental health for us?
It's like that joke Mark Stein told a decade ago, but I'll never forget it.
Muslims fear backlash from tomorrow's terror attack.
Oh yeah, oh hey, cops, you're coming by.
Is this about the terrorist thing?
Hey, why are we doing this to ourselves?
Well, first of all, why did a Christian church who sponsored these migrants do it to themselves?
Our Lady of Lourdes Church is the name.
Now, I've been to Iraq, where the Christian community has been absolutely ethnically cleansed by ISIS.
There's me sweating in 44-degree heat in a bombed-out Christian town.
These Christians, look at that.
That's the church desecrated by ISIS graffiti.
They smashed all the Christians.
It's blasphemous.
Look at that.
They toppled that cross.
It was re-erected by the soldiers who liberated it.
That's what they do to Christians in the Middle East.
They exterminate them.
No one is genociding Muslims.
There's no country in the world that is exterminating Muslims.
None.
There's dozens of Muslim countries.
ISIS is Muslim.
They kill infidels.
The Christians in the places I saw, they can't even go into those UN refugee camps because many of the refugees in those camps themselves are ISIS supporters.
And the UN bosses who run the refugee camps are anti-Christian too.
You know, I was in Germany a couple years ago, and I was walking down a Muslim street in the city of Cologne, and I met a Syrian refugee who happened to be non-Muslim.
He was Yazidi.
And I said, oh, let's talk.
He asked me if I could move away from the Muslim men on the street before he spoke candidly.
Because even in Germany, the refugees were ISIS sympathizers who would kill him for not being Muslim.
He was a secret infidel.
So let me show you 30 seconds from that trip.
Maybe the church wants to help Christians.
I mean, if they don't, I don't know who will.
I don't know, maybe Kuwait will.
The UN spends billions of dollars on Muslims-only refugee camps.
The Middle East is full of OPEC countries overflowing with money for their Muslim brothers, including Kuwait.
So why on earth would a Christian church bring over anyone other than a Christian family?
You're not anti-Muslim if you save a Christian.
That's just virtue signaling, just like Justin Trudeau and Ralph Goodell.
And today, well, I'm shocked that a 20-year-old Syrian migrant was organizing bomb attacks against us.
His dad wasn't really shocked either.
Hey, thanks for warning us, eh?
You know, the civil war in Syria is over now, thanks to Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.
More than 95% of Syria is safe now, probably closer to 99%.
ISIS has defeated in all but a few small villages.
Prime Minister's Call to Return00:05:28
Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, genuine refugees, are returning home from Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan.
Sure, there's work to do.
A lot of the country is rubble, but it's safe now.
Look, other countries are saying, hey, Syrians, it's time to go home.
There's Germany.
I mean, I wouldn't want to live in Syria, but I'm not Syrian.
After World War II, Europeans rebuilt their rubbled cities, France, Germany.
They went back to their own countries and fixed them.
That's what it's time for now.
Justin Trudeau didn't actually save anyone from Syria.
This family, for example, was from Kuwait, had been for 10 years.
Most of the others to Canada were already in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan.
But whatever.
Okay, it's safe now.
Go home and rebuild your country.
Live in your own homeland.
Speak Arabic.
Eat your own kind of foods.
Enjoy your own kind of climate.
Practicing your own religion.
Treat your women the way you do.
I won't like it, but I won't meddle.
Go be Syrian in Syria, where you can get work because you have credentials, where you speak the language, where you fit in, where you're not freezing in the winter.
Go home.
As Sheila Gunnreid showed us through access to information documents, Trudeau spends about $50,000 on each refugee family when they arrive here.
$50,000.
We showed you the documents.
You can see them at 50,000.ca.
50,000 bucks per family?
That is enough for first-class airfare back home, frankly, enough to buy an entire new house out there.
I say we do it.
I say let's be extremely generous.
Let's give these families 50 grand to go back.
But let's also stop being stupid, okay?
I mean, Trudeau did not vet these refugees.
Whether it's the accused rapist in Burnaby, or these accused terrorists in Kingston, or the accused child molester in West Edmonton Mall Water Park, who was acquitted, only because the judge said the white girls, the half dozen white girls he molested, well, they couldn't be relied on to identify a Muslim perpetrator for cultural reasons, so he's acquitted.
Or remember this guy, the hockey stick guy, the Syrian thug in New Brunswick, who beat his wife for half an hour bloody with a hockey stick, and he said to the court, I swear he said to the court, that no one in Canada ever told him that it was against the rules to beat your wife with a hockey stick.
I think we have a problem.
I don't think you can vet for this problem, by the way.
I don't think you can vet for someone who thinks it's okay to beat his wife with a hockey stick.
Well, no one told me.
How do you vet for that?
Oh, by the way, right in the middle of all this breaking news, the CBC had a warning for us, not about terrorism.
The warning for us was actually a warning about us.
We're the problem, you see.
We're the bigots, you see.
Not the ones making the bombs in the name of Allah, but the ones about to be bombed.
We're the evil ones.
The CBC's boss says so himself.
Look at this.
Trudeau warns fear-mongering over immigration will be part of election campaign.
Oh, really?
Yeah, let me read a little bit more.
This is from the CBC website.
PM says there are people trying to create fear, intolerance, and misinformation about immigration.
Yeah, I think one of the people trying to create fear and intolerance is named Hassam-edin al-Zahabi, but of course Trudeau actually meant you and me.
Justin Trudeau, let me read some more.
Justin Trudeau is warning voters to be wary of fear-mongering about immigration, suggesting the issue will be a hot-button topic during the federal election campaign this fall.
Hey guys, don't say hot button when we're talking about people building IEDs, okay?
Let me read some more from the CBC.
And note here, this story was last night, right around when police announced they were making an arrest, right when it became public.
And of course, Trudeau would have been briefed on that, even if the news hadn't come out.
So Trudeau knew what was about to happen.
And so this was scripted.
And Trudeau's state broadcaster was happy to run the script.
Let me read.
The Prime Minister made the prediction Thursday during a town hall meeting in northern New Brunswick where a young Syrian refugee thanked him for allowing her family to come to Canada.
I came all the way from Syria and I came here to thank you, Tasmine Eli told the Prime Minister in a soft voice.
Her words met with warm applause from the 250 people gathered in a high school and Mirror Machine.
This is some sort of softcore Justin Trudeau porn or something.
It's one of those Harlequin romance novels.
That's not news.
That's the state broadcaster.
Get ready for a year of that in the run-up to the election.
So the Prime Minister made that prediction.
No, he didn't.
Prime Minister was told that another one of his Syrians was accused of terrorism.
So they had a soft voice girl say, I love you, Justin Trudeau.
And Trudeau did his best drama teacher impression of how kind he is and how hateful, well, how hateful you are.
You are hateful, don't you know that?
You Canadians.
I mean, if you question Trudeau or his vetting of Syrians or their bona fides as actual refugees or why they're still here since the Civil War is over or all the horrific crimes they're committing, you are hateful.
Fbi's Bizarre Show of Force00:12:57
So shut up and stop fomenting hate while Trudeau ensures that the local mosque has all the support they need to stay safe.
To stay safe from you, you bigot.
Stay with us for more.
This morning, the FBI has arrested Roger Stone, the president's political advisor.
Exclusive footage you're looking at right now from CNN as the FBI arrives at Roger Stone's residence in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, taking him into custody.
We understand he will be arraigned in Fort Lauderdale later this morning, indicted on seven counts, one count of obstruction, five counts of making false statements, one count of witness tampering.
Again, they arrived before dawn there, before 6 a.m., or just after 6 a.m.
A dozen officers were told the FBI agent shouted, FBI warrant.
And you can see it all play out right here.
This is just remarkable.
It's just remarkable to watch, you know, what they call.
Okay, that's it.
FBI, open the door.
And now they're about to say another warning.
FBI warrant.
This is called, you know, the grab shot in the vernacular, and it is remarkable to watch this all unfold.
You can see Roger Stone there a little bit behind that door.
And yes, you know, standard operating procedure for the FBI to show up heavily armed in riot gear like this.
But they didn't do this for other people connected in the investigation.
So it is remarkable that they did this without warning, without any indication to Stone's lawyers beforehand that this would happen.
Well, there you have it.
That is amazing coincidence that CNN happened to be right there outside the Fort Lauderdale home of Roger Stone, who has been investigated by the special counsel in the United States for more than a year.
What are the odds that CNN knew exactly where to go and exactly when within an hour?
And what are the odds that the FBI felt they just absolutely needed to have six police cars, 12 military-style police with flak jackets and long arms, going in SWAT team style?
Because you know, a 66-year-old grandpa-aged pundit, well, you never know what he's going to do.
But of course, there's no point in having that kind of shock and awe if no one's there to be shocked and awed by it.
So of course CNN was brought along.
You know they need the element of surprise of 6 a.m. when they allow CNN to have their bright spotlight because of course there's no point in that kind of a dramatic political style raid if no one sees it.
Oh my God.
Joining us now via Skype is our friend Joel Pollock, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
Joel, great to see you again.
What do you make of that?
It reminded me of Bill Clinton going in SWAT team style to grab Julian Gonzalez.
I'm saying the name right, that little boy, I probably have the name wrong, that little Cuban boy that they were going to give back to Cuba, Elien Gonzalez, excuse me.
A bizarre, a bizarre show of force and CNN there.
It just, it looked third world style, to be candid.
Yeah, it really was unnecessary, I think, and excessive.
Roger Stone has been saying for months that he expected to be indicted, and yet despite that expectation, he didn't leave the country.
He didn't go underground.
He didn't hide.
He didn't disappear as a fugitive.
I mean, he was living as he usually does in Florida.
And he could have been asked to come with his lawyer to the FBI as others have.
But when it comes to Manafort and Roger Stone and some of the higher-ups, I don't think you can call Roger Stone higher up, but he's high-profile.
Some of the targets in this investigation, the FBI has done this very theatrical thing.
I'm not sure that CNN was tipped off.
It does seem likely, but there's an alternative explanation, which is the one they gave, which may be plausible, which is simply that they're so obsessed with this story that they had staked out that apartment for a long time.
And they had watched the court for a long time to see if there was unusual activity.
CNN is so committed to this story of Russia collusion because they want to undo the 2016 election that it's entirely plausible.
They would have had reporters up all night waiting for the FBI or waiting to get the photographs of Roger Stone being led away in handcuffs.
I don't think that it helps Robert Mueller to have this out there.
It makes him look thuggish, as you say, third world and intimidating, but it doesn't intimidate the targets of the investigation, who already know who they are.
They're not hiding.
It actually makes him look bad, makes the FBI look bad.
So I think there's actually less of a chance this was leaked by someone on Mueller's team, unless it was some rogue member of Mueller's team, some law enforcement official who wants to help CNN because he agrees with their political line.
I mean, that's entirely possible, but I think that the explanation CNN gave is likely to be true.
It doesn't mean it has to be true, but they are simply so obsessed with this story that they would have paid somebody, and apparently a couple of people, to stake out Roger Stone's apartment, and I don't think it tells us much about CNN other than what we already knew, which is that they're determined to bring Trump down, and so this is a big day for them.
Yeah well, I remember.
I mean, we had an experience almost two years ago.
We had a reporter in the UK Tommy Robinson is his name and he committed a civil infraction, contempt of court.
He reported something in Canterbury.
He wasn't supposed to right.
The judge, you know, could have picked him up any time of day.
The judge sent a SWAT team to his house at 430 and they do this to Tommy and I'm not trying to bring Tommy into this, but to cause his wife upset, to cause the kids upset, to cause embarrassment, to cause stress, You know, they knew where he was the whole time.
They didn't need to come for Tommy at 4.30.
They could have come at 10 a.m. after the kids were at school.
Now, Roger Stone doesn't have school-aged kids, but like you say, Roger Stone has lawyers.
They could have just asked him to present to the police station.
And to send 12 SWAT team cops, are they implying that he's violent?
Like, it's just what bothers me, I mean, you're very generous to give CNN the benefit of the doubt to say they staked it out and were tip off, but let's accept that.
But for the FBI, even if they didn't tip off the media, for them to send 12 SWAT teams to arrest a grandpa-aged pundit shows to me that the FBI is still rotten and political because I don't believe that that was a legitimate operational choice.
I don't believe there was a risk assessment that Roger Stone was going to go out, guns blazing, that he was going to run to the airport and get on a private plane.
I think what we know for sure, we don't know for sure how CNN heard about, we know for sure what the FBI did probably at the direction of Mueller.
That to me is the largest problem there, is that we have an FBI that is clearly acting as its own political force.
What do you make of that?
Am I overdoing it?
I think that if you understand the FBI's mentality toward all of this, that's different than saying they're correct.
But if you understand that they may actually believe that they are saving the country from some foreign enemy, again, it doesn't mean they are, right?
Because they're not.
There's no evidence of Russia collusion, and they would say that they haven't found any.
I mean, there's been none in these court documents, for example.
But if that's what many of them, especially those who donated to Hillary Clinton, who are card-carrying Democrats, you know, that's who staffs the Mueller investigation.
If they're in the mindset that much of the rest of the media and the opposition are in, in their mind, they are conducting a counter-terror operation, not just a kind of investigation of some process crimes.
And so I think to them, this might have seemed entirely appropriate.
I agree with you, it's inappropriate, excessive, and all of that.
I also think it makes Robert Mueller look very bad, and it makes it look like they deliberately leaked this information to CNN.
I mean, all of that is plausible, or at least can be part of the story.
But I just think what you have probably on both ends, both in the special counsel's team and in CNN, both of which are totally dominated by Democrats.
I think you have the hysteria that we've seen in the media as a whole and in the Democratic Party about Russia that is guiding their choices.
To them, this may have seemed rational and reasonable.
It doesn't mean it was, but I think that's what it tells us.
It tells us that this Russia conspiracy hysteria continues to grip our institutions even when they think they're trying to make things right.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, CNN is its own thing, and it's a private company.
It can do what it wants, but Donald Trump's been president for more than two years.
James Comey is no longer the head of the FBI.
So it's one thing for CNN to have Trump derangement syndrome, but who's running the show in Washington?
I mean, is Donald Trump president or not?
And I'm not saying that Trump should politicize the FBI.
The opposite, I'm saying Trump should depoliticize the FBI and put someone in who is absolutely just a cops cop, not a politician's cop.
Is that even possible?
Why is it two years out now that this is still a problem?
Well, I think, and I've said the FBI might even need to be abolished.
I mean, I think it's an institutional problem.
Remember, there's no reason for Mueller to have hired Democrats to run this special investigation.
I mean, a team of Democrats.
It's not even one Republican on this team.
I think that they are beset by institutional problems.
They're part of the party of government.
Look what the director of the FBI said to his employees during the shutdown, that he was angry about the shutdown, that it was mind-boggling there was a shutdown.
I mean, this is a guy who wouldn't have the job if Trump hadn't elevated him to it.
And he's taking a position on the shutdown that essentially accuses the president of doing something insane.
It's an institutional problem.
It cannot be solved by appointing new people.
So I am actually on the record saying they should tear it down and start over, and they should create clear lines of accountability.
It's really just ridiculous that Trump is about to appoint an attorney general.
He's appointed an attorney general who is about to get confirmed.
And yet that attorney general is now going to have to be the boss of the Mueller investigation, but can't actually run that investigation because if he does, if he tells Mueller to keep things within bounds, if he tells him not to do these pre-dawn raids, it's going to be seen as political interference in the investigation, even when it isn't.
So Bob Barr, or William Barr, excuse me, Bob Barr was a congressman.
Bill Barr is going to have to go in there and be the president's adversary.
It makes no sense.
We have a system regarding our allocation of responsibilities when it comes to legally advising the president, carrying out the president's directives for law enforcement on the one hand, and also on the other hand, being a legal watchdog against abuses of power.
They can't be done by the same people with the same agencies.
It creates this problem.
It has to be done from scratch.
It's got to be redone.
You could hire some of the same people.
There are good law enforcement people in the FBI.
There are people of all political persuasions.
There are people who just want to get the job done, who care about serving their country.
All of that is true.
But you have an institutional culture that I think is not going away.
And so I think the institution needs to be changed.
I want to say one more thing about Roger Stone.
He's an interesting character, colorful character.
I mean, the guy literally has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back.
He does unusual things.
He gives fashion.
He writes a fashion code for Daily Caller.
I think he enjoys being a figure of mystery.
He likes dirty tricks.
I mean, I'm not saying anything he wouldn't say himself.
And I also think he knows and admits to indulge in conspiracy theories.
Pelosi's Refusal To Fund Wall00:02:33
He wrote wild books about Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, both of whom he thought would be Donald Trump's rivals.
And I guess he was right in both of that.
I mean, he called it the Clinton Crime Syndicate, the Clinton Bush.
He's so over the top.
My theory is this.
Tell me what you think of this theory.
It's a guy like that loves controversy, loves mystery, loves intrigue so much that part of him sort of liked being targeted by Mueller because it made him feel like a real player.
But if you look at what he was arrested for today, absolutely none of it goes to is Trump in bed with Russia.
It all goes to, well, maybe Roger Stone was being too tricky with his answers or was interfering with the process of the investigation as opposed to anything substantive.
Have I properly summed up the charges against him?
And what do you think of my theory that he's just, he likes being a wild man, but that doesn't work when you're up against Mueller?
Yeah, I think it's going to depend on what Mueller has on him.
And it's hard to tell.
This is just who Roger Stone enjoys being.
Unfortunately, you can't be quite as flamboyant in prison, and it might change his reactions, some of his responses.
I don't know how to explain it.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I won't ask you any more mind-reading questions about Roger Stone, but I have one more question for you about Donald Trump.
Today, at least from my vantage point way up north here in Canada, it looked like he caved on the government partial shutdown.
He basically said, okay, we'll fund it, and yeah, I don't need anything in return.
Am I poorly briefed on that?
What's going on with Trump?
It's hard to know.
It's hard to know.
It could, on the one hand, be a smart move that gives him more political cover to declare a national emergency at the end of three weeks, taking some of the pressure off with the government shutdown.
On the other hand, it could be a complete cave.
Politically, it is a cave.
I mean, Pelosi said she wouldn't open the government.
She wouldn't fund the wall.
There'd be no discussion of border security until the government was opened.
Trump said he was not going to sign any budget that didn't fund the wall.
Well, he's going to sign a continuing resolution that doesn't fund the wall.
She got her way here for only three weeks.
I think that Congress has really failed here.
Republicans are terrified of the media, and Democrats don't want to fund any sort of barrier while Trump is in office because he'll get the credit for it.
I'm pretty disgusted by it.
Venezuela's Hope Deferred00:03:13
I think a lot of people are.
This is a partial cave.
This could be a total cave, but it's a cave this round.
But Trump says that the Democrats have committed to border security that would include a physical barrier.
I've just seen news now as you and I are speaking that Pelosi has refused to answer whether there'll be a physical barrier on the wall.
So she won't even confirm the terms of the deal.
If that's the case, then this is a complete cave.
And then the only way to resolve it is for Trump to declare a national emergency, which is a bad solution, but maybe the only way to get the wall built.
It's bad because it creates a bad precedent.
Although this is legal and Obama's use of executive power was not legal, it will be challenged in the courts, so who knows if the wall will ever actually be built.
And it sets a bad precedent because Democrats will invent national emergencies to do what they want to do when they have the White House back again someday.
Very thoughtful words.
Well, thank you very much, Joel.
That's Joel Pollack, the senior editor-at-large of Breitbart.com.
He joins us live from their world headquarters in California.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about Venezuela.
Deborah writes, the fact that Erdogan of Turkey is getting involved is not good.
I'm hoping and praying that the people of Venezuela remove the shackles of communism and free their people.
Yeah, what I've learned from Joseph Humeier and Fernando Gonzalez and the other people we've spoken to about Venezuela over the years is Maduro is a bit of a puppet.
There is this whole apparatus around him, the Cubans, the Iranians.
It's crazy to me that Iran has really colonized Venezuela for a decade.
So yeah, I hope they're free.
They're not free yet.
They're almost free, but that's like saying, I almost caught my plane.
Either you did or you didn't.
And they're not free yet, so let's hope.
Liza writes, I hope Venezuela can find a solution for the people.
I remember when it was a prosperous country, and it is chilling to see how far it has fallen in a generation.
Canada is well on its way down the same path.
Well, God forbid that's true, but it's true.
I mean, Venezuela was so wealthy.
Argentina was so wealthy.
These were the hopes for the future, but then Marxism and strong man, it's just so sad.
But hopefully, Jair Bolsonaro and now, by the way, I should tell you, the new de facto interim president of Venezuela, he's not a right winger like Bolsonaro.
In fact, his party is part of an international league of parties that includes the British UK Labor Party.
So he's no right-winger, but he's, let's call him a liberal.
He's against the communist, brutal Leninist Maduro, so I'm rooting for him, even though he's a socialist.
Peter writes, I'm happy for the people of Venezuela.
I am too.
I mean, I have to tell you, I really felt like there was this Berlin Wall moment.
I hope I wasn't foolish for feeling that way.
I don't want America to send, what, an aircraft carrier, an invasion?
Government Appeal Rejected00:01:05
That would be a disaster.
But I want the world to do something to help when 32 million people in our hemisphere who have some common values with us and were once free.
I just feel like if we put trillions of dollars into the basket case called Afghanistan, and how many lives did we sacrifice there?
And for what?
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Tell me for what?
Almost exactly the same population, about 35 million people in Afghanistan as in Venezuela.
Ought we not to lift a finger for them?
I think we should.
Well, let's end the show there and end the week there.
I hope you enjoyed it.
If you haven't been to standwitherbel.com, may I recommend you go there because we had some crazy news yesterday about the government once we filed our appeal of Rachel Notley's censorship of us.
The government said, whoa, whoa, whoa, can you guys not appeal to a real court?
Yeah, we didn't really mean to convict you.
We were just brainstorming.
I know you think I'm making that up.
Go to standwitherbel.com and you'll see the letter from the government.
It is unbelievable.
So that's worth checking out if you haven't already.