Ezra Levant critiques Barack Obama’s August 9, 2021, 60th birthday bash—hundreds of unmasked Hollywood elites and politicians like John Kerry flouting COVID safety despite their past advocacy for restrictions. Media downplayed risks, calling it a "vaccinated crowd," while Fauci warned against large gatherings like Sturgis. PayPal’s ideological blacklisting of conservative groups (Rebel News, Jihad Watch) via ADL partnerships mirrors China’s social credit system, yet U.S. legal resistance stalls. Financial censorship trends, from GoFundMe to Patreon, reflect authoritarian overreach, with crypto as a flawed escape amid Senate tax hikes. [Automatically generated summary]
But boy, did he have a blowout party, the party of the decade.
Put aside the climate change shenanigans there, all these private jets coming.
But what about this whole COVID thing?
What about this mask thing, this social distancing thing?
Why is Barack Obama exempt?
And why is he being excused by the media party and others are condemned?
I'll take you through it and show you some video and pictures from the party.
But first, well, I guess I'm going to show you the pictures, but if you're listening to the podcast, you won't be able to see it.
I really want you to see these pictures of this party.
It really is a baccanalia.
Lots of photos.
If you are a subscriber to what we call Rebel News Plus, you get the video version of today's podcast.
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All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, why was Barack Obama's birthday party a big deal?
It's August 9th, and this is the Angel Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
How did Barack Obama end up so rich?
Rallying With Masks00:08:00
He didn't have much wealth before he came president.
His wife had a diversity job at a university that paid six figures, but they had a costly lifestyle too.
Then he was president for eight years, which earns $400,000 a year.
It's true.
That's not nothing.
And most of his expenses were covered, but his kids go to fancy schools.
But now he's living like he's a billionaire, or at least close to it.
If you think that's something, look at the wealth of Nancy Pelosi or other lifers in Congress.
Anyways, I couldn't help but notice it.
You'd think someone who goes on about global warming wouldn't have such a big footprint, as they say.
And you'd think they wouldn't be buying such a luxury property on the waterfront.
I mean, didn't he tell us the sea levels are going to rise?
Well, that's the thing.
Don't look at what he says.
Look at what he does.
And at his luxury home, for his 60th birthday, he was going to have the party of the decade.
All his fancy friends were going to come in on their private jets.
Here's John Kerry, Joe Biden's global warming czar, arriving on a private jet for the party because he's so very important.
That's literally his excuse when asked.
He's important.
What he's doing is more important than what you're doing.
So if you happen to notice that he absolutely never follows his own rules, he doesn't deny it.
It's just that the rules don't apply to people like him.
That's what he actually says.
On that issue, pollution, I understand that you came here with a private jet.
Is that an environmental way to travel?
If you offset your carbon, it's the only choice for somebody like me.
Yeah, wow.
Not just private jets, though.
Occasionally, he slums it and flies first class domestically.
And he just doesn't wear that mask.
He doesn't like it.
I get it.
I hate masks too.
They're sweaty and dirty and you rebreathe your own hair and they don't make a lot of sense.
You're wearing it for a moment on an airplane and you really, really have to, but then they serve coffee or snacks and you can take it off for like an hour and you're just as close to the person next to you.
It's all theater.
It's all a performance.
John Kerry knows that, and really he's too important, and I'm sure he tells flight attendants that if they bother him, he's just too important.
So the huge Obama bash started to get a lot of media coverage in advance.
Not just because Obama was living like a Kardashian, living like a billionaire, living like a celebrity, lavish.
The guy who told you you had to lose your job if you worked in coal or fracking, the guy who said you need to drive less, he was above all that.
That's news.
And all the hangers-on were news, but it just happened to coincide with Joe Biden saying we need to all mask again and lock down again.
Once again, I want to thank the local leaders in the private sector, leaders who are imposing vaccine requirements.
America can beat the Delta variant, just as we beat the original COVID-19.
We can do this.
So wear a mask were recommended.
Get vaccinated today.
All of that will save lives.
So that's a bit embarrassing.
Joe Biden is saying stop living freely.
And his former boss, Obama, is having the party of the century.
So Obama says, message received, I'll uninvite people, just close friends and family.
Wow, he really is a man of the people.
So this is what just close friends and family looks like.
That massive thing, that's the party tent.
It holds hundreds.
And close friends and family, oh, like any liberal Hollywood actor around.
It was like an Oscar after party.
Everyone was there.
And of course, they weren't wearing masks.
Are you kidding?
Not a soul wearing a mask.
They were hugging and kissing and dancing close to each other.
All of these photos were posted online by celebrities who were there boasting about their connections until they were told to take them down.
You're embarrassing Obama.
Here's a singer from about 20 years ago named Erica Badou.
She was so excited to be there.
She couldn't help herself filming a video selfie of Obama in the background.
Oh my God.
I'm actually shocked too.
He dances like Eddie Murphy pretending to be a white guy.
It's sort of funny.
But it was all about who's cool and who isn't and who's invited and who isn't and who's on the in crowd and who isn't.
And look at how massive it all was.
No quarantining, no masks, no social distancing, no vaccine passports, no testing.
It was normal life, by which I mean the millionaire and billionaire oligarchs living it up.
By normal, I mean people who tell you to live smaller are living large.
Of course, it's a laugh environmentally.
I'm still waiting for Greta Tunberg to say something.
I'm not sure if she's still a thing.
Her thing was that she was a child, like a child preacher or a child prodigy, a bit of a freak show, but now that she's, you know, she's like a child or actor who's grown up, she's lost that special status.
She's just not that special anymore.
She's ordinary now.
And her cause celebra is being forgotten with all the COVID stuff.
But the media party knew how bad it looked.
Here's the New York Times on CNN.
Other people said, you know, this is really being overblown.
They're following all the safety precautions.
People are going to sporting events that are bigger than this.
This is going to be safe.
This is a sophisticated vaccinated crowd.
And this is just about optics.
It's not about safety.
I wonder what she means by that.
They're sophisticated people, so don't worry about it.
What does that mean?
Is that a medical term?
Is that a comment about class or political partisanship?
They're in the right party.
How is that a thing being sophisticated when it comes to public health?
Here's Anthony Fauci same day talking about another public gathering, a motorcycle rally, all outside, all socially distanced, by the way, in a Republican state.
Oh, he hated that.
You've brought up regionally the South, but out in the plains, in the Great Plains, we have Sturgis, South Dakota.
There's a gathering right now of some 700,000 people.
Last year, it was a smaller turnout, and it was over about 150,000 people, and it led to a massive outbreak in the Dakotas, where they became number one and number two for essentially the rest of the calendar year of cases.
What do you expect this rally to do to that part of the country?
Well, I'm very concerned, Chuck, that we're going to see another surge related to that rally.
I mean, to me, it's understandable that people want to do the kinds of things they want to do.
They want their freedom to do that.
But there comes a time when you're dealing with a public health crisis that could involve you, your family, and everyone else, that something supersedes that need to do exactly what you want to do.
I mean, you're going to ultimately be able to do that in the future, but let's get this pandemic under control before we start acting like nothing is going on.
I mean, something bad is going on.
I mean, we've got to realize that.
Why didn't he talk about Obama's party?
Is he hoping for an invitation or something?
Did too many of his friends go?
His colleague, John Kerry, went.
Does anyone believe these guys anymore?
Can you believe them when they don't live the way they tell you to live?
Like this guy, a politician or bureaucrat, I don't even remember.
He's some boss, doesn't have a mask on, puts it on to walk on the stage, then takes it off for show.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did the same thing just the other day, put on a mask for the cameras, took it off when they left.
Even King Fauci himself, remember that baseball game he threw the first pitch to, just for show, he doesn't believe in it.
Why They Take Off Masks00:03:48
It's uncomfortable.
Even this bizarre woman, I'm going to show you the video of a woman at Calgary's pro-lockdown, pro-mask rally.
It was a gathering where they were asking for a ban on gatherings.
This bizarre woman was shouting at people to go to Auschwitz.
Isn't that what Nazis say?
We talk about Typecast, a health Nazi, but even she wasn't wearing her mask right because it's not comfortable.
You better be careful.
There's a COVID right behind you.org.
By the way, that kooky woman assaulted our Calgary cameraman.
So if you know who that is, go to whoisthis.
Go to whoisthis.ca.
And if you can tell us who that woman is, I will give you $500 if you can ID her.
Don't take matters into your own hands.
Just tell her.
Tell us her name.
So no one believes the signs, at least none of the bosses do.
At least they sure don't act like they do.
And yet they use the science as an excuse to become more and more authoritarian.
Here's footage of French police enforcing vaccine passports at Paris bistros.
80 years ago, police would have done the same thing at those same bistros in Paris, asking for Dyna Papier, show me your papers in German.
Today's French are only too happy to comply.
I saw this.
Here's a translation of a news story from France.
The police are brutally enforcing vax passports, but they themselves are exempt.
That's odd, isn't it?
Here's some of that police brutality.
You know, we make fun of France sometimes for surrendering to the Nazis so quickly.
Lots of jokes historically about that.
They actually did lose quite a lot of lives fighting the Nazis.
But I have to say, the French don't seem to be surrendering peacefully here, unlike us in Canada, where there's uniform compliance from the political and media and legal classes.
A few harmless public protests, but pretty much uniform compliance.
Politicians see that.
So today, Nova Scotia says they'll bring in vax passports for their own province.
New liberal government will be proactive in exploring a provincial vaccine certificate for going to restaurants, shops, gyms, and other businesses.
Scotiapass would allow you to attend events without fear while not putting people's health at risk from dangerous COVID variants.
So again, pitting shopkeepers against their own customers, against their own staff, pitting people against each other, but that promise at the end, this will protect you.
This will end your fears.
This saves you.
Don't lie.
You don't actually know that, do you?
Israel, one of the most vaxed countries in the world, now on their third shot.
Well, guess what?
A surge in hospitalizations.
Another lockdown is imminent.
And look at this headline.
14 Israelis who got the third shot later infected with COVID-19.
Maybe a fourth shot will clear this all up.
Or maybe a fifth shot.
Just one more lockdown, guys.
Seriously, just one more.
Just two years to flatten the curve, guys.
Trust us.
Just don't look at how we live and party or exempt ourselves.
Oh, and for your child's birthday party, mask up or the cops will come.
stay with us for more.
PayPal's Financial Monopoly Worries00:14:12
Well, people sometimes ask me, Ezra, what is the biggest risk to your business?
And there's a few.
For example, donor fatigue from our crowdfunders.
It's a possibility.
I think government censorship from Trudeau and Stephen Gilbo, that's definitely a big one.
Traditional businesses only have to worry about things like, you know, competition.
But I think the number one threat to our company is that big tech firms like YouTube or Twitter, Facebook, suddenly decide that we're going to be unpersoned, that they'll cancel us without any reason at all.
And it happened to us, actually a little bit, a few months ago, when PayPal, our first and most important payment processor, basically a credit card processing company, on a Friday afternoon after business hours, sent us a generic email just saying, hey, guys, we're shutting you down six years and tens of millions of dollars without complaint.
We're simply shutting you down without explanation, without appeal, without notice.
Outrageous.
But that is the era we live in.
And so I was very interested in the story in Breitbart.com by the senior tech editor Alan Bokhari.
The item is called Second Class Citizens, the five stages of financial blacklisting.
And Alan Bokhari joins us now from Austin, Texas.
Alan, great to see you again.
They're not even hiding it anymore.
There was always some censorship beneath the surface.
And these tech companies were sort of shy about it.
But I think ever since the companies deplatformed Donald Trump in January, ever since he lost the election, they've really said, all right, we're in no danger now.
We are free to show how woke we are.
We no longer have to pretend that we're politically neutral.
I think that's the number one difference between now and a year ago.
What would you say?
I think that is a big difference.
I think the Biden administration is also putting a lot of pressure on these companies behind the scenes to do their bidding.
Not just behind the scenes.
The White House press secretary has been pretty open about saying Facebook should censor misinformation.
Biden's accused Facebook of killing people with misinformation.
So they're putting a lot of pressure on these companies in public.
You can only imagine what they're doing to them behind the scenes.
And what struck me as remarkable about this story was that, you know, PayPal obviously has withdrawn service from people before.
They've withdrawn service from Rebel.
They've withdrawn service from a range of conservative figures.
But they've now gone a step further.
They've said they're going to start sharing transaction data, monitoring transaction data, and sharing that transaction data with both law enforcement and the far-left anti-defamation league in order to go after the so-called far right.
So if PayPal suspects you of being far right, they're going to be giving your sensitive financial transaction data to a far-left pressure organization, essentially.
And they haven't released much information about how they're defining far right or what kind of data they'll be monitoring and what kind of data they'll be sharing.
Yeah, that's got to be contrary to privacy laws and banking laws.
I mean, I think the first rule of banking is that of privacy.
That's like a doctor, like a priest, what you tell your banker is enormously confidential.
It's the same thing about the IRS or in Canada our CRA.
That is private info.
And for them to share your intimate spending, like there might be something there you're embarrassed about.
There might be some medical issue.
There might be some friendship or relationship you have.
For them to share that with a Democrat-run hunter-killer organization.
The ADL used to be a Jewish civil rights organization, the Anti-Defamation League.
They are not anymore.
They're run by a former senior Obama aide who is extremely partisan.
And I think that he can't believe his luck that one of the world's largest credit card processors is letting him look at everyone's secret transactions.
I think it's a gross violation of privacy.
Yeah, not only one of the largest payment processes, but one of the only ones.
Other than PayPal and perhaps Stripe, there are very few big payment processes on the internet that compete with them unless you want to go through the very costly process of building your own payment gateway, which a lot of small businesses can't afford to do.
So PayPal is in many ways probably one of the only two options that online businesses can use to process payments.
So they have an almost monopoly in this space.
So it's an extraordinary amount of power, and they're not being very transparent about it.
They're just saying they're going to focus, according to the Reuters report, they're going to uncover and disrupt the financial flow supporting white supremacist and anti-government organizations.
That's not a lot of detail at all.
First of all, what are they counting as white supremacists?
Is it the ADL's definition?
Is it their definition?
What's anti-government?
Is that anarchists, libertarians?
Who is that?
And what does uncover and disrupt even mean?
Uncover, as we were saying, uncover could essentially encompass an entire individual's financial transactions, or it could be one or two transactions.
We don't know what it is they're actually going to be looking at.
Yeah, and disrupt.
So you're basically going to war against your own customers because some Democrat says you should.
It's crazy.
I recall when you're talking about how the Biden administration is exhorting them on.
There was this incredible press conference where Jen Psaki said there are 12 people on Facebook who are like I'm not an expert in American law.
But the concept of a bill of attainder that you have a law passed to get get him, get him.
That's an un-American unconstitutional idea.
Here you have the Biden administration essentially saying there's 12 people, we demand Facebook censors.
Like, it's just really scary.
And now for the banks to get in.
And let's quickly go through some of the five stages you talk about.
The first was a few years ago, 2015, when GoFundMe shut down a Christian bakery that was looking to crowdfund its legal offense, if I'm not mistaken.
The idea that GoFundMe would say, we're not even letting you raise money for a lawyer to have your day in court, that is so punitive.
I mean, let the court decide, but GoFundMe wouldn't even let them crowdfund for that.
Am I getting that right?
That's correct.
They shot that down.
And that kind of creates a chilling effect across the entire internet because one of the great things about the internet was democratized fundraising.
And the Ron Paul campaign proved how effective that could be politically by beating all his Republican competitors in 2008 using small online donations.
But when crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe shot down campaign political reasons, that disincentivized people from creating any new campaigns because it also disincentivizes donations because you don't know if the campaign is suddenly going to be shut down.
You know, a lot of people have been looking for other ways to raise funds.
And Patreon was something that was created with content creators in mind.
You can even see the root patron.
You can have lots of little patrons of the arts.
But a few years ago, Patreon and credit card companies, and I know our friend Harmee Dylan was involved in some of these cases, they started pressuring Patreon to censor content.
And it wasn't just Patreon itself.
It was credit card companies threatening Patreon, almost like there's always some bigger fish out there.
Even if Patreon itself wanted to stand by the content creators, the credit card companies would threaten Patreon.
And there's always some bigger censor behind you, isn't there?
Yeah, and this really goes all the way to the banks and not just in the U.S., but it's now spread into the UK.
Just news in the past few days, the successor to Nigel Farage's Brexit Party had their bank, British bank, Metro UK, cut off services to them, an entire political party.
So this is really spreading.
And when it goes all the way to the bank, then even if a payment processor or a platform like Patreon allows you to use their service, if the bank says no or the credit card company says no, then there's nothing even they can do to help you.
So all of this actually raises the question of cryptocurrencies and the increasing need for them.
Of course, now the Senate is planning to pass a law that's going to raise a lot of taxes on that industry and maybe do some damage to it.
Yeah, I'm very worried about that.
I mean, they have targeted freedom-oriented groups.
For example, the David Horowitz Freedom Center in California, their strong pro-freedom property rights group.
Horowitz himself used to be a communist when he was young, and now he's flipped to be a freedom activist.
And for Visa and MasterCard to cut him off, and David, sorry, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, these are mainstream conservative or freedom-oriented points of view.
And when Visa and MasterCard themselves cut them off, it's terrifying.
Now, PayPal is a special case, and like I say, PayPal cut us off.
But they were originally co-founded by Peter Thiel, one of the most liberty-loving men in Silicon Valley.
I don't think he's involved with running them anymore because they have gone so woke.
They're literally working to root out, like they've taken it upon themselves not to be pushed around on this, but to lead the pushing around.
Like the bank itself is leading some purge of wrongthinkers.
Has there been any regulatory response by any bank regulator or financial services regulator, any civil liberties group?
I mean, obviously not the Biden administration, but has anyone else said, whoa, what are you doing?
This is China-style social credit.
No, and I don't think anyone knows what to do at the moment.
Republicans are still getting their head around how to solve the social media censorship problem.
They haven't even started to address or even think about new laws to regulate the financial sector.
And yeah, you mentioned that PayPal was founded by Peter Thiel, one of the biggest conservatives, one of the smartest conservatives in the country.
It just goes, obviously, he sold the company in the early 2000s, so he gave up control a long time ago.
It seems to have been taken over by people who are clearly very woke and very far left.
But that just goes to show why there needs to be industry-wide regulation, because when you have a company that's founded by a conservative who believes in free speech, unless they hold on to it forever, it'll inevitably get taken over by crazy people who are going to deny people service for political reasons.
And that's why just think while it's good to encourage conservatives to start new companies and competitors, you ultimately need regulation because that alone, as we see in the case of PayPal, that alone is not going to fix the problem.
You know what?
There's a British historian named Robert Conquest and he came up with three laws of politics.
And his second law is any organization not explicitly right wing sooner or later becomes left wing.
And you would think, how could that possibly be true all the time?
Well, it's not true all the time, but it's certainly true a lot of the time.
And I think it would apply to PayPal for sure.
Actually, most of the big foundations, I will only imagine what John D. Rockefeller thinks of his great-grandchildren.
If he would see what they're doing in his name and with his money, I think he would have literally put it in a pile and burnt it.
I'm worried about these things, but hopefully there will be certain legal solutions.
I know that there's some talk.
Clarence Thomas has alluded to certain legal approaches in the Supreme Court.
I sure hope that happens, because otherwise we truly will be living in a controlled society like China.
Alan, what do you think?
Do you think it's going to get worse before it gets better?
It depends on the country.
So interestingly, we've seen governments in Europe, Germany, most recently, actually forcing some of the social media companies to restore posts that they previously banned, restore users that they've previously banned.
And they haven't really done it on free speech grants.
They've done it on process grounds, terms of service grounds, things like that.
Because obviously many European governments and ruling parties don't really believe in free speech that much.
But there is more leeway in Europe to do that because companies can't turn around and say, hey, we have a First Amendment right to censor anyone we want and you can't force us to carry certain types of speech.
Now, there is a way around that in the US.
That's with common carrier legislation and with public accommodation legislation, which is what Clarence Thomas has been talking about.
So there is a route to do that in the US.
Texas is trying to pass a law to that effect.
Of course, the Democrats are preventing them from passing any laws by having their legislatures run away from the state.
But it'll be interesting to see if that gets passed and what effect it has.
There are ways for Red States to fix this.
And Clarence Thomas has outlined that.
But certainly, I think Republican voters want their lawmakers to move a bit faster on this issue because it is escalating very rapidly.
Yeah, well, hopefully, we'll see some action from state governors.
Ron DeSantis looks like he's ready for a fight on this ground and maybe Texas too.
Republican Voters Demand Action00:01:34
We're talking to Alan Bokari.
He's a senior tech editor at Breitbart.com.
His latest article is Second Class Citizens, the five stages of financial blacklisting.
And I want to remind our viewers that Alam saw this coming.
His book last year was called Deleted, Big Tech's Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal the Election.
Just absolutely chilling what he saw in advance.
And I think it's all worse since then.
Alan, great to see you.
I hope that you continue to shed a light on this.
I think you do more reporting on this subject than all other reporters combined.
So we're grateful when you visit us.
Thanks, Ezra.
Good to be on, as always.
Right on.
There you have it, Alan Bokari from Breitbart.com.
Stay with us, Moorhead.
Hey, welcome back.
Pulse writes, they're training you to snitch on your neighbors, friends, and family.
They're training you to become more obedient to every single one of their orders.
Well, not just to be a snitch.
We've had that now for a year and a half.
But now you have to be an enforcer.
If you have any shop or any restaurant, you're the one who has to enforce the passport, just like you had to enforce the mask.
This is pitting people against each other.
Karen writes, this is totally what it is, psychological torture.
I think that's right.
We've been in this stressed situation for a year and a half, and we don't even know it.
Dawson writes, keep fighting and getting the truth out, Ezra.
Well, we'll do our best.
Thanks for your support.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubble World Headquarters, good night.