CBC’s report pushes Erin O’Toole to abandon Jason Kenney, framing him as a liability despite Kenney’s role in exposing Liberal corruption like Bill Morneau’s resignation. The CBC ignored lobbyists Melissa Cowet and Tim Powers’ ties to oil projects, omitting conflicts while receiving $1.5B annually from Trudeau’s government. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate’s Trump impeachment trial—post-presidency—faces constitutional doubts, with defense montages exposing Democratic hypocrisy on free speech, including Charlottesville edits. Partisan loyalty likely ensures conviction, but the defense’s First Amendment arguments could sway a few moderates. The episode underscores media bias and political theater, where strategy often overshadows substance. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I take you through a very unethical story at the CBC.
Now you're probably saying that doesn't narrow it down, but this one is special.
The lies of omission and the lies of commission here are super gross, even for the CBC.
But the thing is, like the princess and the pee under 30 mattresses of lies, there's actually a little grain of truth.
And it's about Aaron O'Toole's plans for the Conservative Party.
I hope you enjoyed today's show.
Before you do, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus, because that way you can see the video version of this podcast.
And I'm going to show you some documents, including from various lobbyist registries.
And I'd love it if you could see those with your eyes.
You can with a Rebel News Plus subscription.
Just go to RebelNews.com and click subscribe.
It's $8 a month.
You also get shows by Sheila Gunri, David Menzies, and Andrew Chapados.
And the satisfaction of knowing that you're $8 a month supports Rebel News.
And we don't take a dime from Justin Trudeau.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, the CBC and left-wing lobbyists all agree Aaron O'Toole has to distance himself from Jason Kenney.
Next, it's February 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 publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
You're not going to believe this, but the CBC actually seems to have some information about Aaron O'Toole's campaign strategy.
I wouldn't have believed it.
I didn't believe it at first, but now I think I do.
And the strategy involves throwing Alberta Premier and former Harbor Cabinet Minister, throwing Jason Kenney under the bus.
I'm not kidding.
I'll prove it to you in a moment.
But first, some necessary background, as we've been talking about recently, Aaron O'Toole.
I mean, last month, he ditched Rebel News.
It was weird.
He did an email interview with me about my big scoop about the China files.
Remember that one?
I thought he came across pretty well in the interview, but he panicked when the media party gave him flack for it.
And he just literally hours after we published that interview, he distanced himself from us.
Okay, whatever.
And then there was the fake scandal about Derek Sloan.
You remember that one?
Someone calling himself Frederick P. Fromm donated about $100 to Sloan's leadership campaign, which had raised more than a million bucks.
So it was a small donation by an unknown person, but it turned out that Frederick P. Fromm was actually Paul Fromm, a racist who had some notoriety in the 1990s.
No one detected that, not Sloan's campaign volunteers, and not the Conservative Party headquarters who issued Fromm a membership and took their cut of the donation.
As soon as Sloan found out about Fromm, he sent the donation back, which as far as I know, O'Toole hasn't done with his portion yet.
But O'Toole denounced Sloane for this fake scandal, denounced him as a racist with poor judgment, which was absurd, which isn't true, which is extra absurd and untrue when you remember that Derek Sloan's wife and kids are visible minorities.
Everyone knew this was a false accusation, bearing false witness, as some would say.
So two weirdnesses in a row.
And then the big one, throwing Pierre Polyev overboard, the main conservative MP, the only conservative MP of note, I hate to say.
The only one you can name who's actually done anything, any real political damage to the liberals in the past year.
Ask Bill Morneau if you disagree.
That's right.
You can't.
Bill Morneau resigned in a cloud of corruption, in part due to Pierre Polyev's excellent work.
So yeah, he's a good guy.
As I showed you the other day, Pierre is much more popular with grassroots conservatives than Aaron O'Toole.
If Facebook followers and engagement is anything to go by these days, and I think it is.
So my first reaction, as I told you, was O'Toole is just jealous, tall poppy syndrome.
He hates the guy who is more impressive than him.
I thought it was just a rivalry thing, which is what I thought was about sacking his leadership rival, Derek Sloan.
But as I told you, I've changed my mind on that.
I now think it's part of an ideological strategy, and it makes me revisit a CBC story that I came across about two weeks ago and didn't remark on at the time.
Let me, this is what I want to talk to you about today.
Look at this story.
And it's got a related podcast, which I listened to, but I won't punish you with.
Strategists say Aaron O'Toole must weigh if Jason Kenney is an asset or liability.
I can barely read that without chuckling.
I mean, I couldn't believe that headline when I first read it.
Jason Kenney, even more than Pierre Polyev, is beloved by the conservative base, at least in the eyes of the party base.
I think he's hated by liberals for the same reason, because he's good.
If Jason Kenney had run for the party leadership, he would have won overwhelmingly.
In fact, I don't think anyone else would have even run against Kenney.
And you know, I think Kenney could have beaten Trudeau in 2019, but could have, should have, would have.
Anyways, Kenney is having a tough time in Alberta these days.
It's true, mainly because the province is in the toughest spot in Confederation.
The carbon tax, Trudeau killing three pipelines, and now Joe Biden killing the fourth, plus recovering from the NDP policy time bombs planted by Rachel Notley, and now the pandemic.
But no doubt about it, Jason Kenney is still popular with the federal party base.
His endorsement of O'Toole over Peter McKay was very important.
I think it actually tipped the balance for O'Toole.
But look at the CBC story.
As O'Toole charts a course forward for the conservatives, and with Canadians divided over pipelines and Kenny navigating multiple simultaneous crises, is the premier an asset or a liability?
Seriously, imagine O'Toole, or as I like to call him, OW, thinking that Jason Kenney is a liability.
Well, that's what the CBC experts are saying to CBC journalists and to commentators.
Let me read.
Melissa Cowet, a political strategist with the Canadian strategy group, told CBC's West of Center podcast that conservatives are winning with massive margins in Alberta and Saskatchewan at the expense, apparently, of votes in the greater Toronto area and in Quebec.
It probably does make sense from an electoral math perspective for O'Toole to move a little bit more to the center.
And I think there's still a path to victory if he does so, Cowette said.
Got it.
So Aaron O'Toole has to hide Jason Kenney up in the attic if he wants to win in Ontario and the East, apparently.
That's what Melissa Cowette says.
Melissa Cowette, the name you know, I mean, you know Melissa Cowette, right?
I mean, you just heard she's with the Canadian Strategy Group.
What, you don't know who the Canadian Strategy Group are?
Well, they do strategy for Canadians in a group.
You know.
And she was joined by this guy.
Former conservative strategist Tim Powers, who is now chairman of Summa Strategies, told West of Center that holding the status quo won't secure O'Toole the win in the current climate.
O'Toole wants to win.
So he's got to take what some traditionalists describe as risks, Powers said.
I know this is one that causes tension, not just in Alberta and Saskatchewan, but also out east, is climate policy.
Powers said O'Toole would need to find common ground among younger millennial voters and urban voters in Ontario for whom carbon pricing is a fact of life, unquote.
So you've got a strategist, Melissa Cowette, and a former strategist.
That's how they introduced Tim Powers.
What does it mean to be a former strategist?
And they both are in furious agreement.
They love the global warming stuff.
They love the carbon tax stuff.
The United Nations plan to shut down the oil sands.
They completely agree.
And you know, according to both Cowette and Powers, the kids these days do too.
The former strategist, he knows kids.
And he says that the kids love the carbon tax.
And you know it's true because he's a former strategist.
So what do we make of this story?
The first thing I want to mention is how deceptive, unethical, and dishonest this CBC report is.
Melissa Cowett is not a strategist.
She is a registered lobbyist.
It's different.
A strategist is whatever you want.
I don't know, someone who works for a political party and helps plan their campaign strategy, helps decide what the party should say to win, to campaign, what candidates to choose, what ads to run.
I think that's a strategist for a political party.
Melissa Cowette does not have that position in the Conservative Party.
I don't think she's a strategist.
She is a lobbyist.
Do you know what a lobbyist is?
A bought and paid for lobbyist hired by the hour to do whatever a corporate client tells her to do.
Don't take my word for it.
Here is her website.
It is a lobbying firm.
She's the vice president of a group of lobbyists.
You can literally pay her to say anything you want.
And here's what you get when you type her name into the Alberta government's lobbyist registry.
She is paid by so many people for or against this oil project or that oil project.
Incredibly, it looks like she's paid for by the people who own the Keystone Excel project, but she seems to be arguing against that project.
I'm so confused.
Cowette said O'Toole should view Kenny as a liability, but that could change, unquote.
That's really, really weird.
And Tim Powers, the other former strategist, what about him?
Well, same exact thing.
He's not a strategist about anything that I can detect other than how to be a great lobbyist and make a lot of money selling influence.
He's an influence peddler.
He helps run a lobbying firm called Summer Strategies.
And again, not so much strategies as, you know, lobbying for hire.
Here's Powers' own lobbyist registration from Ottawa.
He works for a hydrocarbon recycling company called Origin International.
Here's their website.
So if he's doing any strategy for a living, I think it's to get Origin International their goals achieved with the federal government.
That's who he's lobbying.
He's lobbying the Trudeau government for companies like that.
And Cowette is trying to get her various clients' goals achieved with government.
So why is it that they are being asked for their opinion about oil pipelines and political campaigns when in fact they have personal interests, hidden interests in those exact same subjects?
They are literally being paid by people to take positions on these issues.
Paid.
It's considered such a risk to our democracy to be a lobbyist that we require lobbyists to disclose that relationship to any public office holder, register online, disclose any communication with public office holders because we want everything to be transparent.
We don't want people to be tricked or hidden.
We want to shine a light of public scrutiny on lobbyists.
Now, we don't ban lobbying.
Lobbying can actually be quite noble.
It can be important.
Everyone should have the right to pester politicians and ask for things and criticize things and suggest things.
And if someone isn't personally in Ottawa, they ought to be able to hire someone who is, hire a pro.
Even I think foreign companies ought to be able to talk to Canadian politicians about things.
Sure, sure.
But the whole reason we have lobbyist registries is to disclose that to the public, to show who's paying who to talk to whom.
So why didn't the CBC disclose that to their viewers?
Why didn't the CBC say that their two pundits weren't in fact pundits?
They're not in fact strategists in the normal meaning of that word.
They are paid, rented, hired lobbyists, taking cash to promote their clients.
And it's such a dangerous thing if it's kept secret that they are forced by law to disclose it in a registry.
But the CBC didn't mention it to its viewers.
Didn't even mention that they are lobbyists at all, let alone who their clients are, that Powers is actually the boss of a lobby group.
What the hell is going on?
And frankly, why would a Keystone XL lobbyist trash Jason Kenney to the CBC?
What on earth?
Who's more unethical here?
These lobbyists for hiding their conflicts of interest?
Or the CBC for going along with the hidden conflict of interest?
Hey, anything to bash Alberta and help Trudeau, right?
But then again, fair enough, the CBC itself takes $1.5 billion a year in cash from Trudeau, and they don't disclose that on the TV screen like a disclaimer whenever they publish a love letter to Trudeau.
So corruption is the norm over at the CBC.
Being unethical is the norm over at the CBC.
It's a state broadcaster.
It's about political corruption and lies.
But I now believe, though, there is a grain of truth under all these lies.
Tim Powers is lying by omission when he hides his role as a lobbyist.
Melissa Khuette is lying by omission when she hides her role as a lobbyist.
The CBC lies by falsely describing these two lobbyists as mere strategists or former strategists or pundits.
The CBC hates Alberta, they hate oil, they hate you, liars upon liars.
There's layers of liars.
But like the princess and the pee, there is a grain of truth under all of it, I think.
I actually believe them, these liars.
I actually believe that Aaron O'Toole really is going to throw out Jason Kenney.
He's just next.
After us at Rebel News and then Derek Sloan and then Pierre Polyev.
Aaron O'Toole, I do believe, is going to throw out Jason Kenney.
It's too embarrassing, too right-wing.
I actually think the CBC did not cook up this story just with its two secret lobbyists.
I think Aaron O'Toole probably planted this story.
I think Aaron O'Toole likes this story.
I think he's shaping the battlefield.
I think he's prepping the media.
I think Aaron O'Toole believes that if he purges every remaining scrap of conservatives from the Conservative Party, that he will win the next election.
Defending Trump: Two Sides00:14:32
He's very, very wrong on that.
But it's pretty incredible to watch him try.
Stay with us for more.
Well, Donald J. Trump has not been president for some weeks, and yet, strangely, he's being impeached.
I didn't know you could even do that to an impeach an ex-president.
Maybe Barack Obama should be impeached.
And heck, why just ex-presidents?
How about ex-people, people who've passed away?
Why not impeach the deceased presidents?
I can think of one or two who deserve their day in court, even posthumously.
All kidding around, it really is happening, and I think it is absurd.
Joining me now via Skype from California is our friend Joel Pollock, the senior editor at large of Breitbart.com.
Joel, I have in front of me your latest piece called Nine Takeaways from the Impeachment Trial.
But before I jump into that, can you even explain to me how do you impeach a president that's not president anymore?
It's not clear you can.
The Senate voted to allow it, and that's because it's not a matter of law that they voted to allow it.
They can't change the Constitution, but they can make procedural rulings when they sit as an impeachment court.
So a majority of senators, 56, decided they did have that power.
This has happened before, where a majority of senators decided it, but there were so many who still believed that this was unconstitutional that they acquitted in the past.
And it looks like that's what's going to happen here.
Regardless of the arguments, there are 44 senators who don't think the Senate should be hearing this case at all.
And that means Democrats are about 11 votes short right from the outset of where they would need to be to convict Donald Trump of incitement.
But I have to tell you, after watching the defense team put on their first day of arguments about the substance, there's nothing left of the Democrats' case against Trump.
I was amazed.
I was proud.
I felt proud as an American, not just as someone who supports Trump, but I was proud as an American of the defense that the Trump team put up because not only did they show the hypocrisy of the Democrats who have used similar language to Trump and who have questioned election results before and who have tried to overturn elections before.
Not only did they do that with very effective video montages, but they also provided a stirring defense of the First Amendment, the freedom of speech, of political speech in particular.
And it was the antidote to cancel culture.
I felt like it wasn't just Trump they were defending.
They were defending every American and really every Canadian, because I know the same issues arise in Canada.
They were showing how political speech has always been protected and deserves to be protected, even objectionable speech.
And then they showed montages of Democrats saying objectionable, violent things.
And they came back and said, you didn't do anything wrong, but if you did do something wrong, you're guilty like Trump, according to your standard.
I have to tell you, it's the kind of speech you're going to watch if you haven't seen it.
It needs to be replayed over and over again.
It needs to be shown in law schools so that we don't turn out these left-wing robots who think their real job as lawyers is not to defend the Constitution, but to suppress the views of people with whom they disagree.
It was just incredible.
There's nothing left of the House Democrats' case against Trump.
Nothing.
Wow.
Well, that's quite a categorical statement.
I have not been watching the impeachment, partly because I feel it's so moot, and I feel it's yesterday's news.
It's not news.
It's old.
It feels like a stunt for collateral purposes.
It feels like a positioning thing where some Republicans are positioning themselves as anti-Trump or post-Trump Republicans.
And I feel like it's got nothing to do with the actual impeachment of an ex-president, but everything else.
But let me say what's really on my mind.
You say this ought to be shown in law schools, and I hope you're right.
But how many people are actually watching it?
I mean, I saw Jim Acosta, the CNN reporter who was obsessed by Trump for four years, as we all were, I guess, saying, our photographer spotted Donald Trump golfing.
And my first thought was, boy, you sure miss him.
He's an ex-president.
Golfing is sort of the thing to do, especially he owns golf courses.
He loves golfing.
He lives in Florida.
And I thought, boy, they miss him.
Is anyone even watching this?
Do networks even have the ratings?
I think they miss Trump so badly.
They want to prop up his presidency after the fact, just to have something to talk about.
You're right.
People aren't really watching it.
There is a lack of interest among Democrats because they know that they hate Trump, so it's not showing them anything new.
There's a lack of interest among Republicans because they feel the whole thing is a show trial that is designed to humiliate them and punish the opposition.
And Trump's not president anymore.
So it's not consequential in any way except for the future of his political career and the disenfranchisement of people who might want to vote for him.
But the opening argument, the two hours of what the Trump defense team put on, is required viewing.
And it's not just required viewing for Republicans.
You have to watch what they do and how they defend the First Amendment and free speech.
We've never seen anything like it, not since the Scopes monkey trial, to be honest.
Have we ever seen a defense of First Amendment rights, as we've just seen?
It's that important.
It's an historically important argument.
Well, I'm blown away.
The fact that you're emphasizing that tells me that we should find it in full on YouTube and put a link to it.
And I'll ask our producers and editors to do that.
You've convinced me.
I did not want to waste a moment's time because the whole thing felt like play acting.
Ignore the House impeachment manager's presentation.
It's not worth it.
It's just painful and awful.
Watch the first two hours of this House impeachment, excuse me, of the Trump defense lawyers.
It's unbelievable.
Wow.
I'm very glad to hear it.
Now, we've caught you in the middle of the hearings right now, so I want to be very careful with our time.
I know out of the corner of your eye, you're watching for when they come back from a break.
Now, you mentioned that 56 senators have voted to proceed, but they would need, is it correct, 67 to actually convict the president?
Is my math correct?
I don't know my U.S. Constitution well.
That's correct.
You need two-thirds vote to convict the president.
In this case, that convicting would mean, because he's already out of office, would mean that you have to apply the rest of the penalty.
I think they have some sort of procedural vote on it afterwards, but basically it would mean barring Trump from running for any public office of any kind, not just president.
He would be barred from any public office in future.
And, you know, that's why many people feel this is an attack on the opposition, because it's not on a current office holder.
It's an attack on a future potential candidate for office.
You know, Iran rules people out from running for president.
We don't want to become Iran.
Now, if he had done something impeachable, if he were really guilty, maybe that might be an appropriate remedy.
But it's not even clear that we can do that.
You know, the Constitution says impeachment is for current office holders and results in their removal from office and their inability to run in the future.
But they say and not or.
It's not a sort of an alternative penalty.
You have to be removed while you're in office and then you can't run again.
The Democrats view it differently now.
They think you can just do removal separately from barring people from running.
Anyway, it's a mess constitutionally, but it's an attempt by the Democrats basically to punish Trump, punish Trump supporters, and to demolish the legitimacy of the opposition.
Instead, they were demolished today.
The Democrats were finally, finally.
I mean, I can't tell you how excited I am actually to have seen this.
The Democrats were finally forced in front of the whole nation to confront their own words supporting violent riots.
And they had to sit there through it.
And they had to, I felt heard as an American.
I felt like the millions of Americans who've had to deal with riots and boarded up stores and intimidation and cancel culture finally got one back.
We finally, somebody heard us today.
The people who impose this regime on us are forced to listen to what they said.
And they were told explicitly by Trump's defense lawyers, you would all be guilty by your own standard.
Well, I've never seen you so effusive about a speech before, so you've convinced me to watch it.
I have one last question, then I'll let you go because I don't want to make you a minute late for watching the rest of it.
I know that there are some wobbly Republicans, some never-Trump Republicans like Mitt Romney in the Senate, but there's also some Democrats like I think of Joe Manchin in, I think he's in West Virginia, who I would call conservative, even though he's a Democrat.
Sometimes the squad and the radical elements of the Democrats get so far ahead of things that the moderates in their party say, whoa, you're going to get us hurt.
Is this one of those things where you might even see some Democrats from, you know, who want to be reasonable, who are maybe up for election in two years, say, yeah, I'm not going to go along with this because it's just not who my state is.
Like for them to succeed, go ahead.
I think Democrats will all vote to convict the president, just like they did last time.
Okay.
And I think they'll do it.
Again, the question is whether some of those Republicans who were wavering, the five or six, whether they will come back and vote to acquit Trump.
I think after today, some of them might.
Joel, I'm going to let you go because I don't want you to miss a minute.
And I'm going to go and dig up the channel.
You got to watch it.
If nothing else, Ezra.
Yeah.
If nothing else.
Yeah.
Have to play the part where Doug Shane, one of Trump's lawyers, debunks the Charlottesville Fine People hoax in front of the entire world.
For the first time, the Democrats had to sit there and watch Trump say that he condemned the neo-Nazis.
They played the whole relevant part of the video, and it was glorious because those of us who've been fighting against this hoax have been waiting for something like that for years.
Plus, he made another point, which is that the House impeachment managers had selectively edited the video.
They had manipulated the evidence.
And that in a normal court, if a lawyer manipulates evidence, they can be subject to disciplinary sanctions.
You really put them in their place.
Wow.
You've got to watch that.
I've just tweeted it.
I've just done an article on it.
You've got to watch it.
It took about two or three minutes.
Unbelievable.
And if your viewers haven't seen it yet, you've got to go watch it.
But you should watch the whole thing because it's really that good.
All right.
Well, we're going to attack on at this moment right here, that three-minute clip you just said.
So we're going to go find it and add it on right now for our viewers to watch at least that three-minute highlight.
And then we'll have a link for them to watch the two-hour grand presentation.
Thank you, Joel, for this.
And thanks for the encouraging referral to this whole video, which frankly I would never have watched without your encouragement.
I'll do so now.
Good luck and continue the great journalism.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Thank you.
Well, that's Joel Pollock, Sr., editor at large at Breitbar.com.
And now let us show you the clip to which he referred.
There's that famous quote, like one of the House managers said, a lie will travel halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its shoes on.
Well, this lie traveled around the world a few times, made its way into the Biden campaign talking points, and ended up on the Senate floor.
The Charlottesville lie.
Very fine people on both sides, except that isn't all he said.
And they knew it then, and they know it now.
Watch this.
But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.
You had people in that group.
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
I saw the same pictures as you did.
You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
George Washington was a slave owner.
Was George Washington a slave owner?
So will George Washington now lose his status?
Are we going to take down, excuse me, are we going to take down, are we going to take down statues to George Washington?
How about Thomas Jefferson?
What do you think of Thomas Jefferson?
You like him?
I do love him.
Okay, good.
Are we going to take down the statue?
Because he was a major slave owner.
Now we're going to take down his statue.
So you know what?
It's fine.
You're changing history.
You're changing culture.
And you had people, and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.
But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?
And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats.
You had a lot of bad people in the other group too.
I'm sorry, I didn't understand what you were saying.
You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly.
I just didn't understand what you were saying.
There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before.
If you look, they were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.
I'm sure in that group there were some bad ones.
The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them.
But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest because, I don't know if you know, they had a permit.
The other group didn't have a permit.
A Horrible Moment For Our Country00:01:35
So I only tell you this.
There are two sides to a story.
I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country.
A horrible moment.
But there are two sides to the country.
Does anybody have a final?
Does anybody have?
You have an infrastructure.
What makes you think?
This might be today the first time the news networks played those full remarks in their context.
And how many times have you heard that President Trump has never denounced white supremacists?
Now you in America know the truth.
Hey, welcome back.
John writes.
If you could go to Walmart, then you can vote in person.
Yeah, exactly.
And if more than that, if someone can work at Walmart or work at the grocery store, a poll worker can work at the polls.
Paul writes, one more example of this pandemic has nothing to do with the virus.
Oh, exactly right.
This is opportunism.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
That's a motto of the left.
Ryan writes, BC had an election in October, no issues.
Yeah, I guess they just weren't clever enough.
They weren't rigging the rules enough.
And don't think for a second that Justin Trudeau isn't taking very careful notes about just how easy this is for his liberal counterparts at the provincial level to get away with.
That's the show for today.
Until Monday, we're going to have a show on Monday on Family Day in parts of Canada.
We're going to have a show.
Until then, on behalf of all of us here at Rub World News, to you at home, good night.