Jason Kenney’s UCP victory in Alberta’s April 19 election marked a shift as he vowed post-election to combat foreign-funded anti-oil groups like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Tides Foundation, and David Suzuki Foundation, bypassing campaign rhetoric. Critics dismissed Rebel Media’s live coverage of his win, yet their viral footage—like Kenney confronting NDP candidate Anne McGrath over communist ties—exposed leftist hypocrisy. Kenney’s potential legal crackdown on lobbyists, including probing oil companies funding environmental opposition and foreign donors exploiting tax loopholes, could reshape Canada’s activist landscape. Meanwhile, Trump’s Mueller exoneration reveals how partisan media and Democrats weaponize investigations without evidence, distracting from policy while reinforcing his political resilience. [Automatically generated summary]
This is a show I think you'll find interesting if you're Alberton, if you care about oil and gas, or more to the point, if you hate these foreign-funded anti-oil sands destroyers that have been dominating our political conversation for a decade, including, by the way, Gerald Bus of Justin Trudeau's office, who you may know used to run the World Wildlife Fund in Canada.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy this show.
Hey, can I invite you to become a premium member?
It's $8 a month.
You get this podcast in video form, which I think is way better.
Obviously, you can see the documents I refer to, see the interviews.
And you get access to Sheila Gunread's show and David Menzie's show.
And it's important because it helps keep our boat floating.
It pays the bills.
It's $8 a month.
Please consider becoming a premium subscriber at the Rebel.media slash shows.
All right.
Without further ado, here is my assessment of how Jason Kenney can fight back against the foreign-funded extremists.
Tonight, is Jason Kenney really going to fight back against foreign-funded anti-oil lobby groups?
It's April 19th, 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.
Alberta's election was on Tuesday night.
By the way, we covered that on a three and a half hour live broadcast, which I thought was pretty fun.
I was here at Rebel World Headquarters.
Sheila and Kian were in Calgary at the Kenny Election Night Event.
I thought it was pretty fun.
Polls officially closed that night at 8 p.m. Mountain Time, but our decision desk was so good that we officially declared a United Conservative Party majority at 7.50 p.m., making us the first media outlet to do so.
That's how good we are.
I'm joking around just a little bit.
I enjoyed that night.
Our viewers seem to like it.
Did you know that for most of the night, we had more people watching our YouTube live stream than we're watching this CB Sieves live stream?
What do you think about that?
That's a fact.
And look at how apoplectic the left was.
Look at this guy.
He even changed his Twitter name to be mean to me.
He said, so the United Conservative Party gave rebel media space to report live from Jason Kenny's Election Night Party in Calgary.
Now that's access.
The racists and white supremacists are already in the building.
Yet another warning sign going forward.
Yeah, mate, I'm Jewish.
I think you're going to have to find a new insult for the rebel besides Nazi.
That is, if you guys actually want to win an election.
I'm actually worried, though, as a Jew, that the word Nazi is being thrown around so much is becoming debased.
It's losing its meaning.
The people just think it means a generic insult, like calling someone a dummy or something.
So that if we actually need to use the word Nazi, if there actually is a Nazi, we won't have a word to mean it.
We won't have a tool because we will have cried whoops so often.
But you see the madness of the left.
I call it rebel derangement syndrome.
It's a version of Trump derangement syndrome or Stephen Harper derangement syndrome.
The guy who wrote that is some kook, but it was retweeted with approval by dozens of other mainstream media journalists.
Now, I know you've never heard of Chris Selly before.
He's an incel editorial writer at the National Post.
And he wrote this.
He said, in response to that tweet I just wrote you, he said, that is legitimately bananas.
No serious Conservative Party should let Rebel in the building.
Yeah, it's a free country, mate, with a free press, Section 2B of the Charter of Rights, if you're interested.
Free press is actually a conservative value, something the National Post used to care a bit about, used to know a bit about, but I guess they're in full bailout mode now.
Look, I think it's a bit of jealousy.
Did you know that Keen's video of him accosting Anne McGrath, you know, the communist who was running as an NDP candidate in the riding of Calgary Varsity?
This video we're showing right here of him asking her about being a communist.
And within 90 seconds, she panicked and literally took out her phone and dialed 911.
The emergency phone call.
That video is the number one most watched YouTube video by any media outlet in Canada covering the Alberta election more than anything CTV did, more than anything CBC did.
That video right there.
And then Kian made that billboard truck.
You know, the one that went around showing she was a communist with that Soviet anthem.
As you know, this pressure on Anne McGrath pushed her to renounce, to publicly renounce her communism at a community forum.
Did you catch that part?
I want to acknowledge, also, something that's come up about my youth, and I want to assure you that I am not a thongist.
Four decades ago, when I was a young student, I was a member, and I deeply regret that.
It was a mistake and a very story.
An important part of Leninism, of course, is any means necessary.
Obviously, you would lie if you had to to be a good communist.
So I'm sorry, I just don't believe that after being a communist for decades, she suddenly renounces it on the eve of the election.
But obviously, Keon's campaign had a real impact if she felt compelled to renounce her past.
And look at this.
Look at this.
This is the election results in Calgary Varsity.
Look at that.
The UCP candidate beat McGrath by just a few hundred votes.
I truly believe Keen and his commie hunting assault vehicle are to credit for that.
I mean, can you explain it otherwise?
Just a few hundred votes.
I think Keen won it.
Why We Won00:03:34
Which I think might help explain why the media party hates us and is jealous of us because people, especially in Alberta, watch us and trust us.
We had 5,000 lawn signs going up saying stop Notley.
Sheila's best-selling book of the same name was a huge hit, like her past best-selling books on the same sorts of subjects, and all of the above done without a dime of government bailout money.
Yeah, I think I know why our competitors don't like the Rebel.
Anyways, that was a long tangent about the election.
I think it's out of my system now.
Will you forgive me?
It's great to have the NDP out of Alberta, but I'd like to go back to the key moment for me, at least on election night.
So I was here, I was watching the whole thing, and Kenny gave a long speech, and most of it was predictable, you know, boilerplate conservative stuff.
He's been given speeches for 25 years.
Most of it was a repeat of what he said in the campaign.
But the crescendo, the apex, the part that got the biggest cheers from the audience was when he said he's finally going to fight back against the foreign-funded anti-oil extremists.
And now, friends, I have a message, another message.
A message to those foreign-funded special interests who have been leading a campaign of economic sabotage against this great province.
To the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
to the Tithes Foundation, to lead now, to the David Suzuki Foundation, and to all of the others.
Your days of pushing around Albertans with impunity just ended.
Albertans are patient and we're fair-minded, but we've had enough of your campaign of defamation and double standards.
So today, today with this election, we begin to stand up for ourselves, for our jobs, and for our future.
Today, we Albertans begin to fight back.
From this day forward, whenever you lie about how we produce energy, we will tell the truth assertively.
And we will use every means at our disposal to hold you to account.
When multinational companies like HSBC boycott Alberta, we'll boycott them.
We will launch a public inquiry into the foreign source of funds behind the campaign to landlock Alberta's energy.
And we will ban foreign money from our politics and use every legal tool at our disposal to defend the working women and men of Alberta.
It was a long clip there, but I wanted to show it to you.
And here's my point.
By that moment, Kenny had won.
The votes were cast.
So he wasn't campaigning anymore.
He wasn't trying to get more people to support him anymore.
Foreign Funds Inquiry00:14:41
He didn't have to say that if he didn't mean that.
So I think maybe he means it.
In past shows, I've emphasized a few things he can do to really mean it.
He can bring in new laws, like South Dakota's law against riot boosting.
Basically says if you foment a violent protest against oil and gas or anything else, you, the fomenter, the booster, are on the hook.
Even if you're at Greenpeace headquarters in Amsterdam, if you boosted a riot, they'll prosecute you.
I like that law.
Most laws that Alberta needs are already on the books, though.
I mentioned the Canadian version of the RICO statute in the U.S., Section 467.1 of our criminal code, a criminal organization it's called.
I mean you could prosecute an environmental group that acts like a Hell's Angels gang or a mafia family.
That's what the law permits.
Those are important laws for a number of reasons and there are other things too.
But the thing about police actions and criminal prosecutions is that properly, appropriately, in our democracy, there's a high hurdle because we believe in free speech and peaceful protest, right?
So you don't want to just prosecute people for a crime.
If it's a thought crime or a peaceful protest, it has to be a real crime, like violence or a riot, which we have had, but we have laws for that.
I think our police and criminal prosecutors have actually made the other mistake.
They become a bit of a joke now.
You can pretty much commit any crime in full public view if it's against an oil company and you know the cops in the courts won't touch you.
Look at this, just the other day, contempt charges dropped against 14 protesters blocking BC Pipeline Project.
Crown and Coastal Gas Link agree not to proceed, but one person charged with assault.
Swap in protesting an oil pipeline for protesting an abortion clinic, and you know they wouldn't have been let go.
The prosecutors let them go.
And it looks like the energy company let them go.
Cowardice, responding to political pressure, I don't know, but it has to end.
But I don't think you need the criminal law for most of this work, because most of the work of environmental extremists in Canada is not violent.
It's not even trespass.
It's actually the opposite.
It's gaming the legal system.
It's jamming up the system.
Only the cannon fodder, you know, the college dopes do the stunts, like actually break into private property.
They're the ones who pay the price with a criminal record.
But the serious fights from Greenpeace and others like them, they're done in the courts.
They're done by registered lobbyists.
They're done by the propaganda machines.
They're not making crimes.
The vandals are just the shock troops to give the public the feeling of risk and chaos to the general population to create a simulation that opposition to pipelines is widespread and organic and real, whereas it's obviously the opposite.
It's foreign-funded and highly scripted by professional protesters.
So the real response is not to use police or prosecutors or even civil lawsuits.
It's to cut off the funds and expose who is behind this activism.
And how do you do that?
Well, the easiest part, but it's the small part, is to pressure oil companies themselves to stop funding their own enemies in a form of green mail, paying bribes to environmental groups so they won't attack them, but maybe they'll attack their competitors instead.
Here, for example, here's an annual fundraising shakedown by the Pembeda Institute.
They call it the Ungala.
Now, they're an anti-oil lobby group, of course, and you can see them.
They're on the Rockefeller Brothers Fund 10-year war on the oil sands.
They were part of the 10-year plan.
But looks who supports them.
Scroll down, this is their website.
Enbridge, what are you doing there?
If you keep scrolling down, you see Shell.
Do you see Shell there?
You see Suncorp, which I think is actually the largest oil sands producer in Canada now.
What are they doing there?
Enbridge, their Northern Gateway pipeline was killed by Pembina's former president, Marlowe Reynolds.
He is the chief of staff to Catherine McKenna, the environment minister.
Pemmeda lobbied to kill it, and Pemmina, their former boss, killed it.
What are they thinking?
Why is Enbridge giving the bad guys money?
Why are Shell and Suncorp paying money to anti-oil lobbyists?
I think Jason Kenney has to say to those companies, pick a side, guys.
Can't play both sides.
And it's not a big ask.
He's just asking those publicly traded oil companies to take the side of their own shareholders, to take their own side.
And I'm not proposing that he punish them if they choose to sleep with the enemy.
He should just say, well, I'm on the other side, so don't come lobbying, don't come for meetings, because I know you're not on my side.
So you stay over there with the NDP.
Kenny has to take that approach with CAP, too.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, they have been in appeasement mode for four years with Rachel Notley.
They have to be shaken out of their stupor.
But of course, the big money isn't coming from the oil companies paying green mail.
The big money is being funneled from the U.S., from the Rockefeller Brothers, from the Tides Foundation, from the Hewlett Foundation, from foundations, especially in America, but also in Europe, too, which funny enough don't ever go after Saudi oil or Russian oil or Iranian oil or Nigerian oil.
Just ethical oil in Canada.
They don't even go after Venezuelan oil these days.
So how do you go against them?
It's often money laundered through what's called donor-directed giving.
It's a form of tax fraud.
It's filing false charitable returns when it's not charitable work at all.
We know they did this.
We know they broke the law because they don't really even hide it.
I mean, for example, to launder money through a Canadian charity registered under the Income Tax Act to give a charitable receipt to that billionaire, for example, you have to do two things to get that charitable status.
Number one, you cannot be politically partisan.
You can't be for the Tories or the Liberals or the NDP.
No partisan politics at all, zero.
Number two, you can be political, like pro or anti-pipeline, but only if it's less than 10% of your activities.
And again, it can't be partisan at all.
But only 10%.
Well, what a joke.
All of these so-called eco-charities, they're all about politics.
I bet it's 90%.
It's really all they do, fighting pipelines, Pembina, Suzuki Foundation, all the lawsuits against pipelines by those legal action funds.
That's all political.
I mean, how is this not political and partisan by David Suzuki?
I was galvanized when I heard Mr. McGuinty first say that his plan was to shut down the coal-burning plants.
This was a big step off the path that we're on.
I remember a few years ago when it seemed like every other day in Toronto was a smog day.
So the health impact of shutting down those plants will save Ontario people millions of millions of dollars in the future.
And I think that what Mr. McGuinty has done is to show real leadership and begin Ontario onto a path that will encourage more and more renewable energy to come in.
And I happen to applaud the future that he's aiming us into.
So that was a Liberal Party ad, as you can see, for Dalton McGuinty a few years back.
That was David Suzuki.
It's perfectly legal in Canada to endorse whoever you want.
It's perfectly illegal for a registered charity to do so.
There is a zero tolerance for partisan activity, and he endorsed McGuinty, David Suzuki of the Sukuzuki Foundation.
Now, you might recall a few years back when I ran a little NGO called Ethical Oil, we filed complaints with the CRA against some of these law-breaking charities, and they failed their audits.
They're obviously breaking the law.
They didn't even hide it because no one ever held them to account.
Now, they appealed their audits, which is their right, but they broke the law, and it was a done deal.
They were going to lose their charitable status.
They're tax cheaters.
Greenpeace lost their charitable status twice, once under the Liberals, once under the Tories, because they're obviously criminals, not charities.
It's not charitable work to break into the Calgary Tower, for example.
That's criminal work, not charitable work.
Anyways, here's a blast from the past.
This is almost seven years ago now.
This is an excerpt from a CBC interview when Evan Solomon worked there.
The gentleman on the left is a foreign-funded lobbyist named Rick Smith, who at the time was with a registered charity called Environmental Defense.
And on the right is Jamie Ellerton, who was with my little ethical oil group.
Here, watch just for a minute and a half of this debate.
So I certainly think that what's been happening over the last few months in terms of environmental charities specifically and crassly smeared by the federal government, by the oil industry, by the oil industry's friends like Jamie beside me.
It's just an unprecedented attack on the ability of Canadians to participate in the democratic process.
So on the Jamie Ellerton, on the homepage of Ethical Oil website, there's basically a big green rectangle that says Canada Revenue Agency, time to investigate.
And when you click on it, it encourages people to basically fill out a form that then goes to the National Revenue Minister, Gail Shea, to report any radical or environmental lobby group masquerading as a charity.
And you've targeted environmental defense, Rick Smith's group.
Do you feel the government's targeting environmental groups fairly?
And if so, what's the evidence?
No, I think what you see here, Evan, is the government has taken note, like Ethical Oil has, of the increased political and partisan activity of registered charities in violation of the law.
So we've wrote letters to the Canada Revenue Agency calling for environmental defense and the David Suzuki Foundation to be investigated.
Environmental Defense, I will have you note, consisted, not only does a ton of political activity, also engaged in a partisan campaign, singling out Peter Kent and Thornhill, making 50,000 phone calls, campaigning door-to-door, and running ads.
This is all on Environmental's website back in February of 2011.
And we think they're in violation of the law.
They are slandering the oil industry.
They're not working constructively to help deal with some of the environmental challenges that the oil sands faces.
To the contrary, they're just saying stop it at all costs.
And we think we're encouraged by the measures announced in the budget that the government is going to put $8 million at the Canada Revenue Agency to beef up their compliance efforts to ensure registered charities are environmental.
What about this?
So yeah, that was seven years ago.
Stephen Harper hired more auditors at the CRA.
Nonpartisan auditors, of course, directed by other civil servants.
No political involvement, no government involvement, just realizing there's a problem with massive tax cheating and putting more auditors on it.
And lo and behold, a bunch of them were about to be banned, like Greenpeace was banned twice.
I mean, you heard Jamie, in the case of environmental offense, they literally boasted online about making 50,000 election phone calls against the Conservative.
Hey, fill your boots, but don't call that charitable work.
It's not illegal to campaign against conservatives, but it is illegal for a Canadian charity that has special tax-exempt status.
Sorry, that's just the rule.
So a whole whack of these fraudulent charities were about to be decertified.
But then one of the lobbyists himself was elected to the PMO.
Oh, not Trudeau, but Trudeau's Rasputin-like figure, Gerald Butts, this guy who ran one of these anti-oil NGOs, the World Wildlife Fund.
You can see the World Wildlife Fund logo on the tar sands campaign plan in the top right there.
Gerald Butts ran it.
I'm talking about this guy.
We think that the oil sands have been expanded too rapidly without a serious plan for environmental remediation in the first place.
So that's why we don't think it's up to us to decide whether there should be another route for a pipeline.
Because the real alternative is not an alternative route.
It's an alternative economy.
So Butts was taking foreign money, laundering it through a charitable tax receipt, and spending it on anti-oil lobbying.
And then he got into the PMO and he hired his buddy, the head of the Pembeda Institute.
You can see in the bottom right there, also on the tar sands campaign plan, and hired the head of the Sierra Club.
You can see them in the bottom right there, which was a Rockefeller Front Group 2.
They all went to work for Justin Trudeau.
And they killed the pipelines like they said they would.
But they also stopped the audits.
Look at this.
Political activity audits of charities suspended by the Liberals two years ago.
So there were all these tax cheaters in there, not my opinion, the opinion of the CRA auditors.
They were being audited by the auditors, not by politicians.
Same auditors who audit your taxes were auditing their taxes.
And they were found to be breaking the law, tax cheaters.
But they had friends in high places now, Gerald Butts.
So the audits were not rescinded.
They were legit audits.
They had already been appealed and they had failed their appeals.
So they were just, what's the word they used, suspended?
That must be nice, eh?
Just like things are always done by Gerald Butts in this crooked PMO.
Favors, favors for friends, secret favors, favors for Bombardier, favors for SNC Lavaland.
And unlike Jody Wilson Raybold, who stopped the corruption when it came to SNC Lavaland, the revenue minister obviously had no compunction about the prime minister's office coming in to rescue his political and personal friends and his former employer from their tax cheat problems.
Must be nice, eh?
Must be nice, those crooks.
Trudeau and Butts and the no-name CRA minister of the time just let their friends out of tax trouble.
And the CBC cheered, of course, because their remaining talent after Jen Gameshi was thrown out the window.
David Suzuki, their last recognizable talent, well, he was in jeopardy too, wasn't he?
They never disclosed that conflict of interest in their reporting on this stuff, though, eh?
So what can you do?
Well, you heard Jason Kenney.
To the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
To the Tides Foundation.
To lead now.
To the David Suzuki Foundation.
And to all of the others.
Your days of pushing around Albertans with impunity just ended.
All right, well, let's see it.
Kenney's Unlimited Resources00:02:32
I should tell you, Jason Kenney was in Stephen Harper's cabinet back in 2012, and he knows all about this stuff.
In fact, Jamie Ellerton, who was on TV there with Ethical Oil, he used to work for Jason Kenney.
Kenney knows all this stuff.
Harper didn't do too much about it back then.
He hired more auditors, but that moved so slowly by the time they were about to decertify the tax cheaters, a corrupt man himself was elected prime minister and he let all his friends off the hook, Lavalan style.
So what can Jason Kenney do now?
Well, the CRA is a federal organization, but was there fraud on provincial taxes filings with these groups?
I don't know.
Was there a crime like money laundering that can be investigated by Alberta agencies, by Alberta police, prosecuted by Alberta's Attorney General?
I don't know.
But I do know that if there were a proper investigation by police, with subpoenas, with search warrants, perhaps with court orders, compelling production of financial documents, where appropriate, follow the law.
No witch hunt.
Follow the law.
But if you had such an investigation, you'd get a lot of information.
I don't know enough about the powers that a provincial government has in this regard, but I suspect they're there.
In the United States, individual states, well, their attorneys general can do investigations and prosecutions all the time.
States don't wait for the feds, especially when the feds are of a different political party.
So I say, we're about to see what Kenney will do.
He says he means it.
He said it on election night after E1.
The appetite amongst his citizens is there.
Someone has to do something.
All of these tax cheats skated because Justin Trudeau and Gerald Butts left their crooked friends off the hook.
Well, let's see what Kenney does and his incoming energy minister and his incoming attorney general.
If they're creative, I think they can fill in a lot of the gaps left by Harper seven years ago and by Trudeau and Butts now.
Go after the foreign-funded lobbyists.
Go after them in the court of public opinion, yes, but go after them in the court of law too.
Hit them where it hurts most, their pocketbook.
All they care about is money.
Make their secret U.S. donors scared that they'll be outed and revealed.
Who knows?
Maybe it's not just U.S. donors.
Maybe some OPEC countries are financing anti-oil sands activists.
It would make sense, wouldn't it?
Put the lobbyists on the back foot for once.
Smoke them out.
Jason Kenney now has the almost unlimited resources of the provincial government to do it.
Democrats Seek Impeachment Opportunities00:14:46
Tell you what.
Shut down Notley's absurd solar power and wind power schemes.
You got a billion or two kicking around just from that.
Put 10% of that into hunting the hunters.
Those lobbyists will be too busy protecting themselves and hiding their foreign paymasters to have time to organize anti-pipeline protests, don't you think?
Stay with us for more.
I'd also like to thank Special Counsel Robert Mueller for his service and the thoroughness of his investigation, particularly his work exposing the nature of Russia's attempts to interfere in our electoral process.
As you know, one of the primary purposes of the Special Counsel's investigation was to determine whether President Trump's campaign or any individual associated with it conspired or coordinated with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.
Volume one of the special counsel's report describes the results of that investigation.
As you will see, the special counsel's report states that his, quote, investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
Well, there you have it, William Barr, the Attorney General of the United States, releasing the extended version of Mueller's investigation into so-called Russian collusion.
Several weeks ago, Barr had released his own four-page summary memo.
The big headline was, no collusion.
Well, today he made good on his promise to release much more of the details of it.
And joining us now via Skype from Washington, D.C. is our friend Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
Joel, great to see you again.
Help us out.
I mean, we went through that four-page memo and what it meant, no collusion, no obstruction, a few weeks ago.
Can you explain what was new today other than more of the report was shown?
Not much was new at all.
There are some details of things the president is alleged to have said about the Mueller investigation, that he wanted to fire Mueller, that Sarah Sanders said something misleading about FBI agents being unhappy under James Comey, little tidbits here and there.
Most of what we are hearing has been heard before, partly because the Mueller team seems to have leaked a lot to the mainstream media.
So there's not much that's new here in terms of facts.
What is new is the forceful way that William Barr asserted in his presentation of the Mueller report that there was no collusion and no evidence that Trump or any other American colluded with Russia, and his explanation of how he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein came to the conclusion that there was no obstruction of justice.
And he used an interesting, perfectly valid argument, but one we hadn't heard before, which was that the context mattered.
And the context was that, first of all, President Trump had been very cooperative with the investigation, had not sought privilege, had not sought to see the Mueller report in advance, had made witnesses freely available to the Mueller team.
And secondly, that Trump was frustrated with what he saw as efforts to undermine his presidency by the media and by law enforcement.
And many of the things he said or did about the special counsel's investigation can be viewed in light of that frustration and not as an attempt to obstruct justice.
So that was a context that we hadn't heard spelled out before.
The Democrats are furious about that.
They say that Barr is providing excuses for Trump to have obstructed justice.
So both sides are coming away from that press conference saying different things.
The GOP, Republican Party, saying that this is further vindication of Trump.
That's certainly how Trump sees it, probably how the rest of the country sees it on the whole.
But Democrats and the media are saying, wait, maybe there's meat on this bone after all.
They're going to go after Barr.
They're going to say that he misrepresented Mueller's investigation.
And they're looking at parts of Mueller's report that suggest there were efforts perhaps to do something wrong.
or that Mueller is even inviting Congress to impeach the president on its own.
He suggests in the report, for example, that Congress can investigate obstruction of justice even if it doesn't meet a criminal standard for prosecution.
And that doesn't interfere with the president's powers.
The president can still be impeached for obstruction of justice, even if he didn't criminally obstruct justice.
So the Democrats are trying to turn this into an opportunity to start impeachment hearings, to continue investigating.
It's almost like a perfect scenario for Trump, because on the one hand, he's been exonerated.
He's not going to be charged with any crimes.
There's no collusion.
And the country's top law enforcement officers said there was no evidence of obstruction of justice sufficient to warrant prosecution.
At the same time, his political opponents are going to remain obsessed with this Russia collusion conspiracy theory that the rest of the public now is getting tired of.
And instead of moving on to issues, perhaps where Democrats might be stronger, they're going to be obsessed with this endless investigation.
And I think it's a great political win for Trump on both counts.
No collusion, no obstruction on the one hand, and Democrats continuing to be obsessed on the other.
Yeah, well, you know, it seems to me, I mean, I remember some of those comments that Trump made over the last two years when he jokingly said, hey, Russia, if you got Hillary's emails, why don't you release them?
I mean, how many tweets did he make attacking Mueller and his partisan witch hunt?
It was so obvious to me, just as a layman, and I guess even far away up here in Canada, that that was Trump just being Trump, mouthing off, being partisan, being funny, being dramatic, using Twitter, saying what was on his mind.
The idea that a tweet or just being frustrated with what in the end was a baseless, it really was a witch hunt.
The idea that that is obstruction is such a stretch.
It would be, I mean, of course that's what all those things were.
But let me ask you this.
How has the media, the mainstream media, or what I like to call the media party, how have they responded?
There was about one millisecond of not contrition, but recognition that they had overplayed their hand when the four-page memo was released.
Are they in any self-reflection mode now or are they in, oh, good, there's a whiff of a whisper of a rumor of gossip here.
We can rev up the machine again.
No, there's no self-reflection whatsoever.
And there's no sense that they failed in any way.
They're all crowing about how their reporting was vindicated.
All that means is they got leaks from the Mueller investigation.
They reported those leaks, and lo and behold, the same information is in the Mueller report.
I mean, they're refusing to see that their narrative has fallen apart.
I think they know.
If you look at some of the glum faces on CNN, you know that they're disappointed that there weren't any bombshells.
There's nothing really to latch on to, except a few tidbits here and there to try to make the case that there was any collusion.
I think they hoped that Barr had lied about what was in the contents of the report, but why would he do that?
I mean, the report was going to come out, and he knew that, and he would never say anything that would be immediately disprovable.
But anyway, I think they hoped this would yield something.
They set themselves up for disappointment.
At the same time, they're really trying to help the Democrats salvage the situation by encouraging the idea that Trump did something that was unethical or wrong, that his reactions to the investigation were unacceptable, and that Congress should use its power to begin drafting articles of impeachment.
The House Democrats would probably pass those articles.
And so they're looking for that narrative.
They're looking for that direction to be the one that defines our politics.
And I think that's good for Trump because the public does not want to see him impeached if he didn't actually commit a crime.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, let me clarify there.
So you think, I forget how impeachment works.
There's a vote to impeach, and then in the Clinton case, there was a trial, but he was acquitted or something.
I'm trying to think of how, like, it's a two-step, right?
You can be impeached, but then you're not necessarily removed from office.
I don't know the legalities of your American system.
What do you think will happen, and what do you think won't happen in terms of impeachment and that?
Well, he's not going to be removed from office.
You need a two-thirds vote in the Senate to do that.
And without any criminal wrongdoing by the president, you're not going to get that.
But you could see articles of impeachment drafted and Democrats in the House voting for them.
The people driving the agenda in the Democratic Party right now are the radicals.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez renewed her call today for impeachment.
And if they are the ones driving this process, you can be sure that there will be a vote on impeachment in the House.
And if they do that, and I think they are more likely than not to do it, I think they could lose the House because I think the public actually doesn't want the president to be impeached.
He's not going to be removed.
It's purely a political exercise.
They want to put an asterisk on his presidency.
They want impeachment so that they can regard his presidency as illegitimate, even if he isn't removed from office.
But I think this direction is going to make it easier for President Trump to run for re-election, to make the case to the American people that he is actually a victim of a campaign of presidential harassment, as he calls it, or political persecution, and that he has to come into office again a second time with a Republican Congress so he can get things done.
And I think that's an easy case to make if Democrats continue doing what they're doing.
So again, in both ways, today is a win for President Trump.
Not only was he exonerated from collusion and obstruction a second time over, but the Democrats are now renewing their efforts to make the case that there was collusion and obstruction of justice.
They sound like conspiracy theorists who just can't let go.
And I wonder how many of them actually believe it, because some of what they're saying is almost certifiably nuts.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you say something long enough, it becomes a cult-like mantra.
I want to ask you one last thing.
I appreciate your time and your advice, Jojo.
I saw the other day an interview with Nancy Pelosi, I think it was on 60 Minutes, where she was asked about the radicals, the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes and the ones who were really getting all the energy on Twitter.
And she was quite dismissive.
She said, oh, there's about five of them in the whole Democratic caucus.
And she has that Pelosi, you know, that dry, dismissive style that can be withering, frankly.
And to see it directed at AOC, as she's called, was a bit of a splash in the face to me of, holy cow, maybe she doesn't like these young pups getting all the ink.
Let me ask you this.
Does Nancy Pelosi, I mean, I regard her as a hard left-wing San Francisco Democrat myself, but maybe she's, quote, moderate and normal compared to the new radicals.
Does she want impeachment?
Has she expressed a view that she want to put Trump to the articles of impeachment?
Pelosi has been rather careful about that.
Her deputy, Stenny Hoyer, the majority leader, has said he does not want to see impeachment happen.
Pelosi has often said, let's see where the facts lead.
I think she's keeping herself open because she has to.
The moderates and the radicals in her party want to do different things, and the only way she keeps them all on board is if she appears to be agreeing with both of them.
I don't think she's going to be able to stop impeachment once it starts.
I think she's going to try to appear to be the reasonable, moderate leader who's pushing back a little bit against impeachment.
And at the end of the day, she'll throw her hands up and say, what could I do?
This is where the facts led.
We have to have an investigation.
And she'll drag it out as long as she can.
But I think she understands that it could be a huge political liability.
And so she is going to try to talk about other things like healthcare.
You saw members of the Democratic leadership doing that immediately after the four-page summary was released three weeks ago.
They said, let's pivot to healthcare.
Let's talk about policy.
That failed because the base of the party is so riled up by this that they don't want to let it go.
So she's going to try to ride the tiger for a little while longer.
I don't think she's going to throw her weight behind impeachment, but she may be required to support it when it finally goes through the process, starting in the Judiciary Committee and eventually reaching the floor.
I think she's going to have to allow a vote on it.
It's very interesting.
Obviously, we're Trump supporters here at the Rebel.
But I must say, as a Canadian, I'm jealous of a system that has checks and balances on a powerful leader.
In Canada, we have true corruption scandals, so much so that two senior members of Justin Trudeau's cabinet have quit citing corruption of Trudeau himself.
Like, it's the most staggering, high-level condemnations of Trudeau by his right and left arm.
And yet we have no ability to have the kind of independent investigations and inquiries into what's manifestly corrupt and perhaps even criminal activity, as testified to by his own cabinet.
I got to say, I'm a little bit jealous of how your democracy works, the checks and balances.
And I just say that as a Canadian in a one-party, sorry, in a country where the leader, the prime minister, has such total control over really every branch of government.
Well, our system works.
And even people who are criticizing the president saying, well, he wanted to fire Mueller, but it's just the people around him that stopped him.
Well, there are checks and balances even within the executive branch.
So the system actually works.
People should be happy to see it working.
They should be happy there was no collusion with Russia.
Instead, Democrats and the media are pretty sad.
They didn't get the smoking gun they wanted.
They don't have much to chew on.
But amazingly, they're still barking up the same tree.
So I think Trump is going to have an opportunity to talk about issues, to speak directly to the American people, while Democrats and the media continue to talk to each other in circles.
Democrats Are Sad00:01:06
Well, it's great to see you, my friend.
Thanks very much for your time today.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
There you have it.
Joel Pollock, the senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
He joins us via Skype from Washington, D.C. Stay with us.
more Ahead on the Rebel.
Hey, welcome back to Today's show was actually recorded yesterday, so we could give our folks a bit of a holiday here at Rebel World Headquarters.
Therefore, my interview with Joel was recorded yesterday.
You may have noticed that.
I don't have any letters to read for you today, but I want to say thanks to everyone who supported the Rebel during our own version of a campaign in the Alberta election.
And by support, I mean taking a lawn sign, making Sheila's book a political bestseller, or tuning in on election night.
As I said before, we actually had more viewers for much of the night than the government broadcaster itself with all their billions.
That felt great.
And I hope you enjoyed the show.
All right, that's it for us for today.
Enjoy the weekend.
We'll see you on Monday.
Until then, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, you at home, good night.