Ezra Levant argues Quebec’s nationalist media, like Journal de Montréal, openly debates culture and immigration—e.g., opposing the burqa and advocating a 20% reduction—without the backlash seen in English Canada, where figures like Wendy Mesley label such views racist. Contrasting Trudeau’s "post-national" Canada with Quebec’s motto "Je me souviens", Levant praises Sloan’s bold immigration stance (150,000 annually) and O’Toole’s defiance of media pressure, unlike McKay’s evasiveness. He criticizes the left’s shift from climate to racism narratives, citing Sierra Club’s ties to white supremacy claims, while noting Rebel News’ informed audience remains sidelined by conservative candidates fearing false accusations. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey Rebels, today I do something a little different.
I looked through some French-Canadian newspapers, including the biggest newspaper in all of Quebec.
It's called the Journal de Montréal.
And you'll hear me try and pronounce some French words not too well, so apologies in advance.
You know, it's a totally different media and political world over there.
That may sound obvious, but I'll give you some surprising details.
So that's today's show.
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So thank you for that.
here's the podcast.
Tonight, welcome to Quebec, the sanest place in Canada right now.
It's June 19th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government, but why publish them?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
The media culture in Quebec is so different from that of English Canada.
It's hard to believe we're in the same country sometimes.
I suppose they have their own obsessions, but they're not as politically correct over there in regards to a lot of things.
I suppose it's an expression of their larger political culture.
Their alternative candidate, I'd call him a nationalist populist.
Francois Legaud won a dominating majority government over the two legacy parties by promising to stand firm against people wearing the Muslim burqa in the public sector and his pledge to reduce immigration by 20%.
You couldn't even say those things in English Canada without the entire media party having a fainting spell and Wendy Mesley probably calling you the N-word.
In Quebec, they gave the man an election victory.
Even Justin Trudeau knows better than to disparage Legault and his key nationalist issues.
You'll notice that when Trudeau rails against burqa bans, he almost always does it in English, in English Canada.
He's dumb, but he's not stupid.
I think it's a larger cultural issue because Quebec is, in many ways, the nation it claims to be.
I'm not talking about separatism and I'm not weighing into issues like equalization or forced bilingualism or any of the things that irritate the rest of Canada, especially the West.
I'm just talking about identity.
Quebec is obviously its own distinct society.
They speak French, they have a French history, their culture is in some permanent peril, some existential peril.
They're a little island of French in a sea of North American English.
They think about it, they worry about it, they worry about losing things, about melting away.
So they talk a lot about their identity.
That's why the Burqa thing irritates them so much.
They've thought these things through for a long time.
They believe that Quebec is more than just a postal code or an airport or a place on a map.
They believe in their land and their history and their people.
They have words like pure lane, which means pure wool, Quebecers.
They talk about Quebecois de souche, a Quebec tree with roots, like a tree stump with roots.
That's what they mean, people who are deeply historically tied to their place.
You're not allowed to even talk that way in the rest of Canada.
You'll be called alt-right or racist.
But they've been thinking and talking about things like this in Quebec since the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and ever since.
So they're not easily blown over by some hyper-ventilating leftist or Wendy Masley calling them names because they know who they are.
Trudeau plays both sides of that.
He dips into his Quebec chauvinism when he's comparing himself to Alberta, for example.
Quebecers are better than the rest of Canada because, you know, we're Quebecers.
But I think that is just Trudeau's pettiness.
I think that's not really understanding Quebec nationalism.
And what do I know?
And I'm an Albertan in Toronto.
But I don't think Quebec nationalism is about sneering at Alberta.
That's a Trudeau thing.
That's a Liberal Party thing.
Quebecers I know have no beef with Alberta or the West, even if they disagree with some policies.
Being a Quebecer is about saving what they have.
It's not about putting other people down.
This is what I think.
Trudeau really isn't a Quebecer in that way.
I think he believes in globalism.
So no borders, no nation states, no identity.
We're all just postmodern nothings to him.
As he told the New York Times in a fawning photo shoot in English, he said, there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.
There are shared values, openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice.
Those qualities are what make us the first post-national state.
Yeah, that's what he says to his fancy globalist friends in New York City.
They think it's so worldly.
Not enough to give him a seat on the globalist UN Security Council, apparently, but enough to publish fawning, photoshopped images of him in the New York Times.
But he would never say those things in French in Quebec City.
He'd never say Quebec has no core identity, because of course it does.
Quebec is not post-national.
It very much wants to be national.
Its license plate motto is Je me Souvienne.
I remember.
Remember what?
Well, it's too long to answer on a license plate, but that license plate starts a conversation.
It starts the national imagination.
In that way, Trudeau is actually not a true Quebecer, and Quebecers sort of know it.
In fact, he hates Quebecers de souche.
And he says so.
Remember when he called this ordinary woman who was concerned about Quebec identity?
Remember when he called her racist?
I think this had a huge impact on the Liberal Party's fortunes in Quebec.
I should say on a personal note, the Quebec media is similar to Quebec political class because there are a lot of nationalists in their media, a lot of separatists too.
And partly because they reflect the will of the larger community and because the media are in many ways the keepers of the French language in Quebec and thus the keepers of the culture.
So they have bigger projects than just latching on to the latest woke fashion.
I get invited to do radio shows in Quebec from time to time, including a fairly regular invitation by a French-language radio station in Quebec City that translates my answers to French in real time.
They're not really part of the mean girls media club like the Ottawa Toronto Media Party.
It's just different out there.
And all of that is a very lengthy preamble to my point today.
I came across this item very recently, a tweet from an editorial writer at the National Post named Chris Selly.
And he wrote, the Journal de Montréal comment page is in the midst of one of the most astonishing ever tantrums en masse.
There isn't anything even remotely comparable in mainstream Anglo-media.
And he shows some headlines from the newspaper's comment section.
I'll get into those headlines in a moment, but just in case you don't know, the Journal de Montréal is actually the largest newspaper in all of Quebec by circulation.
It's obviously the largest French-language newspaper in North America.
It's got a great fighting spirit.
It reminds me of the Toronto Sun chain of newspapers.
It has a very strong investigative unit too.
Lots of deep digging.
It's actually an outstanding newspaper, even though it's got that tabloid style.
It's part of Quebecor.
That's the company that used to own Sun News.
And they have a bunch of TV stations in Quebec, including TVA.
That's the big news channel there.
So it's a huge, populist, popular newspaper.
Obviously, I don't read it often because my French is weak, and I'm not really focused on that.
But I think it's a great newspaper.
And of course, the man saying they were having the most astonishing tantrum he'd ever seen.
Well, that's not quite true because Chris Selly, who wrote that, he's part of the National Post newsroom that had 30 reporters sign a weird snitch letter against Rex Murphy, calling him racist, but calling him racist in a racist way, saying he has to shut up because he's a 73-year-old white man.
That's not an argument, fellas.
They had a two-hour struggle session in their office.
They called it a town hall.
People were named and shamed and told they couldn't talk because they were white.
Even though none of the namers and shamers themselves are black or Aboriginal.
It was a joke, but it was for real.
So yeah, not quite ready to take the accusation of having a tantrum seriously from anyone who works at the National Post, though I should point out that Chris Selley himself didn't sign the letter of denunciation against Rex Murphy.
Anyways, you've got my interest.
What is this so-called tantrum at the Journal de Montréal?
Well, another leftist activist posted a bigger collage of headlines, and I'd like to show it to you here.
So let's hold that up on the screen for a bit.
So that's about a half a dozen different columnists at the Journal de Montréal, and it's a collage of the headlines of some of their recent columns.
Soi blanc, et tetroi!
That means be white and shut up.
Oscars, racism anti-blanc.
That's easy to understand.
Are the Oscars anti-white?
Les anti-racist sans racistes.
The anti-racists are racist.
Interdie au blanc.
Whites are forbidden.
Les maud d'itommes, blanc riche.
Those damn right-wing men.
Iliatr de blanc.
There are too many whites.
Now, as you can perhaps detect, there's a theme here.
It's the racial debates we're having across America around the world intensely for the past few weeks, but really for years, including back to when Black Lives Matter was launched as an Obama street team.
But really, it goes back much further.
This is what our universities teach all the time.
This is how they talk.
In fact, they use these exact words.
Shut up, white people.
Whites are banned.
Our universities use these terms earnestly.
This columnist is just mocking them, criticizing them, saying these words ironically or derisively.
Of course, there is affirmative action for non-whites.
That's not in dispute.
This columnist is just condemning that.
Is that still allowed?
I mean, is she wrong?
Maybe, but it's an opinion column.
And she hasn't been torched by the mob yet, unlike Wendy Mensley.
Then again, this columnist hasn't dropped the N-word yet.
The decline of the whites.
Inclusive racism.
White, male, guilty.
The good racism.
The new fascists.
You know what?
The first thing that comes to mind when I see those headlines is, I'm interested.
I don't know if I'm going to agree in advance.
I haven't read it yet.
But these are people who are speaking candidly and powerfully and with passion.
Maybe they're dead wrong.
I literally haven't gone to read any of these columns yet.
I'm just looking at the headlines that Chris Selly of the National Post calls an astonishing tantrum.
I'm still waiting for Chris Selly of the National Post to tell us what he thinks about the two-hour struggle session tantrum at his own newsroom.
Or maybe he's just too afraid to take on his own mob, so he'll chirp at some Quebecers who have never heard of him, and he'll do it all in English.
That's a lot safer than, say, defending Rex Murphy and criticizing how the National Post threw him under the bus.
So those articles, enfancé and the Journal of Montréal, they all sound interesting.
They're talking about interesting things.
That's interesting.
I think that's sort of the job of an opinion page.
Each of these articles is an opinion column.
It's not news.
Look, I already showed you how each of the big English language newspapers in Canada have a full-time racism columnist.
Shri Paradkar, the Toronto Star, Van Mala Subramania at the National Post, Dakshana Baskamerti at the Global Mail.
Weirdly, all three of them are Indo-Canadian women to the women or Tamils.
These are literally the wealthiest ethnic group in Canada, Indo-Canadians.
Statistically speaking, they're more successful, richer even than the Jews or the Chinese.
These are the most privileged people in Canada.
And Van Mala and Shree are so new to our country that they still have their foreign accent, but they're paid to trash us as racist every day.
They can say things like those French headlines, but they say them unironically.
But you can't have Quebecois de Souche pushed back.
Listen to this woman.
Say, you know what?
There's a couple people that are bad.
We'll never root it out, but there's no institutionalized systemic racism.
Certainly not in Quebec.
What do you make of that?
My first thought was, well, here is another white guy in power telling us that racism doesn't exist.
Right?
And I don't know based on what he says it.
I just, it made me sad because I wish we moved away from this framing of does racism exist to what are we going to do about it.
Because I feel like in so many ways, this denial of racism is a denial of basic dignity, particularly of black and First Nations Métis-Dinu people.
Guys, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that she has never been to Quebec other than perhaps for a wonderful weekend of shopping and fine restaurants in Montreal in which she spoke only English other than the word champagne.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say she doesn't know her Quebec history and really doesn't care.
She doesn't know Canada's English history either.
Why would she bother to learn Quebec's?
But she's calling them all racist in Quebec.
Denying Racism, Upholding Dignity00:02:05
Then again, so did Jagmeet Singh in his own way in Parliament, didn't he?
Yeah, no, they're nationalist.
They believe in something.
They're pretty open-minded, I think.
I mean, for God's sakes, they're French.
They're pretty progressive.
They're very liberal.
They just want to keep who they are, though.
They're French Canadians.
They have been for four centuries.
They fought a war over it.
They fought for their rights in our Constitution.
They're not looking to put anyone down, I don't think.
I mean, there are some who are.
They're not looking to go to Sri Lanka and call everyone racist like our Canadian racist columnists are.
I don't think most Quebecois are poking at anyone outside the province.
They want a home, a homeland, if you like.
And I think they're getting a bit tired of being called racist when, in fact, they've taken in tens of thousands of Haitians, just for one recent example, as refugees.
That's not really a racist move, is it?
They know immigration is a joke in Canada.
Wroxham Road is in Quebec.
They see the people breaking the law, gaming the system.
And then they're called racist for complaining about it, like that woman was who badgered Trudeau.
Yeah, no, having a dozen columns about race and belonging and laws and customs, that's not a tantrum.
Or if it is, then the entire world is having a tantrum now, especially the National Post's Little Maoists and their newsroom struggle sessions.
What I see in the Journal de Montréal, just by those headlines, is possibly Canada's most interesting newspaper.
Not saying I'd agree with it all, or even any of it.
I haven't read the stories, but boy, they're actually allowed to have a conversation.
They're actually debating each other.
And it looks like the only guy telling them to shut up is some weirdo in Toronto muttering to himself in English.
Yeah, no, I sort of like Quebec these days because on the most important issues, identity, culture, society, not taxes or trade, on the most important issues, they have something we don't have.
They have self-respect.
Peter McKay's Freedom Question00:13:41
Stay with us for more.
Social conservative issues are policy that affect families, seniors and children.
And we can't be afraid to address values.
The Liberals are so radically far to the left in their ideas when it comes to conversion therapy and abortion that we can gain ground on these ideas.
Many new Canadians are social conservatives.
They don't believe that there's 72 or 102 genders.
They don't want their kids to be confused.
And remember, Stephen Harper, when he cut funding for foreign abortions, we won a majority after that.
When Doug Ford campaigned against the sex ed curriculum, we won here in Ontario.
So we can take principled stances and we can win.
Well, that is a clip from last night's English language debate at the Conservative Party of Canada.
It was at a Toronto convention center, but in an empty room because of the pandemic panic.
I watched the whole thing.
Sheila Gunn Reed was with me.
We live streamed it.
I don't think a lot of minds were changed, but my guess is that people saw Derek Sloan that we just showed there and said, that guy's a real conservative.
That's at least who I thought won the debate.
According to the chats, the live chat on our live stream last night, that was the consensus.
But to me, the real news of the night was a little bit more personal.
It had to do with Rebel News itself.
As you know, for some reason, the more timid variety of conservative has been afraid to be seen in public with the real variety of conservative, us at Rebel News.
I think Andrew Scheer started that bad behavior.
By the way, the words Andrew Scheer were not spoken a single time in the entire two-hour debate last night.
He's just a footnote in history already.
Andrew Scheer started the bad behavior of shunning Rebel News, hoping it would somehow make the CBC and other media party groups more sympathetic to him.
It didn't work.
In fact, the CBC literally sued him during the campaign.
For the last few months, Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay have followed Andrew Scheer's bizarre media strategy, refusing to talk to Rebel News, although we had many excellent conversations with Derek Sloan, Leslie Lewis, and Jim Karahalios, a candidate who was canceled.
But last night and the night before, our own Kian Bexty managed to physically accost both Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay.
And wouldn't you know it, Aaron O'Toole immediately shucked off his bizarre fatwa on Rebel News and answered some pretty normal questions in a normal way.
a clip of Kian having a normal conversation with Aaron O'Toole.
Take a look.
In the debate there was a lot of focus on racism, a lot of leftist talking points really.
A lot of the questions were focused on that.
Were you concerned that it was focused too much on that and was there something else you would have rather talk about?
Well certainly this is dominating public discourse so I think it's appropriate we're talking about it but it's really the approach.
As I said I'm very proud of our country.
I do think we meet most of the time the ideals we hold ourselves to but if we ever don't we have to stamp it out and have a zero tolerance approach and that's how I've always tried to conduct myself and so that's that's how I've addressed it tonight.
Other candidates took different approaches.
Peter McKay said yesterday in the debate that he would give Quebec a veto over pipelines.
Why do you think he said that in French, not in English?
Do you have that same opinion and what do you think his motivation was in saying that?
Well I did notice tonight he talked about Energy East, right?
And then didn't talk about how to get there.
I've talked about a National Strategic Pipelines Act where the federal government works in collaboration with the partnership, but the federal government has to articulate why these are in the national interest, in all the national interests.
And I think we can get to a place where more and more Canadians see the benefit of getting our world price for our resources.
So Mr. McKay seems to think he can have it both ways.
That's sort of consistent for him.
Yeah, that wasn't so hard, was it?
Why did the lad, the lad, why did the man evade us?
I'm talking about Aaron O'Toole.
Why did Aaron O'Toole evade us for so many months if that's the conversation he was dreading?
I don't get it.
But someone who was a little bit more timid was Peter McCain.
And it took two days for Kian to break through Peter McKay's psychological prison.
Here, here's a clip from two nights ago.
Thank you very much.
Excuse me.
Thanks, Emily.
Peter, you just did a media availability.
Yeah, I didn't get to answer the question.
Why'd you take so many questions?
Peter, why'd you take so few questions?
I want to ask if you'll apologize for calling Jason Kenny.
I'm not sure why you took so few questions compared to everyone else.
They told me I was done.
Peter, sorry.
You must be confused.
The escalator was over there.
Would you be able to tell me, will you apologize to Jason Kenney?
Will you apologize to Jason Kenney for calling him angry and dismissing the concerns of Albertans?
Peter, you dismissed the anger in Alberta by calling Jason Kenney an angry man.
Will you apologize for that?
Will you apologize for calling Jason Kenney an angry man?
How come you don't attend media availabilities?
I was on the phone and they didn't select me.
Oh my god, you were so busy.
You couldn't get to the previously scheduled media a bit.
Peter McKay, you sort of look like a coward right now.
Yeah, I don't think so.
It's called winning.
Excuse me.
Oh, no, We're not going to go elevator wrestling.
Sorry, I can't come off this.
I don't get it.
I just don't get it.
Kean, just wanted to talk to you about, you know, the news, the campaign.
So here's a clip from last night.
Keen trying again with Peter McKay and having a little bit of success.
Baby steps, I'd call it.
Take a look.
Peter, just a very quick zinger.
Do you support free speech?
Absolutely.
You do.
You get free speech.
Do you support freedom of press?
Absolutely.
So why aren't you answering our questions?
Why are you picking on...
Why didn't you take part in the actual...
We called and they cut off the question.
Well, you should ask that other party then.
I don't know why they cut off the question.
Why did you not say that you'd give Quebec a veto in English?
Pipelines.
Answer that question if you support free press.
Yeah, I don't know.
I get a real Justin Trudeau vibe off of Peter McKay.
But to me, that was the highlight of the whole thing, is that Aaron O'Toole got over his rebel derangement syndrome and Peter McKay, well, at least it's in remission.
And joining us now in studio here at our world headquarters in the greater Toronto area is our friend Kian Bexte.
Kean, good to see you.
Good to see you too.
You know, we've met, I think we've met probably 10 times, maybe more than that.
Maybe more.
And, you know, you've got a certain approach to life, you've got a certain attitude and personality.
But I wouldn't have expected that Peter McKay, a man who has served as foreign minister, who has served as defense minister, a man who's been in the public life his whole time, a man who's a lawyer, accomplished, he ran from you as if you were the incredible hulk, as if you were the most terrifying, as if you were a rabid dog or had the bubonic plague or something.
I've never seen a grown man react more like a child to a spider than Peter McKay to you.
It's, I mean, it's the same.
The Conservative Party would get the same thing as they're having with Justin Trudeau.
He's a very similar man to Justin Trudeau.
He's scared of very simple questions.
He was scared of the questions at the end of the day.
He wasn't scared of me.
And the questions weren't unfair questions.
I think he was both.
I mean, I think he didn't want to be seen with you.
He didn't want to talk to you.
I mean, your questions started normal, and then they got a little bit more prickly as he ran away.
He was scared just to be seen talking to you.
I really think he was both.
Well, maybe that's it, but his staff certainly weren't doing him any favors.
His staff came off as these hyperactive children bouncing around.
They were trying to get in the way of my microphone so that I wouldn't be able to ask Peter McKay questions.
It was just one of the strangest evenings, but I was happy that near the end of the night, when we asked him just the easiest question you could ask a conservative, do you support freedom of speech?
How can you even say no to that?
Even someone who was against free speech would say, I support free speech.
Then they would just have lots of asterisks and footnotes.
I've never met a single human who says, even the Soviets used to say they believe in free speech.
Yeah, and then, of course, it was, do you support free speech?
Then he said, yes, I said, do you support freedom of press?
And he said, yes, again, you're here, obviously, aren't you, Kian?
And then I said, well, why won't you answer the real questions?
Why won't you answer why you said in French one thing and wouldn't repeat it in English and that in particular was that he would let Quebec have a veto over pipelines.
Yeah.
You know, you mentioned his staff and his staff, his communications director was certainly very childish, escalated things, engaged in ridiculous name-calling, defamation, physical blocking.
That's all true.
But at the end of the day, the boss is the boss.
And at the end of the day, Peter McKay is the principal, and everyone else is just an agent or an assistant or a deputy of his.
So he has to take the ownership for the conduct of those around him or fire them.
You either own it or disown it.
But you know what?
He has fired five communications directors in that same position.
In how long?
That Chisholm is fired.
The current one, his name is Chisholm.
In the period of the campaign, he's fired five of them.
He's the sixth only.
Yes, yeah.
Oh my god.
Jesus.
Well, you know what?
Maybe the problem ain't with the communications directors.
I mean, listen, I believe you shuffle the deck or something's wrong.
Donald Trump memorably and incredibly switched campaign chairman like just a few months before his 2016 election.
Everyone thought it was insane.
It was the most brilliant move he did.
It's one of the reasons he won when he put in Steve Bannon.
But if you're on Communications Director No. 6, maybe the problem ain't with the communications directors.
Just a thought.
Well, you remember how the campaign started out?
First they stole their campaign logo from a small Albertan company called Maple Money, very similar logos.
Then the second thing that happened was they were putting out these weird, flashy, epileptic seizure-causing campaign graphics.
Do you remember those?
Canadians are proud, but Canada is great because Canadians make it greater.
Yeah, I remember those, and I agree.
They were very weird and childish to use a word.
But those are just styles and tactics.
You can have a substantive campaign that is persuasive on the substance, and those little details and doodads don't matter.
With McKay, you get the worst of both worlds.
He has a man who says very little very poorly.
But like you said earlier, Derek Sloan contrasted with Peter McKay very well in the debate.
I think he stood out the most, the tallest out of all of them.
He was kind of coming into the debate as the underdog, I'd say, especially coming out of the French debate.
He did better there than I thought he would, but not great compared to Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay.
It was kind of the O'Toole McKay show last night, the French debate night, and Leslyn Lewis did a little bit better than she did in the French debate, but I'm not sure if she had the...it wasn't a home run night for her, I'd say.
You know, I like Leslie Lewis.
I like a lot of things about her.
And I've seen her improvements since the first day.
In fact, she launched her campaign here in this very seat you're in right now.
And she made reference to that last night.
In fact, David Menzies put a question over the phone.
I think it was his question.
Here, take a quick look at that clip where Leslie Lewis is asked, how would she treat rebel news?
Here's her answer.
Take a look.
Next question.
Next question will be from David Menzies at the Rebel Loop.
Please go ahead.
Yes, hello, ma'am.
My question pertains to freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Namely, as the leader of the Conservative Party or even Prime Minister, would you allow all journalists into press conferences and would you also ensure that bureaucratic entities such as the Commissioner of Canada Elections would not go after authors who write books critical of the government?
Absolutely, unequivocally.
I think that that is one of the foundations of our democracy is to have free press.
And I set an example of that because my very first interview was with rebel media and that was for a particular purpose because I know that they had not been very active in interviewing people in the party.
And so I wanted to just to open the door and to let people understand that I believe in free press and sometimes the press is not always nice to us, but it is their right.
John McCain's Stand Against Conformity00:02:51
It's a part of our freedom of expression and it's a cornerstone of a free society.
Now Kian, a viewer might say, Ezra, you sure are talking about yourself a lot.
You sure are talking about rebel news a lot.
Can you talk about something that the rest of us care about?
But I think that rebel news is a proxy for certain things.
Are you comfortable with the conservative base or are you ashamed of them like a crazy ant in the attic?
So I think it's your acceptance of the spectrum of conservatives.
And second of all, are you someone who is part of cancel culture or part of the solution to cancel culture?
Are you part of the mob?
You'll capitulate to whatever the CBC or the media party demands of you.
Or will you show some backbone?
One of the things it took me a while to learn about Trump, I remember when he criticized John McCain and said something really awful.
He said, I like my heroes who aren't captured or something.
Well, you know, John McCain had a lot of things you could criticize, but him being shot down over Vietnam, being physically tortured, and choosing to let other POWs go first, you know, the rule is let them go in the order first in, first out.
That was the one great thing about John McCain.
And Donald Trump criticized it.
And then he got so much flack.
And I thought, for sure, he's going to bend the knee on this one.
Veterans are such an important part.
And he didn't.
And I was surprised.
And it took me a while to learn.
His support went up.
I thought, how can that be?
Donald Trump was wrong.
I don't say that a lot.
But he was wrong to criticize the one great thing about John McCain, his heroism as a POW.
He was starved.
His bones were broken.
He was tortured.
Why are you criticizing that and saying, I prefer my heroes who aren't captured?
The reason his support went up in my mind is because he showed, even when he was wrong, so let alone when he's right, that he would never bow to the media mob.
And people said, oh, even when he knows he should, he won't.
This is a guy who will never bend the knee.
And I'm not saying we need to go full Trump, but I would like a conservative leader who, when a media says, do you mean to say this, the instinct is not to go, oh, I'm sorry, Master, the CBC.
I apologize.
I'll never say that again.
The instinct is reflexively to say, to heck with you, and double down.
Well, that's what happened with Derek Sloan last night when the media was actually debating with him.
Like the media started actually aggressively fighting with him over his immigration policy because Derek Sloan actually has the most ballsy immigration strategy plan that any serious leadership candidate has had in a long time.
Media Debating Candidates00:03:57
150,000 new immigrants a year.
Right now it's like half a million or something like that.
Coming up on that.
It's a bold strategy and the mainstream media does not like that at all.
So I forget the name of the CBC reporter that was grilling him on this, but they were fighting about how historical policy and his current policy and how it just wouldn't work.
And it was just a disgrace on the mainstream media's part, but Derek Sloan really shone there.
Well, if you can stand up to the mainstream media, people can tell you're your own man, you will stand by your own beliefs, and you won't be a conformist.
And in a liberal world with liberal media, having the courage to dissent is actually the most important character trait.
Keenan, it's great to see you again.
Thanks for coming to town and doing a great job down there.
And I think you really smoked out something about Peter McCain's character too.
And I'm really glad people had a chance to see that.
Keep it up.
You're going back to Calgary.
There's a lot of work to do out there, but it's nice to see you here in the big smoke.
Thank you.
All right.
Well, that's Kian Bexty doing a great job down there.
Stay with us.
Hey, welcome back on our live stream in the conservative leadership debates.
Sherry writes, it certainly looks like Rebel News has turned the corner.
I think the candidates, except for one, have realized that the large and growing audience of Rebel News supporters are an informed and engaged group that are capable of influencing political outcomes.
I think so.
I mean, I don't know what their rationale was in the first place.
I think it's they were just so afraid of being criticized by, seriously, Wendy Medsley.
I know I am picking on her a little bit because she's tried to destroy so many others with false accusations of racism, and she was the one who was fired for saying a very bad word.
I don't know.
I think that it feels like a low energy race for the Conservative Party.
And we have energy here at Rebel News.
We're fighting the good fight every day.
And I don't know.
I just think it's very odd that people don't talk to the leading conservative media in Canada when they claim to be conservatives.
The left would never do that.
I mean, there are a range of media in Canada on the center left, the left, the far left, the very far left.
And you don't see Jagmeet Singh or Justin Trudeau saying, ooh, you're a little liberal for me.
No, it doesn't happen.
Simon writes, I really wish we had better people.
I truly believe none of these people will beat Trudeau.
How can I disagree with you?
I think Aaron O'Toole, of the people we saw, maybe has the best chance, but he came in third in the last conservative race.
I feel like it's not the A-team.
Listen, people can grow into the job.
Stranger things have happened, but I'm a pessimist.
Ryan writes, I watched the CBC debate tonight, then of course watched the Rebels post-game.
Ezra and Sheila were getting annoyed with all the systemic racism questions in the Q ⁇ A after, and understandably so.
But I think they missed an important angle.
The political left has almost completely dumped the climate crisis narrative and switched to the racism crisis.
I think this might be a changing of the guard.
Look at this below from the Sierra Club.
They now have to write about racism to stay relevant.
Racism is killing the planet.
The ideology of white supremacy leads the way towards disposable people and a disposable natural world.
Yeah, I mean, listen, Greta Tunberg, no one's been hurt worse than her.
No one cares about her anymore.
She tried to make the pandemic coronavirus a thing that people listened to her about.
And I think CNN actually interviewed her as an expert, a kid.
And yes, people just suddenly don't care quite as much.
Racism And The Planet00:00:31
It'll come back, though.
There's just too many billions of dollars at stake.
Trillions, really, with all the subsidies and taxes.
So it'll come back.
Don't you worry about that.
Well, that's our show for today.
I think we had a great week in so many ways.
And I thank you for being a part of it.
Thank you for the support that your premium membership means.
It's eight bucks a month to be a subscriber to our paywall.
You might not think that's a ton of dough, but it adds up and it's how we pay our bills.
So thank you for that.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, can you win home?