Justin Trudeau’s March 20 budget unveiled a $595M media bailout via Qualified Canadian Journalism Organizations (QCJOs), dubbed "Justin Journos" for its exclusion of independent outlets like The Rebel—which outperforms CBC, APTN, and others—while rewarding government-aligned journalists. The framework’s criteria, designed to block dissent, echo past CRTC censorship and CHRC attacks on conservative media, including MacLean’s and The Western Standard. Meanwhile, The Rebel rejects QCJO status, citing grassroots funding over partisan handouts, and debunks left-wing claims linking the New Zealand mosque attack to Trump, noting a 39% drop in extremist killings under his presidency while exposing media distortions of figures like Candace Owens. Alberta’s April 16 election pits UCP’s Jason Kenney against NDP’s Rachel Notley, with The Rebel defending Kenney’s tactics despite ethical concerns but warning of Notley’s perceived threat, praising Stop Notley as a top-selling political book. The episode frames QCJOs as a tool to silence opposition and media narratives as manipulative, reinforcing distrust in institutional power. [Automatically generated summary]
Hi guys, I take a look through the budget yesterday and I try to understand Justin Trudeau's plan for a media bailout.
He's created this thing.
Let me get this right.
He calls them QCJOs, Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization.
I just say Justin Journos for short because I'm not going to say QCJO.
It's too weird.
And he goes through this.
Anyhow, I won't.
Tell that so you just listen.
Listen to the podcast ahead.
Before I let you go, can you do me a favor and go to the rebel.media slash shows?
And can you subscribe to become a premium member?
Look, this podcast is free.
No problem.
Enjoy.
But the bills are paid by the premium subscription.
It's $8 a month.
It's not a lot of dough.
$80 a year if you buy the year in advance.
And I'm basically saying, please do it to help keep us fighting because, of course, we have a staff here and we have the equipment and blah, blah, blah.
Enjoy the podcast for free.
If you go to the rebel.media slash shows and ship in $8 a month, I'd be grateful.
Without further to-do, here is my take on Justin Trudeau's media bailout in yesterday's budget.
Tonight, Trudeau's new budget gives some bizarre details about his $595 million media bailout.
It's March 20th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a 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.
Yesterday, Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau brought in their annual budget.
I think the main thing to know about it is that no Canadian government has ever spent more than Trudeau has.
Canadians have never paid more taxes than we do now.
And the national debt has never been higher.
Any questions?
Here's a helpful chart that the National Post put together.
Look at that line about deficit and debt.
You'll see we'll hit $685 billion in debt this year.
And just four years from now, it's about two-thirds of the way down.
Just four years from now, as in, if God forbid Trudeau's re-elected, we'll be at three quarters of a trillion in debt.
Do you see that there?
In the year 2022-2023, $751.9 billion.
And that's based on rosy predictions of this government.
Funny, I thought we were going to balance the budget for sure.
Remember this?
We have, we were the first party to put out a fully costed framework that said that we indeed are going to run three modest deficits over the first three years so we can balance the books in 2019.
Yeah, no, that didn't happen.
And if that didn't happen during a time of economic growth, how's it going to happen now that we're slipping into a recession?
I guess what they say is right.
Don't hire a substitute drama teacher to do your accounting for you.
Well, the fact is we're proposing a strong and real plan, one that invests in the middle class so that we can grow the economy, not from the top down the way Mr. Harper wants to, but from the heart outwards.
I guess that didn't work for a budget.
I bet it works well on dates.
We're going to grow the economy from the heart out.
That's how we're going to do it, sweetie.
No, it just doesn't work on an actual budget.
But hey, trust Trudeau's state broadcaster to give you the straight goods.
No spin, no partisanship, just exactly what's happening.
Look at this headline.
Liberals table a pre-election budget designed to ease Canadians' anxieties.
Hey guys, are you worried about life?
Maybe even worried that Justin Trudeau is corrupt and his cabinet is falling apart.
Just a few days ago, the most senior public servant quit in disgrace.
Are you guys worried at all about things?
Hey, take it easy, man.
This budget will soothe you like a Valium chased with a fine white wine and some legal marijuana.
There, don't you feel better?
Signed the CBC state broadcaster.
They actually ran that as a story.
They're so gross over there.
Okay, so the budget is the usual, but it starts to put some details on the massive $595 million media bailout that Trudeau promised last fall.
But as the Toronto Star described it last year, that media bailout money will only go to journalists that Trudeau says he can trust.
But how do you manage to put that rule into a budget, into a law, without sounding like a corrupt SNC Lavalan type politician who rigs things for their friends?
That's the challenge.
How do you put that into rules?
Here, let's read from the budget, page 173.
Supporting Canadian journalism.
A strong and independent news media is crucial to a well-functioning democracy.
Recognizing the vitally important role that media play in helping citizens make informed decisions about important issues, in the fall 2018 fall economic statement, the government announced its intention to introduce three new tax measures to support Canadian journalism.
A new refundable tax credit for journalism organizations.
A new non-refundable tax credit for subscriptions to Canadian digital news.
Access to charitable tax incentives for not-for-profit journalism.
Okay, let's stop right there.
Do you get nervous when you hear that the government is going to help the media be better?
Do you believe it's even possible?
Can you think of any situation where government involvement would make journalism more accurate, more free, more independent, more nonpartisan, more anything other than more controlled?
I can't think of a single thing a government could even do hypothetically that could help.
I guess it could undo things.
They could undo taxes.
They could undo existing regulations like the various censorship provisions in Canada, including the CRTC, for example.
I note that this week the Liberals served notice.
It's hard to read this tweet because it's a piece of paper, but they're serving notice that they intend to revive the censorship powers of the Canadian Human Rights Commission to censor the internet.
That's what was used to prosecute McLean's magazine and Mark Stein and provincially me and the Western Standard years ago.
So yeah, the government can practice not screwing things up, but I don't think it's even scientifically possible for them to positively help anything.
But let me read a little bit more from the budget, okay?
As previously announced, the government will establish an independent panel of experts from the Canadian journalism sector to assist the government in implementing these measures, including recommending eligibility criteria.
Okay, got it.
They will be independent, will they?
Just as independent as Justin Trudeau's independent senators, who actually vote with the Liberal Party line even more loyally than formally Liberal senators.
Independent?
Oh, yes, like Anne McClellan, who Trudeau just appointed to be an independent advisor on matters emerging from his SNC Lavalam fiasco.
She's so independent, she was scheduled to give a speech at this liberal fundraising event a few weeks from now.
That's how independent she is.
So yeah, an independent panel of experts from the Canadian journalism sector, that just means Trudeau's friends.
They'll recommend who's eligible for those little handouts that I read about.
Now, if you cut taxes for every journalist, and really, why should you?
Why favor journalists over any other profession or occupation?
Well, it's obvious.
If you were to cut taxes for bricklayers or truck drivers, I mean, that's great and all.
And they might like you a bit more, and they might actually vote for you.
But journalists are a necessary auxiliary in your election campaign.
You're not just buying the votes of a few hundred journalists.
You're buying their megaphone to get millions more votes.
Let me know when bricklayers can do that.
So yeah, these will be exquisitely hand-picked allies of Trudeau, deciding which journalists can get the tax credits and which can't based on their allegiance to Trudeau.
Here's some more.
Given the importance of ensuring that media outlets are able to operate with full independence, the government proposes to establish an independent administrative body that will be responsible for recognizing journalism organizations as being eligible for any of the three measures.
Got it.
So to ensure full independence from government, we're going to have a government administrative body.
That is not independent, guys.
I was just in the UK last week, as you know, and a judge asked all the journalists in the courtroom, including me, to produce their journalism licenses.
I'm not kidding.
She really did ask for that.
And the other reporters there from the UK really did whip out their little licenses so quickly.
They had it on them.
They were so proud, as if to say, I'm part of the chosen elite.
I'm part of the guild.
Kick everyone else out of court, but not me, judge.
Now, I told the judge, yeah, I'm from Canada.
We don't have to register with the government to be journalists here yet.
And they were all confused over there in the UK, almost angry at me that I didn't have to bend the knee to the establishment in the way that they all had to do.
I guess I won't be able to do that for much longer in Canada because we will have an independent government board ensuring we're independent.
Not sure if that's ever how freedom has worked before, but under Trudeau, why not?
And what?
You think journalists are going to quarrel with the guy who's handing out free money to them?
The Liberals put out a few more details on the subject too.
Like the Brits I met last week, they want to determine who has the government stamp of approval to be a journalist and who doesn't.
They actually came up with a name.
It's almost as laughable as independent senators appointed independently by Justin Trudeau.
The name they have, this is real, I'm not making this up.
They call them qualified Canadian journalism organizations.
It's really, here, let me read.
This is real.
This is real.
I swear you'd probably think, oh, you're just making this.
No, check it out.
Go to the budget.
You could Google it.
Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization, QCJO.
That rolls right off the lips.
QCJO status is a necessary condition for each of the three measures.
In order to be a QCJO, an organization will be required to be recognized as meeting criteria developed by the independent panel.
This recognition will be made by an administrative body that will be established for this purpose.
Got it.
So there's grubby journalists who ask questions about the world and they say what they want.
Yuck.
But then there's the elevated ones, the official ones, the elites, the polite people, the better people.
They're qualified Canadian journalism organizations.
That implies the rest aren't qualified.
The QCJOs, oh my God, it rolls off the tongue.
I prefer Justin Journos.
At least it has a bit of an assonance to it.
It's got a poetic quality to it.
And you can't be a Justin Journeau until you are invited to join by other Justin Journos that Justin himself has hand-picked.
It's like one of those secret fraternities at Ivy League universities.
You can't even apply to join.
You have to be tapped on the shoulder to join them.
You can't even apply.
Let me read some more.
This is real.
I didn't make this up.
A QCJO will be required to be organized as a corporation, partnership, or trust.
It will need to operate in Canada, meet additional conditions depending on how it is organized.
To qualify as a QCJO, a corporation will be required to be incorporated and resident in Canada.
In addition, its chairperson or other presiding officer, and at least 75% of its directors must be Canadian citizens in general, in order for a partnership or trust to qualify such corporations along with Canadian citizens must own at least 75% of the interest in it.
Okay, now I just want to tell you, by the way, the Rebel meets those criteria.
I'm just saying, I think they're trying to find some way to keep us out.
Not that we'd come in, but let me enjoy the fun of mocking this.
I'll read some more.
In addition, an organization will be required to meet the following positions to be a QCJO.
Hey, are you a QCJO?
It is primarily engaged in the production of original news content, and in particular, the content must be primarily focused on matters of general interest and reports of current events, including coverage of democratic institutions and processes, and must not be primarily focused on a particular topic such as industry-specific news, sports, recreation, arts, lifestyle, or entertainment.
And let me just stop there for a second.
Why does boring news about politicians get a handout, but not normal news about the world that actual normal people care about?
It doesn't matter the explanation.
This is the personal whims of whatever politician wrote this bizarre rule.
I mean, this isn't about journalism.
It's about Justin journalism.
I'll keep reading.
It regularly employs two or more journalists in the production of its content who deal at arm's length with the organization.
And it must not be significantly engaged in the production of content to promote the interests or report on the activities of an organization, an association, or their members for a government, Crown corporation, or government agency, or to promote goods or services.
So it can't be like a Costco newsletter.
And it must not be a Crown corporation, municipal corporation, or government agency.
Okay, now I'm just confused now, because why does the CBC get money then?
They're a government agency.
What does it mean to engage journalists who are at arm's length from the company?
I'm not even sure what that means.
Is an employee at arm's length from the company?
I don't even know if they know what they're talking about here, but let me skip ahead.
Here's my favorite part.
I call this the Ban the Rebel Clause.
Ready?
To ensure that registered journalism organizations are not used to promote the views or objectives of any particular person or related group of persons, a registered journalism organization will be required to have a board of directors or trustees,
each of whom deals at arm's length with each other, must not be factually controlled by a person or a group of related persons, and must generally not, in any given year, receive gifts that represent more than 20% of its local revenue, total revenues, including donations from any one source, excluding bequests and one-time gifts made on the initial establishment of the particular registered journalism organization.
Like I say, I'd never take money from Justin Trudeau because I'm not a prostitute.
You can't take money from Justin Trudeau and also report on Justin Trudeau, other than if you're a stenographer or his PR boy.
That's why I refuse to call anyone at the CBC a journalist.
Good News For Everyone Here00:07:52
There may be a government journalist, but you have to have that qualifier in there.
If you don't have that adjective, a government journalist, it's not true.
I mean, if you're paying for it, it's not love, fellas.
It's prostitution.
Now, the funny thing is, we at the Rebel actually meet all of those tests.
We have a board of directors at arm's length from each other.
I'm not sure what it means to be factually controlled by a group of people.
Isn't that what a team of managers and editors do?
They sort of control it.
I don't even know what that means in English here at the Rebel.
We have a head of editorial and we have a managing editor and they take pictures from our journalists and they assign stories.
I make suggestions too, but I don't assign stories on a daily basis.
I'll be honest, we put out so many videos on any given day, I sometimes don't even have time to watch them all.
And unlike, say, the CBC, we don't have a sugar daddy.
We have thousands of little supporters.
No one supporter has ever given us more than 2% of our funds.
I think those rules were supposed to be some sort of anti-rebel poison pill, but it's not.
We're actually more legitimate, more grassroots, more Canadian than most of the media organizations that would try to keep us out.
I mean, post-media, God love them, their bonds are held by a hedge fund in New Jersey.
I bet they're going to get most of the dough here, though.
Look, we're more independent.
We're more Canadian.
We're more supported by grassroots viewers than any of our competitors.
The only way to keep us out of this deal, and I say for the third time, I'm not a prostitute.
I'm not looking to be picked up by Justin Trudeau for a few pieces of silver.
No, thanks.
The only way to keep us out would be to have this hyper-political board appointed by Trudeau to say, oh, you're not real journalists.
But don't take my word for that.
Take the word of all of our competitors who are really excited about getting a sugar daddy now and they don't want us to get any of that action.
Here's Kent Driscoll.
He's a reporter with APTN.
He says, tax credits are a decent way to help support media.
Go buy a Toronto Star subscription and get it counted against your taxes.
Sticky wicket is going to be when Ezra and his ilk come looking to get on the eligible list.
Panel needs to be really strong.
Ezra and his ilk.
I think they might be talking about you.
I think you might be our ilk.
But we are eligible under everything I just read to you.
What makes me and you ilk to be kept out by these fancy people by a strongly partisan panel?
Am I not Canadian?
My great-grandfather homesteaded here in 1903.
I'm Canadian.
Do we not cover the news?
Look, it's our political stripe.
This is a bailout, a tit for tat for reporters being liberal.
Here's another gross media elite, Andrew Potter of the Ottawa Citizen.
That's a real picture of him, by the way.
He quoted that guy, Driscoll, and he added, if you see the bottom of his little entry, he said, Who is Ezra, you ask?
And why should we be worried?
If you don't know the answer to that, then that's part of the problem.
What?
That's not even an answer to the question, who is Ezra?
Other than, look, if you know the secret handshake, you know it.
If you don't know it, you just don't know it.
We all know why it's wrong to let Ezra Levant and the Rebel be called journalists or to let them in on an even footing.
And if you don't think so, you're part of the problem.
What a weirdo.
Here's an article on the subject by Paul Wells.
That's Paul Wells on the bottom right there.
That's Althea Raj on the left.
And that's their friend Justin Trudeau sticking out his tongue.
He's personal friends with Trudeau.
And both Paul Wells and Althea Raj already take major payola from Trudeau in the form of CBC honoraria.
They get their mortgages paid by Justin Trudeau, really.
They'll surely be at the front of the line to this new trough of goodies.
And they know it's not just about rewarding friends of Justin Trudeau like themselves.
It's also about keeping out the rabble, the ilk.
Here's a line from Paul Wells about the panel of experts.
He wrote this in McLean's.
One suspects this line is designed to keep the kitty out of the hands of anyone named Ezra.
He actually wrote that in McLean's.
Hey guys, I've got good news for you.
Paul, Althea, Andrew, whatever that first guy's name was, Kent.
I've got some good news for you.
And it's actually good news for all of us.
The good news for Paul Wells and Kent Driscoll, and I've never actually heard of Paul Driscoll.
I can't discover before today, I should tell you.
And Althea Radge and that funny looking guy, Andrew Potter.
The good news is, guys, I'm not coming to take any of the money.
Don't worry.
I'm not getting in line.
I'm not butting in front of the line of you at the buffet.
I'm not taking a dime out of your pay packet.
So don't you worry.
You'll be able to pig out and there'll be one less piggy at the trough.
So good news for you.
And to Trudeau and the hand-picked panel of experts who will come up with the list of, prove the list of QCJOs or Justin Journals or whatever.
Don't worry, guys.
Just like I would never degrade myself by trying to get one of those UK journalism licenses, I'm not really interested in bending the knee for some washed up hacks to approve of me as a journalist.
I get approval enough for my own conscience every single day from the hundreds of thousands of people who watch Rebel Viewers every day.
That's what actually makes you a journalist.
You do journalism.
And I suppose the second part is that somebody reads or watches your journalism.
Yeah, we are journalists here at the Rebel, probably more so than most of the people I've just named, because more people watch us.
So good news for just about everybody here.
Good news for the panel.
They won't have to make up some excuse for why we're not journalists, but they are, even though I meet or exceed all their standards better than they do.
And good news for me, because everything I've ever told you has been proved true.
The media party is in the tank for Justin Trudeau, and now they're on the take.
They will be corrupted by this money.
They already are.
You can't take money from a sugar daddy and pretend you're independent.
And that dependence, that submissiveness, it's not just theoretical now, it's proven.
You have to be a QCJO.
Are you a QCJO?
Can I see your license?
You have to be a Justin Journeau.
It's like a guild now, but instead of judging your skill, like say a dentist or a doctor, you're being judged on your loyalty to Trudeau.
And as if that wasn't enough proof, you've just heard it from Paul Wells, king of the Justin Journals and Andrew Potter and Kent Driscoll and all of them.
This really is about partisan politics and keeping out the ruffians like me and my ilk.
And that means you.
So I win too.
Because now we at the Rebel here are the only journalists left in the country along with Sheila Gunread, David Menzies, Kian Becksty, the rest of the Rebel team, maybe a handful of other minor independent reporters in this country, maybe five in the whole country, like that small outfit in Ottawa called Blacklocks Reporter, or maybe you know Spencer Fernando from Winnipeg.
Maybe there's half a dozen of us in the whole country who aren't being bought and sold.
And you know what?
Being able to say that we're the last free, independent, trustworthy journalists in all Canada who aren't certified and inspected and funded by Trudeau, that's worth a lot more to me than my share of the $595 million trough.
Hitler Comparisons & Extremism00:15:51
Don't you think?
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back, Will.
Well, I was in the United Kingdom and traveling home when the massive attack in New Zealand happened.
I still hope to have my definitive comment on the subject before the week is out.
But I note that no one on the left is wasting any time putting that horrific crime to political use in New Zealand and Australia.
They're blaming the New Zealand and Australia right.
Anyone who questions immigration, anyone who is conservative at home.
Funny enough, in Canada, same thing.
In the UK, same thing.
And in the United States, it's Donald Trump who's to blame, apparently.
Let me show you a tweet from Ilhan Omar, one of the new Muslim congresswomen, who says, It's overdue.
Far-right extremists were linked to every extremist murder in the U.S. last year, including the Tree of Life and Parkland shootings.
They are not operating in a vacuum.
This is a crisis and it deserves national attention.
Is that true?
Joining us now via Skype from the greater Los Angeles area is our friend Joel Pollock, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
Joel, great to see you again.
I have in front of me not one, but three excellent articles you've written on the subject.
My favorite, I think, is from the far-left ADL, the anti-defamation league that's actually run by a former high Obama official.
Let me read the headline of it, and then I'll let you expand.
The headline is ADL, extremist killings down 39% under President Donald Trump.
Take it away, Joel.
What's going on out there?
So the first thing to know is that the number of extremist killings in the United States is a very small number.
So you can have fluctuations in that number that look like very significant percentages, but overall may be statistically insignificant.
We're talking about a marginal phenomenon, whether the killings are on the left or the right.
They're certainly sensational in some cases, like the Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016, which was carried out.
You could call him a left-wing extremist, carried out by a left-wing extremist as part of an Islamist terror attack.
But the number overall, nevertheless, is still very small.
So Elon Omar is saying that Donald Trump is to blame, essentially, for the rise of white nationalism and extremism and so forth.
I'd argue the opposite.
If we're talking about white nationalism, it's probably more marginal than ever because the backlash against white nationalism has been so severe that people don't want to be associated with anything five football fields away from it.
They run away from anything that's even somewhere close to what it might be.
And partly it's because of the media's hyping of the small number of white supremacists, white nationalists.
They're very good at getting attention for themselves.
The media inflate them also because they like tarnishing Republicans with some sort of association, even though white nationalists are not Republicans.
Sometimes they're Democrats, they're opportunists because they'll do whatever it takes to make themselves more prominent than they deserve to be.
But anyway, Elon Omar was citing statistics saying that every extremist murder in the United States or every extremist-related killing in the United States in 2018 was caused by a right-wing extremist.
Now, it's a funny kind of statistic.
The actual number of quote-unquote extremist-related killings was 50.
This comes from a study by the Anti-Defamation League.
You'll note Elon Omar did not cite them directly because the Anti-Defamation League has been critical of her for her anti-Semitic remarks.
So she's not going to link to them directly.
The other reason she won't link to them directly is that if you look at the numbers, they don't quite work out the way she says they do.
So the number of extremist-related killings was 50, but that doesn't mean that people in those 50 were killed for extremist reasons.
It turns out people who are extremists politically also have a lot of other problems.
They have behavior problems.
They may have drug and alcohol problems.
So those killings, the 50 killings, may have nothing to do with extremism whatsoever.
And in fact, if you look at the ADL study, they find that the proportion of killings within those 50 that were committed for ideological reasons actually went down from the year before.
So the number of ideological killings is decreasing, is falling, not rising.
So the actual numbers behind that claim that she cited do not favor her argument.
In fact, they prove the opposite.
Moreover, if you look more closely at the ADL report, you find that there were 72 extremist-related killings in 2016 and 70 in 2015 or the other way around, basically a total of 142.
That's in the last two years of Barack Obama.
In the first two years of Donald Trump, there were 50 extremist-related killings in 2018 and 38 in 2017.
So that's only 88.
And that is a sharp decline from where they were under Obama.
They're a decline of 39%.
So actually, as long as we're using the numbers that the left is now throwing out there, let's look at what the numbers say.
The numbers say Donald Trump has been more successful at fighting extremism than Barack Obama.
Or to put it another way, white nationalism, since that's what they're calling this, white nationalism is decreasing, not increasing.
Now, that's playing with the numbers a little bit because some of the extremist killings under Obama weren't white nationalist killings.
They were on the other side.
They were Islamist killings, sometimes left-wing killings, explicitly so in the case of Black Lives Matter activists who shot police and that sort of thing.
But basically, we're arguing over marginalia.
I mean, these are very small numbers.
They're not necessarily – I haven't done the statistical analysis of them.
I highly doubt they're significant at all, even when they show a decline that's favorable to Trump.
I think this is all a bunch of nonsense.
They're trying to blame Trump for New Zealand, and they're trying to insulate radical Islam from criticism.
There is no contradiction between criticizing radical Islam and empathizing with innocent Muslims who were killed simply because they showed up to pray.
That in fact is the distinction between radical Islam and ordinary Islam.
And you have to insist on that distinction because if you don't, you allow radical Muslims to represent the whole, which was the whole thrust of Obama's foreign policy, right?
That's why he never wanted to call radical Islam radical Islam because he didn't want to give them any prominence.
He didn't want people to conflate Islam with terrorism.
But you're doing that if you don't allow people to condemn radical Islam and also defend innocent Muslims.
So anyway, this is all part of Ilan Omar's attempt to redirect criticism back onto the president.
The media are going along with it.
They see an opportunity to hurt the president by blaming him for what happened in New Zealand.
The killer in New Zealand happened to cite the president in his manifesto.
The media are generally only reporting one side of that.
They're citing that he praised Donald Trump as a symbol of identity, but they are ignoring the fact that the killer, the terrorist, also said Donald Trump did not behave as he would have wanted him to have behaved in office.
He said he didn't like Donald Trump's policies.
So he likes him as a symbol, but he doesn't like him as the president.
Well, what we're talking about is the president of the United States.
So I don't know if we should actually give any credence at all to this terrorist and what he thought.
But the media are definitely trying to establish a connection for all the usual obvious reasons.
Yeah.
Well, there's 7 billion people in the world.
And because one of them kills 50 people and claims the president was his inspiration, actually he didn't even claim that, did he?
Does not, I mean, it's absurd to take that at face value.
But I think, and I haven't had a chance to go deeply through the manifesto of this mass murderer yet.
I think he was extremely media savvy, social media savvy, and he did things that would be called trolling if it were done just online and peacefully.
I think, in fact, it may be that this entire project of mass murdering people in a mosque was a bizarre, murderous troll and done specifically to set in motion a political outcome.
In fact, that was contemplated in the manifesto.
He said he wanted to set society at war against itself.
But let me give you just one small example.
Some of our viewers know Candace Owens.
She's a young woman in the States, a black woman who on YouTube a couple years ago said, Mom, Dad, I'm coming out.
I'm a Republican.
And she's had a great political career since then.
She's affiliated with something called Turning Point USA.
I have had the pleasure of meeting Candace.
I don't think she's a particularly heavy-duty intellectual force.
She's more a political organizer.
I think she's great.
But let me quote to you from this alleged white supremacist murderer.
He said, the person that has influenced me above all was Candace Owens.
Each time she spoke, I was stunned by her insights.
And her own views helped push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness.
Though I will have to disavow some of her beliefs, the extreme actions she calls for are too much even for my taste.
I mean, I laughed there.
I shouldn't laugh, Joel, because those are the words of a deranged murderer.
Candace Owens has never in her life called for violent means.
And for this purported white supremacist to say that a young black woman was the greatest influence in his life is so obviously a troll designed to embarrass her and to cause her to be in controversy.
I find it difficult to take anything in this manifesto and from this murderer seriously because I think he's it's all tricks and it's all little buried nuggets designed to make the media go mad and I think he's been successful at that.
What do you think?
That was my reaction too at first.
I thought that it was a troll, an attempt to troll the media into disparaging Candace Owens.
And then I had another thought, which is that it's possible that the terrorist has a misimpression of what Candace Owens actually says.
And that misimpression has been conveyed by the media.
We don't hear about Candace Owens in the mainstream media.
We hear about her in conservative media, on her own social media channels.
I think she has a YouTube show now on Prayer You.
And we hear from her on social media and new media, alternative media.
The mainstream media only took an interest when she was falsely accused of praising Hitler.
If you actually look at what she said, she talked about the fact that there are nationalisms that are healthy and that she did not regard Hitler as a nationalist because his ideology was, in fact, racist and expansionist and interventionist.
Now, you can argue with that.
I think Hitler was a nationalist, although certainly his racism, his racial thinking of the world, trumped his nationalism.
Hitler once said that if the Soviets won the war, they would have deserved to rule because it would have proven that the German nation or the German race was not, in fact, the strongest.
He really believed in this idea of a competition between races to dominate.
So it was really a misapplication, in a way, of Darwinism to human society, along with a lot of other bad ideas and hateful ideas.
So I think that's true, although I do also think Hitler was a nationalist.
But the point is she was having a discussion about how there are positive, healthy forms of nationalism that don't involve doing things that Hitler did, but our media often associates nationalism with fascism.
The media reported her comments as if she were praising Hitler and saying that he would have been all right if he had just stuck to Germany.
And I think the killer may have been referring to that.
I think he actually may have been thinking about that interpretation of her remarks, and he was name-checking her as a way of legitimizing his own views, basically saying, if an African-American woman can see nationalism as a good thing, then my nationalism is a universal principle, and I will one day be celebrated.
He actually wrote this in his manifesto.
I'll be celebrated as Nelson Mandela was celebrated.
Now, that's crazy, but I think he was trying to make a point, which is that he was acting in the name of universal principles.
It's complete nonsense.
But I think that the media bear some of the blame for carrying some false ideas around the world.
And they say that Trump is to blame because of his rhetoric about radical Islam and so forth.
What about the media's role in convincing, perhaps, this neo-Nazi white supremacist that Trump empathized with him because they refuse to report that Trump condemns neo-Nazis?
They keep reporting Trump as some kind of modern-day incarnation of Hitler.
Do we know who they're inspiring by that?
Do we know who they are encouraging to act out?
And same thing with this quote about Candace Owens.
I mean, when the media misreport what she says, do they not understand that they're encouraging people to justify fascism?
Because she's obviously not a fascist or a nationalist, but if she says Hitler was okay, which she didn't say, but if she is portrayed that way, then you're giving a positive spin to Hitler.
The media, they act as if there's no accountability whatsoever.
So I think that's a possible explanation for what he was doing.
Yeah.
You know, I've often said, you know, there's 300 plus million Americans.
If the media repetitively says Trump is the new Hitler, we know that's not true.
We know that he has a Jewish daughter, Jewish son-in-law, Jewish grandkids.
He led the pro-Israel parade in New York City years ago.
He moved the embassy to Jerusalem.
He's the Jewiest non-Jew in the White House since, I don't know, would that be Truman?
But here's the scary thing I always thought is if you tell 300 million Americans that he's the new Hitler, and if only 1% of 1% of 1% believes it, well, Joel, if you or I thought that the new Hitler was on the rise, you know, you're always, would we try and stop him by any means necessary?
Would you or I give our lives even to stop Hitler before he came to power in 1933, before he started the Holocaust in full force several years later?
I think you tell 300 million Americans that Trump is Hitler, you say it often enough.
Someone's going to say, oh my God, he is Hitler.
I must do anything I can to stop him, including assassinating him, including using my own life to wipe out his because I can't let a new Hitler happen.
If you actually believed the media, some people would feel morally compelled to assassinate Trump.
Comparing Trump to Hitler00:05:20
Right.
I think that's true.
I think that when you compare him to Hitler, you're basically saying that all the normal rules can be abandoned against this man, that it's justified to do whatever it takes to stop him.
So I think that's correct.
And I think it is dangerous.
And I think it's also dangerous to the mental health of the country.
I think people are walking around with the idea that there's somehow been this fascist takeover.
Not a lot of people, but enough to really affect social interactions in this country.
It's definitely affected community life.
It's affected people's personal happiness, but it's affecting social media.
It's affecting our media.
I think it's made us a more unhappy place.
And not because of what Trump is doing, but which is generally perceived as very successful.
I mean, 71% in the CNN poll had a positive economic outlook, which is the highest I think since 2001 or 2000, basically since in 20 years.
They haven't measured this sort of level of enthusiasm about the economy.
So his policies are working.
They ought to be making people happier.
But our media keeps telling us that things are terrible and we're being taken over by stormtroopers and so forth.
All of which is nonsense, complete nonsense.
So I think it does affect people.
And yes, for a deranged few who believe they should take matters into their own hands, it's inspiring them as well.
Yeah.
In this country, too, I think just yesterday, the day before, someone in Toronto was wearing a Make America Great Again hat, went on campus to some event and was basically screamed at that he was a racist simply for wearing that hat.
I myself received a bizarre email from our state broadcaster yesterday asking about our motto, make Canada great again.
I think it's turned the media into madmen and it's launched.
I mean, the rage against that young Covington kid, Nicholas Sandman, just because he was wearing a Trump hat at the Washington, at the Lincoln Memorial a few months ago, I think it has caused a derangement out there.
I find it very troubling, and I think you've shed a lot of light on the phenomenon.
Joel, I'm grateful for your time as always.
Thanks for joining us today.
Thank you.
All right, there you have it.
Joel Pollock is the senior editor-at-large of Breitbart.com.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about an election being called in Alberta for April 16th.
Bernice writes, Can you just cut Jason Kenny some slack here and let us get rid of this awful NDP government?
If you want to put him under a microscope after the election, have at it.
But the UCP is our only hope of stopping Rachel and her socialist government.
It's very suspect that these accusations have been made public right before the election by people who hold a grudge against him.
It reeks of sour grapes to me.
Well, you're exactly right.
And I thought I conveyed that, but I'm obviously not.
That said, these accusations are factual.
They have the emails.
They have the proof of the meetings.
They have, you know, Jason Kenney and his staff confess it.
How could they deny it?
The only question is, is it illegal or just does it look really bad?
I think it looks really bad to be setting up a fake candidate to bash your opponent and then endorse you.
I think that looks really gross.
I'm embarrassed that Jason Kenney felt he had to do that.
I've known Jason for more than 20 years.
I mean, I call him Jason.
I have to practice calling him Kenny.
He doesn't need, I mean, he sometimes wins his elections with 70, even 80% of the vote.
It's sort of pitiful to me that he felt he needed to, I'll say cheat.
I'm not saying he broke a law.
I don't know that.
But I think it's sort of pitiful that he felt the need to cheat.
I mean, I have no particular affection for Brian Gene.
I like Brian well enough.
I just think it's sort of pitiful that Jason Kenney colluded to have a fake candidate run, as they say, a kamikaze campaign against.
I just think that's really sad.
And it makes me think what other shenanigans are out there.
That doesn't mean I would support at all the NDP.
I think we've made that crystal clear.
We just came up with a book called Stop Notley that Sheila Gunread wrote.
So I think it's pretty clear where we stand.
We've done more journalistic damage to Rachel Notley than the rest of the press gallery combined.
So yeah, we're as anti-Rachel Notley as you are.
But that doesn't mean we're going to say, yeah, Jason Kenney, that fake candidate thing tricking the voters, that was really cool and really conservative.
Yeah, no, it wasn't.
How writes?
I truly believe Kenny is a globalist.
Don't forget his recent stand on Muslim immigration to Alberta.
Not even a provincial matter.
Can't get my head around that one.
Notley is still more dangerous.
We should promote Sheila Gunread to run for premier, a true nationalist for Alberta and Canada.
Yeah, Sheila would be great.
I think one day we will lose Sheila to elected office.
I think she would be a great MLA, a great MP, a great cabinet minister.
I think she's got a lot of common sense.
And I think she really understands her community.
So yes, we're lucky to have her.
And I have come to terms with the fact that one day we will probably lose her to public office.
On Sheila Gunreed's new book, Stop Notley, the case for throwing out the NDP, Paul Wrights, I just ordered the book.
Hey, Paul, thank you very much.
Stop Notley: The Case for Change00:01:08
I haven't checked in a few hours, but last I checked, Sheila's book is already the number one political book on Amazon.ca.
And we haven't even really promoted it yet.
I just haven't checked the stats in a few hours, but last I saw it was the number 47 book on the entire bestseller list, not just political books, but any books, foreign, fiction, nonfiction.
You know, the big books are always the self-help books or the even cookbooks or, you know, if there's a new Harry Potter or whatever, those are the big books.
So Sheila's book, last time I checked, was number 47 of all books in Canada, and I haven't checked in hours.
So I am absolutely certain it'll be a number one bestseller probably as soon as tomorrow, frankly.
So I hope you get a copy.
They're just five bucks for the e-book version or $10 for the paperback version, which I hope is ready right now.
And of course, we've got those fun lawn signs.
I'll probably have more stories for you about those tomorrow.
You can get all that at stopknotley.com.
All right, folks, thanks for watching the show today.
We'll see you tomorrow on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, DU at Home.