Donald Trump’s tweets praising Hong Kong protesters while urging China’s Xi to resolve unrest "humanely" clash with his past admiration for Beijing, despite $6B U.S. tariffs pressuring China. The Rebel’s reporter Avi documents four days of protests (Aug 16–20), exposing China’s facial recognition surveillance and Western tech complicity. Meanwhile, Canada’s Trudeau faces unanswered obstruction charges—nine witnesses silenced, $400K in unrecused ethics breaches, and a judge’s explicit ruling ignored—raising fears of institutional corruption mirroring China’s crackdown on dissent. Bernier’s exclusion from debates stifles scrutiny of refugee policies and border integrity, risking voter fragmentation while emboldening leaders like Trudeau to evade accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
We've certainly talked about a lot of things over the months, but today I talk about Hong Kong because I have an affection for the Hong Kong people, also called Hong Kongers or Hong Kongese.
I'm affectionate.
How can you not be affectionate for a people that have built themselves up such a mighty city economically?
And you know what?
They love freedom.
And how can you not love someone who loves freedom and wants to fight for it against the mightiest tyranny in the world, China?
I have an affection for them, and we've decided to send a journalist to Hong Kong.
In fact, he landed today, and I'm very excited to tell you where you can get his reports.
All right, before I get out of the way and let you listen to my podcast, let me invite you to become a premium subscriber.
What's that?
Well, it's $8 a month or $80 if you want to buy the whole year in advance.
You can even get a discount if you want by typing in the coupon code podcast.
And not only do you get this podcast in video form, but you get access to a couple more shows too.
Sheila Gunri does one, David Menzies does one, and of course you get the satisfaction in knowing that you're helping to pay to produce this content.
All right, without further ado, here's my comments on the Hong Kong protests and the exciting news of our reporter who just touched down there.
You're listening to a rebel media podcast.
Tonight, Donald Trump throws his moral support behind the democracy protesters in Hong Kong, and the rebel has sent a reporter there.
It's August 16th, 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.
Historical Insights on Periphery Unrest00:05:56
The only thing I have to say is government.
But why?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
I've been watching the Hong Kong protests out of the corner of my eye for months.
We talked with our dear friend Gordon Chang about it last week.
Gordon made an interesting historical point.
In many times in Chinese history, including the last imperial dynasty, they unravel from the outside in.
So when you have unrest in the periphery, that can eventually move into the center itself.
And that's perhaps what we're seeing right now in Hong Kong.
You know, you have the unrest, of course, in the northwest where the Uyghurs live.
So this could very well be the beginning of the end of communism.
Might take a long time, Ezra, but this is very well maybe the process and how it gets started.
I thought that was very dramatic.
Wouldn't it be amazing if the spirit of democracy were to come to China from Hong Kong?
It's been a few years since I was in that amazing city, but I still remember being struck by how proud the Hong Kong geese are.
Some people say Hong Kongers or Hong Kong people.
How proud they are of their British inheritance.
And what I mean by that is they value the rule of law, the independent courts, property rights, the sanctity of contracts, habeas corpus, innocent till proven guilty, a nonpartisan public service, non-partisan police, you know, that sort of thing.
I was struck by how Hong Kongese had a distinct identity distinct from China based on those things.
As in, it was a point of pride for them culturally that they had an advantage, that luck, but not really luck, that heritage, as opposed to the misery of communist China.
And they wanted to make sure they didn't lose that inheritance when the merger with Hong Kong was given back to China 22 years ago.
I see a few traces of that culture in Taiwan too.
When I went there, oh, I don't know, about a dozen years ago, I saw there was an attempt in Taiwan to really forge a different cultural and even ethnic national identity compared to that of communist mainland China.
They believe they are different in Taiwan.
Don't want to just be absorbed as another little province in a vast Chinese communist empire.
Anyways, the world has been fairly silent on these protests.
I think so.
Even as 2 million Hong Kongese took to the streets.
Do you realize what a staggering number that is for a city of just 7.5 million people?
I don't know if that's ever happened before in history.
I can't think of a political protest anywhere in any country in any moment in time that is larger or at least larger proportionately.
Now, the Egyptian uprising against the Muslim Brotherhood dictator Mohamed Morsi alleged to have had 14 million protesters, but that was across the whole country, a country of 100 million people.
And I'm a little skeptical, but perhaps that is as impressive as what Hong Kong has done.
But these Hong Kong protests seem to me to be qualitatively different than what happened in Egypt a few years back.
They're so politically coherent, these Hong Kong protests.
They're so specific.
They want to preserve freedoms in Hong Kong that China is trying to take away through particular laws that attack the rule of law and the independence of the courts and the independence of the police.
The Egyptian protests, they had a general economic theme too.
Morsi had taken the country to the brink of starvation, frankly, and abject poverty.
Okay, now both protests were impressive, yes.
But I think Hong Kong's is more impressive to me, and here's why.
Because it's explicitly about freedom, not just about kicking out a rogue dictator like Morsi.
I mean, Hong Kongese are actually flying American flags and singing the American anthem because that's their symbol of freedom.
And also, they want America's attention, which it hadn't really had yet.
Which is another thing I find interesting.
Over the past 20 years, in the perpetual wars that followed 9-11, wars that still endure, there are still U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq today and throughout the Middle East.
Just last week, I saw the sad headline, another Marine died in Iraq.
What's America still doing in Iraq?
Don't say building democracy, please.
Trying to convince people to love freedom?
Does it work that way?
I don't know.
I think you have to have a cultural history, a national memory of freedom to make it stick.
Hong Kong had the great advantage centuries under the British.
Taiwan and Korea show you can learn that.
You can make freedom part of your culture.
But it takes some time, and you have to have some desire for it.
Have you seen any evidence of that desire in Iraq or Afghanistan or any other god-forsaken place where Americans and Canadians have died for what?
Did our latest Canadian forces mission in Mali, a place I challenge you to find on a map unaided, is Mali going to suddenly turn into a thriving democracy?
Thank God no Canadian has died there yet, as far as I know.
Compare that to Hong Kong, a people who desperately want freedom, who love it, who are there already, and they're standing up to the world's biggest tyrant.
I'm terrified that the beautiful, bustling, booming city will be Tiananmen.
You know what I mean.
We saw a few days ago footage released by the Chinese military of huge convoys of troops massing just across the border from Hong Kong in the city of Shenzhen.
Are they really going to roll those armored personnel carriers into Hong Kong and massacre people?
Because that's what it would be.
Because of course the Hong Kongese have many freedoms, but the right to be armed is not one of their freedoms, which means all they have are chants and flags, I'm afraid, and their own bodies.
Cathay Pacific's Propaganda Dilemma00:08:03
And China, by the way, is high-tech these days, using facial recognition software to film every single protester, thousands of them, hundreds of thousands, and to quickly identify them from databases of their photos.
Protesters cover their faces with masks or use lasers, which is what you can see here.
Lasers against the government cameras.
I don't know if it works.
The government's pretty high-tech.
They track the use of apps on cell phones.
They know who's down there.
Now, the Hong Kongese are very sophisticated, but so is China, thanks to the full cooperation of Google and other Western tech companies, only too happy to sell their services.
Just like IBM sold their proto-computers, their punch card machines to Nazi Germany.
Let me show you what that facial recognition software does.
Top accounting firms urged to fire pro-ride employees despite distancing themselves from statement calling for release of radical protesters.
So let me explain what happened here.
Huge protests, 2 million Hong Kongese.
Some employees at Western firms in Hong Kong dared to sign a letter for freedom.
China, in retaliation, threatened the companies themselves.
Here's a tweet from a Chinese communist propaganda page called Global Time.
Look at what China did to the mighty airline Cathay Pacific, regarded as one of the finest airlines in the world.
Cathay Pacific announced the resignation of two executives on Friday, including CEO Rupert Hogg and Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Paul Liu.
The reshuffle comes amid criticism of the airline due to its lukewarm attitude in drawing a line with its radical employees in Hong Kong.
Remember, this is a Chinese propaganda outlet I was quoting from there.
So by radical, they mean that a couple of Cathay Pacific employees are amongst the 2 million Hong Kongese supporting freedom.
And they actually pushed out the CEO of Cathay Pacific, a mighty airline.
Let me read another tweet from the same Global Times.
This is an English language propaganda page for the Communist Party.
Cathay Pacific's chairman, John Robert Slosser, said the reshuffle was in response to recent events that get this, have questioned its commitment to flight safety, which put pressure on its reputation, stressing the airline fully supports the basic law and one country two systems principle.
Did you catch that?
The Chinese communists said, hey, nice airline you got there, Cathay Pacific.
Shame if anything were to happen to it.
Oh, and by the way, all those democracy protesters you see, we figured it out that democracy makes your airline unsafe.
You're not flying safely.
You're not committed to flight safety.
That's their language.
So either you fire your employees and you fire your CEO and you fire anyone else we tell you to fire, or wouldn't it be a shame if you can't fly into China anymore, which would be tough given that Cathay Pacific is based in China in Hong Kong.
Obviously, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com and the Washington Post, obviously he caved immediately to Beijing too.
Look at this one.
This is another tweet from that same propaganda outlet, Global Times.
Amazon said it has always accepted and respected the one country two systems policy and complied with local laws when doing business across the world after it was found, uh-oh, you know what they did?
Selling t-shirts with images and slogans supporting violent protests and secessionist movement in Hong Kong.
But look at that.
Do you see those shirts there?
These are the actual shirts.
Do you see what they say?
Free Hong Kong democracy now.
That's all they say.
That's it.
But according to Beijing, that's violent.
The word freedom is violent.
So Amazon was pressured and they took the pressure of just a gentle breeze to have that Trump-hating leftist Jeff Bezos bow down to Beijing, didn't he?
He couldn't do it fast enough.
Look at this crazy stuff again.
This is from China's official English language foreign propaganda channel.
Strengthening ideological and political courses for the youth is more urgent and relevant given the current international situation and current chaos in Hong Kong, say observers.
Huh.
Gordon Cheng was right.
The virus of freedom could well spread into China.
Here's hoping.
Well, speaking of tweets, the Twitter-in-Chief threw a few bombshells, rhetorical bombshells, into the mix.
Let me quote Trump.
I know President Xi of China very well.
He is a great leader who very much has the respect of his people.
I can't say that without chuckling.
He is also a good man in a tough business.
You know, it's tough being a dictator.
No one thinks about how tough it is.
And then look at this.
I have zero doubt that if President Xi wants to quickly and humanely solve the Hong Kong problem, he can do it.
Personal meeting?
Wow.
Look at that.
It's like how he used Twitter to box in Kim Jong-un.
Flattery and praise, but just coming out and saying pretty clearly, don't touch those protesters violently.
Got to be humane.
And then Trump followed up a day later.
He said this.
If President Xi would meet directly and personally with the protesters, there would be a happy and enlightened ending to the Hong Kong problem.
I have no doubt.
I love his use of enlightened.
That has a Chinese feeling to that word.
Now, I don't know what the likelihood of Xi meeting with the protesters is.
I'd say it's about one in a billion gazillion.
Probably not that high.
It's literally impossible.
Imagine the precedent that would set in China.
If you protested against the dictator, the dictator might actually give you a meeting in return.
Imagine what that would do across China from Tibet to the Uyghur homeland of Xinjiang to people upset with mere corruption and police abuse to just plain old people who want freedom.
Nah, nah, Trump was making an impossible suggestion, but it put Xi on the spot, didn't it?
All the while, Trump's smart, he's smarter than you think.
He's jacking up tariffs on Chinese products by hundreds of billions of dollars.
I think China's actually on the verge of its first recession in a generation.
They're terrified.
They're running out of foreign currency reserves.
Factories are actually leaving China so they don't have to pay Trump's tariffs.
Trump is jubilant about it.
He brags about it.
He was on the Trump tweet.
If they don't get this trade deal with the U.S. done, China could have its first recession or worse in years.
There's disinvestment in China right now.
Disinvestment.
And what does China have in return?
How's China going to fight back?
Well, other than with more propaganda in their schools, here's the big plan again, according to the Global Times.
They say, if China plays the card of the holiday economy to hit back on the U.S. in the trade war, Americans may have an unforgettable Christmas this year with price hikes for Christmas trees, plastic reindeer, glittery wreaths, and even Bibles.
Yeah, that's not quite as scary as I think they think it is.
I mean, either plastic Christmas ornaments and other junk will be a dollar more expensive at the dollar store, or Americans will just have to make those little trinkets in America.
And I'm not putting them down.
I'm just saying, come on.
I don't think that's going to bring America to its knees.
What a showdown we see here.
Trump is winning economically, politically, and who knows?
Maybe he is planting the seed of democracy in China.
He's not planting it.
That's too active.
But it's already planted.
Two million Hong Kongese planted it there.
But Trump isn't encouraging it, as leaders of the West are supposed to do.
Last pair of Trump tweets, I promise.
Look at this.
Good things were stated on the call with China the other day.
They are eating the tariffs with the devaluation of their currency and pouring money into their system.
The American consumer is fine with or without the September date, but much good will come from the short deferral to December.
It actually helps China more than us, but will be reciprocated.
Millions of jobs are being lost in China to other non-tariffed countries.
And then look at this.
Thousands of companies are leaving.
Of course China wants to make a deal.
Hong Kong Reports Launch00:02:28
Let them work humanely with Hong Kong first.
Wow.
I think what that means is Donald Trump's actually saying, I mean, you saw it for yourself, that he wants China to be humane.
He's using that word.
I guess that has a special meaning.
He wants China to be humane with Hong Kong before he does any trade deal with them.
Humanity first, civil rights first, trade deals second.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Aren't the woke leftists supposed to be the ones who care about human rights and put principles first?
Yet it's Trump who did, not Merkel or Trudeau.
Trump, who cares about freedom for Hong Kongese?
And who knows?
Who knows?
Maybe his moral pressure will do more for freedom than all the costly wars of the past 20 years.
And you know what?
I'm curious about the story.
Are you?
I hope you are.
And I'm hopeful.
I hope you are too.
And I want the real news.
And obviously, I don't trust the state broadcaster either, China's state broadcaster or Canada's state broadcaster.
So you know what we're going to do?
We're going to send our own reporter to China.
In fact, he just landed in Hong Kong.
Our friend Abby Yamini, the energetic Australian who I've gotten to know a little bit over the past year or two in support of Tommy Robinson, he's a big Tommy fan too.
I've seen his journalism both in the UK and in Australia.
You know, he's really good.
He's getting really good.
He's got courage.
He's not afraid of a bit of tear gas.
He's got a great sense of humor.
He's really funny.
And he cares about freedom.
I think he's a good fit for this project.
It's just a one-off project.
He's landed in Hong Kong today.
And for the next four days, he's going to be filing reports for us about these protests.
What are they really like?
Who are the protesters?
What are the police like?
Are people worried about those Chinese tanks invading?
Are people hopeful that Trump will do more than just tweet?
I am so curious, aren't you?
So we've set up a special website, hongkongreports.com.
And we expect to have videos on it as soon as tomorrow night.
I'm excited about being on the ground out there and hearing the truth and cheering on those who care about freedom.
We've sent Avi and his cameraman, so that's two flights and a hotel and taxi fare and meals.
Witnesses Ordered Not to Cooperate00:15:37
Total cost for the expenses to get him and his cameraman there, about $4,000 by the time we're done.
If you can help us chip in, please do at hongkongreports.com.
But either way, all of our videos are going to be put up on that website for free.
They'll be outside the paywall.
We just want the world to see the truth, and it's just a little pricey game in Hong Kong.
Are you with the people of Hong Kong like Donald Trump is?
I hope so.
So go to hongkongreports.com.
We won't have new videos up there today, but they should be up tomorrow to get the rebel take on it.
Thanks.
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, it was a bombshell, yet another ethics bombshell exploding in Justin Trudeau's office.
But he just has that perma grin.
He's going to try and brazen it out.
Mario Dion, the second conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, has convicted Trudeau of violating the Conflict of Interest Act.
That in itself is not a criminal code offense, but it is a law.
He broke the law yet again.
I have shared with you my initial thoughts on the subject in a monologue, but someone who I follow very closely, especially when it comes to matters involving both law and politics, is our friend Manny Montenegrino, who was our chief expert on the NAFTA renegotiations.
And he has been following this ethics report very carefully.
And he joins us now via Skype from Ottawa.
Manny, great to see you again.
Great to be with you, Ezra, as always.
Well, Manny, I had my say on the subject.
If I had to sum up my biggest concern in one sentence, it would be this.
Nine people who work for the Prime Minister told Mario Dion that they had more relevant information to share, but that Trudeau was forbidding them from disclosing it.
So that tells me we don't even know the worst of it.
That's, I guess, my takeaway, but I really want you to go deep on this.
Can you take us through the offenses, take us through what Trudeau did and use your own legal and political mind to help guide us here?
Absolutely, Ezra.
Let's start from the beginning.
Justin Trudeau was elected late 2015.
By 2016, March, he's already orchestrated, which is very hard to do, a free trip to the private island of the Aga Khan.
Now, he did not go, but his wife and friends did, and he obviously, that was one of the violations under the Ethics Act, under Section 11, by taking gifts.
Then another similar violation when he and his family went back on December 16th to the Aga Khan's private island.
And people have estimated that each one of these trips, if you include the entourage and being at the island, and sometimes, as the Prime Minister's wife was, being on the island by yourself without the Aga Khan there, it's about $200,000 per trip.
So we're talking about $400,000 worth of free gifts.
Now, that was two violations that the previous ethics commissioner found.
But in addition, another alarming one, and we know this, and I think Canadians know this, this Prime Minister does not have his hands on the minutiae of the running of the government.
But he did with respect to putting himself in a position where they were giving grants to the Aga Khan, and he again was found to be in breach of the Ethics, Section 21, which is he failed to recuse himself.
Now, think about that.
You've just got $200,000 twice free trips to the Aga Khan, and you make yourself to the decision of giving grants to the Aga Khan Foundation, and that is a violation.
So all in all, at the very first instance of these two trips and others, he's in breach of 13 separate violations under the Ethics Act, the Conflicts Act.
And that was found by an ethics commissioner.
And I want to remind you, Ezra, when we were going through the second trouble with Prime Minister Trudeau, the obstruction of justice, he calmed the nation by saying, we don't need a justice inquiry.
We don't need a royal commission.
We have a quasi-judge, the ethics commissioner.
And he called him a judge.
And I paid note to that, Ezra, because he's trying to comfort everybody that a judge is going to be looking at it.
Mario Damon is a judge.
He will be adjudicating.
And that's what he said to Canadians.
So we'll get to that in a second.
But the very first instance where he has 13 breaches of separate violations under the Ethics Act, there's another important point that the previous Commissioner Dawson found, and that was the Prime Minister was not credible.
And what I mean by that, he attempted to say to a judge that the Aga Khan was a friend who he had not seen for 30 years.
The commissioner said, I do not accept your evidence.
And when a judge says that, you know, we say, you know, we can use different language, but basically some say lie, but others like they not credible and not a credible witness.
So in the backdrop, you have the Prime Minister of Canada who has been found 13 separate violations over two attempts, March 16th, December 16th, and found by a judge not to be credible.
Now, we sit and what does he do?
Does he behave?
No, he then goes and tries a four-month campaign to obstruct justice for SNC Lavalan.
Now, what happened, Ezra?
What happened?
The attorney, this is unprecedented.
The Attorney General of Canada, the top lawyer, breaks and says, I can't take this anymore.
This is wrong.
This has got to stop.
And that in itself ought to have, I mean, that is about as serious as you can get in Canada when the top, and this is a liberal attorney general.
This isn't politics, but it was seen as politics because that's how the prime minister got around it.
But the attorney general says, this is so bad that I need to speak.
And then, in addition to that, she gets fired.
She was fearful of losing her job because she was holding up the rule of law.
The clerk quits.
Butts quits.
Five attorney generals sent a letter saying to the RCP, we see evidence of obstruction of justice.
The opposition leader, Andrew Scheer, says, we see evidence of obstruction of justice.
And gratuitously, the Attorney General of Ontario, the ex-Attorney General Michael Bryant, says, in his legal opinion, it is obstruction of justice.
Well, that was all pushed aside, Ezra, because it said, well, this is all politics.
We've got to wait for Mario Dumont, the judge, as the Prime Minister likes to call him.
Well, they have to wait till what he says.
Well, what did he say?
He said, in a scathing decision, it was clear conflict of interest, and the evidence was there that there was clear obstruction of justice.
So he is not a politician.
He was appointed by the prime minister.
So here you have a attorney general appointed by the prime minister, a clerk working for the prime minister, butts, best friend of the prime minister, an attorney general from Ontario, and now a judge of the ethics commissioner appointed by Trudeau, all pointing to clear evidence that there is obstruction of justice.
You know, I read the Mario Dion's report, and he's a very clear writer, and I would invite people to find the report and read it online.
It's not too technical a document.
You'll get into lots of the details of who said what, when, but it shows that Trudeau had this whole team working against Jody Wilson-Raybould.
They were scheming privately with lawyers from SNC Lavalin and not telling Jody Wilson-Raybold that.
And Wilson-Raybold said she was surprised to learn this, that, for example, that they were taking legal opinions drafted by SNC Lavalam.
The Prime Minister Trudeau was briefing himselves on those, and they were lobbying Jody Wilson-Raybold, pressuring Jody Wilson-Raybold on behalf of the company.
It's crazy, Manny.
And that only came out.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And it can't, I mean, Ezra, I cannot think of a case where the facts are so clear and meets the test under section 139.1 of the criminal code, which is obstruction of justice.
It is a very clear section.
It says everyone, that includes Justin Trudeau, who willfully, and that Mario Deon's decision wasn't, it was absolutely willful.
When you have an orchestrated attempt for four months working along with SNC Landland lawyers and trying to obstruct the Attorney General, that is about as willful.
I go past willful and say it's premeditated, but he met the threshold of willful, or the case was.
Attempts, and it was clearly many attempts over a four-month period in any manner, it says.
And it is to obstruct.
So the case has been absolutely met.
So it is, it is.
Now, Ezra, here's an interesting point.
And, you know, we get more American news than we get Canadian news, thanks to our media who's fixated on Trump.
So we don't, but we, everyone knows the Mueller report.
The investigation there was to see whether there was any collusion.
Now, this is very typical in criminal cases.
There is an alleged crime you investigate it.
And within that alleged crime, sometimes those who are investigated don't cooperate fully with the investigator.
And so in the Mueller case, they came forward and said there's no evidence of Russian collusion.
But did the president, with his tweets and otherwise, try to obstruct?
And they found, of course, not a clear case.
Now, bring ourselves to Canada.
We have a criminal case of obstruction of justice where the Attorney General clearly made the case.
And now the Judge Ethics Commissioner, Mario Demon, finds clearly that.
But he also says something else, Ezra, and you alluded to it at the beginning of the show.
And that is they obstructed justice within the investigation of obstruction of justice by not letting the nine people speak.
Now, I mean, in America, the White House let everyone speak.
In Canada, nine key witnesses were told not to speak.
That would have been, that is a separate charge of obstruction of justice.
And so you have, the irony is, is that we have an abundance, we have a plethora, we have a mountain of obstruction of justice cases here.
This isn't just simply saying, oh, we can't meet with you, Marion.
instructed not to meet with you it's pretty uh the way dion described it these witnesses had information were prepared to cooperate but they were ordered not to by a government lawyer And there's this crazy line in there, Manny, where Mario Dion says that when he tried to negotiate the release of this information, they were stonewalled.
And Trudeau said, well, what can I do?
The PC lawyer says not to.
So I'm not like, as if the prime minister doesn't have the power to release that information because some lawyer who works for Trudeau says, don't do it.
And Trudeau says, what could I do?
The lawyer says I can't give you the info.
Stephen Harper waived privilege over everything in the case of Admiral Mark Norman.
He just said, I waive it.
Any rights I have, I waive it.
And Trudeau not only didn't waive it, he enforced his rights, and the little coward blamed some lawyer in the Privy Council office.
I can't believe he's getting away with this, Manny.
It's shocking.
Ezra, there was a case where the RCMP investigated a senator for spending $90,000, Senator Duffy, on specious evidence, on allegations.
We have here clear, not only allegations, we have here judgments of a judge, ethics commissioner that lays out obstruction.
And in that case, on the Senator Duffy, what did Prime Minister Harper do?
He not only instructed everyone to be cooperative and give all the evidence, most of them were witnesses for the Crown.
They weren't obstructing.
They were in fact witnesses for the Crown to assist the Crown in the case.
Here we have obstruction by the Prime Minister's office on a case of obstruction.
It just, it is beyond comprehension.
And now, you know, Ezra, Canadians know, and I've been asked this on Twitter because I've got a lot of American followers.
Is there any impeachment capability in Canada?
And Americans don't know.
They have a solid constitution where everyone is responsible and there's supervision and so on.
In Canada, all we have is a parliamentary democracy that solely relies on ministerial responsibility, i.e. kind of an honest check of yourself.
If you do something wrong, you resign.
And without that, we have no power.
We have to depend on the integrity of our politicians to act properly.
Or the parliamentary system is a joke.
And since it was starting to get a joke, we created a legislation called the Conflicts of Interest Act because we didn't need that before, because we trusted our politicians.
They were honorable.
They were representing.
But now we have a piece of legislation and that doesn't even help to get responsible government.
We need to have, I mean, unfortunately, the only thing that will work is a criminal investigation by the, I mean, I cannot believe that the RCP is not already and has not already concluded.
I mean, there is absolutely no evidence, none, zero, that suggests that at least investigation and charges should not be laid.
Now, where this goes criminally is up to great lawyers and great parsing of the criminal code.
But Ezra, we have a decision of a quasi-judicial body, the ethics commissioner, referred to by the prime minister as a judge, scathingly say there was obstruction of justice.
RCMP Commissioner's Call for Action00:11:05
That's all you need to lay charges.
And he's explicit that he doesn't even know the whole story because of the nine witnesses who were ordered to stay quiet.
It's very frustrating.
I was talking to Lauren Gunter about this the other day, and I said, our system depends on people voluntarily complying with the law, even if they're not thrilled about it.
I mean, I guess all of society depends on that.
We don't have enough policemen to ensure that every single citizen obeys the law all the time.
There's just not enough.
There's not enough jails.
We have to rely on people doing the right thing.
In politics, I think it's sort of the same way.
After what Mario Dion just reported, if the entire political establishment says we're going to brazen it out, we're going to say, well, we disagree and move on like nothing happened, something's got to break because we rely on some submission by the Prime Minister to the rule of law.
But he's sort of saying to all of Canada, I dare you.
I dare you, you're going to blink first.
Let's have a staring contest.
I'm not going to blink.
Well, it's a bit different than that.
You know, there's a lot, and it's just so infuriating in the media.
The discussion now is, will Trudeau apologize?
Why did he not apologize?
You know, no one cares.
And all this does is diminish the seriousness.
You know, as, you know, your kid broke a window.
Should he apologize?
The seriousness of the crime.
This is obstruction of justice.
You can't get much bigger, especially when it's wielded by the prime minister and the PMO.
But Canadians do not understand, Trudeau is not, Prime Minister Trudeau is not being obstinate or being, you know, narcissist about not apologizing.
He's got great criminal lawyers telling him, do not apologize because the case is so strong against you.
Mario Dion made such a strong case.
If you apologize, you are basically saying to the court, when you get to a criminal court, I am guilty.
He has to.
I mean, listen, if I was instructed, I mean, you know, some great criminal lawyer friends of mine that would simply say, do not admit, do not apologize.
It still could go to court.
Here's the thing: the new RCMP commissioner was appointed by Trudeau.
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that she's not putting integrity first, but I saw this little video clip of her hugging Trudeau in that close, huggy way that Trudeau does with women, that he wants to sort of mark, I'm the alpha dog, you are submissive to me.
He does this to all the women in his cabinet.
He touches the bum of the governor general.
Like he's got this weird thing he does with women.
He physically touches them, he hugs them.
I think it's sort of like a pickup artist domination psychological trick.
I'm worried, Manny, that that RCMP commissioner is not doing the right thing, and I hope I'm wrong, but she reminds me too much of the submissive women who stayed in Trudeau's cabinet as opposed to the proud, honorable women, Jody Wilson, Raybold, and James Philpott, who quit cabinet.
I'm worried that she's more in the mold of Melanie Jolie and Catherine McKenna, women who would do anything just to stay in power.
Well, you know, Ezra, I don't want to say that, but I will say this.
You have an unprecedented set of facts that began at the beginning of the year.
The Attorney General pleading to the public that I think he's going to fire me because I'm protecting Canada's rule of law.
Then she gets fired.
The clerk quits.
Butts quits.
Attorney Generals are demanding an RCMP investigation.
This all happened.
Now, the video you're referring to happened on July 1st, and that was Canada Day.
And I see that video on Twitter and it breaks my heart to see people use that.
And I've retweeted it because I want people to see it.
That basically are saying, now, the RCMP commissioner knows very, very well that there's at least an apprehension that there could be some criminality, a very serious one.
You would think you'd have the presence of mind not to be in that hug fest during this.
And now we have a judge, Mario Demont, coming with a decision saying obstruction of justice.
And you have, and only a month or so ago, you had the RCMP commissioner hugging the accused prime minister.
And it's just unfortunate.
And the RCMP, I mean, they really, they're the last people in Canada that can protect Canadians what we expect, the rule of law.
You know, we lost our Attorney General who is protecting the rule of law.
We have a new Attorney General, and it is beyond my comprehension that David LeMetti, who has said, I don't need to interview, who has now before him, and everybody was waiting for Mario Demont, who now has before him a decision by a judge, as Trudeau calls him, the Ethics Commissioner, and the Attorney General of Canada is not calling in the RCMP.
The Attorney General of Canada is not saying, this is serious.
The Attorney General of Canada says, I still take the Prime Minister's word.
I mean, the only person that can protect Canadians, the only group that can protect Canadians, and it is wrong to put this to an election.
This is not a matter of an election.
This is a matter of rule of law.
And the only people that can do it, Ezra, are the RCMP.
And they've got to move quickly because we are slowly, slowly losing confidence in our judiciary.
I mean, we've also even, you know, we even heard in that report, which breaks my heart, that the ex-Chief Justice, Supreme Court Justice Beverly McLaughlin, was helping in this obscure obstruction of justice.
I mean, it is beyond my comprehension that we've lost the judiciary, the census.
We've lost the clerk of the Privy Council, the one who takes care of the independent bureaucracy.
We've lost, and please, God, let's not us lose the RCMP.
We've seen the obstruction of justice with the Admiral Norman.
You know, our military is now corrupted.
I mean, this is, and you know, Ezra, what bothers me, and I say this almost on every time we do an interview, I think of those two young men in China.
You know, they are sitting there and China is now reading a legal judgment saying that the prime minister obstructed justice while China was told that we in Canada never interfere in the justice process.
China is, that decision vindicates China, their gross and vile acts to these two wonderful men.
But they sit there now saying we were right.
Trudeau obstructed.
Trudeau told us he doesn't.
He did.
A judge said that he obstructed.
And we hold these Canadians in the same honor or the same perspective as they hold our citizen from the CEO of Huawei.
And so they sit there and say, we're doing the same as you are because we have a legal judgment.
And that alone, I mean, God, do Canadians care?
There are two men that are now in jail and the prime minister should resign.
The RCMP should investigate.
We should, these men are in jail because of the prime minister acts making it worse and worse and worse for them.
And I can't believe people are not as upset.
I mean, these could be my sons.
These could be my nephews.
These could be, and these men did absolutely nothing except get caught in the obstruction of justice by the prime minister.
Well, Manny, it's incredible.
I know we are only, what, about 75 days away until the next election.
And I am worried he's just going to bluff and brazen his way out.
I truly believe that if the RCMP does not investigate Trudeau, I think he's going to get away with it.
Yeah, you've got a few journalists who are upset about it.
Andrew Coyne and Paul Wells has obviously fallen out of love with Trudeau in recent months.
But other than a handful like that, I see the Toronto Star editorial board has already forgiven Trudeau.
By the way, they're taking $115,000 a week from Trudeau's bailout fund.
I'm worried he's going to get away with this.
And I'm worried, not just because I don't like him as a prime minister, but because of the legacy of corruption in our rule of law.
Last word to you, Manny.
It's great to have you on the show again.
Yeah, thank you, Ezra.
Listen, Ezra, I understand Canadians to be kind, to be generous, to be forgiven.
We are wonderful people in that sense.
But here we have a person that has had 13 priors, 13 breaches, a separate section of the Conflict of Act, the Interest Act, reported by a judge.
And now we have him in the height of conflict of interest, in the height of criminal activity, which is obstruction of justice 139.1.
And it is clear that the case has been made.
And within the investigation, he obstructs the investigator.
I mean, it can't get worse.
There is got to be a time in Canadian soul that they've got to say, we've got to respect. the rule of law.
We've got to put Canada ahead.
If this continues, Ezra, if this doesn't end, there's nothing that the prime minister cannot do in a new mandate.
And it scares me.
And, you know, Ezra, we're watching.
It's amazing.
I don't understand.
We're watching what's happening in China.
In China, in Hong Kong, there was no obstruction of justice.
There's no malfeasance.
It was just a piece of legislation that was going to kind of remove some of the rights, human rights of the Hong Kong citizen.
And they, millions, are on the street.
They understand.
They understand what it is to lose your civil rights.
In Canada, we are not only not caring as much, but we're allowing the malfeaser to continue.
And we are, you know, we are basically, I almost feel like we are lobsters here or frogs in a hot water.
We just turn up the temperature and we'll slowly die and nobody cares.
There goes it.
I wish we had the same love for freedom that those Hong Konges are showing.
Manny, it's great to see you again.
Thanks for taking the time.
You're our go-to expert for these matters, and it's great to talk to you again.
No problem, Ezra.
Thank you.
Right on.
There's Manny Montenegrino.
Debating Bernier's Exclusion00:03:49
He's the head of Think Sharp and a former lawyer to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Stay with us.
There's more I had on the road.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about the government running the leaders debates and blocking Bernier from participating.
Susanna writes.
Talk about censorship, excluding Bernier from the debates is a surefire sign that all the other parties are afraid of him and his message.
Many Canadians haven't even heard of Maxime and might agree with his views.
Yeah, well, listen, anything can happen when free speech is afoot.
A good idea might even be heard, or a bad idea might be heard and debunked.
I don't know.
All I can think of, though, is if the Bloc Québécois leader is allowed to debate in English, but Maxime Bernier is not, something's wrong.
Jonathan writes, if Bernier had resigned his seat in the first place, ran as that PPC in the by-election and won, he would be in the debate.
But nope, he did it his way and therefore doesn't qualify.
Yes, and that's my point, is that rule was specifically written in that manner, but by whom?
By Justin Trudeau.
And that's my point, is that I do not believe that a player can also be a referee.
And I don't believe that the government should decide who gets to challenge the government.
Now, it sounds to me like you're probably a conservative who doesn't like the risk that Bernier will split votes from the right.
And that is a valid concern.
But the answer to that is not giving Justin Trudeau control of who can and can't be in a debate.
I think it's fairly obvious only one of two men will be prime minister on October on the night of October 21st, Justin Trudeau or Andrew Scheer.
I don't think the math would allow anything else.
So obviously I'm aware of that.
But I still want Jack Meet Singh to be allowed in the debate, even though I don't particularly like him.
I don't know if Elizabeth May should be in, but she will be in.
And surely if she should be in, surely Maxime Bernier should too.
Preston Manning was in debates before his party, before he had a seat himself, before his party was a force to be reckoned with.
I don't know.
There's so many examples here, but the main point is, whatever the decision is, it should not be that of the Liberal Prime Minister.
On my interview with Kien Becksey about his trip to Wroxham Road, Liza writes, How much conversation about what is going on at Wroxham Road and the illegals coming across will happen in the debates without Bernier?
Canadians want it addressed.
Canadians want Bernier's input on it.
Canadians want to hear it debated.
That's exactly right.
And, you know, Bernier talks about the dairy cartel, and he also talks about the tweetlead, tweedled dumb of the liberals and the conservatives on certain key policies.
And that might sound shocking to conservatives who really believe that Andrew Scheer is the anti-Trudeau.
And in some ways he is, but in many ways, important ways, he is not.
I cannot really tell you a difference between Andrew Scheer and Justin Trudeau on immigration on the key issues that matter to me at least, which is the actual number of immigrants, whether or not we pretend that immigrants coming in from the United States can actually be refugees, the demographic and national mix of immigrants.
Andrew Scheer is so terrified of those, he just says, yeah, whatever Trudeau says, I'm fine with.
There's no meaningful difference there.
So yeah, I actually believe in a debate.
And that's the one hope I have.
I acknowledge the risk of Maxime Bernier is splitism on the right, but the hope that I wish, I think, might offset that risk is that being a full-throated advocate for true conservative ideas, maybe that would press Andrew Scheer to be a little bit more conservative.
If it's just the club getting together, you won't hear a real conservative word said.
Hope For Conservative Shift00:00:34
That's the show for today, everybody.
Thanks for tuning in.
We should have Hong Kong Reports with its first video.
Avi Yamini touchdown today.
There's a time zone difference that I'm trying to figure out, and we've got to edit the videos and put them up.
But they should be up by tomorrow.
I hope you check those out.
I'm actually pretty proud that we sent someone over there.
The total cost of him is cameraman.
The hotel taxis and airfare is about four grand.
I haven't precisely tallied it up.
If you want to help us, please do.
In any event, go to hongkongreports.com.
All right, folks, that's it for today.
Until next time, on behalf of us here at the Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.