Ezra Levant and Elon Musk critique EV subsidies, with Musk blaming GM’s lobbying and calling for their elimination amid a $3T U.S. budget deficit, while comparing private innovation to government inefficiency. Musk also dismisses vaccine mandates as overreach, citing court blocks on Biden’s policies except for federal employees, and contrasts U.S. judicial skepticism with Canada’s uncritical rulings. Dr. Julie Panessi’s book argues mandates violate ethics, following her firing for refusing vaccination—a clash exposing ideological fractures in pandemic responses and potential voter backlash against coercive measures. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, the other day I took you through a speech by Eric Zamour, a French presidential candidate.
Let me do something a little closer to home.
An amazing half-hour conversation with Elon Musk and a conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal.
I'm going to take you through 10 revealing clips.
He talks about a number of things, including his views on China and subsidies to his own company.
Interview and very interesting surprises in him.
That's ahead.
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All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, the wisdom of Elon Musk.
It's December 7th, 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 about why I publish them.
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
We hear a lot from Bill Gates, who used to be the world's richest man.
Instead of doing industry or creating entrepreneurial outfits anymore, he's more into social control, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on media fact-checkers to disagree with him, investing in controlling schemes like mandatory vaccines, which he promotes, and even bizarre ideas like blocking out the sun with dust in order to save us from global warming.
I think even though he looks like a sort of schleppy regular guy, I think he's actually deeply evil, not just the schemes I've just outlined, but of course this New York Times story showing that Bill Gates kept in close touch with Jeffrey Epstein even after Epstein was convicted of being a child predator.
I think Bill Gates is a deeply evil man.
But the world's richest man, at least for now, is, couldn't be more opposite than Bill Gates.
Capital Allocation Critiques00:15:23
His name is Elon Musk, and of course he's the CEO of Tesla, but of many other things too, of SpaceX, of the boring company, which specializes in tunnels.
He's in so many different things, and of course he's active on Twitter, often with ironic and culturally hip jokes and memes.
But he sat down with the Wall Street Journal for half an hour at a conference they held, and he was asked good questions, and I thought he gave great answers.
It's nice to hear from Elon Musk in a longer form.
So I'd like to take you through 10 different clips extracted from his conversation with Wall Street Journal that I think there's a lot of wisdom here.
I mean, I don't agree with everything the man says, but what a refreshing change he is from the big government, big business, you know, crony capitalist types.
Let me start with what I thought was an ordinary question with an extraordinary answer.
Here, take a look.
I wanted to ask you: say tomorrow you get a phone call from Joe Biden, and he says.
I think that's unlikely, but sure.
You know, he just gives you a call and he says, You know, I haven't been talking a lot about Tesla lately, but what do you need from this bill?
What are your needs?
What do you answer him?
Well, to be totally frank, I don't know if we, at least no one at Tesla has actually brought up whether they care about this bill or not.
I think if this bill happened or didn't happen, I don't know.
We don't think about it at all, really.
Okay.
It might be better.
Honestly, it might be better if the bill doesn't pass.
Because we've spent so much money, you know, it's like the federal budget deficit is insane.
You know, it's like $3 trillion, federal expenditures are $7 trillion, federal revenue is $4 trillion.
That's a $3 trillion difference.
If this was a company, it would be a $3 trillion loss.
So I don't know if we should be adding to that loss.
That seems pretty crazy.
Something's got to give.
You can't just spend $3 trillion more than you own every year and expect, you know, don't expect something bad to happen.
I think, you know, this is not good.
Well, Ms. McConnell's actually saying.
In fact, if I may elaborate on that, the deficit is more than $3 trillion when you look at the future obligations.
So it's $7 trillion of current expenditures, but it's much more than that if you look at future obligations for Social Security, Medicare, and so forth.
So we're running this incredible deficit.
Something's got to give.
I don't know.
This can't keep going.
Wow.
I mean, I love the first part.
We don't even talk about what the government is doing.
We don't have an interest in it.
We're busy doing whatever we do in our company.
I thought that was a wonderful answer that rang true.
But later, saying, you know, government's too big.
What was the last time you heard a big businessman say government is too big?
Normally they say, well, we need either subsidies to protect us or regulations to inhibit our competitors.
What a great answer that was.
And the questioner followed up with more about the role of government.
What is the role of government?
I've been a critic of Tesla before because it has taken government subsidies.
These next two clips have an interesting answer to that.
Take a look at this one.
Yeah, but I don't see a strong effort in this direction.
Well, I want to come back to autonomous vehicles, but I want to just stay a little bit more on the role of government.
You said at this conference actually a year ago that you think government should really just be hands-off when it comes to innovation.
Though with this bill, there is a lot of support for EVs, and it could be the biggest change that we've seen throughout the country in terms of the infrastructure of EVs, and it helps Tesla.
What do you think the role of government should be?
I think the role of government should be that of like a referee, but not a player on the field.
So generally, government should, I think, just try to get out of the way and not impede progress.
I think there's a general problem, not just in the U.S., but in most countries, where the rules and regulations keep increasing every year.
Rules and regulations are immortal.
They don't die.
Occasionally, you see some law with a sunset provision, but really, otherwise, the vast majority of rules and regulations live forever.
And so if more rules and regulations are applied every year, and it just keeps growing and growing, eventually it just takes longer and longer and it's harder to do things.
And there's not really an effective garbage collection system for removing rules and regulations.
And so gradually, this hardens the arteries of civilization where you're able to do less and less over time.
So I think government should be really trying hard to get rid of rules and regulations that perhaps had some merit at some point, but don't have merit currently.
But there's very little effort in this direction.
This is a big problem.
Again, one of the biggest arguers for regulation in our economy are companies that dominate the marketplace.
They want the regulation to hobble upstarts.
You see this in tech.
You even saw it in Alberta for the limits on new oil sands production.
The big four companies agreed with Rachel Notley to ban any upstarts because they already got their big oil sands projects.
Here is the world's largest electric car maker, or at least the largest one in America, is saying, I don't want more rules and ranks.
He was asked about subsidies.
Like I say, Tesla has taken them, but listen to him talk about that.
Because sometimes the criticism of Tesla is like, hey, Tesla gets all these subsidies.
But it's worth noting that for the vehicle purchase tax credit, the $7,500, Tesla stopped getting that like two years ago.
So we've, whereas everyone else, I think, except for GM, still gets the $7,500 tax credit.
So all of our sales this year and I think last year had nothing to do with the tax credit because we were no longer eligible because we've made so many electric cars.
Tesla has made roughly two-thirds of all the electric cars in the United States.
I'm not sure if most people are aware of that.
So, yeah, so Tesla's made basically twice as many electric vehicles as the rest of industry combined.
And we don't need the $7,500 tax credit.
I would say, honestly, I would just can this whole bill.
Don't pass it.
That's my recommendation.
What about the support, though, for the charging network?
I mean, there are parts of this bill.
No?
No.
I mean, do we need support for gas stations?
We don't.
So there's no need for this for support for a charging network.
I would delete it.
Delete.
Okay.
All right.
I'm literally saying get rid of all subsidies.
But also for oil and gas.
Isn't that incredible?
You hear all these climate change activists calling for subsidies for electric cars, subsidies for charging stations.
And there's the man who has produced twice as many electric cars as the rest of the industry combined saying, we don't need the help.
We didn't want the help.
I love his analogy.
Do we need to subsidize gas stations?
What a rebuke to the control, the social control model of the climate change activists like Bill Gates himself, let alone politicians.
He makes another brief comment about where the call for subsidies came from.
He says that when he started Tesla, that wasn't on his mind.
It was one of his competitors saying, listen to this.
I'm in favor of deleting subsidies.
I mean, when we started Tesla, there were no EV subsidies at all, and gasoline was super cheap.
We did not anticipate any subsidies.
That came later.
And that came, the $7,500 tax credit came as a result, not of Tesla activity, but of General Motors lobbying for it.
So, you know, I would just say just delete them all.
Did not know that General Motors was the one that called for those subsidies.
It makes sense, you know, the old motto, what's good for General Motors is good for America.
Yeah, maybe that was true, but I'm not sure if it's true anymore.
That is the crony capitalist motto.
Whatever else you think of Elon Musk, he's not in bed with the government.
Joe Biden actually hates him.
Here's a great question about research and development, which is another big government thing.
People always say we need more investment in research and development, as if politicians are better at that than others.
Take a look at this.
There's some other good things in this bill that some would argue.
I mean, a lot of money earmarked for RD.
Would you want to put that towards something?
No.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
We're going to move on from the bill because I think we get what you're saying.
In general, we should just, if we don't cut government spending, something really bad is going to happen.
This is crazy.
Our spending is so far in excess of revenue, it's insane.
Like, you could zero out all billionaires in the country.
There's all this like anti-billionaire BS.
Well, if you zeroed out all the billionaires, you still wouldn't solve the deficit.
Imagine saying, I don't want the government to spend money on RD.
You would think that as a greedy capitalist, he would want free money and he would want the government to do the research for him, but he has a different mindset than the globalist, crony corporatist.
I think this is very refreshing.
I think every answer is a surprise.
And this next one I really appreciate.
He talks about, he looks at government in a way that I think every progressive, every leftist should, which is skeptically in pointing out really what's the difference between big government and big business, other than you can never run away from big government, you can never hold big government to account, and big government has the lawful use of violence.
This is an amazing comment.
Take a look at these two minutes.
Like, if you think of assets beyond a certain level that are far beyond, let's say, somebody's ability to consume, then, you know, at a certain point, really, what you're doing is capital allocation.
So it's not money for personal expenditures.
It's what you're doing is capital allocation.
And it does not make sense to take the job of capital allocation away from people who have demonstrated great skill in capital allocation and give it to an entity that has demonstrated very poor skill in capital allocation, which is the government.
I mean, you can think of the government essentially as a corporation in the limit.
The government is simply the biggest corporation with a monopoly on violence and where you have no recourse.
I mean, government is a corporation in the limit.
So it is the most corporate thing.
It is maximum corporation.
But it's also a monopoly and also is the only one that's allowed legally to do violence.
So why would you want to give a corporation with no competition that can't even really go bankrupt more money?
So I'm not somebody who's sort of an extreme libertarian and thinks the government should not do anything.
I just think we should minimize what the government does because the government's efficiency at spending is just going to be lower than a competitive commercial company, but by a lot.
Isn't that amazing?
I can't believe this libertarian philosopher and scholar happens to be the world's richest man and great innovator.
Very interesting to me.
You know, he talks a lot about capital allocation.
That's a way of saying where do we put money in society that's the best.
And one of the things he says about other gazillionaires, like Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, is he says, Warren Buffett is a capital allocation specialist.
So which company deserves more investment?
Should it go into Coke or to Pepsi?
Well, it depends on which company is being run better.
And let me measure and check and read financial reports.
That's the Warren Buffett way of doing business.
And it's a very useful and important way of doing business.
Elon Musk calls that capital allocation.
Where should we move money in society?
He says, why would you take money away from the Warren Buffetts who are good at that and give it to governments who are terrible at that?
It's a very thoughtful way of looking at it.
It's realizing that governments are big business too.
Now, this next part is one of my favorites.
It's worth remembering.
We don't think about it that much, but there's something inherent about freedom and smaller government.
And we have two perfect laboratories, that of pre-unification Germany and divided Korea.
Take a listen to this.
So I'm not somebody who's sort of an extreme libertarian and thinks the government should not do anything.
I just think we should minimize what the government does because the government's efficiency at spending is just going to be lower than a competitive commercial company, but by a lot.
If you look at, say, East Germany versus West Germany or North Korea versus South Korea, and you look at the GDP per capita of East and West Germany or North and South Korea, the difference is gigantic.
And that's just the difference between East and West Germany.
It's like a random line was drawn, basically depending on where the Red Army was and where the Allied troops were.
And East Germany's productivity was at least five times worse than West Germany.
And it's not like West Germany was like some bastion of capitalism.
They were quite socialist, really.
So there may be as much as an order of magnitude difference between the efficiency of a competitive private company versus the government.
It's so refreshing to hear that in an age of Bernie Sanders and socialists to hear someone saying, yeah, no, it doesn't work.
But I think the most surprising thing I heard in this whole speech was what was next.
Typically, the fancy people like Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum, just the other day, the World Economic Forum said that there are 95% too many people in the world.
Billionaire Perspectives on Population00:03:42
I mean, they're depopulation obsessed.
I mean, Bill Gates is obsessed with reducing population.
He says so.
Elon Musk was asked about that.
He has the opposite point of view.
I've never heard this before by anyone at his station in life.
Take a listen.
There are not enough people.
I can't emphasize this enough.
There are not enough people.
And I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate and the rapidly declining birth rate.
And yet so many people, including smart people, think that there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control.
It's completely the opposite.
Please look at the numbers.
If people don't have more children, civilization is going to crumble.
Mark my words.
Is this why you have so many children?
I'm trying to set a good example.
Yeah.
You know, gotta practice what I preach.
He does.
I think he's got seven kids, although I think one passed away.
Maybe he has six surviving children.
That is a lot of children.
Now he's almost a trillionaire.
He's got a couple hundred billion.
He can afford many kids, but it's obviously a deeper belief than him.
And of course, you don't need to be rich to have children.
I want to show you his, I guess, corollary about we need more people.
But unlike some really weird billionaires, he doesn't want to live forever.
He doesn't believe in trying to become immortal.
He used the word immortal earlier, if you heard him, to talk about government regulations.
But he thinks that we should live and we should die and we should have kids while we're here.
I thought this was an interesting comment.
He takes a jab at Joe Biden, I think, but he's just talking about to live your life while you're alive.
Take a listen.
How are you combating aging?
Is there some secret technology we don't know about that you've got?
I'm not aware of any secret technology to combat aging.
And I mean, I don't know that we should really try to live for a super long time.
I think there is some, it is important for us to die because, you know, most of the times people don't change their mind, they just die.
And so if we live forever, then we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed.
So, but I'm not poking fun at aging.
I'm just saying, you know, if we've got people in very important positions that have to make decisions that are critical to the security of the country, then they need to have sufficient presence of mind and cognitive ability to make those decisions well because the whole country is depending on them.
Well, I thought you might say psychedelics.
Do you think when he's talking about people in charge of the national security of the country having their cognitive abilities, do you think maybe there's a teeny tiny chance he was referring to Joe Biden?
I think there's another reason, by the way, we don't want to live forever, and that is life has value precisely because it's limited.
If we were to live forever, nothing would be of any consequence.
Nothing would matter because you could just fix it tomorrow or in a year or in a hundred years or a thousand years.
But I think he does have a good point that we need the generations to pass one to the next.
His last comment, I think, was his weakest because I think it was his only inauthentic comment the whole day.
Biggest Kid on the Block00:06:04
I mean, Elon Musk is a self-made man.
He controls Tesla unquestionably.
He follows his heart.
He has side projects.
He has a Neuralink project that he's trying to give paralyzed people the power of their limbs back.
He has his space project.
He has his subway project.
He's got his automatically driven cars project.
The guy loves to take action on whatever his heart desires and his brain suggests.
So I think he's one of the freest men in the world.
He's beholden to no one, certainly not to the president of the United States, and certainly not to any subsidy.
But he was asked about China.
And immediately he changed.
And I think we see the one place where Elon Musk does have a master.
Of course, he is trying to break into the massive Chinese market.
He has a giga factory in China, if I'm not mistaken.
And so you can see when he's asked a question about China, he gives a very vague and meek answer, not as obedient as, say, Disney or the NBA would.
But you can see that for the first time in the half-hour conversation, suddenly he's thinking, hmm, what will happen to my stock price if I give a politically incorrect answer?
Take a look.
The United States has been the world's largest economy for as long as anyone can remember.
You know, I think the U.S. became largest economy, I don't know, probably 120, 130 years ago.
And there's nobody that old really anymore who can remember a time when the United States was not the world's biggest economy.
Now We're heading towards a situation where China is going to be probably have an economy two to three times the size of the United States.
And so that's just a different world.
I do think there's, you know, there are a lot of people in the government of China who kind of grew up with China not being, with China being a small economy, and maybe who feel like China was pushed around a lot.
But they haven't fully appreciated the fact that China really is going to be the big kid on the block.
And so if you're going to be the big kid on the block, then you can really be pretty chill about things.
You don't have to worry about like other countries are not really a threat to you if you're by far the biggest kid on the block.
And so I would say that's kind of an important mindset change.
Hopefully that China goes through is just to think like if you are the biggest kid, like how would you want the biggest kid on the block to behave?
And now if you are going to be the biggest kid on the block, then wouldn't you want to behave like you would have wanted the biggest kid on the block to behave?
I think that's pretty important.
I mean, overall, you know, I think Tesla has a good relationship with China.
And I don't mean to endorse everything that China does any more than I would say endorse everything the United States does or any country.
But overall, I think we are headed to an interesting and different world.
And I hope that we can remember that we're all human beings.
And let's just try to have as positive a relationship as possible and work towards mutual prosperity of humanity as a whole.
Wow, that last answer, would you agree with me of the 10 clips I showed you?
Would you agree with me that the last one was the most guarded, the most finesse?
That he really thought, well, I better choose my words very carefully.
Oh, well, I don't endorse everything they do.
Not that I endorse everything America does.
And I just hope that we're mutually prosperous.
And like he was very careful.
The one meaningful idea he had was: when you're not the biggest kid in the block, you hope the biggest kid in the block is nice to you.
When you become the biggest kid in the block, hey, still think like you're the little guy.
That works maybe for democracies, but it doesn't work for communist dictatorships that are militaristic, expansionists, and have a chip on their shoulder.
I think he sort of gave away the game there.
When China is the number three or number two banana, it'll act a certain way.
But the minute it gets dominance economically, militarily, diplomatically, and it's on the cusp of all of those things, do you really think China is going to be meek and mild?
I think Elon Musk himself does not believe it.
That was more a hope he expressed than a prediction.
Well, I have to say, Elon Musk is a fascinating man.
He's an individual, an independent thinker, much more than Jeffrey Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or the horrific Bill Gates.
I think he believes in liberty much more than the social media tycoons do.
I think he's a builder and a dreamer.
I think he's an amateur philosopher who actually makes more sense than maybe many of the professional philosophers in our world.
And I learned a little bit from him too.
I realized that he no longer gets the subsidy that made me chafe against his company.
And I learned that he never asked for them.
It was GM that did.
He was just happy to take the free money along the way.
My esteem went up for him.
I hope yours does too.
If I'm wrong, let me know.
Send me an email to Ezra at RebelNews.com.
Stay with us.
Emergency Vax Rulings00:14:31
Well, the formerly fascist countries of Austria, Germany, and Italy are trying on that old outfit again, getting the band back together as they're bringing in the most vicious vaccine mandates ever seen.
I think they're actually more strenuous than anything that China itself has done.
And now in New Brunswick, Canada, grocery stores have been given the power to ban unvaccinated people from even shopping for basic needs.
What's going on in the United States, though, the most important country in the world by many managers, and of course a country whose lead Canada often follows, joining us now via Skype is Janine Yunes, a lawyer with the new Civil Liberties Alliance, who's been a leading American activist on this file.
Janine, great to see you again.
So much is going on around the world.
We're coming to you for the U.S. update.
There's some good news and some bad news.
Let's start with the bad news.
What's happening in New York City, perhaps the world's most amazing and magical and exciting place?
What's the mayor doing to that city?
Well, he's destroying it one stroke at a time, or I should say one press conference at a time because he doesn't actually sign any orders usually.
He just issues these things by a press conference.
But the latest is that he has issued a mandate yesterday for private companies to require their employers to get the vaccine.
Not only that, but for children ages 5 to 11 to show proof of vaccination to enter what we would call places of public accommodation.
So restaurants, theaters, gyms, et cetera.
So that's essentially mandating vaccines for children of tender years.
Like five years old, you're forced to vacc your kid now, or you can't even go to a, even if you're vaccinated yourself, you can't go to a restaurant.
Well, yeah.
So what these governments are saying is, oh, we're not forcing you to get the vaccine.
You know, it's completely ridiculous.
You're shutting people out of public life, and now you're putting parents in the position of having to make their children's lives miserable or give them a vaccine that really has not been adequately tested on children.
You know, to the extent there are issues with adults in terms of how long this vaccine has been tested and how extensively, those issues are writ large for children.
There have been no studies conducted of children with natural immunity, for instance, getting the vaccine.
And the studies on children have been much more limited in nature.
So this is just a shocking development.
And, you know, children face such a low risk of COVID that what's going on here is a bunch of scared adults are using little kids to protect themselves to feel better.
It doesn't even work because we know these vaccines aren't very good at stopping transmission.
But what they're doing to children is sickening.
I agree.
Let's get back to the point you made earlier about requirements on private companies.
If I heard you right, does that mean if you're a worker, like you work in like, let's say, a local, New York has so many little corner stores that have a, it's a little bit of a corner store, it's a little bit of a restaurant, it's a little, like there's so many little places.
Often they're owned by new Americans.
So these are folks just visible minorities or whatever.
They're getting their, they're really the hardworking entrepreneurial small businesses that make New York so interesting.
Those places, are they covered by this new rule that their staff have to be vaccinated?
Well, it appears that way, Ezra.
I mean, the mayor just made a statement at a press conference saying that now private businesses have to do this.
So nobody's not actually passed a law yet.
He's just sort of using the bully pulpit to suggest it.
I mean, does he have the power to issue orders like this, or does it have to come from the New York City Council?
It's from the Health Commissioner, but it's under emergency.
Again, there's supposed to be an ongoing emergency for something like this.
There is no emergency in New York City right now.
This is made up.
This is just a complete abuse of executive power.
I mean, we're seeing it in New York.
We're seeing it in other places as well.
We're actually seeing it with the federal mandates, although thankfully the courts have been quite good at reining that in.
We'll get to those federal mandates in a minute.
I just got one last question for you because I've been looking at the different kinds of groups that are hesitant to take the vaccine.
And although in the media party, as I call it, the narrative is, well, it's those right-wing Republicans, you know, the MAGA hat supporters.
They're the ones who are objecting.
If I'm reading my statistics right, the groups that are the least likely to be vaxed include African Americans and Hispanic Americans.
And you'll correct me if I'm wrong on that.
And again, that gets back to these corner stores, which are often visible minorities, new immigrants just working hard, often a family business.
And the idea that they could be fired from, like, I don't even know how that would work in a family business.
If you've got a family business, do you have to fire your own kin because they're not vaxed?
And this is going to hit those immigrant families the hardest.
I mean, I care about everybody, but this is a very anti-progressive thing for a so-called progressive mayor to command.
Well, this is just along the lines of all of the other policies that so-called progressive politicians have been implementing under the pandemic.
I mean, lockdowns harm the poor and the working class the most.
Mask mandates harm the poor and the working class the most.
You know, I have to wear a mask when there's a mask mandate in my city for a few minutes going into a grocery store.
The grocery store workers, on the other hand, have to endure them all day long.
They're uncomfortable.
They make breathing hard.
So I would say this is just a continuation of hypocrisy from the left that we've seen.
Well, that's the bad news, but I see little green shoots of good news out there.
A number of courts have struck down different forms of President Joe Biden's vaccine mandates.
I find that hopeful here in Canada, the courts have very submissive.
No substantial ruling has gone against the government.
Can you tell us what the courts are doing with these vaccine mandates?
Yeah, so there are sort of four components of the Biden mandate.
One is for federal contractors.
One is for federal employees.
One is for private businesses that employ over 100 people.
And then the fourth is healthcare workers.
So three of the four have been struck down by federal courts.
And actually, the contractors had just been struck down in three states.
But as of about an hour ago, I got notice that it's actually been extended nationwide.
So the only part of Biden's mandate that's currently in effect is the one for federal employees.
So this is really good news.
And a lot of these decisions, it's about the executive overreach.
It's about the fact that Joe Biden doesn't have the right to do this sort of thing.
He's abusing his executive power.
But there's also a lot of good language, for instance, about is there really an emergency that justifies this?
Why aren't we recognizing natural immunity?
Do the vaccines really stop transmission?
So is there any sort of public health justification for mandates?
So these have been really, really good decisions.
Unfortunately, a lot of the sort of overarching aspects can't really apply to state or employer mandates, you know, not non-federal.
Still, it's a signal to the judiciary that it is acceptable to say no to this.
Here in Canada, I feel like all the judges who have weighed in are just an extension of, you know, polite opinion and conventional wisdom.
No judge in this country that I have seen, I'm talking about Canada, has given any credence to natural immunity.
They've all assumed we're in the worst emergency.
I saw a judgment out of Alberta, a judge named Justice Adam Germain.
There was no evidence before the court on this.
He just said, I'm certain that everyone in the province of Alberta knows at least one person who has died from this virus.
Well, actually, only one in 1,500 people has.
This judge is extrapolating his own panicked and paranoid lifestyle.
I tell you that as an illustration, that the judges here are in complete lockstep.
It sounds like the judges down there are being a little bit independent-minded.
Does that apply to judges who were appointed by Democrats?
I know not all judges are partisan, but that is a good way to look at some divides in America.
Is there a non-judgment?
Go ahead, Sori.
Oh, yeah.
To my knowledge, these are all Republican appointees.
I believe that's the case.
So I don't know of any Democratic judges who've struck these down.
And, you know, these are being brought in jurisdictions that are more conservative for a reason, but then you can apply for a nationwide injunction.
So, you know, I don't have a lot of hope that judges in blue jurisdictions would be doing the same thing.
Okay, I appreciate that caution, but still, the fact that it's happening at all, I mean, I find some glimmer of hope there.
Now, how about, let me ask you a political question.
I know you're not a partisan person.
In fact, my understanding is for many years, you considered yourself a Democrat.
I look at what happened in Virginia recently and even in New Jersey, where it was awfully close.
And one of the takeaways is that maybe the Democrat lockdownists have overplayed their hand and that moderates and independents are saying that's too far.
We can be more like Florida and Texas, and we don't have to have this kind of strict lockdown.
Do you see that the pendulum is swinging back?
And that maybe if the lockdownism continues, that 2022 will see a red tide come in.
What do you think?
I think so, and I hope so.
I mean, I think that a lot of moderates are very sick of this.
And frankly, I know a lot of Democrats who, even people who are as progressive as me.
I mean, I voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016, who are planning to vote Republican and voting Republican.
That's sort of anecdotal.
So it's hard for me to get a handle on precisely what percentage of the population it is.
And obviously, there's a reason that I'm talking to these people because we all feel similarly.
So, but I think there'll be pushback.
And there are just a lot of people who are afraid to speak up and realize we're living in this cancel culture.
We're even suggesting that masks don't work very well to stop the spread of the coronavirus is considered heresy and they keep their mouths shut.
But they know at the end of the day, it's crazy.
And maybe they, you know, like certain things about the Democrats.
Maybe they didn't like Trump.
But this time around, I think, you know, that a lot of those people are going to be voting Republican.
And I hope to see a red wave.
I want a strong rebuke of the Democrats and their policies that have been crippling Americans.
Has it really been a party divide?
Like, is it really as simple as red team, blue team?
Here in Canada, all five parties in our national parliament are unanimous on all of these pandemic policies.
And we have 10 provinces in the country.
All 10 governments and all 10 provincial opposition parties are unanimous as well.
There's literally not a single person in the government or the official opposition in any jurisdiction in this country that's a skeptic.
I find it impossible to believe, but that's a fact.
Is it just as simple as red team, blue team in the states, or are there some Democrats who are skeptics?
When it comes to politicians, it seems to be very red team, blue team.
Although I do think some of them privately think that some of these policies are extreme, but I think they believe that they're catering to their electorate and that their electorate wants these.
You know, I know, obviously, I'm one of them.
I know a lot of dissident Democrats, former leftists who, you know, reject all of this, but we are a minority.
I mean, most of the people that I've been collaborating with in all my anti-lockdown work are Republicans.
And, you know, there's a sort of subset of us who relate to each other because we're, you know, feel very betrayed by the Democratic Party and as though they're not living up to the principles that were the reason that we belong to them in the first place.
Last question for you, be very generous with your time.
It's great to catch up with you.
You're not just an observer, you're actually in court fighting these battles.
And that's that I'm very pleased that you are.
Let me ask instead about courts for a minute, though, about pop culture.
I mean, some of the most cringeworthy pro-vax propaganda has come from late night TV hosts.
I mean, I don't know if you saw this clip.
The vax scene.
Here, take a quick look.
The biggest
crime there, Janine, is not how wrong it is, it's how unfunny it is.
And all these comedians who are supposed to be entertainers, I don't know if they're being sponsored.
I don't know if these are paid advertorials.
I think they're ideologically wrong, but the crime is just so damn unfunny.
Is there any sector in pop culture and entertainment?
And like we've seen a few NBA stars try to object, and they were Gina Carrano, a few other actors have come out against this, but it's so unanimous.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is.
My Choice: The Ethical Case Against Mandates00:05:59
I mean, there are a couple there.
Eric Clapton, Van Morrison both came out against a lot of this.
Bill Maher, actually, I think has been pretty good.
Even though I think he's sort of pro-vaccine, he's questioned these mandates and what they're doing.
And he's said many times, I don't understand why we're not recognizing natural immunity.
So he's one, but I'm not a pop culture person.
So I might be missing something, but to my knowledge, it's been pretty bad.
And I actually have some actor friends who, you know, from all of this, and they feel very marginalized.
They're the only ones and they can't get jobs.
That's another aspect of this.
Most of them aren't even permitted to go to do auditions without a vaccine passport.
Yeah.
Well, I tell you, we're in a crisis, that's for sure.
Do you think we're still going to be in this crisis five years from now?
You'd think that would be an easy question to answer.
In five years.
Oh, yeah.
I have different thoughts about it.
I mean, one very interesting development was last night the New York Times actually posted an article saying that the Omicron burying actually appears to be less deadly.
And they've, you know, it's just been panic porn for the last week about Omicron, Omicron, Omicron.
So I thought that was an interesting concession.
I don't know what that'll lead to.
I mean, look, the virus is endemic.
If it turns out it's less deadly, that is obviously a very good thing.
And maybe that will help quell some of the panic.
But the problem is that the mindset that has led to all of this is not going to go away.
Janine Yunus, what a pleasure to catch up with you.
We're so proud of the work you're doing.
We didn't talk a lot about your cases, but I know you're fighting hard.
You're with the new Civil Liberties Alliance.
I love the title of your organization.
Great to see you again.
Thank you.
Great to see you too, Ezra.
Thank you.
Right on.
There you have it.
Stay with us.
Bye.
Hey, welcome back.
Your feedback.
John Carroll says, I appreciate Mark Morano's observation that there is no longer any political left or right.
There is only pro-tyranny and anti-tyranny.
Yeah, it reminds me of Janine Yunus, who for her whole life was a Democrat and suddenly is wondering where do Democrats go?
Democrats and leftists and liberals in this country and the Green Party in this country, they're now pro-big pharma.
They're against personal privacy.
They abandon their my body, my choice.
They just, where on earth did they go?
It's pretty incredible.
I mean, if you would have told me two years ago that Rebel News was crowdfunding to help union members fight against their union for abandoning them to their corporate masters, I would have said, I don't see it.
Here's a letter from Chris N, who says, I follow Rebel News, but as a Frenchman, I have to say this propaganda for Zimour is disgraceful.
Well, listen, I appreciate your point of view.
And I think I told you everything I know about Zumur.
I don't know everything about him.
But what I know about him is that he has caught the imagination of at least a chunk of Frenchmen.
And what's most interesting to me is that although he sounds like a French chauvinist, quoting or citing de Gaulle and Napoleon, he himself is a son of immigrants, a Jew, and an Arab.
Now, I think that there could well be many reasons to dislike him, reasons I don't even know about.
Over the years, I saw that there were many criticisms of Donald Trump.
I think I heard them all.
Some of them had some merit.
Others were just hyperventilating and partisan opposition.
I look forward to learning more about Eric Zamour, and I'm sure we will in the campaign ahead.
I know this, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France right now, is about the worst president that country has had in memory, and that's saying quite a lot.
Janine Bean30 says Robert Kennedy Jr.'s book, The Real Anthony Fauci, is available and illuminating.
Well, thank you for telling me that.
Again, that's an example of what Mark Morano had to say.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was someone I would have no time for two years ago.
Now he is a leading voice of reason and to push back against overweening government.
Didn't expect that from a Kennedy.
Speaking of books, let me leave you with a, I'm going to call it our video of the day, but it's actually a kind of ad.
It's just a minute or so long.
Speaking of books, our friend Dr. Julie Panessi has a new book called My Choice.
And I'll leave you with our video of the day.
It's a short promotion for her book.
I hope you enjoy it.
I'll leave you with that video, and until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.
My name is Dr. Julie Panessi.
I was a professor of ethics at Western University until I was fired for choosing not to take one of the COVID-19 vaccines.
I made an ethical choice and it cost me my job.
COVID-19 has caused a crisis in healthcare, but it has also triggered a crisis in other institutions we regard as essential to civil progressive society.
Academia, especially the sciences, journalism, government, the law, and more broadly, civil discourse, how we talk to each other.
In my new book called My Choice, The Ethical Case Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates, I discuss how the response to the pandemic is ushering us into a new era, away from the classical liberal world we are leaving behind, and why I think we are living through a pandemic of coercion and compliance.
Grab Hold of Hope00:00:07
I explain how we have gotten here and how we can grab hold of a safer, freer, more hopeful future.