Ezra Levant examines the 2023 midterm backlash against Democrats, spotlighting Winsom Sears—Virginia’s first Black woman lieutenant governor—whose Jamaican immigrant roots and military service contrast with Democratic racial grievance narratives. Polls suggest Trump could defeat Biden in 2024, but concerns linger over his baggage, while DeSantis’s "Trumpism Without Trump" approach may delay a 2024 run. Meanwhile, vaccine mandates like Air Canada’s spark legal battles over medical privacy, and skepticism grows over Biden’s COP26 role amid elite COVID hypocrisy, signaling deeper fractures in progressive governance. [Automatically generated summary]
Really the first person, first piece of good news from American politics in a year, exactly a year today.
It was the U.S. election.
Joe Biden won, the history books say.
But last night, Americans pushed back a shocking win for Republicans in the fairly deep blue state of Virginia.
And Republicans coming within a percent of winning New Jersey for crying out loud.
What's going on?
And oh my God, look at some of their candidates the Republicans had.
I see this as very hopeful, a sign that you can't write off America just yet.
And something I'm a bit jealous of up here.
I'll take you through all the details first with my own monologue, a wonderful victory speech from their lieutenant governor, and an interview with Joel Pollock.
So much to talk about.
Let's get straight to it.
But before, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this show.
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Here's today's show.
Tonight, a year after the presidential election, Americans push back hard at the Democrats.
It's November 3rd, 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 to the government of why I'm publishing is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I want to show you a video.
I saw it this morning.
I watched it, and then I watched it again right away.
It was so great.
Now, it's more than seven minutes long, and I don't think I've ever showed you a clip that long before, but these seven minutes will go by so quickly.
You'll want to watch it again, too, I bet.
This is a woman with the wonderful name of Winsom Sears.
And she's a Republican, and she just beat a Democrat to become the lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
They say lieutenant, we say lieutenant.
And she's so amazing.
It'll explain why the media party has deliberately ignored her until last night when they could no longer ignore her.
She is the first black woman to win a statewide office in Virginia history, by the way.
All right, here's the video.
Take a look.
Stay with it.
It's wonderful.
First Black Woman Lieutenant Governor00:04:21
Lost for words for the first time in my life.
You know, I love you too.
I am here.
Yes.
Greencore.
Motivated, dedicated.
So I'm here because of you.
I'm here because you voted for me.
I'm here because you put your trust in me.
That's the only reason I'm here.
Thank you.
Thank you. Got my speech.
I want to introduce to you my husband, Terrence Marine.
My daughter Katja, my daughter Janelle.
I'm telling you that what you are looking at is the American dream.
The American dream.
When my father came to this country, August 11th of 1963, he came at the height of the civil rights movement from Jamaica.
He came and I said to him, but it was such a bad time for us.
Why did you come?
He said, because America was where the jobs and the opportunities were.
Came with $1.75.
$1.75.
Took any job he could find and he put himself through school and started his American dream.
And then, yes.
And now he's comfortably retired.
And then he came and got me when I was six years old.
And when I stepped on that Pan Am Boeing 737 and landed at JFK, I landed in a new world.
And so let me tell you this.
I am not even first generation American.
When I joined the Marine Corps, I was still a Jamaican, but this country had done so much for me.
is willing, willing to die for this country.
And so I say to you, Victory indeed.
But I say to you, there are some who want to divide us, and we must not let that happen.
They would like us to believe we are back in 1963 when my father came.
We can live where we want.
We can eat where we want.
We own the water fountains.
We have had a black president elected not once but twice, and here I am, living proof.
In case you haven't noticed, I am black, and I have been black all my life.
Back To 1963?00:06:45
But that's not what this is about.
What we're going to do is we are going to now be about the business of the Commonwealth.
We have things to tend to.
We are going to fully fund our historically black colleges and universities.
You're going to hear from your governor-elect, Glenn Yonkin.
And he's got a day one plan that I'm already tired about.
Don't know how we're going to make it to day two.
But he's going to make sure we keep more of our money in our pockets because he's going to get rid of all kinds of taxes.
We're going to have safer neighborhoods, safer communities, and our children are going to get a good- Education lifted me out of poverty.
Education will lift us all out of poverty because we must have marketable skills so that our children can not just survive, but they will thrive.
And they will create generational wealth.
This is about I'm gonna finish up We love you too.
It's a historic night.
Yes, it is.
But I didn't run to make history.
I just wanted to leave it better than I found it.
And with your help, we're going to do that.
We're going to have transparent government.
And as I used to say as we were on the trail, hold on, Virginia.
Help is on the way.
The cavalry has arrived.
Thank you.
God bless you.
And finally, I want to thank my staff because I couldn't have done it without them.
We were a ragtag bunch of people.
We ran an impossible, improbable campaign against God was exactly with us.
Otherwise, we would never have made it.
And so I want to finish up by thanking you, Jesus.
How sweet it is.
Well, isn't she amazing?
You can see why the media party hasn't shown you a glimpse of her.
If she were a Democrat, you would already know her name.
And they'd be talking about her as a future presidential candidate.
Some Democrats were circulating pictures of her with firearms.
I think they thought that would hurt her electoral chances.
Not sure if that's true in Virginia.
Not sure if that's true with any veteran of the Marines, as Winsom Sears is.
I know many Canadians might not like the look of someone with a gun and CNN reporters might not.
But I find it a sign of strength and confidence and self-determination and the absolute opposite of victimhood.
Victims don't carry a gun like that.
And I think that's an important thing.
You heard her talk about not dividing people.
And she made a quick reference to historically black colleges that the Republicans had pledged to fund.
But other than that, there really wasn't a lot of racial talk in her speech, even though she just made history, because she is not in the vein of a grievance monger, a complainer, a victim, someone blaming others.
You heard her.
Her dad came from Jamaica with a $1.75.
He brought the rest of the family over later.
Winsom joined the Marines in America before she was even a U.S. citizen.
Strength, loyalty, patriotism, hard work, merit.
And look at her now, Lieutenant Governor.
Why should she talk about grievance?
And I tell you this because incredibly race and how children in Virginia are taught about race and about other things like transgenderism was a big reason why Winsom and the new governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, beat the huge Democratic machine, the media machine, the Biden machine, and won a state that just exactly 10 years ago today went for Biden by a 10% margin over Trump.
How do you turn a blue state that was turning more and more blue?
That's the color of the Democrats.
How do you turn that Republican in just one year?
Well, Ann Coulter had a theory that I like.
A lot of people have been working from home this past year, and their kids have been schooling from home via Zoom on their computer.
So, and this is Ann Coulter's theory: a lot of dads were home and happened to see what their kids are learning in school from their laptops or on Zoom or whatever app they were using.
Moms always sort of know, but even moms weren't there in the classes as you could be on Zoom.
Now, both mom and dad could see what was being taught to their kids, and mamas and dads would have opinions about spelling and history and geography and math.
I don't know if those are even still being taught.
I don't know.
But they would actually see critical race theory being taught, which is another way of saying teaching young people that the world is racist, America is racist, Virginia is racist, and that the children themselves and their families are racist.
The most shocking stories, the insane, hateful lessons, which are actually propaganda, shocking stuff, not just in Virginia, but across America and in Canada too.
And by the way, some of the most fierce opponents of critical race theory are other racial minorities.
Asra Nomani, a Muslim woman immigrant, is just an outstanding example.
She is a new American who doesn't want that racial grievance being taught to her kids.
Mostly Minority Parents Check Their Privileges00:08:56
She's been a star on this.
Here's just a quick clip of her.
I came before you in June 2020.
I spoke to you during quarantine.
I pled with you at that time because I said to you that we had activists from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, where my son is a senior, and that they had just disbaited the idea of an Occupy TJ movement.
I sent a note to every single one of you, and I got not a single response.
There was no concern about our students at that time.
And then the summer proceeded, and the principal at our high school told us that our mostly minority students and parents had to check their privileges.
And then, as the summer continued, Dr. Brabrand, you decided that our students and our families were spending thousands and thousands of dollars on test prep.
And then you, Melanie Marin, told us that we were toxic.
And then Karen Keys Gamara promoted the idea that we were racist.
And then by the fall, every single one of you voted to remove the merit-based race-blind admissions test to TJ.
And we pled with you as Asians, as an immigrant.
I came at the age of four.
I knew no English.
And you didn't listen to us.
And now I sit here listening to this empty proclamations and declarations that you're making about your great value of Asian Americans.
You tell us about you going Melanie Marin to a Japanese restaurant.
Well, do you know that just a few weeks ago in social emotional learning at TJ, our students were told that if they do salsa dancing, it amounts to cultural appropriation and that they needed to check their racism.
And that is our mostly minority, mostly Asian students.
And so your empty proclamations are just that.
And then today, we get this vacuous survey from you, Dr. Braybrand, and you dare to tell us that you're going to consider removing the one policy that parents have to defend their students from indoctrination and activism, the policy that makes certain that anything taught in our school that is controversial must be presented fairly.
You have to just think for yourself, if you have to remove a policy like that, how can you possibly be doing anything good?
And then this survey, it's just a loaded survey.
And who is it by?
Indeed.
New York Leadership Academy.
And what has that survey done?
They've asked us the questions for the time that you have now said.
Thank you for your time.
That will allow us to do that.
Thank you for your time.
Your time is up, ma'am.
You all have to be up.
Your time is up, ma'am.
Your time has expired.
Yes, your time has expired.
Next speaker.
Continue to shut us down.
Speaker.
Because that's what you love.
Please go to your seat.
Most Americans don't want critical race theory.
You know, the left, the teachers' unions, they love racism.
They cook it up.
They cook up weird ideas.
They don't say Latino or Hispanic.
They say Latinx.
What?
No one says that.
No actual Latinos say that.
Most don't even know what that means, other than they're being told that they should be angry or should play the victim or something.
You heard Winsom Sears.
She said, no, thanks.
And so did so many other parents of Virginia.
And then the former Democratic governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, who was running again to be governor, well, he knows who his supporters and donors are, the teachers' unions.
And so he knew who he sided with.
Again and again, he just said it.
He said parents have no role in determining what their own kids get taught.
He said it out loud, including in a TV debate.
I'm not going to let parents come into schools and actually take folks out and make their own decisions.
You vetoed it.
So you've stopped the bill that I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.
And really, he said it again and again.
Parents are either stupid or racist or evil or simply ought to be kept out of their own kids' affairs.
Critical race theory is not taught in Virginia.
It has never been taught.
It is a racist dog whistle.
And I'm really tired of it.
But if we don't have a definition, how can we say it's racist?
I just want a definition from you.
It's not taught here in Virginia.
We can ask about any topic.
Here's what I've said all along.
And it really bothers me.
You know, it really bothers me.
This whole idea of stirring parents up to create divisions, our children are going through such challenges today because of COVID, and we're talking about something here today, wasting precious viewers' time.
And at this same time, as parents were getting outraged at critical race theory being force-fed to their students, another troubling trend synchronized with it.
In Loudoun County, a teenage girl was raped by a boy wearing a skirt who went into the women's only change room and the school covered it up because he didn't want to undermine their transgenderism policy.
A girl was raped.
And that girl's dad went to ask school officials about it and they lied to him and said it never happened.
And shockingly, incredibly, police arrested that dad, the raped girl's father.
Police arrested the girl's father, the girl who had been raped, the father trying to, not even to get justice, just trying to find out the truth.
Well, you heard, McAuliffe, it's none of parents' business what happens in schools.
You've got to be racist to want to find out, or transphobic.
Critical race theory plus transgender extremism all made Virginians say, what are you doing to our children?
And suddenly a state that was plus 10 for Biden went Republican last night, but not without the media trying to stop the Republicans by calling them racist, of course.
That's quite something, given that the outgoing governor, Ralph Northam, a Democrat, actually is a racist.
He actually dressed up in blackface or a clown outfit, or maybe both, I can't quite figure it out.
He admitted it, but he refused to step down.
I mean, why would he?
Trudeau went full blackface again and again, and he didn't step down.
But for them to call anyone else racist, that's quite something.
So funny things started happening just in the last few days.
Like this group of young people dressed up as alt-right, tiki torch, burning, racist, they showed up at a Republican campaign event, except there was something off about it.
Do you see that one guy dressed up as an alt-right racist?
Do you notice that he's black?
That's weird, isn't it?
Yeah, they weren't Republican.
It was a hoax.
They were young Democrats trying to perpetrate a hoax to make it look like Republicans were racist.
It was reported as a Republican racist act until all the individuals there were identified as registered Democrats, excuse me.
So that added another level too.
Not only did it prove that the racist accusation against the Republicans was false, it was a hoax, it also showed that the Democrats and the media had no compunction about using a false accusation of racism to score points, to manipulate.
It's another way of saying they don't really care about racism other than their ability to use racism to scare black people or liberal white people into voting Democrats.
They don't actually care about racism.
They like it.
They use it.
Well, Virginians saw through it, fighting wokeism, both racial and transgender, fighting media smears.
People went Republican.
Amazing.
And incredibly in New Jersey, which went plus 16% for Biden a year ago, the Democrat just squeaked by its less than a percent difference.
I think there might be a recount.
I don't know.
It's so close.
I think the Dems are going to win it because it's within the margin of lawyer, but still total shock.
Democrats Face Backlash00:15:53
No one saw it coming.
Same issues, just not as acute.
Their Democrat was a little bit less insane than Terry McAuliffe.
Critical race theory, transgenderism, school choice.
Nothing as sharp as a governor attacking parents and a rape cover-up.
But the same issues, and oh my god, is it close?
And add to all that, Joe Biden, the walking disaster, inflation, America failing overseas, extreme COVID mandates.
Democrats are properly terrified of what happened last night.
If Republicans can win states that went deep blue in 2020, what's going to happen 12 months from now in the midterm elections when all of Congress is up for grabs and a third of the Senate, the House and the Senate will go back to Republican control if things stay the way they are.
And then comes 2024.
It's not too far away.
Who will be the Democrat presidential candidate?
It's unthinkable, unthinkable that Joe Biden will be that man.
He falls asleep in meetings almost every day.
He mumbles and mangles his speeches.
What's this all about?
No mobile expression, time is money.
As one computer said, if you're on the train and they say portal bridge, you know you better make other plans.
Yeah, I don't get it.
He takes entire days off.
He's ineffectual.
China and Russia laugh at him.
There was a report the other day, and I'm sorry to say it, that he pooped his pants at the Vatican.
I don't know if it was confirmed, but the fact that hundreds of thousands of people believe that and recirculated that shows that that's sort of how he comes across.
Sorry to use the word poop.
Anyways, yeah, imagine him in three more years.
I don't want to be mean.
But I'm not even sure if he's going to be alive then.
He turned 79 this month.
I don't think he's doing very well.
I think his wife should come and get him.
So who's going to run for the Democrats in 2024?
Is it Kamala Harris?
This woman?
I just love the idea of exploring the unknown.
And then there's other things that we just haven't figured out or discovered yet.
To think about so much that's out there that we still have to learn.
I love that.
I love that.
And so I'm very excited about the Space Council.
We're going to learn so much as we increasingly, I think, are curious and interested in the potential for the discoveries and the work we can do in space.
So that's one of the things I'm most excited about.
But the other, you guys are going to see.
You're going to literally see the craters on the moon with your own eyes.
Oh, I like it.
With your own eyes.
I'm telling you, it is going to be unbelievable.
That was so cringe-worthy.
Even weirder, it turned out that those were child actors that she hired to participate.
I saw the news that Kamala Harris recorded a message that was played in black Virginia churches on the eve of the election telling people to vote for the Democrats for McAuliffe.
That's probably illegal under IRS rules.
I'm not an expert, but do you really think someone so awfully fake, so inauthentic, so cringe, actually move people over to vote for McAuliffe?
I say have Kamala Harris on TV every single day and you'll win a Republican supermajority.
So it's a miracle.
It's a proof that there's life after Trump.
In fact, removing the drama and the quirks of Trump, I love Trump, but removing the stuff that people could focus on and be negative about and keeping the good stuff, the Trumpy policies.
What a winning combination that was.
And that wokeism is death of the ballot box.
Even in blue states, no wonder Biden took today off work.
Every Democrat who won by less than 10% in the last election ought to be very worried.
Everyone pushing extreme left-wing policies from overspending and borrowing to COVID rules to racial theory, they should be worried about what's coming.
But frankly, I hope they won't be worried.
I believe it was only when voters saw how crazy the Democrats had become, how crazy the schools had become, how the Democrats are truly the party of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.
It was only then, when they saw the truth, that they recoiled and voted Republican.
I can hardly wait for the pendulum to swing back further.
And I can hardly wait to see what Winsom Sears does next.
How about you?
Boy, I'm jealous, though.
This shows that if you give voters a clear, conservative, reasonable alternative, if you talk about things people care about, they didn't talk about global warming or carbon taxes.
They talked about kids in schools.
If you give people a real alternative, they'll take it.
Wouldn't it be nice if one of our own cowardly Canadian conservative parties up here ever tried that?
stay with us for more well one of our favorite guys to ask about u.s politics is our friend joel pollack senior editor at large at breitbart.com who i would regard as an expert on the democratic party even though he himself i think
is a Republican.
Joining us now, Via Skype is Joel.
Great to see you.
I have to tell you, Joel, the last few times you and I have spoken, I have come away from our conversations very depressed.
We've been focused on those who led the definition of the Democratic Party in the last year: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and really the extreme left-wing policies last night felt like a tremendous repudiation of those policies by two states that were heavily for Biden a year ago.
I have hope in me, real hope, for the first time in a year.
How do you feel about it all?
Well, you're absolutely correct.
I think the off-year election results, the 2021 elections, have possibly put a ceiling on the rise of Democratic socialism in the United States.
And it's not just New Jersey and Virginia.
Look at some of the other races around the country.
In Minneapolis, voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to abolish the municipal police department and replace them with a Department of Public Safety, whatever that means.
In New York State, voters also rejected Democrat voting reforms like same-day voter registration.
The voters supported ballot integrity, voter integrity, and so on down the line.
My favorite election result is that a truck driver who happens to have conservative views and only spent $153 on his campaign, much of it on donuts.
I'm not kidding.
He actually spent money at Dunkin' Donuts to feed people for his event or whatever he had.
This guy seems to have knocked off the New Jersey state Senate president.
In Buffalo, of all places, there was a socialist who won the Democratic primary and she lost.
She was defeated by the incumbent mayor who launched a write-in campaign to save his mayoral tenure after he lost the primary.
And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who you mentioned earlier, she campaigned for the socialists and the socialists has lost.
So I do think that what's happened is there's been a huge backlash from the electorate against Joe Biden's policies and against the far-left woke policies of the so-called progressives.
And I do think that that's going to trigger a civil war inside the Democratic Party.
You're going to have the moderates saying, we told you so.
You guys did not pass the infrastructure deal.
You held out for massive social spending, et cetera.
And as a result, we had nothing to show the voters.
The left is going to say, no, no, no, it's because the moderates wouldn't pass the spending bill that our base didn't get energized, that the left-wing base didn't turn out.
So there's going to be a fight.
This is definitely a victory against woke progressivism, but it's not so sweeping and so consequential that the left is going to just give up and go home.
So I think what we are going to see over the next few months is an intensifying civil war within the Democratic Party.
And the casualty of that civil war might be Joe Biden himself.
I don't know if the party has any use for his presidency anymore.
And he may be pushed out possibly after his first year in office.
Well, that's incredible.
I mean, I was trying to figure it out because I am skeptical that Joe Biden is the real decider.
You know, Donald Trump was undermined sometimes by his own appointees.
I think there's credible evidence there really was a deep state of permanent staff against him in various departments.
But no one would doubt for a second that Trump was the decider, that he was immersed in the details.
I simply don't believe that Joe Biden knows the details, let alone the headlines of the key files.
So, you know, he has been a mouthpiece for the policies, but I don't know where they've come from.
Is it the chief of staff?
Ron Clain, I think, is his name.
Is he anything more than an air traffic controller?
I don't even know where the center of the White House is.
Who's the boss of the White House?
Do you know the answer to that?
I mean, I sound like I'm asking out of the blue, but was it a repudiation of the White House, too?
I think it was.
And you're right, there's an ambivalence in Biden's policies.
To some voters, he presented himself as the moderate, the guy who could hold the socialists in check.
But to his own party, he promised fundamental change, revolutionary institutional change.
He started talking like Bernie Sanders.
And in fact, this big spending bill they're still fighting over was written by Bernie Sanders in the Senate.
Sanders chairs the budget committee.
So he wrote that finance bill and Biden then later tacked his own brand onto it, the Build Back Better slogan.
So Biden, in some ways, is being run by the left.
The problem with that is that at least to a significant chunk of the electorate, Biden offered himself as the only guy who could hold the left in check.
He hasn't done that.
He has not governed in a moderate direction at all.
Now, usually Democrats get away with that by blaming Republicans.
And they say, well, I would have moderated, but the Republicans are so intransigent.
That was the approach Obama used.
But it's very hard to say that now, especially, for example, with the infrastructure bill, when 19 Republicans in the Senate voted for it, giving it at least a veneer of bipartisanship.
So Biden can't blame the Republicans anymore.
And this election result was the outcome of voters understanding who was to blame for their problems and having nothing to thank Joe Biden for having done.
Again, no infrastructure bill, the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, high inflation, no end in sight to that problem.
And also, there's a backlash against the rigorous and draconian policies of coronavirus shutdowns in some of these blue states.
Parents are super angry at teachers' unions for forcing the schools to close, for forcing onerous mask mandates, vaccine mandates.
And parents have also been watching their children on Zoom lessons at Zoom school and so forth over the last 18 months.
And many of the kids are back at school now.
But the brief experience of watching their kids in school enlightened many parents about what the school districts were forcing their kids to learn.
And that's one of the reasons for the backlash against critical race theory and transgenderism and so on.
So there is a real backlash against Democrats' assumption that the state knows best, that the school board knows best, and that the end users of public services should be grateful for whatever crumbs the government throws to them.
Yeah, I think a lot of the blame goes to, as you said, people seeing the Democrats for who they really are.
The wokeism in school, the transgenderism, the critical race theory, the teachers' unions.
And I think McCall have said some things so bluntly they couldn't be ignored.
But I, you know, let's talk about the Republican side.
So we've been talking about the failures of the Democrats.
And some people say no one actually wins an election.
It's the other side that loses it.
I don't know if that's always true.
I think the Republicans were pretty disciplined.
And it makes me think, I mean, I was affectionate towards Donald Trump because I liked the guy.
I thought he was, you know, I thought he was courageous.
I thought he was entertaining and funny.
I thought he was bold.
And you can't deny he got things done.
I think of the Abraham Accords, for example, which is truly a masterpiece.
But what I see in Virginia and elsewhere is that if you can have Trumpism without Trump, if you can have the fighting spirit and conservative policies and the courage, but without some of the foibles or the quirks or the eccentricities of the man himself, maybe you can win.
Would you say that that applies here, that you had a strong conservative candidate just without some of the flaws of Trump?
Is there any, does that hold any water, that theory?
It does.
And I think the answer is we don't know yet.
You're right that this was a victory for Trumpism without Trump, that Trump's policies, his success, really set a new standard for American politics.
Americans look at the Biden administration and at Democratic governors and say, hey, we just had a guy in there for four years who offended everybody, but he got a lot of stuff done.
There's no way that there would have been a cargo crisis, a supply chain crisis with Donald Trump in charge.
There's no way that China would be humiliating us on the world stage if Donald Trump was in charge.
So people understand Trump has set a new bar for government service and for government performance.
Trump ran it like a business.
You have to satisfy the customer.
People are used to that now, so they're completely fed up with Biden's non-performance.
But then, again, you don't have the man himself.
Now, that may have made a lot more suburban voters comfortable with voting Republican, even though they were constantly being reminded by Democrats that the Republican they were voting for had supported Trump.
And Trump did a little telephone rally for Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, for example, the day before the election.
So Trump wasn't completely absent.
I'm not sure we know yet whether Trumpism can survive without Trump.
And the other reason is that there isn't yet a clear frontrunner for the presidential nomination in 2024.
Trump is still the leader of the party, and not just by default.
He's a leader because nobody else gets to the heart of the problem like Trump does.
When a Democratic policy goes wrong, when Joe Biden fails, Trump's the only person who can cut through a lot of the political rhetoric people are used to hearing and just tell it like it is.
So the worse Democrats do in government, ironically, the better the chances are for a Trump candidacy in 2024.
And the better chances really become for him to win.
I mean, there are some polls right now where he would defeat Joe Biden in a head-to-head race today.
So I don't know that he's not a viable candidate.
Yes, he comes with a lot of baggage.
He offends a lot of people.
But people may start to look past that.
And they're already yearning for the kind of performance he provided in office, even if they're glad that some of the drama is gone.
Last question.
I mean, I've become more and more enamored with Ron DeSantis of Florida.
First of all, his courage in opposing the lockdownism.
Ron DeSantis' Presidential Potential00:05:57
And, you know, and the results speak for themselves.
Florida last week reached the lowest infection rate in the continental United States, which is incredible, especially given that they have one of the older populations and they didn't have the lockdowns.
I like him.
I think he takes on issues that are actually beyond the scope of his state, weighing in on the supply chain crisis, saying, hey, come use our ports.
He's making jokes about let's go, Brandon.
Like, he's clearly jabbing at Biden.
He's pushing back on Biden's mandates.
He's acting, in my view, like a guy who wants to be in the national stage.
Tragically, his wife was diagnosed with cancer.
I hope she pulls through, but that would certainly distract a man from a national campaign.
And, you know, he still has plenty of work to do in Florida.
But give me your thoughts on Ron DeSantis.
I'm a fanboy.
What can I say?
I think he is Trumpism Without Trump in my books.
What do you think about Ron DeSantis as a candidate in 2024?
Well, he is a viable candidate.
I'm not sure he wants to run against Trump.
He's aware that Trump helped him get where he is.
Remember that DeSantis was a distant, distant third, I think, in the Republican primary for governor in Florida before Trump endorsed him.
And I don't think DeSantis is the kind of person to go up against Trump, to go up against the guy who basically made him governor.
Also, keep in mind, DeSantis is following a lot of Trump's policies as governor.
So yes, he has his own swagger, his own style, and he's very, very good on social media, as you pointed out.
He picks up on the memes, he picks up on the slang, whatever.
But I think he also is very conscious of the fact that running against Trump would divide the base, essentially.
So I don't think it would work for him.
There aren't enough voters for him to divide that base and still get elected.
I think that he has been impressive for a long time, even before Trump.
I mean, I was impressed with Ron DeSantis from the time he was in Congress.
He was a great foreign policy person on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, stood up for Israel all the time, very, very clear-minded about that.
I saw him at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem back in 2018.
He was running for governor, but it wasn't like some kind of new commitment for him.
He was one of the 10 members of Congress who showed up, 10 Republican House members.
So I think he's got the chops.
Whether he wants to run against Trump, I don't think he does.
I think he will wait until 2028, perhaps, or 2032.
He's got a long way to go.
He's a young guy.
And as you point out, he's dealing with some family issues.
I'm sure that she'll do fine.
But, you know, he is a viable candidate.
Look, Glenn Yunken in Virginia sounded like a possible presidential contender at some point last night.
His speech, his victory speech was really great.
He wasn't partisan.
He talked about Virginians moving forward together, the things they would achieve together.
And many politicians managed to make that sound quite canned and sort of trite.
But he really made it sound like a running cry for the state as a whole.
And I think it appealed to a lot of people, including people beyond the Republican base.
So there are a lot of good contenders coming out.
I just think Trump is the frontrunner for 2024.
It's his nomination to win or lose.
And I don't think DeSantis is going to want to have a head-on confrontation with the guy who helped him get where he is.
Thank you for that.
I'll let you go.
But give me 60 seconds on Winsom Sears, this amazing, amazing lieutenant governor.
I had never seen her until last night, and I know why.
Because if she was a Democrat, we would all know her name.
She would be touted as presidential material.
Her biography, her patriotism, her beautiful family, her service, everything about her is a winner.
And I think that's why the media assiduously ignored her, covered her up, hid her from the public.
I'm in love.
She's amazing.
Give me your thoughts on Winsom Sears.
Well, you're not the only person who saw her for the first time yesterday.
Look, lieutenant governors are never particularly important.
The office is almost an afterthought, and it's very rare that a lieutenant governor has to do anything.
Of course, Andrew Cuomo left in New York, and so he was replaced by Governor Mochul, who's now the lieutenant governor, moved up to the governor.
But Winslow Sears said amazing things last night in a debate that was often charged by accusations of racism one way or another.
She got up there and said, This country is not racist.
We moved here during the worst of the civil rights movement, and she asked her father, why did we move here during such a troubled time?
And he said, Because America had the jobs and the opportunities.
And she made it in America.
She made it in the supposedly racist America.
She went to college, she joined the Marine Corps, and she became successful.
Now she's the first female and also first black female statewide office holder in Virginia, and she's a Republican.
She made an amazing speech.
She left an amazing impression.
She's definitely a star for the future, one of the few lieutenant governors anybody knows anything about.
And she definitely has a national future in front of her.
Well, I just can't get enough.
And she spoke so authentically.
Like you said, there was nothing fake about it.
I don't think she had a script.
She was just talking as she's been talking her whole life.
I got the feeling.
Anyways, Joel, we'll let you go.
Thank you for your time.
Great to see you.
As always, hope to keep in touch.
I have a new spring in my step.
For the first time in a year, I think America is going to pull back from the brink.
I've had too much pessimism.
I think it's always better to be a pessimist and then be pleasantly surprised than the opposite these days, especially.
But I say hope's alive.
That's how I feel.
Let's put it this way: the fight ain't over, but we got up off the canvas.
Yeah, there you go.
All right, thanks, Joel.
Great to see you.
There you have it.
Joel Pollack, Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart.com.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Encouragement Amidst Pandemic Protocols00:14:51
Semper 5007 says, Biden was there at COP26 on behalf of China, not America.
I don't know if Joe Biden actually believes in the theory of man-made global warming, but he sort of acts like he does.
Well, no, he talks like he does.
Of course, the President of the United States has the single largest carbon footprint of any man in history.
He flies in a jumbo jet as his private plane.
He had, what, 50, 80 vehicles in his personal caravan?
So he certainly doesn't act like he believes it.
He didn't Zoom join by Zoom or Skype.
But I think Semper 5007 has a point in that simply letting China off the hook and strapping the American and Western economies does China's bidding.
Goldman Eddie says these people are not just special.
They are stunning and brave in a world allegedly besieged by a deadly virus.
The courageous elite are risking mixing with 100 countries, yet no mention of a super spreader event.
It's almost as if the supposed danger from the risk is so grossly exaggerated that the elite are not concerned.
And this is why the UK doesn't have a lockdown yet, so they can get away with this.
It will come once they've had their fun.
Well, I understand that the rules for mass gatherings in Scotland are more strict than other parts of the UK.
Remember, there's the different countries that make up the United Kingdom.
There's England, there's Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
So I understand that the rules were specifically relaxed for the fancy people at the global warming conference.
But of course, they are.
I mean, if you're going to break the rules about emissions to jet there on a private jet, you're not going to follow something as ridiculous as a mask rule or a social distancing rule or a forced vaccine rule.
Yeah.
I'm glad Lewis was there.
It was good to see him in action.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.
And keep fighting for freedom.
And let me leave you with an interview that Adam Sos of Calgary did with an Air Canada employee who's speaking out against their forced vaccine policy.
Take a look at this.
Do you have any words of encouragement to maybe colleagues or even people in other industries?
We're seeing students, airline employees, government employees, people right across the board who are in the same situation, who are facing termination.
And given the number of people we're hearing these stories from, I think it's more than people realize.
Do you have any words of encouragement for those people who are in the same situation?
I believe that as science is evolving and more and more scientists and doctors are speaking up, we will probably see that vaccine mandates and vaccine passports will inevitably have to be coming to an end and we can return to our regular happy lives.
It's really remarkable that the union's not doing anything, right?
You pay your union dues and the union doesn't do anything for you when you face a job termination.
But, you know, they'll go and grieve a termination related to an employee who's not been pulling their weight for the past five years, but they won't grieve somebody who's sitting at home doing a good job.
Adam Sos here for Rebel News and today I will be sharing with you the story of one airline employee that we are able to help thanks to your generosity at fightvaccinepassports.com.
Through that initiative and because of your donations, we are able to launch 20 strategic lawsuits across Canada to help people and to share stories like the story I'm about to share with you today.
We're keeping the name of this client confidential and we're going to obstruct her identity as best we can in an attempt to safeguard her work.
But she is one of the many people who may potentially lose out on employment because of their vaccine status.
Her story is one that we thought you absolutely had to hear because she has been working for an airline company for decades and for over 10 years she has worked from home.
Despite this, they are insisting that she be vaccinated even though she does not interact with people through her work at all and has not for 10 years.
If that wasn't crazy enough, worse still, she had COVID during the first wave and has tested positive for the antibodies.
So we have lab confirmed antibodies.
So this is a natural immunity case.
She is willing to do rapid testing.
She's willing to go through any other measures, but because of her natural immunity, she feels it unreasonable that she should be vaccinated and she is therefore refusing.
So we're going to gather some of her story and sit down with her to get her perspective.
After that, we're going to go to Sarah Miller of JSS Barristers, who has been provided at no cost to this client to help her defend her livelihood for a little bit about the legal perspective on how we're helping this client.
All right, so thank you so much for joining me.
Obviously, to conceal your identity, to help protect your employment, we won't be shooting your face for those who are wondering at home.
We just wanted to first off touch base, get some of your story.
You are one of the many people across Canada who are potentially facing a loss of employment because you're unwilling to be vaccinated.
If you could maybe tell us first off, just to give people a little bit of a sense of your story, when this all started and when you thought these vaccine passports and mandates might affect you personally.
So the vaccine mandate was announced by my airline on 25th of August and the timelines given for the deadlines given for the first dose Or reporting at least the first dose were 8th of September,
and the second dose had to be reported by or had to be administered at least on 16th of September and reported by 30th of October.
So, there's a number of interesting considerations when it comes to your story.
First off, there is the fact that you had COVID and you do have natural immunity that's been confirmed by lab testing.
Can you touch on that a little bit?
Yes, I had COVID in the very first wave in March 2020.
I actually contracted it from a co-worker at work.
And yes, I was considered a COVID survivor.
I did really well, took some vitamins, took some supplements, plenty of liquids, plenty of rest.
And I believe that I was safe.
I had immunity.
And when the vaccine mandate was announced the next day, very next day, upon recommendation from my doctor, I went to get tested for SPIC protein antibodies.
And a couple days later, I had my result and I scored positive for these antibodies.
And it was also a semi-quantitative test that showed that I have a high level of antibodies.
So you've got the antibodies, so there's a pretty reasonable medical reason not to need a vaccine as well.
You've proven that as well.
But additionally, beyond this, and I think what most people will probably find troubling, is the nature of your work.
You've been working from home, is that right?
That's correct.
For about the past 10 years, I've had a position that allowed me to work from home on the phone, on the computer.
Yes, absolutely.
And so, you, and we mentioned this, we talked about this before.
You're willing, you're staying at home, so you're isolated, you're not being exposed to people on a daily basis.
You're also willing to undergo rapid testing.
You've been going through these protocols.
You're happy to take part in that, but they're not giving you any reasonable accommodation.
They're basically saying get vaccinated or get out, is that right?
Yes, unfortunately, there are no other options offered, no exceptions for natural immunity.
Even though me, my doctor, offered to take a regular blood test that shows persistent antibody level.
And yeah, I'm willing to get tested, PCR test, rapid test on a regular basis or when needed.
Unfortunately, that is not given as an option.
And it's a story we're seeing time and time again.
Unfortunately, you're not alone.
Thousands of Canadians, even people within the airline industry, are facing the same types of struggles.
You're willing to do all these things, willing to compromise, willing to meet them halfway, and they're saying, no, it's our way or the highway, unfortunately.
How long have you been with roughly Air Canada?
How long have you been a unionized employee with them?
I've been with my airline for over 20 years now.
A long time, long career.
So, over 20 years of loyal service, no major issues.
Suddenly, the terms and conditions change.
You're willing to meet them halfway, and they're not willing to do that.
What does it feel like?
And I'm sure you're not alone.
I'm sure there's other people that you've probably spoken with, maybe co-workers.
What does it feel like to have all that work, that career, after 20 plus years at risk of evaporating simply because of your medical privacy?
Yeah, it's a really, really bad feeling.
It's really tough mentally because it's almost imminent in a few days.
I and many others will be put on personal leave with no benefits, no pay.
I believe for at least six months.
And at the end of six months, they will look at whether they keep us or not.
We're hoping they keep us, but it's possible that we could be terminated.
And for those people, I think anyone reasonably minded will say, well, you're working at home anyways.
You've got the immunity.
You're willing to do testing.
That's enough compromise for most reasonable people.
What do you say to the people out there who are vilifying people who are not willing to be vaccinated?
They're not looking at the human side of the story.
They're not thinking about you and the thousands of other Canadians who've lost often multi-decade careers or may lose them.
What do you say to those people who vilify you and don't see you as a human being?
Well, COVID has been with us for a year and a half, over a year and a half.
I have been a COVID survivor at the beginning.
Everybody would agree with me that I am immune.
I've been immune.
I've been a safe person to be around.
And as this pandemic progresses and variants emerge, we're seeing with the Delta variant that actually even vaccinated people are affected now.
They are getting infected and they can spread the disease and they can even be hospitalized.
I look at the statistics on the Alberta government website and right now it's showing that 30% of all new cases are actually among fully vaccinated and this has been translating to the hospitalizations as well.
So it seems like this is a contagious variant and people may be getting it, everybody may get it and people may be spreading it.
And once they get that natural immunity, that is equally good as vaccinated immunity or better.
That's what perhaps will put this pandemic behind us.
And I think many people will appreciate you're not denying there's COVID.
You've been through COVID.
You're not denying the potential efficacy of vaccines.
You're saying you have natural immunity and that is as good, if not better.
I think many people out there will appreciate that it's a very measured and reasonable response.
I guess finally, just before we go, do you have any words of encouragement to maybe colleagues or even people in other industries?
We're seeing students, airline employees, government employees, people right across the board who are in the same situation, who are facing termination.
And given the number of people we're hearing these stories from, I think it's more than people realize.
Do you have any words of encouragement for those people who are in the same situation?
I believe that as science is evolving and more and more scientists and doctors are speaking up, we will probably see that vaccine mandates and vaccine passports will inevitably have to be coming to an end and we can return to our regular happy lives.
Okay, well thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
We're going to continue and touch base with you as the legal proceedings move forward.
We're going to meet with Sarah Miller very soon to discuss the legal proceedings and how we're going to be acting on your behalf.
Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
Thank you very much for representing me.
Happy to do so.
Thank you.
So as I mentioned, I am now here with Sarah Miller of JSS Barristers, who will be providing us with a bit of an update on the legal component of this Air Canada case.
So if you could maybe just let us know the nature of the case, kind of what the plan is moving forward.
So for background there, Air Canada has initiated a vaccine policy mandating all of their employees to be vaccinated.
Our prospective client, or our client, I should say, not prospective, is working from home and very, there's really no reason for her to be vaccinated.
She's also got natural immunity.
She's had COVID previously.
So we have asked the union to argue against the vaccine policy.
The union has just straight up refused.
I mean, they've given us non-answers.
They've not done anything for anyone, frankly, who's a unionized employee at Air Canada.
Negativity Seems Prevalent00:03:45
So the next step now is to launch a complaint against the Canada Industrial Relations Board to hopefully get that board to order the union to do something for these employees who are facing this mandate.
And when we spoke with the client, like she'd mentioned, over 10 years working from home, basically in isolation by default, not being subjected to other people, also tested and confirmed antibodies for COVID.
She also mentioned that she was willing to go through other protocols, do rapid testing.
She's willing to do just about everything except for this one thing, and all she's seeking is some reasonable accommodations.
Is there any grounds under which they're offering any reasonable accommodations or are they just steadfast and not making any exceptions?
So Air Canada is deciding that they're, as far as we've heard so far, they're not giving exceptions.
We have not heard from anybody at Air Canada yet that they've actually gotten an exemption due to a medical reason or otherwise.
So that, you know, and until that happens, until we hear of somebody, you know, we're not in contact with every Air Canada employee, but it seems from our perspective that Air Canada is not offering any kind of option besides just getting vaccinated, which when you're working from home and otherwise following public health mandates can be, you know, a difficult thing to face, loss of employment.
And it's really remarkable that the union's not doing anything, right?
You pay your union dues and the union doesn't do anything for you when you face a job termination.
But they'll go and grieve a termination related to an employee who's not been pulling their weight for the past five years, but they won't grieve somebody who's sitting at home doing a good job.
And that's something certainly we've seen unions across the board not going to bat for their employees on this specific issue.
Seemingly they forget that they're supposed to be agents for the people who pay them union dues every month and that's evaporated.
So a letter will be sent and hopefully there's some action there.
Is there a plan moving forward from that or is that kind of we wait and see?
So we're going to file a complaint with the regulatory board that looks over the unions for federal unions.
So we're going to, it's a regulatory complaint procedure.
We will file the complaint.
It will be heard by the board at some point and hopefully the board will direct the union to take action here.
Okay, wonderful.
Well thanks again for the update and we'll continue to follow this story as it unfolds.
As always I'd like to thank Sarah Miller for providing us with that legal analysis on this.
I also particularly want to thank this brave airline employee for coming forward with her story.
For every story that we are able to tell there are thousands of people in the same circumstances so it's important.
People out there need to know that they're not alone.
These particular stories though will become legal cases, cases where we are going to bat and hopefully setting precedent for others who are in the same situation.
This is a vital time in this fight.
I want to encourage all of you to go to fightvaccinepassports.com right away.
Check out the stories and check out the fights that we are fighting on the behalf of Canadians across this country who have had enough with vaccine passports.
There's also an opportunity there for you to sign our petition as well as to contribute to our legal battles in defense of fundamentally Canadian values like freedom and medical privacy.
As always, I want to thank you all for tuning in for Rebel News.
I'm Adam Sos.
The airline industry has been the center of a great deal of negative attention since the onset of COVID-19, with flight cancellations and no refunds being given to mass layoffs.
Encourage Action Against Vaccine Passports00:00:07
The news has not been good.
And that negativity seems to be continuing moving forward with vaccine passports.