Chinese diplomat Zhao Lijian mocks Justin Trudeau as "xiang tudo" ("little potato"), exposing his $4.8M Huawei funding, support for Chinese virus research, and refusal to ban China from 5G despite Five Eyes allies’ actions—undermining Canada’s sovereignty. Meanwhile, Rebel News reporters like Yankee Pollock and Efron Monsanto face repeated arrests in Montreal’s curfew crackdowns, accused of being "Jew media" despite only one Jewish contributor; police admit targeting critical journalists while ignoring stenographic outlets. Trudeau’s subservience to U.S. interests and Canada’s eroding press freedoms reveal a government more concerned with compliance than principle. [Automatically generated summary]
I follow a lot of Chinese Communist Party Twitter accounts because I want to see what the bad guys have to say.
And I was shocked that one of them tweeted something that, well, I completely agree with.
He was tweeting about Justin Trudeau.
I'll read that tweet to you and give you some background context.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
It's the video version of this podcast.
And I think it's got a lot of value because we really put a lot of effort into finding videos and charts and graphs and clippings and things like that.
So it's not just the spoken word.
And you also get shows every week from David Benzi, Sheila Gunn Reed, and Andrew Chapin.
It was my show's daily, as you know.
And I think most importantly, from my point of view, the $8 a month that it costs, well, that pays the bills here at Rebel News.
So thank you for that.
And even if you don't think you're going to watch the videos often, maybe consider doing it just for that reason alone.
Subscribing just to give us the eight bucks because we'll never take it from Trudeau.
Just go to rebelnews.com and click subscribe.
All right.
Here's today's podcast.
Tonight, a Chinese diplomat mocks Trudeau and accidentally tells the truth.
It's March 29th 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 the publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I want to show you an incredible statement by a Chinese diplomat.
It's quite something, very undiplomatic.
Stay with me.
I'll show it to you in a few minutes.
But first, let me just give you a reminder of where we are with China.
You know, sometimes someone makes fun of you or insults you and they do it in a subtle way, sort of a passive-aggressive way, maybe an ambiguous way.
I have a friend, a former editor of mine, who would joke that he was often asked what he thought of friends' works, like a play or a book.
And he would sometimes have to come up with a subtle and ambiguous answer to the question because he didn't want to embarrass them when they said, so how do you like it?
And he said his favorite line was, you've done it again.
I like that.
Isn't that great?
He doesn't actually say anything, but he wasn't lying either.
I think Barack Obama was the master of that sometimes, where he just quietly pose, giving someone the middle finger.
I could be overthinking it, but it seems to happen so much.
You know, we have 10 fingers.
We're always using them sometimes distractedly.
If every moment of my life was photographed, you might catch me for a second where it looks like I was flipping someone the bird.
Obama seems to have done that at strategic times.
China has been engaging in diplomacy for centuries, millennia, really, like Persia, like the Ottoman Turks.
China was into diplomacy and subtle speaking and symbolism before Columbus was even born.
Think of Marco Polo.
So the Chinese know what they're doing more than, say, I don't know, Christia Freeland.
Restoring, refreshing, strengthening the Canada-China relationship.
We're quite proud.
The prime minister has been given a fond nickname in China.
He is called Tudo, which I believe means potato.
And he's, I can't say the Chinese word, it's xiang, tudo, little potato, because his father, Pierre Elliot, Tudo, was senior potato.
Yeah, Justin Trudeau, they're calling you little potato.
You've done it again.
China knows what they're doing.
Here's how they handled Obama when they were mad at him.
Now, U.S. President Barack Obama's arrival in China for the G20 summit got off to a bumpy start as he didn't receive the red carpet treatment usually offered to world leaders.
OC Young has more.
Was it a carefully calculated snub or a simple mishap on the behalf of the Chinese?
As President Obama arrived in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou on Saturday, no rolling staircase had been prepared for his exit from Air Force One.
Instead, he had to make his way out from a little-used exit.
There are also altercations between U.S. and Chinese officials as Obama got off the plane and U.S. reporters were told to move.
A Chinese official was heard shouting, This is our country, this is our airport.
President Obama later downplayed the situation.
Yeah, the country that is obsessed with feng shui and saving face knows exactly what they're doing in diplomacy.
They know how weak Canada's liberals are.
Remember when a senior Chinese communist came to Canada and stood right next to Stefan Dion, who was in cabinet at the time, and a Canadian reporter asked a fairly standard question of China, and he absolutely tore a strip off her saying, basically, how dare you ask questions like that?
And Stéphane Dion, the cowardly liberal, just stood there and took it.
Hi, Minister Dion.
Amanda Connolly with iPolitics.c.
Thank you for taking our questions today.
There are no shortage of concerns about China's treatment of human rights advocates such as the Hong Kong booksellers and its detention of the Garretts, not to mention the destabilizing effects of its territorial ambitions in the South China Sea.
Given these concerns, why is Canada pursuing closer ties with China?
How do you plan to use that relationship to improve human rights and security in the region?
And did you specifically raise the case of the Garrett's during your discussions with the foreign minister today?
I want to make a response to the questions asked by this journalist about China.
Thank you.
I have to say that your question is full of prejudice against China and arrogance, where I don't know where that comes from.
And this is totally unacceptable.
Yeah, that's not even the hidden snub, is it?
That's full-out disrespect, a bully taking our lunch money again and again, and we're just accepting it.
That's been Trudeau's approach.
It's really embarrassing.
Despite the kidnapping by the Chinese dictatorship of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, Trudeau just won't stop loving the bullies.
He trains their soldiers at our bases.
He gives money to their virus research institutes.
He just gave $4.8 million to Huawei, a gift to one of the richest tech companies in the world that just happens to be controlled by the Communist Party of China.
He even thought it would be a really smart idea to sign up for a contract with the Chinese Army for their version of the vaccine.
I kid you not.
Canada still remains the one five-eyes ally not to ban China from making our 5G network.
Is there nothing Trudeau won't do for China?
Even at the show trial of the two Michaels just this month, Trudeau refused to send our ambassador to China to the trial.
A dozen other countries sent their diplomats to the trial as a sign of solidarity with us, but our own ambassador just didn't go.
He didn't go.
He sent some junior underling, you know, mustn't get off sign will China.
And the grossest of all was then when the opposition conservators put a motion condemning China's genocide of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province, Trudeau refused to show up to vote.
He wouldn't vote for it or against it.
He didn't even show up.
All he did was send the Mark Garnot to say, we abstain, but the whole cabinet just hid.
What a coward.
It's almost like Trudeau meant what he said when he told us that he loves China's basic dictatorship.
There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their face it dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime.
But you know, that wasn't good enough for China and they've started turning on Canada.
Well, they did years ago.
They put sanctions on our agricultural exports, for example.
But now they've started putting sanctions on individual Canadian MPs and other officials.
So Canada has responded in the most modest way possible, sanctions against minor Chinese officials.
Trudeau says he won't allow goods made by slave labor by Uyghurs into Canada, but the Global Mail shows that ban is just not happening.
No goods have been stopped at all.
It's fake.
But China is outraged nonetheless, and they've lost emotional self-control, which is odd for a country that values a saving face.
But I'm not sure.
Was this deliberate or was this a rogue diplomat trying to impress his bosses in Beijing?
I don't know, but look at this.
Just look at this tweet.
Boy, your greatest achievement is to have ruined the friendly relations between China and Canada and have turned Canada into a running dog of the U.S. Spendthrift!
You don't really hear some of that language a lot, a capitalist running dog.
That's weird Cold War era communist language, sort of Stalinist language.
But look at the pure derision, the mocking, the diminishment of him, calling him a boy.
You don't see that a lot from diplomats.
It's not very diplomatic, is it?
Now, this diplomat, Li Yang, or I think it might be said Yang Li, he's based in Brazil.
So it's a bit odd in some ways for him to be weighing in on Canada, unless they just wanted a diplomat who couldn't be kicked out of Canada to do that.
Not that Trudeau would ever kick him out.
So what have we here?
We have Trudeau who hasn't actually done anything to China.
We haven't withdrawn our diplomats or kicked out any of theirs.
We haven't cut off their trade, even though they've cut off ours.
We haven't kicked out any of the 100,000 privileged sons and daughters of the Chinese Communist Party who are studying in our universities, taking out places that Canadians might take, keeping out, you know, we don't keep out Chinese goods dumped in our market like cheap Chinese steel.
We haven't kept out China's Huawei from our 5G.
We're still in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
We're putting our money into building infrastructure in China.
We haven't even thought of boycotting China's upcoming Olympics.
None of that, none of that, just a fake ban on Xinjiang cotton.
But you know what?
I have to agree with this communist diplomat from Brazil.
Let's look at that tweet just one more time.
Boy, your greatest achievement is to have ruined the friendly relations between China and Canada and have turned Canada into a running dog of the U.S. Spendthrift, that last part is quite true, isn't it?
You know what?
I think this little commie is right.
I think he's rude and undiplomatic, but by gosh, there's some truth under it.
I think that if Trudeau really does manage to unhook Canada and China, if he really does start to push China away from us, the dictatorship, untangle us from the companies, if he really did that, which he has not yet done, and frankly, it doesn't look like he's going to do, it really would be Trudeau's greatest achievement.
Stay with us.
Well, we've been covering the lockdowns across Canada.
Our office is based here in Toronto, but as you know, we've been covering the church lockdowns in Alberta.
We've had reporters at the Grace Life Church outside Edmonton, a Baptist church down in Calgary.
We've been covering the diner rebellion, the whistle-stop diner in Mirror, Alberta.
We've covered things in Toronto pretty well, too, because we're based here.
But only in the last few weeks have we been going to Montreal.
I think we should have gone there earlier because they actually still have a curfew at night.
I think that's the only place in North America that does.
Treats adults like children, treats healthy people like sick people, treats innocent people like criminals.
It's actually crazy.
We have a guy out there called Yankee Pollock.
He's based out there.
He doesn't do a lot of on-camera work for us.
He's mainly a web social media guy.
But at night, he goes out and documents the curfew.
And they started, they haven't been rough with him physically, but they've detained him and given him thousands of dollars in tickets.
And he would show us the craziness out there, especially police clapping down on the Orthodox Jewish community.
We've been covering a lot of Christian churches in Alberta and other places in BC and Ontario.
But for some reason, they're focusing on the Jews, or at least the Orthodox Jews in Montreal.
So the last couple of weekends, we've sent a fairly big team from Rebel News, and they're starting to know us.
The individual police recognize us now, certainly recognize Yankee, our Montreal reporter.
They're clearly watching our videos.
And by the way, we have signed exemption certificates.
We comply with the law.
We have a letter from the Montreal police confirming it.
We followed all the rules.
We're exempt from the lockdown under the rules.
The police know that, but they've arrested our people again and again.
And this weekend, they actually handcuffed our reporters.
You know, Efron Monsanto, our head of video, he has reported for us from Poland, from Mexico, even from Hong Kong during the democracy protests.
He has never been arrested anywhere.
He has never been handcuffed anywhere except in our own country.
And there's this weird thing, like Efron Monsanto.
I haven't asked him, but I think he's Christian based on the name.
And Mocha Bazirgan, he's Muslim.
And Lincoln Jay, he's Christian, I think.
So we have people from different backgrounds.
Yankee Pollock is Jewish, but of our whole team that is going out to Montreal, other than Yankee, no one is actually Jewish.
And Yankee's just there.
He's not there in a Jewish capacity.
He just happens to be a Jew.
Like Lincoln happens to be Christian.
It's not relevant.
Different Backgrounds, Same Treatment00:06:40
We're covering the news.
Rebel News is not inherently a Jewish organization.
In fact, other than Abby Yamini, I don't think we have any on-camera talent who is Jewish.
It's just not our central focus.
Our focus is on civil liberties, on Canadian politics, a little bit on Australian politics.
It's just so weird because the police in Montreal keep saying, oh, there's Jew media.
There's the Jew media.
Are you a Jew?
And at first, the first time I heard that, I thought, did we mishear that?
Did they say it in some other way?
What do they mean by that?
But it's happening again and again, even as they handcuff our people.
I find it extremely unnerving.
And we're going to fight back like hell.
And in fact, we're not going to let it roll.
I mean, the lockdown to the great outrage, the fact that they're adding this weird layer of you're a Jew, you're a Jew, is, I think, really creepy.
But we're not done yet.
So I think we're going to go back to Montreal until we get this thing fixed.
And obviously, we're going to fight the fines for Yankee and Mocha and Efren and Lincoln and all our other people out there who've been getting these outrageous fines.
Illegal fines, our people are exempt.
Anyhow, enough ramble for me.
Let me throw to some outstanding videos taken by these young men.
And I can assure you, just like we stayed with it in Alberta until we won for the whistle stop and stayed with it until Pastor Coates was let out of jail.
We're not going to ease up in Montreal.
Perhaps the creepiest thing I heard from Montreal was something Mocha told me over the phone.
He said that the police said to him, you're not allowed to ask us questions.
None of the other media do.
Mocha said the cop said that to him, as in the other reporters never question, the other reporters are never skeptical.
The other reporters never engage.
The other reporters never doubt.
They're stenographers, not reporters.
Our rebel news reporters in Montreal are the first time any journalist has taken a critical eye to their curfew.
The worst lockdown in North America.
What they're doing to our reporters is an outrage, but the fact that the cop said you're the only media who acts like journalists is very telling.
I'll say goodbye to you now, but here's some videos that our team did from Montreal.
Enjoy these videos, but I know enjoy is the wrong word.
If you're like me, they'll make you angry, but I promise you we'll keep at it.
I'll leave you with these videos, and I'll see you tomorrow.
Keep fighting for freedom.
Why are you having your hands on you?
Why are you having a money?
You're not allowed to manhandle.
You're not allowed to manhandle me.
Why aren't they going to be able to do it?
He doesn't have to go in.
Give him a ticket.
Don't need my badge number.
You are targeting me because I'm recording, right?
No, you're not recording.
I just came here.
Hey.
You're allowed to record this.
Hey, I'm very good.
Yeah, I am recording.
Okay, are you taking your time?
Let's go.
I just arrived here right now.
And you're grabbing me.
Yes, I'm grabbing you because you're recording.
Acknowledge that.
Okay?
No, I don't have to.
Yes, you have to.
Okay, okay, give me the tickets.
Okay, I am calm.
Okay.
You want my ID?
Okay.
Okay, I'll give you the ID.
Okay, here are your IDs.
Okay, seven answer.
What's your name of the badge number?
Seven nine eight time.
Whatever you've been tapping for, not for what?
I'm not part of the protest.
No, no, wait, wait, wait.
Listen, listen.
I'm reporting.
Listen, I'm reporting.
I'm not part of the protest.
So it doesn't matter, see, that I'm not reporting.
I'm just here to report.
I'm asking some idea.
I'm going to need a ticket.
You're going to have to sit in the car because I have to verify your identity.
I'm here.
I'm not going anywhere.
Yeah, you have to sit in my market.
I have never heard of that.
Why are you putting me in?
Can I sit over here?
No, of course not.
You have your own.
This is my fourth ticket.
And I've never.
Yeah, no one put me inside there.
I don't have to.
It's for you.
No, I'm okay standing here.
Yes.
You're going to see me.
Okay.
I'm going to go to my car and then I'll go.
I'm waiting here.
Okay.
Really?
You're going to touch that mask with naked hands and give it to us?
Yeah, okay, thank you.
And this is your two pieces of water.
No, I don't have to.
If you don't, okay, you can't give me hundreds of tickets.
That's okay.
I'm not going to wear a mask that you touch like that.
No, sir.
Would you like to take it for yourself?
No, I don't have to.
Yeah.
Okay, have a good day.
Hey, I'm media.
Hey, hey, what's going on?
Would you take a piece?
Don't fight back!
Don't fight back!
Mask on!
I'm not in a crowd.
I'm not in a crowd of 20, though.
Okay, well.
My colleague is detained.
I have to stay.
Let's go.
I'm on public property.
No, babe, put your mask on.
I'm not in a group of 20, though.
Hey, doy situation!
I'm not in a group of 20, what?
Keep walking?
You want a ticket or not?
That's fine.
Okay, babe, go.
Keep walking.
Tickets, fine.
Stay on the sidewalk, go.
Let's go, folks.
Documenting Protest Thugs00:01:13
Hello, Rebel New.
This is like, we're documenting what's happening here, guys.
So, why are we getting such a tough time?
We've been through this so many times with you guys.
Why is it being arrested?
You just told us you were in the protest.
You're gonna come with us.
We don't understand now.
Why is he being arrested?
He's not talking to Professor.
I'm documenting the protesters.
Why did you arrest the two members of the media?
They are not violent people.
Alright, guys, once again, please go to lockdownreports.com, help fund our journey.
Once again, we're showing you what's really going on on the ground in Montreal.
Mocha currently being dealt with by the police.
Assuming he's just receiving a ticket, we'll see what happens.
Well, I'm back.
I told you guys, I was right.
The collective forces of this nation is perverted, it's corrupted.
Their badges, they are thugs wearing badges.
That's all they are.
They are using a legal vacuum to beat thugs towards peaceful protesters and members of the media.