Gerald Butts, Justin Trudeau’s top aide, dodged sworn testimony by citing "persuasive" (not pressuring) contacts with Jody Wilson-Raybould over SNC Lavalin’s $47.6M bribery scandal, despite no proof of job losses—contradicting his claims while blocking full text disclosure and legal scrutiny. His refusal mirrors Michael Wernick’s disputed testimony, raising obstruction concerns as five ex-attorneys general urge RCMP action. Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar’s divisive remarks—like "Israel hypnotized the world"—expose a Democratic Party split between hard-left critics and moderates like Biden and Schumer, risking long-term Jewish influence amid ideological clashes. Trudeau’s denial of wrongdoing in a sexual assault allegation, despite polls trailing him by 5-10 points, suggests systemic evasion of accountability, fueled by media bias and unchecked power. [Automatically generated summary]
Let me tell you a little bit about today's podcast.
I go through some of Gerald Butts' testimony before the Parliamentary Justice Committee.
I show you some back and forth banter with Lisa Ray.
She did a pretty good job.
And then I tell you how I think it's going to all end.
I also talked to Pardes Sala of MediaIte about Ilhan Omar, the Muslim congresswoman from Minnesota.
So I'm glad you're listening.
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Here you go.
Without further ado, today's Ezra Levant Show.
You're listening to a Rebel Media Podcast.
Tonight, Gerald Butts, Justin Trudeau's right-hand man and the de facto prime minister, takes the stand in Ottawa, but refuses to do so under oath.
I wonder why.
Was he lying?
It's March 6th, 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 about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
It's been the biggest scandal to rock Justin Trudeau's government.
Last month, the Globe and Mail reported that Justin Trudeau tried to pressure the Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybold, into dropping criminal charges against a corrupt Montreal engineering firm called SNC Lavilan, even after Wilson Raybold said no.
Well, the PMO and other senior Trudeau handlers met her and phoned her 20 times and emailed and texted her even more.
When she wouldn't buckle, they sacked her from her job, appointing a more compliant Montrealer named David LeMetti, who's downtown Montreal riding, just happens to be where the head office of that disgraced engineering firm is located.
You know it's a big deal when even the CBC starts to run criticisms of Trudeau, albeit from one of the few independent-minded journalists left there.
Today, Neil McDonald tore a strip off Trudeau, calling him shallow, calling him narcissistic, calling him, frankly, stupid, mocking his meaningless word salad.
Of course, Jody Wilson-Raybold's own testimony last week was devastating to Trudeau.
We played it for you in full the day she did it.
Here are just two quick clips from that day to remind you.
I'm choosing these because they refer specifically to Gerald Butts, Trudeau's right-hand man, the de facto PM, the man Trudeau himself says that MPs should treat Gerald Butts, that if he says something, they should take it as if Trudeau himself said it.
So Butts was testifying today.
Here's what Jody Wilson-Raybold said about him last week.
Jerry said, quote, Jess, there is no solution here that does not involve some interference, end quote.
See, that's the thing.
It's illegal to interfere with a criminal prosecution in any manner.
And then this.
Jerry talked to me about how the statute was a statute passed by Harper and that he does not like the law.
I said something like, that is the law that we have.
Yeah.
There's a deliciousness here.
Stephen Harper brought in an anti-corruption law and it actually worked.
It caught a corrupt government, didn't it?
Now, it's one thing for Jody Wilson-Rabel to say what she said.
Man, who knows?
Maybe she had an axe to grind.
After all, she was sacked as Attorney General by Trudeau.
So maybe it was sour grapes.
But then this week, Trudeau's most competent cabinet minister, that's what people say, Jane Philpott is her name, resigned, putting out a shocking, blunt statement saying she just couldn't support Trudeau and the cabinet anymore, given what she had learned about this matter and its lack of ethics.
Stunning.
Well, today Gerald Butts finally took the stand.
Well, not quite.
You see, when you say the phrase, take the stand, it implies that you swear on a Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
It's a moral statement to tell the truth, but it's also a legal statement because if you lie under oath in a proceeding like this, you're guilty of perjury.
You could theoretically go to jail.
Now, before Butz took the stand, the Conservatives introduced a motion to have Butts swear an oath to tell the truth.
And the Liberals voted against that.
Then the Conservatives put a motion to ask Butz voluntarily to willingly swear an oath to tell the truth.
And again, the Liberals blocked that.
They wouldn't even put that request to Butts.
Now, Butz was sitting right there watching all this, and indeed, he chose not to swear an oath.
I'm sorry, that is the weirdest thing you can imagine.
How much more obvious can it get?
This is a contest of credibility.
And Trudeau's guy won't swear an oath to tell the truth, and Trudeau's MPs blocked it?
It's so obvious.
Okay, I'd like to show you a few clips of his testimony.
I've got about half a dozen.
It was mainly a fog machine.
Low energy, lots of fuzzy language.
The opposite of the ranting ideologue that Gerald Butz shows himself to be on Twitter every day.
I mean, Butz is the guy who literally calls his opponents Nazis.
In this tweet here, he's implying I'm a Nazi.
I guess I'm a Jewish Nazi.
But I think someone said, yeah, Jerry, that's not the right approach to take in parliament today.
Reminder, this is the guy, if you're talking about corruption here, this is the guy who padded his expenses, who personally pocketed $127,000 just to move from Toronto to Ottawa.
And then he hid those expenses from Canadians.
And he only grudgingly paid a fraction of it back when he was caught.
He's just as corrupt as Trudeau.
And he wouldn't swear an oath to tell the truth here today.
With that in mind, here you go.
Here is Gerald Butts, some clips from him in front of Parliament's Justice Committee.
Unsworn testimony.
Take a listen.
I am not here to quarrel with the former Attorney General or to say a single negative word about her personally.
Yeah, and then he proceeded for the next hour to call her a liar in about 17 different ways.
Here, watch a little more.
What I am here to do is to give evidence that what happened last fall is in fact very different from the version of events you heard last week.
It is based on direct communications with the former Attorney General and her staff.
Contemporaneous notes I took in meetings I attended personally and debriefs from people who attended meetings I did not.
I guess my second point is that he did not provide the meticulous meeting by meeting rebuttal that Jody Wilson-Raybould had.
She had dates, times, places, names, who emailed her, who phoned her, who said what.
Gerald Butts had a lot of feelings, and I'll show you a little bit of that later on.
But he said some interesting things that I think gave away the game.
Their general response was, sure, we tried to persuade her.
We didn't pressure her.
It was persuasion that's different.
And by the way, it was about jobs.
Here, take a listen for a minute.
The Prime Minister gave and maintained clear direction to the PMO and PCO on this file.
That direction was to make sure the thousands of people whose jobs were, and it bears repeating, are at risk, were at the forefront of our minds at all times.
If anything could be done to protect those innocent people, we were told to work with the professional public service to make sure that option would be given every due consideration.
He told us to keep in mind at all times that the decision to direct the DPP rests with the Attorney General and the Attorney General alone.
We implemented that direction faithfully and with integrity.
I was personally involved in the file on only a few occasions, but it was principally my responsibility to ensure that the Prime Minister's direction was followed by PMO staff.
I have no doubt that they did so to the highest standards.
He talked about the thousands of innocent people whose jobs were at stake.
I should tell you that in the course of today's testimony, both by him and others, not a single person, including Gerald Butts, had any evidence whatsoever that prosecuting this corrupt company would cause any job losses whatsoever.
In fact, there was evidence to the contrary.
The claim that maybe SNC Lavalin would leave Montreal, they actually have a legal agreement that they must keep their headquarters in Montreal to at least the year 2024.
But that whole argument that it was about jobs, it was about jobs, even that is not acceptable under the law.
You'll remember that Butts just said, Justin Trudeau directed us, that the decision here is for the Attorney General to make about the Director of Public Prosecutor.
Do you actually think Justin Trudeau said that?
Do you actually think Justin Trudeau had that kind of a command of the situation?
I don't think we can take Gerald Butts at face value.
What he's trying to do, though, is saying, sure, we broke a few eggs to make this omelet, but we were doing it to save jobs.
But that's the thing.
See, the Canadian Criminal Code specifically says that economic matters are not relevant to whether or not you can prosecute a criminal.
It's just not how we do things in Canada.
Otherwise, we would literally favor any rich person, any big company, and let them off, but just go after the poor people.
Think about it.
Put that up just for a second.
Again, I'm going to read.
This is from the Criminal Code.
This is on deferred prosecutions.
This is what SNC Lavalan asked for.
Look at this.
This factors not to consider.
It's actually phrased that way.
Despite paragraph 2i, if the organization is alleged to have committed an offense under Section 3 or 4, the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, the prosecutor must not consider the national economic interest, the potential effect on relations with the state other than Canada, or the identity of the organization or individual involved.
Must not.
Factors not.
to consider.
So this whole jobs, jobs, jobs argument that's specifically not allowed in a consideration to drop charges.
Otherwise, every big company could simply break the law all the time and say, yeah, really wish you could prosecute us, but you see, we got a lot of people working here.
Let's watch some more clips.
It was not about second-guessing the decision.
It was about ensuring that the Attorney General was making her decision with the absolute best evidence possible.
Fresh in our minds was a recent federal court of appeal decision that had found that the government had not concluded consultation sufficiently in connection with the TMX pipeline.
The TMX pipeline is the Trans Mountain Expansion Pipeline, a, what, $15 billion, $10, $15 billion project that would double the amount of oil shipped from Alberta to BC.
That actually is a jobs, jobs, jobs project that the Liberals shut down along with all the other pipelines to pretend that the Liberals care about jobs is a bit of a joke.
But you see his excuse there.
He said, well, we had to really, really think about it.
Jody Wilson-Raybold wasn't thinking about it enough because, you know, we had just been through the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
He's saying that because they were shut down because they didn't consult widely with Aboriginal bands there.
That's what the federal court said.
They'd better consult widely here.
But there's no comparison at all.
Consulting with dozens of Indian bands is something that you go out and do and you either do a good job of it or you don't.
But there's no consultation with Indian bands about whether or not SNC Lavalan paid $48 million worth of bribes in corrupt Libya.
They did.
There's no question that the Qaddafis stole $120 million as part of this SNC Lavalan deal.
There's no more facts out there.
There's no facts that are new.
There's no new evidence.
To dare to compare the lawful consultations by the Trans Mountain Pipeline to SNC Lavalan is a trick, a monstrous trick that actually takes advantage of legitimate oil and gas workers and compares them to the pure corruption of Libya a decade ago.
There's no new facts.
It's outrageous.
Here's some more clips from Gerald Butts.
Text Messages Discussed00:15:29
On November 26, she wrote, hey there, GB, do you want to chat?
I have a number of things to bring up.
Maybe you do as well.
Tomorrow after cabinet, perhaps.
Thanks, Jode.
I replied, sure, I'm heading to Toronto right after, but could delay 10 minutes.
She replied, happy to chat another time with you if heading to TO.
Think this convo may be a bit longer than 10 minutes.
We parted that meeting as friends and colleagues and exchanged personal text messages a couple of hours later.
I wrote, nice to see you.
She replied, nice to see you too.
Thanks for the convo.
Please say hello to the PM.
Heard him speaking my language in his speech.
Good luck in Montreal.
We stick to our guns slash plan.
We will be good.
As you will note, SNC Lavalin is not mentioned in these exchanges at all.
You see what he did there?
So he is quoting Jody Wilson-Raybold's personal text messages to him that show they were friendly.
Thanks for the convo.
Say hi to the PM.
So what he's doing is exactly what Jan Gameshi did when he abused women.
He held on to texts after the abuse.
And this isn't controversial.
This all came out in the court.
He held on to text so he would punch a woman in the face.
And if they had any interaction with him after that, he would hold on to that text as proof.
Well, she couldn't have really been mad because she was civil to me later.
That's a form of what Gerald Butts is doing here.
Oh, she couldn't have been pressured.
She couldn't have been corrupted because you see here, I just read three friendly texts from her where she said, thanks for the convo.
Say hello to the prime minister.
So, you know, you can't trust her.
She's a liar.
False accusations.
Remember, he said he was going to start off by not casting aspersions.
But there's another layer here besides that tactic of, well, obviously she wasn't pressured.
By the way, there were 10 meetings and 10 phone calls in addition to any texts or tweets.
But how did Gerald Butts get those text messages?
I know that sounds like a strange question, but of course, those texts are government property on government cell phones.
And of course, he resigned from the government weeks ago.
So how did he get those?
And how did he get just those?
Well, he was asked that, and I think we'll show you some clips in a moment.
And he said, oh, well, I don't really know, but my lawyer sort of got them.
And don't ask me about that.
So those texts were given to Gerald Butts in a process he doesn't know by someone he doesn't know to put the prime minister in the best possible light.
But no other texts were released to the public.
We don't know what else was said.
This is another stitch-up.
Let's watch some more.
I am fully aware that two people can experience the same event differently.
I believe that the minister shared my interpretation of our dinner, and I only quote these messages so you can appreciate why I was so surprised to hear months later that the minister experienced that dinner as pressure.
I do not see how our brief discussion of that file constituted pressure of any kind.
If you close your eyes, we experience the same thing differently.
I was surprised to hear her say that.
I thought we were fine.
That's exactly the words that Justin Trudeau used when asked about his sexual assault of Rose Knight, the young reporter in Creston, B.C. in the year 2000.
He said, well, I respect her right to have experienced that event differently.
The exact same language.
Gerald Butts clearly wrote the same alibi that Justin Trudeau used back then that he's using now.
Well, sure, she meticulously proved that she felt pressured, but I got to tell you, you know, cuckoo, you know how girls can be.
I respect her and her ability to experience it that differently.
Cuckoo!
I respect you for being that crazy, but yeah, no, it didn't happen.
He's calling her a liar.
He's calling her a liar.
Funny, though, he's the one who refused to swear an oath.
Here, watch a little more.
The second and final meeting I had on the file was with Jessica Prince, the minister's chief of staff, and Katie Telford.
There was no urgency to attend that meeting.
I remember that meeting very, very differently than the account given last week.
I remember Ms. Prince saying that the minister didn't want to consider quote-unquote political factors in the decision and was worried about the appearance of political interference.
I said that it's the minister's decision, of course, but to my mind, 9,000 people are not a political issue.
Again, it's a lie with no evidence behind it.
Prosecuting SNC Lavalan for a crime.
SNC Lavaland is a multi-billion dollar company.
Prosecuting it for a crime is not going to push it out of business.
It'll be an embarrassment and it'll probably cost it, I don't know, $48 million, the money they stole and paid in bribes.
Yeah, they could obviously afford $48 million in bribes.
They could afford $48 million in fines.
But it's not going to put 9,000 people out of work.
He kept saying that, and I'm sure you'll see the media party and the Justin Journos who were signing up for their bailout repeating that.
But there was no evidence offered whatsoever that 9,000 people would be put out of work.
And even if, in some hypothetical scenario that was not proven, even if SNC Lavalan were to go out of business, that doesn't mean that those engineers and other people working for the company would never get work.
They would reassemble in an ethical company.
They would immediately be snapped up.
Probably a manager at SNC Lavaland would say, okay, you 10 guys, we've been working together.
Let's go start our little company.
It's a lie to say 9,000 jobs would be lost.
It's a joke to think that the same Gerald Butts that killed three pipelines with multiple thousands of jobs lost cares about jobs.
But it's a trick.
And it's an illegal trick.
As I showed you, economic factors are specifically not to be considered in the prosecution.
I think we have some more clips.
Go ahead.
This to me begs the entire question of what exactly constitutes pressure.
According to the former minister's testimony, 11 people made 20 points of contact with her or her office over a period of close to four months.
Four of these people never met with the Attorney General in person.
In my case, the Attorney General solicited the meeting.
That's two meetings and two phone calls per month for the minister and her office on an issue that could cost a minimum of 9,000 jobs.
Oh, now it's a minimum of 9,000 jobs.
So who knows?
I mean, this could cost a million jobs.
No evidence for it.
He was asked repeatedly about that, including by Elizabeth May.
Funny enough.
Now he's saying, well, listen, 20 phone calls and meetings, you know, that's not a lot of pressure.
He said he was just trying to persuade not to pressure.
And no, no, no, it wasn't political, even though Jody Wilson-Raybold said that Justin Trudeau's re-election was specifically a reason that Justin Trudeau demanded she reconsider.
I want to read to you another section of the criminal code.
I showed you the section that said factors not to consider.
I showed you this the other day.
It's obstruction of justice, section 139.2 of the criminal code.
Everyone who willfully attempts to obstruct, pervert, or defeat the course of justice is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding tenures.
Everyone who willfully attempts in any manner other than a manner described in subsection one, and that was financial manner.
So it doesn't have to be undue influence.
Gerald Butts is saying, well, sure, there were 20 attempts, but you know, it was over a few months.
No, no, no.
It doesn't have to be undue pressure or sustained pressure or gang-like pressure.
Any manner.
Any manner.
Oh, no, it was just 20 times.
I mean, come on, grow up.
But as we learned in Jody Wilson's own testimony, the decision had been made and still the pressure came.
All right, I'm not going to show you any more of Gerald Butts' testimony.
I thought it was full of vagueness.
He said 9,000 or more jobs would be at risk.
He never substantiated that.
And he more or less called Jodie Wilson-Raybould a liar throughout and selectively released text messages that suited him.
I should tell you, the conservatives moved a motion asking that all text messages be released, and the liberals blocked that too.
Gee, it's almost like they don't want the facts to come out.
All right, well, after Gerald Butts' self-serving testimony, which I have to say was very out of character for him, I showed you that online where he's unguarded, where he's himself, he's the most partisan, vicious man around.
Here he was low energy and polite even, politely calling Jody Wilson-Raybould a liar.
But then Lisa Raitt, a conservative cabinet minister who is actually a lawyer herself, I believe, started to press Gerald Butts with a few questions.
I want to show you some of those interactions.
We have a couple of back and forth.
Here, take a look at this.
Mr. Butts, you said that you reviewed your texts since you have resigned from PMO.
How did you still have possession of your government phone?
I acquired the ability to review my texts through my counsel.
I do not have possession of my government.
You don't have your phone.
So you received the access to the phone?
Is that what you're saying?
I am, however, my legal counsel got the texts.
That's how I got them through my legal counsel.
So they did a review of records and they produced the texts to you?
Well, I'm not sure what you're asking, Ms. Rait.
I'm asking how, if you gave up your phone when you left the PMO, that you still had access to the phone to produce the texts today.
You said you didn't.
You received it from your legal counsel.
That's true.
And I'm asking who then picked the texts that you were to receive and look at.
You may recall there was a small story on the front page of the Globe and Mail about this a few weeks ago.
And when that story ran, I said to myself, actually, it wasn't when the story ran, it was the next day when I got a very specific question from the Globe and Mail through the office directed at me about my meeting with Minister Wilson Raybould.
I believe they were even specific enough to say at the Chateau Laurier Hotel, where my first instinct was to look at my phone and see if I remembered as correctly as I did.
I thought I did.
Okay, Tom.
You'll notice he didn't answer the question.
He gave a roundabout story, but he didn't answer who chose the texts and how did you get it?
That's a skillful liar here.
Watch a little more.
Mr. Butts, did you know that on September 17th, Jodi Wilson Raybold indicated that she instructed her staff to ensure they had a very detailed chronology of all meetings and conversations about SNC Lavalin and deferred prosecument agreements because she was worried about what was going to be happening in the coming months.
Were you aware of that?
I was not aware of that, though.
Well, she did, which I found interesting.
As we were talking about what the Prime Minister office staff was doing to try to get to the Director of Public Prosecution, the second type of legal opinion that was sought was different.
And this time, it was a legal opinion sought on the actual director's decision to not grant a deferred prosecution agreement.
Were you aware that Mr. Elder and Mr. Bouchard requested that?
I'm not even sure I know what that means, Ms. Raid, to be honest.
It sounds you are a lawyer, correct?
I am.
I am not.
These are important issues, Mr. Buts, and because you're testifying here that you are the link between the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's office.
And yet the Prime Minister's staff was clearly over the line of appropriateness.
That's testimony from Jodi Wilson-Raybold, and that's my assumption based upon the fact that she put forward.
So at the end of the day, you are responsible for these matters, and your responsibility flows up to the Prime Minister.
That is correct.
I'm also testifying that if anyone crossed a line, it is the responsibility of the minister to inform somebody about that.
You see, there was two things he did there.
He was asked a technical question about why people in the Prime Minister's office were meddling with a decision made by the prosecutor.
It wasn't the prime minister's decision to make.
It was the Attorney General's.
And did you see his answer?
Well, I'm just a simple boy from the country.
I don't know about all this law talk and stuff.
No, no, You're the godfather.
You're the head of the Lobranos.
You can't just say, I'm not a lawyer.
I don't know about all this law talk and stuff.
And then the follow-up question there, where he said that, where he was asked about the responsibility flowing upwards, he never rebutted the actual allegation.
He gave fuzz and fog, and he didn't do it.
But what I think he achieved today was he gave enough fog, enough vagueness, enough talking points.
He certainly mentioned jobs that all the pro-Trudeau activists, all the party loyalists out there, have something to hang on.
They've decided they're going to throw Jodi Wilson-Raybold under the bus, but very politely.
They've decided they're not going to apologize for anything.
I don't know if you saw the news story the other day where Trudeau was floating trial balloons.
Maybe I'll make a statement of contrition.
They've obviously decided not to do that.
I'm not going to spend any more time on the exchange.
There were a few interesting details that Gerald Butts brought forward.
For example, he said that Jodi Wilson-Raybold was offered the Aboriginal Affairs portfolio in the cabinet but declined it.
Okay, that's interesting, but that's got nothing to do with her being fired from Attorney General.
Unless Another Shoe Drops00:02:53
Other than that, all we heard is a series of Gerald Butts saying, well, I don't know about what that guy did, and I don't know about what that guy did, but all Trudeau did, if he did anything, was stand up for jobs.
It's just simply not what the law allows.
I should say that after Gerald Butts testified, there was more testimony from Michael Wernick, the clerk of the Privy Council.
He's supposedly the head of the nonpartisan civil service.
And his comments today were so extreme and bizarre.
They were the opposite of Gerald Butts, who was on his best behavior.
Michael Wernick went unhinged.
In fact, he started today by complaining about mean tweets that he had received.
I've never seen such a partisan performance by it.
In fact, the NDP's Charlie Angus was probably the toughest and basically said the guy was a liar who should step down.
So what's the takeaway today?
I don't want to take up, it was hours of testimony and there were lots of interesting points.
I thought it was worth going through Jody Wilson-Raybold's entire testimony because it was so fact-packed and so shocking.
Today's testimony by Gerald Butts was not shocking.
It was embarrassing in that It had, well, it was basically calling her a liar.
It was embarrassing in that it was contrary to what the law itself said.
But it comes down to this.
Justin Trudeau and his team have decided to brazen this out.
They've decided to go all the way through.
They've decided it's faster to go across than to turn back.
And they're going to do that.
And they're going to go into the next election saying we did it for jobs.
The only people who I think can stop this are the police, the RCMP.
Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott both say that the law was broken in terms of obstruction.
Five attorneys general, former attorneys general from across the country, have written to the RCMP asking for an investigation.
Will they do that?
If they do, I think it'll be the end of Justin Trudeau.
But if they don't, I think he might just get away with it.
The election is still more than six months off.
I think the press will lose interest in this, especially as it comes time to cash those $600 million checks in the bailout.
Yeah, I think we saw today the liberal counterattack, and we saw how the liberal MPs on the Justice Committee closed ranks to shut down any further questions.
They also shut down a conservative motion to bring Jody Wilson-Raybold back to say more.
Unless there's another shoe-to-drop, another cabinet minister who quits, or if Jody Wilson-Raybold is holding back more information, I think we've seen the way this is going to go.
Democrats Divided on Anti-Semitism00:14:54
Unless the police do their job.
But these days, with the politicization of the RCMP, which itself reports to a cabinet minister named Ralph Goodell, well, I wouldn't bet on it.
Stay with us for more welcome back.
Well, for years I have puzzled over a quirk in Israel's democracy.
You know that Arabs and Muslims and Christians and everybody have a right to vote in Israel.
And so there are some Muslim parties that run for the Israeli parliament, the Israeli Knesset.
And some of the successful MKs, as they're called, are extremely anti-Israel.
But they have the rights and privileges of an elected parliamentarian.
And some of them go too far.
They actually are prosecuted for treachery or a kind of sabotage.
But it's always puzzled me about how a liberal Western-style democracy can have within it underminers that would literally seek to destroy the state.
Well, that was just something I daydreamed about if I was bored.
But now I believe it's come to America.
Because you see, in November, two Muslim congresswomen were elected for the first time ever, and both of them are of the most extreme variety.
One of them is named Ilhan Omar.
She's from Somalia, and she is an elected congresswoman from Minnesota.
And she's caused quite a fuss.
Let me show you an example.
Here's the Washington Post on the subject.
House Democrats erupt in protests over indirect sanction of Representative Omar for alleged anti-Semitism.
This was just published minutes ago by the Washington Post.
The Democrats are trying to figure out how to deal with such a nut.
Let me show you a little bit of who Ilhan Omar is.
wrote, Israel has hypnotized the world.
May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.
You've commented a lot since then, trying to explain what you meant by that.
And I wonder just what your message is this morning as the first on our Game Changers series to Jewish Americans who find that deeply offensive.
Oh, that's really a regrettable way of expressing that.
I don't know how my comments would be offensive to Jewish Americans.
Now, of course, you can be an anti-Semite and still be an American, but she's also an anti-American extremist.
I don't think you should be anti-Semitic, by the way, but she's also deeply anti-American, attacking many American institutions.
It's quite a puzzle.
And joining us now to talk about how the Democrats and Republicans are dealing with what I believe is a fifth columnist is our friend Pardez Salam, who's a writer for Mediaite.com and who herself has written about, hey, Pardez, great to see you.
I see you've got a column on it called Democrats Looking for the Goldilocks option to condemn Omar without going too far.
That's the pickle for Democrats, right?
They don't want to seem extreme and anti-American, but they don't want to lose this part of their coalition.
Yeah, it seems like a problem that they've been grappling with.
And they were supposed to vote on a resolution today condemning anti-Semitism.
And they pushed it off until at least tomorrow because of the internal disagreements, which actually today, instead of voting in the resolution, they had a closed-door fight, which we just heard about from the Washington Post, which they broke the story just now.
Well, tell me, what are the two camps?
I mean, is there actually an anti-Semitic wing of the Democrats?
Are they just saying, look, she's a Muslim first, let her have those views.
We can all co-look.
I believe that the Labor Party in the UK has gone full anti-Semitic.
I just, I see evidence of that every day.
I don't think the Democrats have gone fully anti-Semitic.
But is this the beginning of a Corbynite laborite style of official anti-Semitism?
A party saying, look, there's just so many anti-Semites, so much radical Muslim migration.
Let's harvest those votes.
What's going on inside there?
I think there are two factions of the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party has always been very unified until now, but I think they're splitting up.
There is a very, very anti-Israel faction that's also very hard left and they're anti-American and they're anti-like a lot of things.
And they're kind of like the hard left and they're splitting with a lot of the more traditional, more moderate Democrats who are, you know, kind of like they call themselves centrist Democrats like Michael Bloomberg, you know, maybe Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein.
So like, sorry to be like naming so many, but I think there's a big dispute between them right now and it's coming out in this anti-Semitism resolution and also with Alexandria's Ocasio-Cortez's New Deal.
So a lot of issues, they're starting to split.
So I think there's going to be, in the long term, there's going to be an overall split in the Democratic Party.
They're not going to be so unified anymore.
And I don't think the whole party is going to go in like the anti-Semitism route.
Now you mentioned a bunch of names there, but three names stood out for me.
You said Bloomberg, Schumer, and Feinstein, all three of whom happen to be Jewish, all three of whom are in their 70s or even their 80s.
And of course, Bernie Sanders is very senior also.
None of those three are particularly religious Jews, but I think they're culturally Jewish.
And that represents a time when the Jewish vote was, if not quantitatively large, it was qualitatively large.
Jews were donors, Jews were activists, Jews were engaged as voters.
Here's my point about the Labour Party in the UK.
You could have said the same thing for liberal politics in the UK until mass immigration changed the math.
You could say the same thing for Canada, too.
The Liberal Party of Canada is the traditional home of the Jews.
But now, Justin Trudeau did the math.
He counted noses.
And there's four times as many Muslims in Canada now as there are Jews.
So he switched sides.
There are a few Jews who haven't got the memo yet.
I guess my question to you is you've got Ilhan Omar from Minnesota.
You got Rashida Tlaib.
That's another radical Muslim congresswoman from Michigan.
They're young.
They're 30s, 40s.
And those Jews we named are 70s and 80s.
Is this a demographic change that in 20 years there won't really be any prominent Jews in the Democrats?
It'll be the party of Islam.
I think it really depends on what Republicans do.
Right now, we've also got a lot of, there's this whole wave of young Republicans who are coming out against this whole leniency with immigration and are pro-border walls, border security.
And I think right now it really depends on what President Donald Trump does if he fulfills his promise to his constituents and what they do moving forward.
Because right now, the ball is in Republicans' court and Republicans have allowed Democrats to waver on immigration for a while.
So I think really it depends on House Republicans at this point, in my opinion.
You mentioned Donald Trump.
He weighed in on Ilhan Omer directly.
Here's a quick clip of Trump talking about the Somali American congresswoman.
One other thing I might want to say is that anti-Semitism has no place in the United States Congress.
And Congressman Omar is terrible what she said.
And I think she should either resign from Congress or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
What she said is so deep-seated in her heart that her lame apology, and that's what it was, it was lame, and she didn't mean a word of it, was just not appropriate.
I think she should resign from Congress, frankly.
But at a minimum, she shouldn't be on committees.
Certainly, that committee.
You know, I mean, obviously I agree with him on anti-Semitism.
I'm Jewish myself.
And even if I weren't, I hope I would be against anti-Semitism.
But being supportive of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, isn't just a Jewish thing.
It's a liberal Democrat thing if you support a democracy.
It's a Christian Zionist thing.
It's an American thing.
Who has a better read on the pulse of America?
I mean, Donald Trump is saying it's un-American to have her views.
Is he right?
I think he's right.
For a long time, the United States has been a very welcoming country to Jews and has been very pro-Israel, pro-freedom in the Middle East, and having Israel as an ally in that region.
And I think things are changing a little bit now with the new wave of far-left Democrats.
I think also another thing that was interesting about the far-left Democrats' defense of Ilan Omar is that they said, well, you know, we don't think that she's necessarily anti-Semitic and her comments are being used to just nullify anything else Democrats say as anti-Semitic.
So we don't support this resolution.
I think it's interesting they say that because if anyone else was saying it, you know, maybe you might believe them that they mean it.
But these are people who repeatedly are calling Republicans and other people in the Democratic Party racist, homophobic, you know, sexist.
Anything that you do, you're called ism label just to shut down what you say.
But so somehow with anti-Semitism, it doesn't apply to anti-Semitism because Ilhan Omar is Muslim, so she's a protected class.
Very interesting.
I want to show just a few more quick tweets of Ilhan Omar because you mentioned, I mean, Trump mentioned a fake apology.
I mean, she's doing this every week, so I don't think it's a one-off.
She's talking about Israel and why the Republicans are pro-Israel.
And she said, it's all about the Benjamins, baby.
That's a phrase that refers to the American $100 bill.
We've got one more tweet.
Our democracy is built on debate, Congresswoman.
I should not be expected to have allegiance or pledge support to a foreign country in order to serve my country in Congress or serve on committee.
The people that fifth elected me serve their interest.
I'm sure we agree on that.
But she's implying that to support Israel is to show a dual allegiance.
And I think you can be pro-Taiwan, pro-Israel, even pro-Saudi Arabia, I suppose, without being disloyal.
That's another anti-Semitic trope.
I don't know.
I find this interesting.
I got one last question for you.
You work for a company called MediaIte, which shows your focus is on journalism.
Is the mainstream media giving Ilhan Omar a pass on her anti-Semitism that they would not give if it were a Republican or a non-Muslim saying the same things?
I think that they are not giving her a pass for the most part.
Some people are starting to give her a pass, like we saw on MSNBC earlier today.
It wasn't even a pass.
It was kind of like, oh, maybe she wasn't really being anti-Semitic, or maybe she's having such a hard time because she's Muslim, so she doesn't know what to do, and everyone's piling on her.
But they would have definitely been harder on someone who was Republican.
I mean, there's no question about that, or someone who wasn't Muslim or wasn't, you know, on the far left.
Yeah, very interesting.
Well, Pard Saleh, great to see you again.
Thanks for keeping us up to date.
I find this a fascinating Congress.
You mentioned Alexandria Okezio-Cartez, very interesting and a real news shaper just from her charisma.
I think Ilhan Omar is in the same league, not because she's charismatic and inspiring, but because she is, like I said at the beginning of this segment, she is an underminer.
I truly believe that she is deeply anti-American and anti-Semitism is just a part of that.
It'll be fascinating to see if she winds up like some of those Israeli MKs who were finally thrown out.
Hopefully we can keep in touch on this one.
Yeah, sure.
It's going on.
It's a topic that's going to, there's so much that's going to happen after this.
And we've got the resolution tomorrow.
We'll see if that happens.
All right.
Well, we'll keep following your stuff on media.
Great to see you.
Thanks, Pardes.
You too.
Thank you.
All right, there's Pardes Sales.
She writes for Mediaite.com.
Stay with us.
more ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
You know, I mentioned earlier how Gerald Butts had an eerie repetition of Justin Trudeau's We Experience Things Differently.
One of our top editors here did a mashup of Justin Trudeau saying we experienced it differently when he was asked about his sexual assault in Creston, B.C.
And Gerald Butts today, you got to watch this.
Take a look.
The same interactions could be experienced very differently from one person to the next.
Different Experiences00:02:52
I am fully aware that two people can experience the same event differently.
I feel I am confident that I did not act inappropriately.
I believed that the minister shared my interpretation of our dinner.
Like I said, I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way.
I was so surprised.
I was fairly confident.
I do not see how our brief discussion of that file constituted pressure of any kind.
I've been reflecting very carefully on what I remember from that incident almost 20 years ago.
And again, I feel I am confident that I did not act inappropriately.
I remember that meeting very, very differently than the account given last week.
Often a man experiences an interaction as being benign or not inappropriate, and a woman, particularly in a professional context, can experience it differently.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you believe either of them?
Let me read some letters.
On my monologue yesterday about South Dakota's new riot boosting law, Bruce writes, we should all get a copy of this bill and send it to our elected representatives.
Riot boosters should be strictly punished, not praised.
Yeah, or in the case of Alberta, Rachel Notley actually appointed riot boosters to her oil sands advisory council, Sappora Berman, just to name one.
On my interview with Barbara Kaye about transgender athletes, Wendy writes, very demoralizing for female athletes.
Many high school girls toil away at sports to try to earn a post-secondary scholarship, to take their sport to the next level and to afford a college education.
The trans community is robbing them and ruining their competitive experience.
You're exactly right.
I mean, I'm not a big follower of boxing, but every once in a while I watch a bout.
And there's weight categories.
You don't put a fly weight or a welterweight up against a super heavyweight because that's not sport.
That's like that jokey clip we ran from Seinfeld of Kramer, the grown man, winning, ta-tally won against those little pitchers, those little tykes.
That's not sport.
You know, the phrase shooting fish in a barrel, that's not sport.
It's sport when you go out and fish with a fishing rod.
It's not sport when you shoot fish in a barrel.
It's not sport when a grown man beats a kid.
It's not sport when you put Mike Tyson up against a 100-pound weakling.
And it's not sport when trans men beat women.
And I'm afraid that our morality is inverse because people are afraid of saying, look, the emperor has no clothes here.
Well, that's the show for today.
Not Sport When Trans Men Beat Women00:00:56
I hope you don't think I spent too much time going through the minutiae of Gerald Butts.
I have to say, it took up all my day, and I was left feeling unsatisfied by it.
But I was left with a bit of a worry that they're just going to try and tough it out.
And I think the hands of this country are in the fate of another cabinet minister or MP if they stand down and quit, as, for example, Jane Philpott did.
I think that would change the math, or if the RCMP did.
But failing those two things, I think Justin Trudeau is going to brazen it out.
And if you look at the polls right now, the Liberals are behind.
In every single poll I see, they're behind between five and ten points.
That's a fair bit, but it's a fair bit of time between now and the election.
And I just don't think the media party will overcome their natural biases to the left and their natural affection for Trudeau.