Bryan Adams faced backlash for a May 12 Instagram post linking COVID-19 to "wet market" practices, which Ezra Levant argues the CBC mislabeled as racist to shield China’s CCP. Pamela Geller sued NYC Mayor de Blasio over protest bans, calling lockdowns a power grab with ignored public health data and partisan motives. Levant contrasts Lewis’s Conservative leadership potential with McKay and O’Toole’s perceived weaknesses under media pressure, while defending free speech debates. The episode ties criticism of China to broader concerns about government overreach and election-driven policies, framing accountability as a free speech issue. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I talk about Brian Adams and his anger at the Chinese wet markets.
Is that really racist as the CBC says?
Or are they just running another errand for the Chinese Communist Party?
I'll show you the proof.
Before I do, let me invite you to become a Rebel News Plus subscriber.
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And you help us stay strong.
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Okay, here's the podcast.
Tonight, is Bryan Adams racist for swearing at China?
The CBC thinks so.
It's May 12th, 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 is government will watch is because it's my bloody right to do so.
You know Brian Adams, right?
The great Canadian, easy-listening rock star whose 80s hits like Run to You and Summer of 69 made him a CanCon staple.
He's led an interesting life.
He's become an accomplished photographer, too.
He lives in London mainly.
He's 60 years old now, but he looks great.
I think he would pass for 40, and he still does concerts.
And obviously, like everyone else, he has had his concerts canceled because of the pandemic.
So he took to Instagram to rant a bit.
He played his guitar and sang a song, but he typed out these words right next to it.
Cuts like a knife, a song by me.
Tonight was supposed to be the beginning of a tenancy of gigs at the Royal Albert Hall, but thanks to some effing bat eating, wet market, animal-selling, virus-making, greedy bastards, the whole world is now on hold.
Not to mention the thousands that have suffered or died from this virus.
My message to them, other than thanks an effing lot, is go vegan.
To all the people missing out on our shows, I wish I could be there more than you know.
It's been great hanging out in isolation with my children and family, but I miss my other family, my band, my crew, and my fans.
Take care of yourselves, and I hope we can get the show on the road again soon.
I'll be performing a snippet from each album we were supposed to perform for the next few days.
Love, Song from Isolation, COVID-19, ban wet markets, self-isolation, Brian Adams cuts like a knife, go vegan.
So just to point out the obvious, he doesn't say anything about race.
He doesn't even say the word China.
And he mentions the victims of the virus, which obviously includes Chinese victims.
And probably, in fact, if we ever do find out the statistical truth that the Chinese Communist Party is covering up, it will likely be that China had the most victims from the virus in the world.
When Brian Adams said greedy bastards, I don't know who exactly he meant, but I know what he meant by bat eating.
He meant some of the more gross and dangerous cuisines in China.
And by wet markets, he meant the same places where wild animals, both alive and dead, are sold for food in China.
A dozen years ago, I walked to a wet market in Shanghai, and the air was so thick with animal dust and dander and the smells of a thousand things, I couldn't walk through it fast enough.
I almost choked.
Maybe that's me being a privileged Chrissy.
I hold my nose when I go to a chicken farm or a pig farm or a cattle feedlot in Canada.
They don't smell like daisies, but you generally don't have the entire chain of food production, including eating it right under the same roof in the same room.
We use the phrase from farm to fork.
You're not sitting there within the cow pens, pig pens, eating.
I think that's what he was ranting about.
Because he's being a vegan, which is a hardcore form of vegetarianism.
No milk or cheese even.
He's been that for decades.
If you were a vegan, you would go berserk in China.
There are a lot of foods that I imagine people learned to eat from sheer starvation.
It's the largest, hungriest country in the world.
Probably always has been the largest, going back centuries.
If it's between a famine and eating anything with calories in it, you eat.
I think of traditional Jewish foods that I learned to love as a kid.
And looking at them objectively, they're just European poor people food.
making do with things that are actually sort of awful.
There's a Jewish kind of haggis.
You know what haggis is?
Well, there's a Jewish version called Kishka.
You don't eat that if you have other choices, but if you don't have other choices, you eat what you can and you say, hmm, this is great.
Maybe that's what happened.
But China could probably lay off eating bats now.
That country doesn't face starvation anymore, thank capitalism.
So is Brian Adams being racist?
Of course not.
Is he mad at China?
Of course he is.
And you should be too.
Is Brian Adams mad at the Chinese race?
Of course not.
He's mad at the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese virus, and the bat eating theory that the Chinese government itself has promoted.
So I suppose in that one way, he's critical of an aspect of one expression of Chinese culture, these wet markets.
But I know a lot of Chinese people, mainly here in Canada, but around the world too, and I'm pretty sure that not a single one of them ever ate a bat.
Brian Adams is not smearing them.
He's shouting at the sky because of what happened, as are all of us, including many Chinese people both here and there.
Well, you know, we're returning to a sense of pre-pandemic normalcy when the CBC state broadcaster decides that his Instagram post is worthy of a racial witch hunt.
It's gross.
It's not real journalism.
It's outrage porn.
It's activism.
It's part of the CBC's agenda to excuse the Chinese Communist Party and to paint critics of the virus as racist.
But in a way, it's good to see that things are returning to normal.
I drove to work today, and for the first time in nearly two months, it was a traffic jam in Toronto, a traffic jam, as in people are done with the pandemic panic.
Anyways, cue the outrage police, they're back too.
They weren't really working these past two months, but they've certainly been paid these past two months.
The CBC, how is that possibly an essential service when literally 99% of Canadians don't watch CBC News?
Seriously, how in the age of a million YouTube channels, hundreds of cable channels, Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, Disney Plus, Crave, whatever, there's a new streaming service every week, Quibby.
How does the CBC still manage to liberate $1.5 billion a year from taxpayers for content no one wants, no one would pay for on their own?
Well, obviously, by serving Justin Trudeau's interests, by stoking outrage at anyone who dares to challenge Trudeau's liberal narrative.
That's worth $1.5 billion a year to Trudeau.
You bet it is.
So here's their stab at Brian Adams.
Brian Adams' Instagram post draws rebukes from Chinese Canadian organization, social media users.
Warning, the story contains offensive language.
Oh, did Brian Adams swear?
Did he use a racist word?
He didn't swear at Chinese people.
He didn't use a racist word.
But the CBC wants to hype this up a bit.
Look at that construction of the headline.
Some social media users are mad.
I got a bit of a secret for you, and maybe you already know it.
Some social media users are always mad at something because you've got, I don't know, 2 billion people around the world on Facebook alone and everyone has a comment on something.
So that's not really the definition of news, but it's a trick that weak journalists use when they want to gin up a story and don't really have a lot to go on other than their own opinions.
They want to turn it into news, just like when the CBC went after the Epoch Times newspaper.
They literally quoted one woman, a liberal woman in BC, who simply said she thought the Epoch Times was racist or something, even though she is white and the Epoch Times is an ethnically Chinese newspaper.
That random person from BC was not an expert or an authoritative source on China, racism, or anything.
She was just literally one out of 37.5 million Canadians who said something that the CBC then turned into Canadians upset.
That was their headline.
Yeah, a more accurate headline would have been Canadian upset.
It's the same fake news here.
A prominent Chinese Canadian activist said she is shocked, disappointed, and angry about an Instagram post on Canadian singer Bryden Adams' official account that she and others say is racist.
Oh, so this time it's a prominent woman, not just some random person like in their epoch time smear.
I wonder who that prominent person is.
I can hardly wait to find out.
I like following prominent people.
The post contains a snippet of Adams singing his hit song, Cuts Like a Knife.
An accompanying description expresses his frustration that COVID-19-related restrictions have led to the postponing of three shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England.
Okay, I'm waiting for the racist part still.
Tonight was supposed to be the beginning of a tendency of gigs at Royal Albert Hall, but thanks to some effing, bat-eating, wet market, animal-selling, virus-making, greeting bastards, the whole world is now on hold, the post read.
My message to them and other than thanks and effing lot is go vegan.
Okay, so I guess that's the offensive language part is pro-vegan swear.
So where's this prominent person I was promised?
Oh, here.
Amy Goh, the president.
Wow, that's pretty, that's very senior.
The president of the Chinese-Canadian National Council for Social Justice called the post racist and believes it could stochater to Chinese Canadians.
Quote, people look up to public figures.
He is seen as an idol by many, Goh said.
It justifies this racist hatred against Chinese.
This is so irresponsible, just so, so, so, so racist.
You know it's very racist because she said so four times.
As the coronavirus pandemic has spread, many have raised concerns about growing anti-Asian and anti-Chinese racism in Canada with reports of anti-Asian hate crimes on the rise in Vancouver, including physical and verbal attacks.
Okay, Amy Goh, I guess, is the prominent person we were promised.
I had never heard of her.
Have you?
I know plenty of prominent Chinese Canadians.
There are plenty of Chinese Canadians in high stations in life in Canada, in business, in politics of every party.
Amy Goh, Amy Goh.
Doesn't ring a bell.
How about that group, the Chinese-Canadian National Council for Social Justice?
Have you ever heard of them before?
They're prominent.
The CBC just said so, so it's got to be true.
Now, I found their website.
It looks like the organization was just invented a few months ago.
They announced they were formed, and then they only had a couple of small notices until this year.
They're literally a new creation.
They had a student panel at a law school, co-sponsored with someone else.
That's all they pretty much did in 2019 at the very end.
Until the Chinese virus came to Canada in January, when they started piping up, calling everyone racist who complained about the pandemic.
Seriously, I went through their entire website.
There wasn't a substantive thing they did until just three days after the first virus patient came from China to Canada.
In February, they submitted a paper to a parliamentary committee calling Canadians racist.
And then their big thing before the virus shut down the whole world was they took to the streets of Toronto dressed in a virus-style hazmat suit, handing out hand sanitizer saying to stop the spread of racism.
And they set up a website promoting that stunt.
I'd be scared if someone came out to me in the streets in a hazmat suit.
Very creepy, very Chinese state propaganda-ish.
So not so much concerned about the virus, but pretty concerned about fighting racism.
Okay, it's weird.
They sound like Chinese state propaganda, though.
In fact, they have a video clip on their website of China's man in the WHO calling everyone racist.
Remember this?
It's so painful to see the level of stigma we're observing.
Of course, we're human beings.
We're not angels.
We make mistakes.
But at the same time, we can make rational decisions too.
And we can have the right attitude and behavior.
The stigma is more dangerous than the virus itself.
Okay, so who funded this whole thing that was created out of nowhere?
I couldn't tell.
There was no about us section on their homemade website.
But if you scroll right down to the bottom, you find a link to the brand new organization I mentioned before.
And you see something called Hive.
I'd heard of that.
That's a professional ad agency.
Pretty fancy, pretty pricey.
So you have an online group that was just created a few months ago, really didn't do anything of note until the virus came.
And then they go from zero to launching a full-blown ad agency-constructed propaganda campaign, not public health information about the virus, but a political campaign to demonize Canadians as racist by nature.
It's produced by a costly ad agency.
We have no info on either the campaign website or the organization's website about who their funding comes from, who runs it, including whether they take foreign funding, including whether they take funding from the Chinese embassy or from the China-run World Health Organization.
Isn't that odd?
Now, the CBC didn't mention that, did they?
They didn't mention any of that.
They called them, what did they say again?
A prominent Chinese-Canadian activist, really?
Prominent.
You know, you can find my email address and phone number on the internet with a quick Google.
I got about 10 email addresses.
They all really do come here.
I got staff helping read through.
You can contact me in about five minutes if you tried, and I'm not that prominent.
So I tried to contact this very prominent person, very famous, very credible, definitely not just some random person, and definitely for sure, absolutely not just a paid propagandist for a Chinese political organ.
Never, never, no, no.
So, so, so.
She absolutely came up with the money for this fancy ad agency by herself.
It's Brian Adams who needs investigating for being against eating bats, the racist.
Is the CBC being used as a tool by a foreign government again, meddling in Canadian politics, spreading disinformation?
They sure seem to be in their recent smear against the Epoch Times.
And one of the journalists in this Brian Adams story, Katie Nicholson, was in on that EPOC Times smear too.
But can I ask a question?
Has there actually been a wave of anti-Chinese racism in Canada?
I don't mean anti-China, the country.
I mean anti-Chinese, the ethnicity, the race.
Well, the CBC cites a few examples over the course of the last 90 days in our huge country of 37.5 million people.
Anti-Asian Racism in Canada00:05:58
They say, as the coronavirus pandemic has spread, many have raised concerns about growing anti-Asian and anti-Chinese racism in Canada with reports of anti-Asian hate crimes on the rise in Vancouver, including physical and verbal attacks.
And that's what the Toronto Star says too, so you know it's true.
They wrote about the creation of this prominent PR group.
They actually wrote about Amy Goh.
Look at this.
They said, Chinese organization launches stop the spread of racism campaign amid coronavirus outbreak.
Okay, so this story was from March 3rd.
Amid a marked uptick in harassment complaints from the Chinese community, a national organization launched a campaign Tuesday to combat a different kind of sickness, coronavirus-inspired xenophobia.
You still hear comments from people on the street saying, oh, I'm fine because I stayed away from Chinatown, Amy Goh, interim president of Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice, said in an interview.
Very prominent woman.
I heard all about her in the CBC.
Everyone's talking about Amy Goh.
I just can't find her phone number or email anywhere because she doesn't, I guess she's only prominent to the people who will write a story along her narrative.
She says anti-Asian bigotry is a huge thing.
Now, I hope that's not true.
Is it true?
I read the whole Toronto store story.
Here's what they say.
Complaints have been heard across the greater Toronto area.
On February 2, a woman entered a flower shop in the upper beaches and went on a racist tirade after asking the owner whether he had traveled to Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak.
On Feb 19, Toronto police charged the man after he allegedly harassed and assaulted a woman wearing a medical mask on a TCC bus in downtown Toronto.
Police wouldn't say whether the incident was race-related.
In late January, the owner of Wuhan Noodle in Markham said the restaurant had lost two-thirds of its customers after being flooded with racist comments on social media and prank phone calls holding a viral post on the popular Instagram page SixBuzzTV.
All right, asking someone if they went to Wuhan, I guess that could be asked in a racist way in the flower shop case, but I think it is a question.
Tens of thousands of people did fly from Wuhan to Canada.
Maybe the question in the flower shop was asked rudely, but those are actually official questions that border police ask anyone flying in to Canada.
It's to check for the virus.
That's where it came from.
Wuhan Noodle, that lost two-thirds of its customers back then, our David Menzies went to Wuhan Noodle in February.
I'm not sure if it's racist to stay away from Wuhan Noodle.
I'm guessing most of their customers were Chinese ethnically, and they just didn't want to go out to restaurants anymore.
Canada's now shut down all of our restaurants, pretty much.
So can other restaurants cite racism?
Or is it only the one named after the virus's epicenter that can cry racism?
And the second example there they cite that about the TTC bus, but they admit the police didn't say it was racist.
But I guess the star needed more than two weak examples to show a trend.
And that's it.
Look, I'm glad there's no racist wave in Canada.
I'm really glad.
Stop trying so hard to make one.
Folks, do you think Canada is racist?
Do you think that anyone, and I mean 99.999% of people, think this virus is somehow a racial or ethnic thing, as opposed to simply having come from China?
I mean, China's toughest critics are ethnically Chinese people.
They're not racist.
They just hate the Communist Party of China.
Being against the Soviet Union wasn't anti-Russian bigotry.
It was being anti-communist.
The first victims of the Soviet Union were its own citizens.
Same with Communist China today.
This is a fake story in the CBC.
Of course it is.
Maybe there's a tiny tidbit that Brian Adams is mad at having his venue canceled and mad at people who eat bats because he's a vegan and he finds that gross.
That's a small entertainment story, but the CBC turned this into a huge story, a political story, and they quoted the one and only prominent Amy Goh as proof.
I love that, prominent critic.
No one's ever heard of her.
She's got a pop-up fake astroturf group, political group that was inactive until just a couple months ago, but seems to have scats of money to hire pro-ad agencies.
Is the CBC pulling another trick here?
I try to find Amy Goh.
There's no contact info for her.
Maybe I should put a call into the Chinese consulate.
I wonder if they know how to get a hold of the prominent Amy Goh.
I wonder if they're the ones who served up this story to the CBC.
It certainly serves the interests of Communist China, just like the CBC smear in the Epoch Times did.
Oh well, Brian Adams made another Instagram post in the wake of the kerfuffle.
I'll read it to you.
Into the Fire.
Title track from the same album.
Apologies to any and all that took offense to my posting yesterday.
No excuse, I just wanted to have a rant about the horrible animal cruelty in these wet markets being the possible source of the virus and Bermoni veganism.
I have love for all people and my thoughts are with everyone dealing with this pandemic around the world.
Here's the appropriately titled song that would have been performed tonight at the Royal Albert Hall.
And he's still saying, ban wet markets and go vegan.
Yeah, I'm not sure if he even needed to do that apology.
I don't even think it was a real apology.
It was the same answer.
Sorry if you were offended.
I don't think anyone thought for a moment that Brian Adams is a racist because he's mad about the virus.
I don't think the CBC thinks he's racist.
And I don't think the CCP, the Communist Party of China, thinks he's racist.
I don't even think Amy Goh thinks he's racist.
I think they all just want to promote a narrative.
The CBC, the CCB, and Amy Goh, that Canadians are racist, and that to be mad about the virus is racist.
And to hold the Chinese communist dictatorship to account is racist.
That's the only way this fake news story makes sense.
Which is probably why Trudeau's CBC State Broadcaster is at the center of it.
Pushing Civil Liberties Away00:04:28
Stay with us for more.
Seriously, you guys have a park.
You live in the middle of a park.
You don't need to not essentially travel to Brooklyn.
Come on, guys.
Give it a break.
Come on, you won't even open roads for people of all backgrounds.
I'm not going to give it a break.
This is selfish behavior.
This is so terribly selfish.
You call yourself a progressive, but you chauffeur yourself to Brooklyn.
You force people to drive you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, that's New York's mayor, Bill de Blasio, being heckled by a citizen for breaking his own rules about traveling and social distancing.
Of course, de Blasio set up a snitch line to be used on the little people.
He didn't think it would be used on himself.
He's got a bit of a double standard that way.
He loves to go to the gym, likes to go out for a coffee, but he has a particular hatred for, I don't know, a particular ethnic community.
Color me shocked.
He issued this tweet.
My message to the Jewish community and all communities is this simple.
The time for warnings has passed.
I've instructed the New York Police Department to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups.
This is about stopping this disease and saving lives, period.
That's pretty weird to group all 1 million New York Jews together.
He's tired and furious with the Jewish community, and he's going to send the police after them.
That's not a good look, Bill.
That's not a good look, Bill.
Well, I know one New Yorker who won't stand for this, who won't stand for her civil liberties being pushed away by some hardcore left-wing mayor.
You probably know who I'm talking about.
It's our old friend Pamela Geller, and she actually filed a lawsuit against Bill de Blasio, and she joins us now.
Pamela, great to see you.
It's wonderful to be back, Ezra.
Thank you for having me.
Well, it's our pleasure.
Now, you don't just act as a commentator on the news.
You get involved and do stuff.
You're an activist, too.
And I have in front of me your lawsuit filed recently where you were the plaintiff.
You're suing Bill de Blasio individually and in his capacity as mayor.
And you're suing Dermot Shea, the police commissioner.
Now, why don't you tell us a little bit about the lawsuit and what you hope to achieve?
Well, the lawsuit challenges Mayor de Blasio, his recent edict that the First Amendment no longer applies in New York City, that you can no longer peacefully assemble.
You can no longer peacefully protest.
Imagine that.
And this past weekend, by the way, peaceful protesters were arrested.
And too many left-wing progressive politicians like Mayor de Blasio see this current panic as an opportunity to impose draconian restrictions on our fundamental rights and liberties.
His latest effort is the most egregious that we have seen, the suspension of the ability to protest, the banning of protesting.
It's unfathomable that a government official, his thirst for power, would go this far, and he needs to be stopped, and we intend to do so.
Well, I always heard, because I watched CNN and read the New York Times, that the man who was going to take away our civil liberties, the Nazi-like man in 2020, was Donald Trump.
And yet I've seen no efforts by him to censor the press, to stop protests, to crack down on anyone.
And I have to ask, Pamela, if the same rules being enforced by Bill de Blasio, a hard left-wing Democrat, were imposed by any Republican, let alone Trump, I have to think that New York would be the center of the resistance.
It's where all the woke journalists are.
It's where Vaux and the New York Times and every wannabe media star is the media headquarters of the country, the liberal headquarters of the country.
Woke Journalists Resisting Cuomo00:06:08
It voted, I don't know, 90% Democrat.
Why are all these civil libertarians fine when it's a Democrat who's putting handcuffs on them?
Because it's rights for me, but not for the.
This is the left.
The media is engaging in fear pornography and panic incitement.
I was actually heartened today when I told him that the German, the number one newspaper in Europe, Bill, had said the lockdowns must end.
We're seeing the opposite here.
We get fearmongering extraordinaire.
No one is discussing the fact that, for example, the median age of the corona death is 82.
No one's discussing the fact that it is not a danger to children.
No one is discussing the fact that half of the deaths were in nursing homes or the fact that our governor, New York City Governor Cuomo, sent corona-stricken seniors to nursing homes.
Can you imagine if instead of sending corona-stricken seniors to nursing homes, thereby infecting how many elderly people and sentencing them to death?
Because as you know, the most vulnerable are the elderly with comorbidities.
Can you imagine if he put everybody on that cocktail of hydrochloroquine, Zithromax, and zinc?
I think the number in New York would have been half.
Now, here again, there has been no criticism in the media of Governor Cuomo, none.
No criticism really of de Blasio.
It's incredible.
The subways were filthy.
They were disgusting.
You couldn't take them.
The essential workers, of course, because let me tell you something about the rich people in New York City.
They're gone.
They went to their second homes.
We have to see these Instagram pictures of them laying by the pool, the horror of laying by the pool and being served lemonade.
It is distressing to me.
I am a New Yorker, born and bred my whole life.
I love this city, and I don't recognize it.
It is the most survival.
If you look at the country, there are protests and there are demonstrations in support of freedom, you know, protesting these shutdowns because they are draconian and they are wrong and they're imposing on our unalienable rights.
And in New York, there has been nothing.
Nothing.
You know, when it's nice out, they go to the park and then they go home to their lockdown.
And at 7 o'clock, it's like Oshkosh Bogosh, Wisconsin here.
People open their windows and they bang pots.
I mean, I wince when I hear it.
It really makes my skin crawl, but that's their action at 7 o'clock.
Woo-woo-woo-woo!
I don't know.
What are they woo-wooing?
I don't know what they're wooing, but everybody is hiding.
And I think it's grotesque.
Older people, especially people with comorbidities, should shelter in place for their own safety.
But for their entire generation of millennials and Gen Xers to be sacrificing their future because they are.
Everyone thinks you're going to what?
It's all going to be okay when a vaccine comes?
There's going to be nothing left.
These jobs won't be there.
And so sometimes you need to be the person to go out into the street and scream.
And that's what this lawsuit is.
The idea that he has banned protests.
You have to understand that.
In Michigan, those protests played a role.
In Whitmer, Governor Whitmer, who also had imposed draconian measures, she was forced to pull them back because of the protests.
And here in New York, you can't do it.
Well, let me ask you about the domino effect or people looking at other states and saying, hey, how come they get to open up and we don't?
Because I know that you have 50 states in the union and a lot of these decisions are made at the state level.
Some are even made at the city level.
And there are some places I saw Senator Ted Cruz going to get a haircut at the hair salon where the owner had actually been thrown in jail a couple of days earlier by a judge.
That created such a backlash reaction, the Texas Supreme Court freed her.
And I think that was sort of a breaking point where Texas said, all right, we've had enough of this.
At what point do New Yorkers say, hey, hang on, how come Florida gets to go back and Texas and other parts?
Like, will there be a group of New Yorkers, maybe not the wealthiest who think this is one big pajama party, maybe not people who are getting their salary in any event, but the working class who say, I simply have to work.
And if they can work in Miami and if they can work in Dallas, I can work in Manhattan.
Well, I do predict an exodus out of this city.
I honestly do.
And if Wall Street, you know, there was a time when New York was the center of manufacturing, textiles, technology.
I mean, it was diversified.
You know, there were a great many different sectors here.
Well, today, the number one employer in New York City is New York City, is the government.
And of course, number two is Wall Street.
If Wall Street finds that they can WFH work from home and they don't have to come in and they don't have to be in New York, this city is done.
It's cooked like the Ramadan goose.
It's and I think that this is why they're jumping the shark.
I think Cuomo, I think he's holding the state hostage, hoping that Donald Trump will bail him out and bail out de Blasio, not from coronavirus, not from the Wuhan virus, but from their years of mismanagement.
I mean, we're not in trouble because of coronavirus.
We're in trouble because of years of Democrat mismanagement.
Now, you ask me, won't people get fed up?
I think those people are going to vote with their feet.
I think those people are going to leave.
But there's also the sheeple who are reading the New York Times, who are NBC News.
If you look at the headlines every day, Ezra, it's fear panic.
There's an outbreak at the White House.
One person in Pence's office had the virus.
And so now it's an outbreak at the White House.
I mean, it's constantly fear-mongering.
They don't talk about the fact that in these tests that they've been doing, they're finding that over 25% of the population has had it, has been asymptomatic.
The mortality rate is less than the seasonal flu.
This is a flu.
Look back in the late 60s.
Do you remember the Hong Kong flu in the late 60s?
I mean, that wiped out 150,000 people.
Did anybody stop doing anything?
My God, we had Woodstock and Moon Landing and everything else.
I mean, this is just a seizure.
It's not about your safety, ladies and gentlemen.
This is about a seizure of power.
This is about control and that you cannot leave the house.
You will get arrested.
This idea about now you got to wear masks.
Oh, really?
So we didn't need lockdowns.
Everybody could have worn masks.
If masks worked, why did we need lockdowns?
It's just insane.
The idea that you're going to keep children home the summer from camp.
First of all, they need to be outside.
They need to build their immunity systems.
That's how children fight sickness.
And adults, too.
Being in the house for months is not an answer.
What is, you have to ask yourself, what is the end game here?
The end game is the election.
Just so they, the end game, there was no way that President Trump was not going to win.
I mean, we had an unprecedented economy, unprecedented unemployment numbers.
This is, they feel that this is the left and this is what they do, but they always, always jump the shark.
They think that if they can keep this destruction going, I mean, there was an interesting Facebook post by a person who works in the Beltway on Capitol Hill saying that every morning the Democrats, you know, they go into their offices and they're like, the unemployment numbers.
Look, look at that.
I mean, this is sick.
This is misery.
No one's talking about the despair.
No one's talking about the suicide rate.
No one's talking about the depression, the clinical depression, the mental illness.
I mean, there's no hope.
There's no future.
And there's no date.
There's no end date.
This started out in New York City as two weeks because the healthcare system is going to be overwhelmed.
And we can't have that.
And we can't have people piling up at the hospital.
We've got to flatten the curve.
We've got to flatten the curve.
What happened to that argument?
By the way, we flattened the curve here over a month ago.
What happened?
Now it's about what?
Now we've got to, you know, what did he say?
What did Cuomo say?
We got the beast on the run.
Now it's every day.
They get up there and they have their shiny shoes.
Their shoes are shined.
He's got a nice clothes shave.
He's getting all of these offers from women, Cuomo.
And he said, yes, ladies, I'm single.
I mean, you can't make this up.
And meanwhile, everybody's out of work.
And so it's really scary to me.
It really is.
And honestly, I hope that in the courtroom, it's not a question of, well, you know, it's a national security issue or it's a safety issue.
I feel that the city has to prove that, Ezra.
If you look at the mortality rates, the hospitals are empty.
The hospitals are empty and they can't pay their bills.
And by the way, you can't, if you're sick, you can't even have a visitor in the hospital.
If a woman is going to give birth and she's in the hospital husband can't come and see her.
It's terrible.
And no one's talking about it because the media is so in the tank.
They are 100% behind this panic.
And that's what it is.
It's panic.
It's fear-mongering.
People need to look at the data.
People need to look at the science.
And they're not.
And this is why I think you see, you see on the Twitter land, you see in Facebook, you see on Instagram, you know, keep the lockdown, keep the lockdown, keep the lockdown.
They just, it's been drumped into their head that there's some kind of, you know, deadly plague around the corner.
Now, I do not fault President Trump in the beginning.
I do not fault President Trump at the beginning because, you see, it's a weird flu and it could have gone sideways and we didn't know.
Without Proper Process00:03:42
Well, you know what?
We're over two months wiser now.
We have a ton of data and we know and we have to get back to work.
Look at Georgia, Ezra.
Georgia lifted the lockdown April 24th.
And you know what?
They're at their lowest COVID hospitalizations yet.
Have you seen that anywhere in the American media?
No.
It's incredible that the difference in media coverage, Andrew Cuomo, the lion's share of the deaths in the country, he's treated as a hero by the media.
States like Georgia, Florida, or one of my favorites, South Dakota, which never really went into a lockdown in the first place, were demonized by the media, but they've had a sliver of a fraction of the cases of New York.
Well, let me ask you one last thing.
You and I have been talking mainly about the lockdown itself, the house arrest itself, and how it doesn't make sense.
But let's get back to your lawsuit for a moment.
Because if I'm not mistaken, you're not particularly suing to end the lockdown, but to end the ban on protest.
Am I right on that?
It's a suit to end the prohibition of citizens gathering to protest their government.
I mean, it is elemental and Mayor de Blasio's latest effort, and this is not the first time, remember, my ads, my political ads that I used to run were banned under Mayor de Blasio.
I mean, that was the first time.
Think of it, Ezra, the first time in 100 years, in the 100-year history of the New York City transit system, that political advertising, issue advertising, were banned.
So he is a first, he's an enemy of the First Amendment.
This is not new, but this is his latest effort to suspend the First Amendment in the city of New York.
It is the most egregious one that we have seen.
And it's unfathomable that his thirst for power, you know, would go this far.
Well, it's incredible.
I'm very excited that you're taking action.
I mean, of course, we enjoy your commentary, but actually filing a lawsuit is very important.
What's the next step in this?
Does the government have to file a reply within a deadline?
How do these things normally go?
They try and probably get it dismissed, thrown out of court early.
I'm imagining.
How does it work?
Yes, exactly.
They'll go for standing.
Does she have standing?
Being that I have had, I've engaged with the city of New York on this very issue, the First Amendment, how many times?
And one, how many times?
I cannot begin to tell you that if anyone has standing, I have standing.
So that's not going to, they will not impede my progress with this suit.
They will have to answer it.
And I can assure you that when we win, and we will, we will have a freedom of speech.
We'll have a First Amendment march.
I mean, you have to wake people up because let's be frank, Ezra, the media is, you know, disinforming, misinforming.
People are not taught to think critically.
They don't even know.
They don't even understand what's being taken from them.
You know, think of it, centuries of blood and toil for these intellectual rights that, frankly, was seized without due process.
That's a different problem.
They were seized without process.
So what's the process of getting them back?
They were just taken.
There was no declaration of any sort or, you know, I understand this invisible enemy.
Dr. Leslie Lewis on the Conservative Party Campaign00:03:48
I understand that.
But it's proven to be handleable.
We can handle corona.
But to take away the First Amendment, our Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, this is just, it's a coup.
It's unbelievable.
Well, you're a great American, Pamela.
It's a pleasure to talk with you.
We wish you good luck to our viewers.
I recommend thegelerreport.com.
Stay strong, my friend.
You're fighting, as you say, as a one-woman army, and I think you're going to win.
Take care.
Thank you so much for having me, Ezra.
Our pleasure.
There you have it.
Pamela Geller.
You can find a copy of her lawsuit at thegelerreport.com.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about a peaceful protester being arrested in front of Alberta's legislature.
Ken writes...
Hopefully if we ever get out of this lockdown, some of these so-called police officers who are breaking law will be held accountable.
Yeah, I wouldn't bet on it.
I wouldn't bet on it unless there's some sort of a lawsuit.
On my interview with Dr. Leslie Lewis about her campaign to be the leader of the Conservative Party, Colin writes, I love it when someone listens to the question without interrupting.
A very refined, highly educated lady, you can ditch McKay anytime you like.
I like Dr. Lewis.
I'm glad she's come on the show twice.
And I'm glad she said a kind word about freedom of speech and rebel news.
We have put out invitations to both Peter McKay and Erin O'Toole.
And they're welcome to come on.
And look, I'll ask them frank questions, honest questions.
I don't think there'll be surprise questions.
I'll ask them a bit about the campaign.
I'll ask them probably about the pandemic in China.
I might ask them about free speech, you know, common themes that we care about at Rebel News, but I think conservative members care about.
I don't think I would engage in any gotcha questions.
That's not that interesting.
I think I would try and talk about substantive things.
And I would be grateful that they came on the show.
I don't know.
I think they should come on because we're a vast swath of the Conservative Party's base.
And I mean, let's just get right down to it.
If you can't handle a 10-minute interview from Rebel News and Ezra Levant, maybe you're not ready for Justin Trudeau's liberal war room and the CBC.
I mean, it's going to get tough out there for whoever wins.
You're going to be up against the entire media party, all the other political parties.
You got to be tough.
It's a tough job.
Peter writes, my goodness, why haven't I heard of this woman before?
Very intelligent, very impressive.
I've not been too thrilled with my choice with the Conservative Party leadership.
Dr. Lewis gives me hope.
Well, she's a very nice lady, and I enjoyed my two meetings with her.
And I think she's doing well in fundraising.
If I had to predict, I would predict that the eventual winner is going to be O'Toole or McKay.
But my personal view is that I hope that Dr. Lewis stays involved in the party and at the very least runs as an MP, even if she doesn't make the Conservative Party leadership.
I'll be candid, to go from not even an elected backbencher to party leader is probably too big of a jump for someone's first tryout anyways.
Maybe if she be, I mean, this is I wish her all the best and maybe she can win the leadership, but even if she doesn't, I hope she runs as an MP, gets a little bit more seasoning, a little bit more experience, and perhaps is elevated to a cabinet position one day, and maybe she will in time be prime minister.