Meghan Markle’s demand for $24M in Canadian taxpayer-funded security—while worth over $50M and residing in a $24M Vancouver home—ignites backlash, with 80,000+ signing a Canadian Taxpayers Federation petition against it. Critics like Angel Levant mock her "entitlement," comparing her to figures like Scott Gilmore (a Maclean’s journalist advocating for her protection) and Ilhan Omar, while citing Trudeau’s conflict-of-interest conviction over a free Bahamas trip. Meanwhile, Democrats’ Trump impeachment trial stalls, with Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler facing rebukes, as Alan Dershowitz argues the process is unconstitutional—risking 18–19 House seats in November. Canada’s 208,234 "liberal voter" immigration surge under Trudeau fuels debates on housing, emissions, and economic fairness, while Bernie Sanders, despite ideological clashes, leads polls due to perceived authenticity. The episode ties celebrity privilege, political overreach, and immigration policy into broader questions of accountability and voter priorities. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey guys, I want to talk to you about Megan Markle's demand for security.
I want to compare it to Drake's demand for security and Justin Bieber's demand for security.
And I want to ask you why we would pay for Markle's if we don't pay for theirs.
Before I, I think there's a lot in this podcast.
I think you'll get a kick out of it.
It's better as a video because you see the photos of the house, the photos of Drake's house, things like that.
I quote from some articles and websites.
The podcast's great.
I love it.
But if you want the video version, well, we call that premium content.
It's $8 a month.
Go to premium.rebelnews.com.
$8 a month.
And you get the video version of the podcast plus Sheila Gunread Show and David Menzies' show.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, why should we pay for Meghan Markle's private security?
It's January 2nd, and this is the Angel 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'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Do you have a security system in your home?
Even something basic, an alarm system, or even a little closed-circuit camera in your doorbell, like that thing there.
They're so cheap these days, and they're connected to the internet and your cell phone, so you can actually see if someone rings your doorbell, or even if they just walk by on your cell phone, wherever you go.
It's offered by the same companies that hook up your internet and phone and cable.
I mean, it could cost 30 or 40 or maybe 50 bucks a month for the full package.
My point is millions of Canadians pay for their own security cameras and alarm systems out of their own family budget.
I mean, ordinary people do.
People who make 50 grand a year or 100 grand a year do.
People whose homes are worth, I don't know, a quarter million dollars or I suppose a million dollars in more expensive cities like Toronto and Vancouver.
If you're rich, if you have some sort of celebrity, you probably pay more because that's the price of being rich and famous, I think.
The Toronto rapper Drake, he's a pretty big celebrity in Toronto.
And he just built a super expensive house in Toronto in the bridal path, not too far away from Conrad Black's family home.
I don't know, what's that, $20, $30 million?
The land alone has got to be $10.
And he just asked the city for permission to build extra high walls around his house because so many people want to gawk at him, probably trespass.
Now, I bet 99% of them are sort of harmless.
They're not robbers or kidnappers or anything.
But if he's spending, I don't know, 25, 30 million or whatever on a home, he's probably spending more than a million on things like fences and security.
And he probably actually has full-time security staff on the premises.
And I think he usually has a driver bodyguard too.
My point is, private citizens, all of us, have the protection of police, but it makes sense for some of us each to spend money on some private security too.
Even just a lock on your door.
Obviously, we can't expect people in public service who are threatened.
This is a shot of the prime minister's motorcade.
It's a little over the top, I think.
I mean, good Lord, just how many cars does Justin Trudeau need?
I think that's Trudeau footage.
But if there was a genuine RCMP decision that he needed that protection, fine.
Pay for the massive costs of the Prime Minister's security.
I think that was overkill probably, but look, it's the nature of the public office that attracts the threats.
Justin Trudeau didn't have government security when he was just some playboy running around.
It's appropriate for all of us to provide protection for public office holders who are at risk because of the public office, right?
But understand it's not that they're public people in the sense of being well-known.
It's that they're doing a public service, or more to the point, a government service.
I mean, Justin Bieber, speaking of the other famous Justin, he's a Canadian with a huge public profile.
We don't pay for his security.
Public Service Manners00:03:48
Celebrities sometimes do charity work, by the way, public service, I guess, but that doesn't make them public servants in the literal meaning of that.
So obviously you know what I'm talking about.
You know where I'm going with this.
I'm talking about two foreigners, an American named Megan and a Brit named Harry.
Now they just had a multi-million dollar wedding to which they invited all sorts of other celebrities and it was subsidized by taxpayers because Harry was a prince.
I guess he still is a prince.
Then they had their house fixed up with millions more pounds from the British taxpayer.
That is a luxurious lifestyle to be sure.
But they are a part of the royal family and they did duties in support of the country.
It's a constitutional role, I get it.
But that's done now.
They quit.
They ambushed the queen.
They surprised her.
They made a public announcement about it on Instagram before they even spoke with her.
Imagine that.
I mean, remember, the queen isn't just the head of the royal family, constitutionally and legally in terms of the government and public service.
Remember, the queen is Harry's grandma.
Imagine not even talking to your own grandmother about quitting the family, rejecting everything you are and your grandmother is and centuries of tradition and not even talking to her about it in advance.
Harry is a royal.
That's the literal definition of having class.
There's no such thing as being classier than the royals.
But look at him.
He's become like his gold-digging wife.
She has lowered him.
He has not raised her up.
I mean, you saw Prince Harry literally pitching the head of Disney, pressing him to hire Macon to do voiceover work.
They're at a public reception for whatever.
And he's like, you know, a typical waiter in Hollywood or bartender in Hollywood in a restaurant who sees some big producer or star sit down for lunch and he grabs the script that he's been hiding on the counter waiting and says, oh, excuse me, Mr. Spielberg.
Can you just read my script?
You know, a nuisance, a hack, pitiful, desperate.
That's what Meghan Markle has turned Harry into.
Oh my God, that is so gross.
Imagine you marry a prince, you join the royal family, you have everything, and your instinct is to try and cash in on it by having a royal prince at a public function lobby some Hollywood executive to get you doing voiceover work.
You're the princess.
What can I look up to?
Maybe I'll be the voice in some cartoon.
Oh my God, that is so cringe.
Look at this.
Look how she manhandles him, tells him to sit down, to stand up.
Like she's embarrassed by him when in fact, as a royal, he obviously knows that high-class manners dictate that you don't sit down unless the women have sit down first.
Did you see this?
I want to show you one more clip of him doing exactly that again.
Take a- Just take a look at this.
Megan Markle And Harry's Controversy00:14:05
Excuse us.
There we go.
Yeah, a lot of people blaming Megan Markle for all this.
And it's true.
She's a gold digger and she's a manipulator.
But look, Harry's a 35-year-old man.
He's an adult making his own decisions.
He's the one who didn't talk to his grandmother.
She's estranged from her family.
She doesn't care about family.
He's all about family, but he did not talk to his grandma.
He's the one who agreed to be the desperate waiter pitching the head of Disney in an inappropriate moment.
He's the embarrassment.
So they're done with the queen.
And she's done with them enough.
They won't be able to call themselves their royal highnesses anymore because they're not doing anything for the royal family anymore.
The queen is making them repay the money they took to reno that British house, but they still plan to cash in.
Look, at least Kim Kardashian and her husband, Kanye West, at least they built themselves up, created things, built a business and a brand.
Kanye creates music.
They're worth something.
Harry was just born into it.
Megan gold digged her way into it and then tried to run away with the silverware.
So they want to come to Canada, aren't we lucky?
And I guess, as I pointed out yesterday, Trudeau will literally let anyone come here, nearly 200,000 people every 90 days.
But what's the legal basis for letting these two grifters here?
Megan Markle's not a Canadian citizen.
She's an American.
Harry is a Brit.
He's not a Canadian.
They're not part of the royal family anymore in the public sense.
They quit.
They're just a couple of spoiled rich kids now.
So why are they here?
We allow people to visit us all the time.
Megan Markle worked here for a while before as a C-list actress in a show called Suits, but that was real work.
And she was paid.
And she, I presume, had a visa of whatever sort that she needed to work here.
So why is she here now?
And same for him, just because they feel entitled to come here.
Do they not have to apply to move here?
Or are they above all that?
Look, I actually have no beef with them moving here, I should tell you.
They should not be above the law.
They should have no special status since they quit their status, the ingrates.
I know they want to cash in on it, but talk to Disney.
Don't try to shake down the Canadian public, okay?
They want to buy a house in Vancouver.
As long as they're not using my money, I guess I don't care.
The British tabloids, I mean, what, did you think the Canadian media would do the research here?
Don't you remember that it was the foreign media that reported the Trudeau blackface stories?
The British tabloids have done the exposés on the house that Markle and Harry are looking at.
$24 million home.
Now, I know that Vancouver is very expensive.
For a detached home near the downtown, average house, you're looking at a million dollars just for a regular house, a regular person in Vancouver, a million bucks or close to it.
It's extremely expensive to live in Vancouver, by some measures, even more than in Toronto.
Young people have a tough time buying their first home and starting a family.
It's crazy.
But holy cow, 24 million, that is rock star stuff.
Except, like I say, neither Markle nor Harry are rock stars.
One was a C-list actress.
The other just quit the family business.
They're not so much losers as they are quitters and grifters and entitled.
I see that Megan Markle was out walking her dogs the other day with security, as you can see.
And her baby there.
That's pretty fun.
It was photographed.
That's the currency of Hollywood even more than it's the currency of the royal family.
Look at her smile for the cameras there.
Never believe a celebrity, especially a vain, talentless celebrity past her prime, a celebrity who's famous just for being famous, like Megan Markle.
Never believe them when they say they hate the paparazzi.
They love the paparazzi.
They love the adulation because Megan Markle wants to be famous and wants the unearned wealth that can come from it.
But look at this, look at this, look at this.
She's now threatening anyone who takes pictures of her.
Well, you see, we're Canada, and although we have our problems with censorship, those problems until now have not involved a couple of foreigners coming here without legal status, as far as I know, and then demanding that we not be able to do journalism about them.
You know, if they keep this up, telling us what we can or can't report about them, which not even the queen does, by the way.
Well, I think we better assign our young Kian Becksty to their case, don't you think?
That's what we do here at Rebel News, especially the people who think they're better than the rest of us.
I really enjoyed when Kian scrummed Ilhan Omar, remember that?
And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and all the fake celebs.
I think Kian's up for the job.
I'd like Kian to ask Megan, the Duchess of Gold Digging, a few questions.
But really, if Megan Markle and Harry apply to immigrate here legally, and they stop threatening people, I don't mind if they move here.
I mean, they quit the royal family.
They're quitters.
That's fine.
No skin off my nose.
They'll quit Canada too when they're tired of us.
I'm sure Megan will quit Harry in due course.
I hope he has a strong prenup, but judging by how she berates him and dominates him, I doubt it.
But look, I really have no beef.
Canada has our share of celebrities and a double helping of B-list and C-list celebrities who can't quite make it in Hollywood, but they're big fish in our small pond.
Drake and Bieber are truly international stars.
I'd put Shania Twain in there too, and maybe William Shatner, but let's be honest, most of those celebs don't spend most of their time in Canada.
They follow the money and the audience to America.
I have no beef with a C-list celebrity and a C-list royal moving to Canada.
I have no problem.
Just apply to immigrate like anyone else.
But here's where I have a huge problem.
They want us to pay for their security.
We don't pay for Drake's security.
We don't pay for Justin Bieber's security or Shania Twain's security or William Shatner's security.
Taxpayers don't pay for my security, and I actually have needed it over the years because I've received a few death threats in my day for my journalism, especially back when I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.
We had to hire security guards back then.
Just last week, we spent $1,500 to hire a security detail for Kian to go up to that pipeline protest in BC because protesters have been violent.
We've probably spent $100,000 over the years on security for rebel reporters and rebel events.
I think in some of those cases, the police probably should have helped us for free.
But I also know that the police are not there just to prevent Antifa from harassing us out of the blue.
Police work for everyone.
They're not just assigned to follow us.
I'm not mad that we don't have a full-time police escort.
I'm not expecting that.
I'm not expecting the taxpayer to subsidize us, certainly.
It's a bit infuriating.
Actually, we're the only media in Canada I know of that gets regularly assaulted, as you can see in these images I've shown you before.
But still, I don't demand that the taxpayer protect us.
I demand the cops prosecute after the fact, which they don't always do.
But this multi-million dollar couple, depending on who you believe, Megan and Harry are worth $50 million, probably more if they're about to dump 24 million bucks on a house, and they expect that the little people will keep paying their security.
They're not serving the state anymore.
They're not serving their constitutional role anymore.
They're not doing their duty anymore.
They literally quit without notice.
They quit cowardly.
Imagine not even telling your own grandmother.
And they want us to pay their security?
What would we tell Drake or Justin Bieber if they demanded the same thing?
Both of those celebrities are pretty arrogant, but I don't think either would dream of asking Joe and Jane Lunchbucket to subsidize their security and their lifestyle through the taxes.
But these two foreigners who have quit their duty to us?
Yeah, no.
I'm pleased to see an Angus Reed poll that shows the vast majority of Canadians are saying no.
I'd say more accurately, we're probably saying hell no.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation had more than 80,000 people sign their petition to this effect in only a couple weeks.
But of course, Canada's D-list celebrities, especially the woke leftists who love the destruction of the royal family and love the feminist global warming claptrap of Harry and Megan.
I mean, these are the folks taking private jets the same way you and I take taxis, and then they give a speech about climate change.
It's a perfect fit for Trudeau's Canada, in a way, don't you think?
Well, take it from the Liberal Party's unofficial propaganda arm, MacLean's Magazine.
Remember, McLean's receives about a million and a half dollars a year from Trudeau, and it also employs Scott Gilmore.
He's the house husband of Catherine McKenna, the former environment minister.
So this is pretty much the official Trudeau line.
Look at this.
Opinion.
A royal bargain at any price.
Scott Gilmore says, pay Harry and Megan whatever they want.
They're the best thing that's happened to Brand Canada since we invented Snowboards.
Seriously, pay celebrities come to Canada.
I've never paid anyone in my life to come to a birthday party.
I've never sent myself flowers on Valentine's Day.
I don't believe in paying for a friend because then they're not your friend.
That's prostitution.
We don't have to pay for someone to like Canada.
And I don't know what's good for our brand.
Who talks that way?
Hey, how's Brand Canada doing these days?
Well, I think it's being affected by Justin Trudeau's buffoonery on the world stage.
I'd like to hear more talk about Brand Canada before he goes on another costume party trip to India.
But who even talks that way?
We need to improve Brand Canada.
Pay them anything.
Who thinks that way?
By the way, since Harry and Megan ambushed the Queen, there have been scientific public opinion polls showing that the most hated royals in the whole dysfunctional family are Megan and Harry second only to Prince Andrew, who was fired by the Queen for his gross friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
No one likes Harry and Megan anymore.
People don't like Megan's gold digging.
They don't like Harry's disloyalty and weakness.
They realize they're quitters who have a sense of entitlement greater than a sense of duty.
I guess he's like Trudeau in that way, but normal people don't have time for it.
But Trudeau's McLean's magazine loves it.
Remember, this is a Trudeau subsidized magazine, and it's being written by a Trudeau insider, married to a Trudeau cabinet minister.
This same Trudeau here.
First of all, why are we still fighting against certain veterans groups in court?
Because they are asking for more than we are able to give right now.
Right.
They're asking for more than they can give.
So read this from McLean's.
The possibility we may spend somewhere between $1 and $12 million, estimates vary, protecting the Windsor refugees is being met with stern looks and questions.
I find this debate utterly silly.
Oh, we should not only pay their security bill, but give them free Air Canada tickets for life.
That's how Trudeau thinks.
That's how his people think.
Of course it is.
I mean, look, he gave $10.5 million of taxpayers' money to a terrorist named Omar Cotter.
If that's your baseline, giving money to a terrorist, then giving $12 million a year for some sea-list celebs seems perfectly reasonable.
I mean, taxpayers paid for Scott Gilmore's wife, Catherine McKenna, to hire a Paris fashion photographer for thousands of dollars to photograph her at some global warming conference.
So Scott Gilmore and his money-grubbing wife are used to throwing bales of taxpayers' money on the fire just for vanity.
The laugh here is that Gilmore and McKenna and Trudeau are just as grasping and desperate and grifting as Megan and Harry are, so they don't even see it anymore.
I mean, remember how Trudeau and his wife, Sophie, finagled their way onto Billionaire Island in the Bahamas?
I don't know if you remember, this is from the Ethics Commissioner's report.
Sophie kept on phoning up the Aga Khan's daughter, pestering her, saying she wanted the free trip.
Eventually, the Aga Khan's daughter just said, fine.
It was against the law.
Trudeau was convicted of breaking the conflict of interest law.
It was super gross and really embarrassing to read about Sophie Trudeau promising to bring all her friends to Billionaire Island by really renting out her husband's reputation.
So yeah, of course, Megan and Harry are perfect for Justin Trudeau's Canada.
And of course, they expect you to pay for it.
Yeah, like hell.
Stay with us for more.
There are many overlapping reasons for voting against this resolution, but they all converge on a single idea.
Fairness.
Democrats Struggle to Make New Points00:15:24
The trial should be fair to the House, which has been wrongly deprived of evidence by a president who wishes to conceal it.
It should be fair to the president, who will not benefit from an acquittal or dismissal if the trial is not viewed as fair.
It's remarkable that after taking the action of the breathtaking gravity of voting to impeach the duly elected president of the United States, and after saying for weeks that they had overwhelming evidence to support their case, the first thing that the House managers have done upon arriving finally in this chamber after waiting for 33 days is to say, well, actually, we need more evidence.
We're not ready to present our case.
We need to have subpoenas and we need to do more discovery because we don't have the evidence we need to support our case.
This is stunning.
I got to tell you, I'm bored already.
I mean, I will pay attention to this because it's a media criticism story more than anything else.
So what you saw there were some vignettes from the impeachments of Donald Trump.
It moved from the House, which is dominated by Democrats, and you saw Adam Schiff there, to the Senate.
The House, if I can, I'll be corrected in a minute by our next guest, but the House puts the accusation, and the Senate tries it.
One is like the prosecutor, Schiff, and the other is like the jury, the Senate.
And I think one of the reasons I find this trying and boring and uninteresting is because it's deja vu.
I saw all this for three years in the form of the Mueller inquiry.
Hundreds of witnesses, thousands of interrogations, search warrants, interviews.
And at the end of it, Robert Mueller and his massive team of Democrats found there was no evidence that Donald Trump was in collusion with the Russians and they had their big shot and they shot it and missed.
And I feel like this is a bad sequel to a bad movie.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Joining us now via Skype from world headquarters of Breitbart.com is our friend Joel Pollock, who has been following most closely this impeachment.
And we're glad to have him break away for a few moments.
Joel, I know I should be more interested just for the flavor and the interest of it, but I don't think even the Democrats believe this is the kill shot they once thought it would be.
Am I wrong?
No, you're right.
I think that their hope is to cause as much political damage to the president as they possibly can while minimizing damage to themselves.
But I think that the first day of the impeachment trial did not go particularly well for them.
They did have all of the airtime, essentially, and the president's lawyers, the White House counsel, chose not to use all their time.
They just made their points and sat down.
The Democrats basically used 11 or 12 hours to make substantive arguments on procedural motions that they were bringing to demand more witnesses, to demand more documents.
And that clip you played earlier where one of the White House lawyers said, look, you can't show up on the first day of the trial and say you need more information.
You've got the indictment.
You've already said we believe we can prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
But now you say you want us to call these witnesses.
You want more proof.
It's noteworthy also is that the Democrats did not allow Republicans to call any new witnesses in the House.
So why should the Republicans and the Senate allow Democrats to do the same, especially when the Senate is the later part, as you pointed out, of this entire process?
The Democrats are now going to lay out the opening argument.
They get 24 hours of total time to do it over, I think, three days.
So they're going to have eight hours a day, followed by the White House counsel laying out their response.
We're not clear that they're going to need to use all of those 24 hours.
In fact, I described this to someone earlier today as being like a baseball game.
If your team is the home team and they're winning in the ninth inning and the visiting team strikes out three outs, you don't have to bat in the bottom of the ninth.
Trump's lawyers can simply stand up and say, there's nothing proven here.
You've got no case.
This is unconstitutional and sit down.
They could theoretically dispose of this in five minutes.
I think it'll take a little longer than that.
They have some points they want to make.
But basically, the president's case is that there, first of all, is nothing impeachable here.
Secondly, there's a legitimate interest in finding out about corruption in Ukraine by Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, election interference from Ukraine.
If there's any legitimate interest in what the president was asking Ukraine to do, there's no grounds for impeaching him.
And the Democrats have come in saying there is no possible legitimate interest.
It's just not a supportable argument.
I don't know why they've done that to themselves.
They've made a number of mistakes along the way.
So we're basically sitting, as you pointed out, we're sitting here and listening to the same thing we've heard for the last several weeks in the House, for the previous three years on the media, on CNN, and in the House, and in the Senate, and online and everywhere else.
So this is going to be quite a grueling, boring marathon.
There are a few fireworks here and there.
The Chief Justice had to intervene to rebuke.
He rebuked both sides because he's got to look impartial, but really it was to rebuke the Democrats.
House Democrats came in and accused the White House counsel of lying, which you don't really do.
It's considered not just uncivil, but unprofessional for lawyers to do that.
And he also, as Adam Schiff did, said that the Senate would be derelict in their duty if they didn't vote the way he wanted them to vote.
No, the Senate has a duty to vote according to its own conscience, according to its own conclusions, but they don't have a duty to vote the way Democrats want them to.
You can't accuse them.
Actually, Jerry Nadler, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, said they would be voting against the United States.
That's an exact quote, against the United States if they voted not to remove Trump from office.
So it's really just extraordinary the fact that they've come in here with that.
That was one of the only exciting moments.
Chief Justice admonished both sides.
I think that the Democrats have a tougher task ahead than they did in the first day of the hearings because they're going to repeat themselves over and over and over again.
Schiff is not very likable.
He whines a lot.
He's got no sense of humor.
The other House impeachment managers are a little better.
One or two of them have surprised me by being better than I thought they would be, but most of them are pretty poor.
Representative Garcia of Houston essentially put everybody to sleep on the first night.
So it's going to be long, grueling, and boring.
The president's lawyers generally did a very good job.
Pat Cipollone, the lead counsel, was excellent.
And I think the highlight's going to be Alan Dershowitz coming in.
Dershowitz is not coming in to make an argument about the facts.
He's coming in to make an argument that this entire impeachment is unconstitutional based on his expertise as a constitutional law scholar and historian.
He's written several books about the Constitution, about the Bill of Rights.
Adam Schiff has twice now trashed Donald Trump, excuse me, trashed Alan Dershowitz.
Schiff has trashed Alan Dershowitz by saying, well, he's just a criminal defense lawyer.
He's not really an expert in constitutional law.
Not only is it a lie, but it's a completely ridiculous, ad hominem, personal put-down.
And I think it's just going to give Alan Dershowitz an appetite to come in and absolutely destroy the Democrats' argument.
Now, I share your point of view, but then again, I would tend to, because that's where I come from.
That's my worldview.
But let me give you a little report from up here in Frozen Canada.
I was interested in Donald Trump going to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he gave quite a speech, and we'll have that speech on tomorrow's show.
And all the Canadian media seem to be saying on Twitter, online is, how can Trump even be thinking about other things?
He's running away from the impeachment.
Why won't he talk about the impeachment?
Like, the Canadian media were riveted by this.
So even if it is constitutionally and legally improper, even if Adam Schiff is unlikable and another one of the impeachment managers is boring, the Canadian media thinks that this is catnip.
They think Trump is guilty.
And I can only imagine how the media party in the United States are treating it.
So you say eight hours sounds like a lot.
Eight hours a day.
Well, that's enough to fill CNN schedule.
So even if it's not great, it's 24 hours of election year anti-Trump innuendo and defamation.
So I don't know.
Yeah.
But here's the problem.
Remember how many of the Democrats are running for president from the Senate?
Several of their leading candidates are Senate Democrats.
They have taken these Senate Democrats and they've forced them because they can't leave.
They've forced them to sit in the Senate chamber for days and days and days until 2 a.m., in fact, on the first day of the trial.
So Bernie Sanders is on the jury and he's in the Senate.
He cannot campaign in Iowa.
He cannot campaign in Iowa.
Michael Bennett cannot campaign in Iowa.
Who can campaign in Iowa?
Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Andrew Yang, Tom Steyer, all the non-senators.
But, by the way, Biden is coming up constantly in this trial.
So he's not really escaping it.
He's in the crosshairs, and he may be called as a witness if Democrats succeed in opening up new witnesses.
If they get John Bolton, who, by the way, will probably not be a very good witness for them, but if they get John Bolton and whoever else they want, you can be damn sure the Senate Republicans are going to call Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, the whistleblower, and anybody else they want to.
And Biden's going to be pulled off the trail.
And this is all happening with less than two weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses.
So yes, Democrats are getting airtime to talk about impeachment.
What they're not doing is talking about health care.
They're not talking about Green New Deal and climate change.
They're not talking about anything that is of interest to their own primary voters, most of whom, including those on the left, see this as a distraction.
There's no way the Senate's going to remove him from office.
You need a two-thirds vote to do that.
The Republicans are not going to split like that.
You're not even going to get more than one or two Republicans to vote for that.
And even that's a stretch.
I can see Mitt Romney, who doesn't like Trump voting anyway to remove him from office, but you're not going to get 20 Republican senators.
And that's what it would take, 20 out of the 53, to cross over.
Never going to happen.
So Democrats' own voters, you put them in office in 2018, want them to do things on gun control, want them to, and none of that's going to happen, and they're not talking about it.
So Democrats, in short, have interfered with their own election.
Now, as to the point about Trump being in Switzerland, he's not running away from impeachment.
This is his case against impeachment.
And it was the same strategy used by Bill Clinton successfully in 1998, 1999.
Not because Trump is guilty as Clinton was.
And by the way, I didn't think Clinton should have been impeached either, even though I did think Clinton had committed crimes.
Trump is doing what Clinton did.
Trump is showing the American people that he's still at work.
Are you going to impeach and remove a president who is representing the country on the world stage, who is concluding trade deals, who is bombing bad guys, who is running and boasting about the world's strongest economy?
You're going to impeach that guy?
So Trump is basically saying, look, you can impeach me, but you're risking all of this.
You're also undermining the country's negotiating position if you take me out of the game and all these world leaders have to get to know somebody else.
So I think that this is actually Trump prosecuting or defending his own case in the impeachment trial by doing what he was elected to do so he can show the American people that he is staying focused while the Democrats are stuck in the Senate chamber.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, that's the thing is, especially 10 months before an election, if people wanted to get rid of Trump, they can do it pretty cleanly in November of this year.
Are there districts where a Democrat won in Congress or Senate and Trump won the presidential vote, that there's enough of an independent electorate that would say, we really don't like what you're doing.
It smacks of undoing an election.
It smacks of trickery.
And we're going to take it out on our congressman, our senator, any other, because of course, there's a lot of different people up for election in November, not just the president, every congressman and a third of the Senate.
Are there Democrats who must be saying, hey, please get us out of this mess?
Yes, there are a couple of Democratic senators who are up for reelection, but the real action is going to be in the House.
There are 31 Democrats who represent districts that Trump won in 2016.
They're all up for reelection, and the polling in many of those districts is sharply against impeachment and removal.
That is a big problem for Democrats.
Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, these are unpopular figures in these districts.
And remember, these are districts that voted for Trump.
So you see a lot of candidates coming out now in these districts on the Republican side who are running against impeachment and doing very well.
I'll give you a district I know well, back in my old hometown of Chicago.
There's a suburban district on the west side, the 6th district, was once represented by Peter Roskim, who was a real great congressman, really one of the best.
Free market guy, pro-Israel, strong foreign policy, great congressman.
He was ousted in the blue wave, and they elected a guy named Sean Kastens, a businessman with a very sharp tongue and not much else behind him in terms of political experience.
He was elected on essentially a moderate platform, albeit with a very bare-knuckle style of politics.
He tried to imitate Trump in insulting his opponent.
But Kasten has voted for impeachment, and his opponent, a woman named Jeannie Ives, is now running on that.
The district leans more toward Democrats in terms of overall party preference, but she is beating Kasten in early opinion polls by something like 10%.
It's a very big margin, 9 or 10%.
So the Republican challenger is beating the incumbent.
Jeannie Ives is beating Sean Kasten in early opinion polls because of impeachment.
That's how unpopular impeachment is in these districts.
They want a Democrat in Congress, some of these districts, because a lot of suburban districts have moved against Trump.
They don't like his rhetoric.
Women don't like him, whatever it is.
Bernie's Rise?00:03:53
But the impeachment thing is pushing a lot of those voters back into the Republican column.
Democrats have wasted their mandate on impeachment.
And that's what's happening in those districts.
That's why Republicans are cautiously optimistic that they can win back the 18, 19 seats they're going to need to retake the House of Representatives.
Isn't that incredible?
I mean, 10 months is so long anything could happen.
Let me ask one last question.
I want to let you get back to things because you're really covering this closely.
I'm grateful for you shoehorning us in your day.
I look at the Democratic presidential roster of nominees, and it seems weak to me.
I think every one of them has a major flaw.
Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, I just maybe I lack imagination, but I can't imagine any of them beating Trump, and I really have trouble imagining them being effective presidents.
Can you give me your latest thinking on that and on the possibility, and it's almost too ridiculous to suggest, but I just want your thoughts.
Is there a chance that Hillary Clinton will jump back in?
I know that's absurd to ask, but I just want to ask it.
Well, to the first part of your question, no, there is no Democrat who yet poses an alternative to Trump.
There's no Democrat who really comes out as a leader, who comes across as someone who can rival Trump in their ability to achieve something, do something.
There is one person emerging, and I have to say, I have to give him credit because he's emerging as the new frontrunner in at least one poll, in the CNN poll, despite the fact that he's stuck in the Senate with this impeachment thing, and that's Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders is coming out strong as Biden starts to fade a little bit.
Now, we don't know how Iowa is going to vote.
We don't know how New Hampshire is going to vote in the beginning of February.
But Bernie Sanders is moving ahead.
And I think one of the reasons he's moving ahead is precisely that Democrats have lost faith in the field as a whole.
And Sanders, being the most authentically left-wing, he's the original Democratic socialist, spent his honeymoon in the USSR, all that stuff.
He, in a way, is a protest vote against the party establishment.
And so if Democrats can't get a candidate who they think can actually win, they're going to go for a candidate that makes them feel good when they cast their vote.
That is Bernie Sanders.
He's not unlikable.
He is liked even by Republicans.
He's amusing.
He is civil to his Democratic opponents, unlike many of his rivals who've been running attack ads all the time.
He often backs away from the best attacks.
He could really go for some of these corruption issues, but he backs away.
And that, ironically, is appealing to people.
The impeachment trial is about to start up again here, so I have to run back in.
But that's what I would say.
Watch Bernie Sanders in the next 10 days.
All right, Joel Pollock, we'll let you get back to the impeachment.
Thanks for your time, my friend.
Thank you.
Okay, there you have it.
Joel Pollack, we pulled him away.
He was literally watching the impeachment, so I'm glad we stole 15 minutes from him.
Very, very interesting, especially those thoughts about Bernie Sanders.
And I don't know if you noticed, but just the other day, Hillary Clinton came out with a broadside against Bernie Sanders saying no one likes him.
You know, I know Hillary doesn't, and she put the knife in him, but I don't like Bernie Sanders' ideology.
But I agree with Joel.
He's got a likability, and maybe it's because he reminds me of that TV character, Larry David, from the show Curb Your Enthusiasm.
He's got that accent.
He's got that look.
I don't think people are sour about him, the way Hillary Clinton was such a turnoff for so many.
Very interesting days, but 300 days to go until the election, approximately.
Trudeau's Immigration Impact00:02:11
We'll see how it goes.
All right, stay with us for more.
Hey, folks, on my monologue yesterday about Trudeau bringing in more than double the amount of people that his immigration targets.
Kayrick writes.
208,234 new liberal voters.
Congratulations, Canada.
Yeah, 16% of those were natural births, but the other 83% are migrants.
It's twice as many as Trudeau said.
Do you think any media party person will comment on it?
Do you think any Conservative Party person will?
Robert writes, perhaps it's time to state immigration numbers in terms of CO2 emissions increases.
200,000 new immigrants and approximately 4 million tons of CO2 emissions to Canada's output.
At $50 a ton, that's $200 million in tax revenue plus GST.
Well, that's the thing.
I mean, it's not even a joke.
I mean, it is a joke, but how can Canada reduce our carbon output if we're adding almost a million people a year?
Well, don't come at me with hate facts.
Hank writes, buy some real estate.
In 10 years, it will be worth a lot more.
Well, yeah, good point.
For those who have real estate, for landlords, people with construction companies, banks, cell phone companies, low-skill employers like Tim Hortons, they love mass immigration.
It lowers wages and it increases property values.
So yeah, just buy real estate, eh?
Well, as I said earlier in the show, that's a million dollar proposition in Toronto or Vancouver.
So if you're in, sure, yeah, you want the boat to rise, but what if you never got in the boat in the first place?
On my interview with AWR Hawkins about guns, Hogan writes, an armed society is a polite society.
Yeah, AWR said that yesterday, and that's exactly right, because everyone's on good behavior.
You don't try something.
You don't get a moment of road rage.
You don't have an impulse when you don't know if the guy two rows over in the church pew is packing.