Joel Pollak argues Trump’s 2020 trade, immigration, and LGBT policies—like USMCA’s labor union wins, Grinnell’s diplomatic role, and global decriminalization efforts—undercut Democratic identity politics, which alienate voters. Despite trade wars and mixed unemployment stats, Trump’s economic growth and symbolic wall resonate, while Democratic impeachment tactics backfire. Pollak credits Trump’s charisma and market-driven resilience over government control, contrasting Alberta’s oil struggles with U.S. energy booms. Even if Democrats lose, their opposition won’t wane, but Trump’s appeal to working-class groups could secure reelection, reshaping politics beyond traditional partisan divides. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, the U.S. Democrats, can they find a candidate to beat Donald Trump?
It's December 27th, 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.
Well, you know him as our expert Sherpa to guide us through U.S. politics.
So we're glad that he was able to take some time to sit down with us to look ahead for what 2020 will hold in U.S. politics.
Obviously, a momentous year, not just congressional elections, but the presidential election.
Will Donald Trump be re-elected?
What will happen, joining us now via Skype, is Joel Pollack, Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart.com.
Joel, great to see you again.
Good to be with you.
I tell you, there has not been a dull moment with Trump, partly because he's an entertainer and everything he does just, you know, is funny or outrageous.
I think he's a natural storyteller.
He's a ham, as they would say.
He's a New Yorker.
He's got bravado.
He's got charisma.
This is not me expressing my affection for him, although I am affectionate.
I think he is the most newsworthy person to hold that office since Theodore Roosevelt.
What do you think?
Well, until the next one.
Yeah, that's right.
But it's going to be a wild year.
It's going to be a crazy year, partly because he's like catnip.
No one can avoid him.
The media go crazy about him.
His enemies go crazy.
They're deranged.
Yes.
And the funny thing is, I don't think they really believe their own derangement.
It's almost something you have to talk yourself into.
If you step back a little bit and just allow yourself to examine your own behavior in terms of what you actually do, for example, in the same way we ask people to look at their own behavior, if they really believe in climate change, are they really taking fewer flights?
Are they buying a different car?
Are they turning the lights off?
Are they abandoning energy-intensive toilet paper for some other green alternative?
I don't know.
The question really is, are you really behaving as if Donald Trump is a tyrant?
Do you really live in fear of your life and your constitutional liberties?
Maybe in the months after the election when Hillary Clinton's rhetoric was still ringing in your ears, that might have been excusable.
But after three years of a growing economy, expanding opportunity, massive improvements in the lives of black, Latino, gay, Jewish Americans, I mean, you name it, fighting for gay rights abroad.
I mean, do you really think that Donald Trump is a terrible tyrant, Hitler in waiting?
Well, it doesn't really hold water.
And nobody's fleeing the country and seeking refuge, at least not right now, unless a bunch of us show up at the doorstep in Canada.
I think Democrats' worldview is now largely contrived and sustained only by the fact that we rely on media to tell us about what's going on in the world right in front of our faces rather than going out and looking for ourselves.
Well, you know, that's a good point.
We heard so many people who said, well, if Donald Trump wins, I'm moving to Canada.
None of them moved to Canada, so I guess it couldn't have been that bad.
Or maybe Canada was worse.
I don't know.
You had Justin Chudeau by then.
Well, that's, I mean, he's the dreamboat of the Hollywood left.
Well, it's funny you say that because just the other day I was looking at the website of GLAD, which is a gay and lesbian anti-something, something, Alliance Against Discrimination.
It's like it's pro-gay lobby group, and they have a whole website dedicated to Trump and the terrible times of Trump, and they have over 100 incidents in the last three years.
And I thought, oh my God, what's going on?
I started clicking through them.
And they were, oh, well, Prague or you had a website that was mean.
And Joe Walsh, who's actually a never-Trump Republican, he said something mean.
I thought, for God's sakes, if you can only come up with 100 things in a thousand days of Trump, and when I start reading them, they're not even things that Trump did.
I'm guessing things are pretty, I mean, he's not the tyrant you said he was.
If you can't even muster examples of him being mean, right and more than that, there's so many examples of Trump doing great things for gay and lesbian Americans, appointing the highest ranking gay official in Richard Grinnell, who is a cornerstone of our diplomatic mission abroad, and decriminalizing homosexuality worldwide leading, leading an effort to do that.
So you know, I think Trump's been great.
There is a debate over the T in LGBT yeah, and Trump hasn't been a transgender president, but there's also a debate within the gay rights movement.
I mean, look at someone like Andrew Sullivan, who's been very critical of Republicans over the last decade or more, took Obama's side very strongly in the 2008 and 2012 elections, but Andrew Sullivan's been saying, look, we are not allowing ourselves to debate this transgender issue in the gay community and what's happening is young gay kids are being told, maybe you're not homosexual, maybe you're just the wrong gender, he says.
That's actually, in a way, a kind of discrimination against gays.
So there's a debate going on within the transgender community and it really affects a very very, very small proportion of the population.
So, on the whole, Donald Trump is probably arguably the most pro-gay and lesbian bisexual rights president in the history of the United States.
So anyway the the, the dark totalitarian world, hasn't materialized except in Congress, except among Democrats who have trampled civil liberties and the constitution in their rush to impeach Donald Trump.
Yeah, you know it's.
It's funny you mentioned the T because that's what I was doing in the GLAD Website.
Actually they had a study that showed the acceptance of Lgbt was falling precipitously amongst millennials and my theory is it's because of the T, because of the absurdities there.
But uh, but the points you make about gay issues, I think can be made about Black issues, about Jewish issues, all these groups that historically have been counted on by the Democrats.
I mean even labor unions.
Maybe that's the biggest of all.
One of the first things Trump did was he ripped up the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that had been such a sticking point for the big unions.
I remember when Trump gave a tour to union bosses, I think it was his first day in office.
Here's a clip of that.
These big Democrat labor union bosses, and they left stunned by the respect they had shown.
Here's a quick clip of one of them saying he had never been shown that respect by any president ever.
Here, take a look at that.
When the president laid out his plans about how he's going to handle trade, how he's going to invest in our infrastructure, and how he's going to level a playing field for construction workers and all Americans across this country, and then took the time to take everyone into the Oval Office and show them the seat of power in the world.
The respect that the President of the United States just showed us.
And when he shows it to us, he shows it to 3 million of our members in the United States was nothing short of incredible.
And we will work with him and his administration to help him implement his plans on infrastructure, trade, and energy policy so that we really do put America back to work in the middle-class jobs that our members and all Americans are demanding.
Thank you very much.
Trump isn't just friendly to gays and Jews and blacks and labor unions.
I think he's doing the ultimate Democrat move of being a celebrity.
Like Obama was supposed to be the celebrity, but Trump actually was.
I think that's one of the reasons he drives the left crazy is because he's using all their tricks against them.
Right.
And also he's reaching right into the core of the Democratic constituency.
You know, his political strategy in 2016 was to go beyond the swing states, go beyond, you know, in football terms, the neutral zone, and don't fight on the line of scrimmage.
Go deep.
And he went right into the heart of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio.
He went to all of these Democratic states.
He's doing it again, not just in terms of the Electoral College, you know, going to Minnesota, campaigning in Democratic strongholds like that, but also by going to all of these groups that form the stars in the Democratic constellation, African Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, and unions.
And now you've got the AFL-CIO backing the USMCA, Trump's big trade deal.
So Trump is really going after Democratic voters, Democratic priorities.
Border security is something many Democrats are concerned about.
Trade, immigration, these issues cut across party lines.
But Democrats have positions on these issues that are at odds with the majority of Americans and with many people in their own party.
You know, to take on China is so contrary to the traditional GOP Republican elite, the free trade with everyone.
And I got to tell you, that's where I came from politically myself, the Fraser Institute, the Milton Friedman pure free trade, declare unilaterally free trade with the whole world.
Trump, going back decades, I mean, you could see his old interview on Oprah Winfrey.
He was talking about getting tough with, back then it was Japan, and then I suppose it was Taiwan, and now it's China.
That's a traditional turf of Democrats.
Here's a clip from Trump.
I think this is from the 80s, telling Oprah he wants to get tough with cheap foreign labor.
Here, take a look at this.
I took out a full-page ad in major U.S. newspapers last year criticizing U.S. foreign policy.
What would you do differently, Donald?
I'd make our allies, forgetting about the enemies, the enemies you can't talk to so easily, I'd make our allies pay their fair share.
We're a debtor nation.
Something's going to happen over the next number of years with this country because you can't keep going on losing 200 billion, and yet we let Japan come in and dump everything right into our markets.
It's not free trade.
If you ever go to Japan right now and try to sell something, forget about it, Alprin.
Just forget about it.
It's almost impossible.
They don't have laws against it.
They just make it impossible.
They come over here, they sell their cars, their VCRs, they knock the hell out of our companies.
And hey, I have tremendous respect for the Japanese people.
I mean, you can respect somebody that's beating the hell out of you, but they are beating the hell out of this country.
Kuwait, they live like kings.
The poorest person in Kuwait, they live like kings.
And yet they're not paying.
We make it possible for them to sell their oil.
Why aren't they paying us 25% of what they're making?
It's a joke.
See, that is contrary to the Koch brothers purist free trade approach.
But that's what's going to bring back jobs for blue-collar Americans in those states you mentioned, like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio.
I think he's winning those seats back from the Dems, who are now all about radical grievance politics and identity groups.
Right, and you can't underestimate the degree of damage that identity politics has done to the Democratic connection with their voter base.
Yes, there are particular constituent groups and leaders who insist on identity politics, but many Democrats are alienated by that.
In fact, many Democrats agree with Republicans that political correctness is a big problem.
And if you're a young and up-and-coming Democrat and you want to make your way in the party and have a political career, or if you're just a voter who's looking for a place to belong, political correctness is a big obstacle because you've got to somehow do this inventory of all these prejudices you supposedly carry with you and privileges that you supposedly inherited from Lord knows where.
And they make you basically pay an admissions price at the door to get into this party.
And more and more people are saying, well, that's just too high a price to pay to belong to the cool kids.
Maybe I'll just sit back and be an independent for a while for free.
And if they really get upset, they join the Republicans or they vote Republican.
Quietly, many independents do.
And I think that's why Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats are trying to rush this impeachment.
They sense the public's not with them.
The Democratic base doesn't like their candidates.
There's all sorts of other tensions pulling at the Democratic Party.
So yeah, identity politics is one of them.
Big, how do you do, until Andrew Yang qualified, really, but there was a big controversy about having only white candidates on the stage for the December debate.
Now, again, that's part of identity politics.
You know, the ideal, Martin Luther King Jr. articulated, was judge people by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.
Democrats are a long way from that.
And in that sense, they're moving away from a national principle, something that's shared broadly by Americans.
You know, identity politics, we went deep on the issue of the T in LGBT, but I think that's actually a big sleeper issue because that's not just some obscure virtue signaling where you, you know, like saying people kind, if you use the right language, it shows how fashionable you are.
I think there's an enormous number of Americans, including, let's say, American mums, whose girls are on sports teams.
And now you've got a guy who can't cut it on the men's team.
So he says, I'm a girl, I identify as a girl.
And he goes and he competes against the girls' teams, smokes them.
And maybe if he's really pushy, he demands to change in a girl's changing room.
And all of a sudden, what was just an irritant of virtue signaling and political correctness now is actually changing the lives of normal people who don't want politics messing up with their girls' sports or their girls' changing room.
I think that the T in LGBT is actually, if the Republicans were to pick it up and run with it, I think that could move a lot of those soccer moms, as they call them, into the Republican camp because I think that's a genuine concern for millions of Americans and Canadians who don't feel like they're allowed to even talk about that in public.
But if you look, you mentioned the Democrat debates.
They had an entire debate or town hall that seemed to be only about sexual issues.
Here's one where someone says, what about the black transgender something something?
Here's a clip from that.
I just want to take a moment before I ask my question to validate the pain of our transgender siblings that demonstrated earlier and that have spoken up today.
Democrats And Transgenderism00:12:41
Especially black trans women.
I don't want to take this away from you.
But let me tell you something.
Black trans women are being killed in this country.
And CNN, you have erased black trans women for the last time.
Let me tell you something.
Black trans women are dying.
Our lives matter.
What do you think about that?
I mean, I'm not, we're spending a lot of time talking about LGBT, but I actually think it's an explosive issue because unlike, you know, other rights that don't really impose upon you, if someone is trans, they're saying, I want to get in your girls' league.
I want to get in your girls' change room.
And it's a whole different thing than, okay, so he's gay or okay, so he's black, I think.
Well, here's the issue.
It's okay to champion the cause of a small number of people if in some way it's emblematic of a larger problem.
So when Donald Trump took up the cause of families who had lost a loved one to crimes by illegal aliens, that's a very small group of people, but it represented a lot of Americans who felt their government was no longer protecting them.
And what Democrats are doing with transgenderism is choosing a group to champion, rightly or wrongly, I mean, I'm not saying in this comment anything about their cause, but they're choosing a group that has a hard time standing for anybody else.
They're really standing for identity politics in general.
They're the next civil rights cause in a way, but they don't stand for any broader purpose.
In fact, the charge they make is that the entire system, cultural system, not just political system, the entire cultural system is unjust.
And so by standing up for the transgender movement and the way Democrats are doing it, they're basically saying we want to be a part of changing everything.
Well, that's really about an abstract ideal shared by fervent supporters of the Democratic Party, but it's not something that represents the majority of Americans or some great broad inclusive idea.
So that's where Democrats are stuck.
Where Democrats usually have a good footing is when it comes to health care.
And they often choose specific categories of victims, people with pre-existing conditions, for example.
That was a big Democratic talking point for a long time.
And very few people, well, I shouldn't say very few, a large number of people do actually fall into that category, but it's still a minority.
Most people who have health insurance are not ruled out because of pre-existing conditions.
But they represent the group most vulnerable as part of a system that doesn't really work as well as it should for anybody.
Americans like their health insurance, but pay too much for it, and everyone has problems.
So this idea that people were getting excluded from health insurance completely, even though it was a smallish number of people, that stands for a larger cause.
But Democrats aren't talking about them so much anymore.
And they're focused on all this impeachment nonsense and on transgender issues and so forth, deciding which pronoun they are.
I mean, it all is about a narrow agenda.
Trump is winning because he's going into the heart of the Democratic Party and finding big ticket items and making them his own.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, Obama was historic.
It truly was historic to have him win.
I think winning the election was his finest moment, and it was all downhill from there.
He didn't deliver much, but you could say he was iconic.
He had a look, a sound.
He represented a hope.
I look at the field of Democrats who are seeking the presidential nomination, and it feels like Snow White and the seven dwarves without Snow White.
It's just seven dwarves.
It feels like, I mean, when Donald Trump ran, it was a very crowded field of nominees against him too.
There was actually some good contenders there, I think, that were serious, but he was just so dominant.
I don't see anyone in this Democrat field that makes me say, wow, or they've got leadership.
They've got the royal jelly.
I just, I mean, they're either too old, Joe Biden too socialist, Bernie Sanders too young and inexperienced.
But a judge, maybe I'm just nitpicking, but I look at that and I think it's not a surprise that Hillary Clinton keeps floating trial balloons, because at least she's a giant.
She's a corrupt, failed, unhealthy, miserable giant, but she is a giant.
Right.
So she's teasing the idea of running.
Look, in four years or five years, Republicans are in trouble because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is going to be old enough to run for president.
She's the only person who excites the Democratic Party and can broaden it by bringing in new young voters.
So I think that her personality would dominate the field.
She exudes leadership.
Like her or not, she's got leadership qualities and she controls the Democratic caucus right now.
I mean, she basically prodded Nancy Pelosi toward impeachment.
So there you go.
But you're correct.
I don't think Democrats like their own candidates.
I've talked to Democrats in many different groups of the population, let me put it that way, socioeconomically, racially, ethnically.
Nobody seems to like their candidates.
Nobody feels what you described, that sort of attraction to a leader that Republicans felt with Trump.
And like him or hate him, they felt strongly about him.
There are no Democrats that evoke that strength of feeling.
So I think Democrats find themselves in a similar situation to Republicans in 2012 when Mitt Romney was sort of heir apparent to the nomination because he bowed out in favor of John McCain in 2008.
And he didn't really come from the Tea Party.
He wasn't in touch with the base.
He had the right resume, good looks and all of that, but he really didn't resonate with the party and people were dissatisfied.
They kept looking around.
We called them the not Romneys.
It was Romney versus the Not Romneys.
And people kept looking at the not-Romneys.
And every month, it seemed there was a new one.
There was Newt Gingrich one month.
It was Rick Santorum another month.
And the Republican primary electorate kind of cycled through these alternatives to Romney before basically giving up and settling on Romney.
The smart money says that's what's going to happen with Joe Biden.
By the way, my prediction of Kamala Harris was wrong.
So that didn't happen.
But she may still be on the ticket because of the fact that she checks all the different boxes for Democrats in different ways.
But Joe Biden may end up being kind of default nominee, and then Democrats kind of hobble into the election.
Now, that doesn't mean they're going to lose.
I mean, Democrats have the tech companies, the media, Hollywood on their side.
Those are very, very big factors.
So we'll see.
But I think Democrats are certainly in a very difficult position.
And it is probably too late for another candidate to come in who does have that sort of leadership quality.
Nobody knows who it would be.
And Democrats have not done a very good job of developing a bench of talent.
Alexandria Orcasio-Cortez is there, but she basically broke down the door.
She ran against an incumbent lieutenant of Nancy Pelosi's in the Democratic Party.
So that's how Democrats are going to renew themselves.
The current crop of candidates really doesn't provide them with much.
Maybe a few future cabinet members.
You can see Pete Buttigieg, for example, being placed in charge of something or other, but I don't see a real leader among them either.
Well, if Trump wins again, and let me make the case again, I'm an outsider.
I'm a Canadian.
Obviously, you live this stuff every day.
It's your forte.
But I would guess a few things.
First of all, if there is another, quote, scandal on Trump, first of all, we probably have heard all the scandals against him.
I can't imagine there's anything that hasn't been dug up if it was there to be dug up.
It's not like Justin Trudeau, who wasn't vetted.
No one even bothered to look through his yearbook photos to see the blackface until he was prime minister for four years already.
I think if there's anything bad on Trump, it's already exploded.
And even if there was something new, I don't think it's going to dent the ardor for him by his base, who love him not just despite his flaws, but love his fighting spirit.
So I can't imagine he's going to lose them unless he dramatically changes course on a core policy.
I think he's better organized now.
He has a bigger team now.
He's building lists at these mega rallies he has.
I see his campaign bragging about how many names they're signing up.
He's reaching out to new communities.
My point is, I think there's a real chance Trump could win again in 2020, especially if the economy holds.
And I guess my question to you is: will liberals actually explode?
And by that, I mean do something nuts like, God forbid, an assassination attempt, God forbid some crazy civil war attempt, not that they're armed.
I mean, I just, they've labored for three years thinking this guy isn't real.
He hacked the election, he stole the election, he colluded the election, he bribed the election.
If he's actually elected, I think, I don't know what they're going to do.
They're going to explode.
I think they're going to, well, Obama used to believe that if he won in 2012, as he put it, the fever would break and that Republicans would become more amenable as if they were the problem.
Now, that almost happened in a sense because the Republican establishment was certainly eager to make a compromise.
They wanted to negotiate over amnesty as soon as the election results were in.
I mean, literally the day after Romney lost the election, the Republican establishment was all in for amnesty on illegal immigration.
And it may be that they saw an opportunity in Obama's victory to rid themselves of this troublesome political base, this terrible issue.
So in that sense, the fever broke, although, you know, these were really Obama's co-conspirators in a policy sense.
Now, Obama mistook the source of his problem as being the opposition.
Really, the source of his problem was himself, his ideas, his inability to lead the country in a way that unified it, and so forth.
But with Trump, I think there really will be kind of a reckoning.
Not because they're suddenly going to realize they like Trump and they should listen to him and they should acknowledge his achievements.
But I think what you see happening around Democrats, and my mind is sort of just kind of working this out as I speak to you, but what you see among Democrats is they're laying the foundation for an explanation as to why they lost in 2020.
And right now, that foundation has two pillars.
One is a weak field of candidates.
So they will tell themselves we had terrible candidates.
They're already telling themselves they had terrible candidates.
The related complaint will be that the Democratic National Committee mismanaged the debates by having these arbitrary thresholds about donation levels and polling thresholds.
So already you see a bit of that.
They're saying the DNC is to blame.
The second pillar is going to be this impeachment thing.
And I think that some Democrats will say in retrospect, it was a mistake to go for impeachment.
Now, this is assuming they lose in 2020.
But if they do, they're going to look at impeachment and say, you know what, this was really just kind of nuts.
We allowed ourselves to get talked into this.
So they are already, in a sense, laying the, or maybe they'll say they didn't push it hard enough.
That was the initial reaction of CNN when the articles of impeachment came out.
The CNN basically said, well, this is all you came up with after all these months?
You didn't push hard enough.
didn't include extortion and bribery and all the things you could have included and should have included.
You didn't fight hard enough.
That's actually a likelier response from Democrats.
So what Democrats are saying in either case is we didn't fight hard enough.
We didn't choose the best candidates, the best arguments, and it's in some measure our fault for losing.
They didn't say that about Hillary Clinton.
The Bernie people did.
The Bernie Sanders people blamed the establishment and Hillary Clinton for losing in 2016, but the Clinton people who still represented the establishment and the dominant force in the media, they were basically saying, well, this was the Russians and Trump stole the election and all that nonsense.
So what I think you'll see is not so much a reckoning with where the country is as a whole and why the country is not listening to Democrats, why Democrats are distant from the needs of ordinary Americans, but you'll see Democrats talk to each other about their own failures.
They're not going to become more amenable to compromise with Trump, maybe even more dug in against him.
But I think they'll start to have a real conversation with each other about the way, at least, in which they choose their candidates.
It's all just going to be talk because, again, it sort of awaits a strong personality.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Impact00:03:46
Once you get Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez going, which you will get going, then I think you have a different kind of conversation.
But I think you'll start to see some reckoning among Democrats in the same way that there was a little bit of reckoning among Republicans.
And look, Republicans had a very qualified field in 2015, but perhaps not a very good field.
That's what Trump saw.
That's why he jumped in.
So you'll start to see Democrats also change their party simply by running, in the way that Trump's changed his party by running.
And I don't think the fever, so to speak, of opposition to Trump will break, but I do think Democrats will have some reflecting to do.
And maybe in the long run, that might make them start to listen more to the American people.
But it depends how that internal process shakes out.
You know, I remember right after 2016, like the first reaction was just stunned.
I mean, Hillary Clinton herself couldn't muster herself the night of the election to give a concession speech.
She just wouldn't.
She just wouldn't believe it.
And I think there's this amazing footage.
I think it was Ben Rhodes, was the name of a Democratic strategist who just literally was stunned, speechless.
He was participating in a reality TV show.
He thought he would be the hero in winning that day.
But at the moment, he just had to process.
And that's, here's a clip of that.
He said, I just need a minute to process.
Look at this.
I just came outside to try to process all this.
It's a lot to process.
I mean, I can't even.
I can't, I mean, I can't, I can't, I can't put it into words.
I don't know what the words are.
So there was that initial stunned moment, Joel, but then I think some of the more radical elements deployed.
There were antifa riots almost immediately.
George Soros announced he was giving, I think it was $100 million to street activists.
He bankrolled the pussy march, the women's march, to coincide with the inauguration.
I mean, that was a heavy, high-budget, high-engagement response by a more radical wing than just the, you know, the elected officials.
I know it sounds insane, and I'm not that wild, Joel, but do you think that you're going to see a street riot approach, an antifa approach?
Do you think that will actually happen?
That's a given.
They've invested so much money in these organizations.
They'll do whatever they think benefits them politically.
So you notice they turned off the Antifa stuff once it started to backfire.
And they were able to rein it in pretty quickly.
A lot of it is connected to the institutional money that also supports the Democratic Party.
So I think they will ratchet it up.
But I think, again, most of their energy is going to be focused inward after 2020 if they lose.
If they win, maybe Antifa comes back because they need some way to, and Obama tried this and sometimes succeeded.
Wall's Shadow Diminished00:08:51
They need a way to amplify the messages from the White House.
They need a grassroots presence to validate whatever the administration is doing.
That's how Democrats have learned to operate.
So you could see more Antifa if Democrats win, ironically.
Well, listen, I want to whip through a few other points.
We've spent a lot of time talking about the Democrats and Trump, and I think it's fascinating.
We're going to have reporters in the field in the United States, even though we're based in Canada.
We're riveted by it, as the whole world is.
But let's just tick off a few other issues.
I don't want to keep you much longer.
The economy, I mean, it has gone, I think, surprisingly well.
I remember when Obama said, oh, it's not like you could just wave a magic wand.
Here's Obama saying, well, you can't do any better.
Here's that clip.
He's going to bring all these jobs back.
Well, how exactly are you going to do that?
What are you going to do?
There's no answer to it.
He just says, well, I'm going to negotiate a better deal.
How exactly are you going to negotiate that?
What magic wand do you have?
Well, I guess Obama really never had any private sector practice.
Trump did.
He's getting really strong growth, even though he's in a full-tilt trade war with China.
Right.
I think the trade war could be a negative factor in the economy, mostly because the costs of tariffs are being absorbed by businesses.
So in order to stay competitive, they're spending money on other things like tariffs.
They're also competing now in a very tight labor market.
So they are raising wages, but they're not necessarily investing in future production.
So we could see some fallout further down the line.
But yeah, I mean, we still have relatively high interest rates compared to what we had during the Obama era.
And we're still rocking and rolling economically.
It's really about confidence.
I think the country is confident.
And we've changed our disadvantageous tax structure.
So there is no longer the same incentive for companies to park their money overseas.
And I think it's great.
And I think it's great for the country, regardless of politics, because recessions are really terrible.
But I think if it keeps going like this, Trump ought to win.
You know, as I said to you before, Justin Chudeau won, I tend to think that even if you don't like anything a president or prime minister is doing, if they're still presiding over economic growth, they tend to get reelected.
Now, I know the unemployment numbers haven't been good since then, although they still on the year are pretty good.
But who knows?
You once were skeptical about those numbers.
And I thought about you when I saw the last two unemployment reports from Canada.
I thought, well, I wonder if there was something to that.
But we'll just have to see.
My wife, who's the labor economist, tells me that Canadian unemployment statistics tend to be very volatile.
So it's very hard to measure after just two reports.
But look, in any case, as long as the economic growth number is positive, and as long as the economy feels positive, it's harder to lose an election.
But Democrats are going to try to push Trump out no matter how they have to do it.
You know, I remember talking to Phelm MacAlier, the independent filmmaker, in 2012.
And he said that one of the things that Obama had going for him, ironically, was that the fracking revolution was creating jobs in places that were really depressed.
And he really focused on Pennsylvania, for example.
And he said that ironically, Obama was against the energy industry, but despite that, It was creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Well, here we are, four, eight years later, and the United States, and this was unthinkable just five years ago, is a net energy exporter and for the first time, a net oil exporter.
That's unbelievable to me.
So, I mean, that's huge jobs.
That's also very important.
Well, you know, that shows you the resilience of the American economy by design, because so much of our economy exists outside of government that even though Barack Obama tried to put the brakes on oil and gas development in this country, he simply couldn't stop what was happening technologically.
And driven by high oil prices, which were a legacy of the Iraq War and that whole period, the American energy sector invested in new technology, found new resources, created this shale boom, and we're still enjoying the benefits of that in a very big way.
And that shows you how resilient our economy is, because essentially Obama tried to destroy that industry.
Now, there are industries that are suffering in the energy sector, like coal, but that's also happening in a way, despite government.
Donald Trump is the most pro-coal president we've had probably since Harry Truman.
And yet the coal industry is suffering.
And that's because of prices and it's because of consumer preferences and a variety of other reasons.
But again, it shows us that the economy, in many respects, is driven by factors outside of government in the kind of economy we have.
Now, if we had a more state-centered economy, you could see those policy changes having a much bigger impact.
There are policy changes that do have an impact, primarily relating to taxes, monetary policy, and things like that.
But when government decides the future of an industry, it can do some damage.
But as much power as Obama had early in his administration, as much damage as he tried to do, the market just would not let him.
The supply and demand for energy would not let Barack Obama destroy the oil and gas industry.
Now, it certainly cost jobs and probably made electricity and gas more expensive.
But, you know, I think that given the resilience of the American economy, as long as presidents and governments in general are doing what they can do to help that economy stay resilient, and there are key decisions to be made.
I'm not saying government's unimportant, very important actually, but government doesn't drive the economy.
Government's not the engine.
Let me put it this way.
Government might be the steering wheel, but it's not the engine.
And that's, I think, very important when it comes to understanding that energy boom in the United States.
We're now the number one oil producer in the world.
That's largely due to Donald Trump, but it's also despite Barack Obama.
Well, here in Canada, I mean, in my home province of Alberta, it literally has, that one province has more oil reserves than any other country in the world other than Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.
50% of the accessible oil in the world is in Alberta.
That is, it's not controlled by a state.
And yet Alberta is floundering because of government.
And we look on Texas and North Dakota and Pennsylvania with great longing.
That could be us, but we voted for a drama teacher in Blackface.
Let me ask you one last question, and it's about the wall.
I remember I once said to you that the wall in my assessment as a Canadian pundit, so I'm removed from it.
It was such a core promise.
And I don't know if this made sense, but I said it.
I said, if he only keeps that promise, he's re-elected.
And if he does anything but keep that promise, he's not re-elected.
It seemed that important, not only as a tangible symbol that he actually is who he says he is.
Now, here he is in his fourth year as president.
Maybe he's proven enough himself on so many other things, like appointing great judges and fighting back in the culture wars and the media wars.
Maybe the wall has been eclipsed by other proofs of his realness.
But I still believe that wall is such a tangible proof of whether or not he's full of it or if he can be trusted.
What do you think of the wall?
Will more of it be built?
Is that still a fake?
What's up with the wall?
I think the wall will be built.
It's going to take a lot of work.
Trump's doing what he can.
I think Trump voters are sticking with him even though the wall isn't up because they sense that he's tried his hardest and the opposition he's faced has been relentless.
And it's clearer than ever that only Trump can get it done.
So I think they'll stick with him on that.
I do agree with you.
It was central, and that's why Democrats attacked it.
It's also why Democrats would only pass the USMCA through the House on the day they also decided to impeach the president.
And it's as if they can't give him a core campaign accomplishment without, in a sense, delegitimizing his presidency.
That's the level of trade-off Democrats are demanding.
So we'll see.
But if Republicans come back in 2020 with a majority in both houses of Congress, I think they'll learn from the mistakes of the first two years of the Trump presidency.
And I think they'll be ready to roll on the wall, on health care, on a whole bunch of other issues.
I won't say the election is theirs to lose, but Democrats, by focusing on impeachment, have given Republicans a massive opportunity.
Democrats' Impeachment Trap00:00:24
Joe Pollack, it's great to have such a good talk with you.
Thank you for spending so much time with us.
Not just today, but throughout the year, we really rely on you as a guide, and we love reading your stuff at Breitbart.com.