Ezra Levant warns Joe Biden’s January 20th press conference exposed leadership decline—rambling, pauses, and a "I have no idea" response to mental fitness questions. Ukraine’s officials reportedly took his ambiguous stance on territorial integrity as a green light for Putin, while his administration’s "interagency process" (Clinton/Obama holdovers like Psaki, Rice, Blinken) stalls decisive action, emboldening adversaries like Russia and Iran. Vaccine passport defiance in Quebec, led by restaurants like Keste and Saint-Houblanc, highlights public pushback against mandates, despite financial losses and misallocated subsidies. Biden’s perceived weakness risks eroding trust in Western alliances, from Crimea to Nord Stream 2, while allies face escalating threats—suggesting a presidency out of control. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I take you through some American politics, but of course it affects the whole world as most things from America do.
Joe Biden gave a very long press conference for his standards.
I mean Trump would go on for 60, 90 minutes a day, no problem.
But Biden does it very rarely.
And you can sort of see why.
He runs out of juice, runs out of energy quickly, but he did mutter a few consequential things yesterday that I think are very dangerous.
I'll take you through it.
I'll show you a bunch of clips and then we'll talk to Joel Pollock about what it means.
That's today's podcast.
But first let me invite you to become a subscriber to Revel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
I want you to see with your eyes how weak Joe Biden is.
You'll hear it on the audio podcast.
You'll hear the long pauses, the rambling nature, but you've got to see this 79-year-old man just lost.
It's quite something.
Go to Revelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
It's $8 a month.
A bargain at twice the price.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, is Russia going to invade Ukraine again?
Joe Biden seems to think so.
He says he's actually fine with that.
It's January 20th, 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.
Oh, why?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Yesterday, Joe Biden had an absolutely disastrous press conference.
I just keep thinking of this comment by Joe Rogan.
Biden, to me, is like having a flashlight with a dying battery and going for a long hike in the woods.
Biden's Press Conference Flop00:07:11
It is not going to work out.
It's not going to make it.
That is such a great comparison.
Here, watch just one of many clips I could show you from last night alone.
Well, could school reopenings or closures become a potent midterm issue for Republicans to win back the suburbs?
Oh, I think it could be.
I hope to God that they're that.
Look, maybe I'm kidding myself.
But as time goes on, the voter who is just trying to figure out, as I said, how to take care of their family, put three squares on the table, stay safe, be able to pay their mortgage or their rent,
et cetera, is becoming much more informed on the motives of some of the political players and some of the political parties.
And I think that they are not going to be as susceptible to believing some of the outlandish things that have been said and continue to be said.
You know, every president, not necessarily in the first 12 months, but every president in the first couple years, most every president, excuse me, the last presidents, at least four of them, have had polling numbers that are 44% favorable.
So it's this idea that, but you all, not you all, but now it is, well, Biden's that one poll showed him at 33%.
The average is 44, 45%.
One poll meant 49%.
I mean, the idea that the American public are trying to sift their way through what's real and what's fake.
And I don't think as I've ever seen a time when the political coverage, the choice of what was he talking about?
Did he forget?
What was his point?
After 15 seconds, I don't think he remembered the question.
And then 15 seconds later, I don't think he could remember what his answer was supposed to be.
I tell you, there were many moments like that.
Have you ever met anyone who's slowly losing their cognitive powers?
It's often sad, and they're often very frustrated because they can't find a word or a name.
They can think of it or imagine it or see it in their mind, but they can't connect the idea to the word.
And they're still sharp enough to realize all this.
They're not fully gone.
Biden snapped at reporters yesterday when it was clear he couldn't be articulate.
He does that a lot.
He sort of panics and starts to shout or attack.
He's been doing that for a few years, actually, and I really don't think it's covered a lot.
It gets swept under the carpet.
Here's an excuse from last night.
Frustration and anger.
You know, you campaigned and you ran on a return to civility.
And I know that you dispute the characterization that you called folks who would oppose those voting bills as being Bull Connor or George Wallace, but you said that they would be sort of in the same camp.
No, I didn't say that.
Look what I said.
Go back and read what I said and tell me if you think I called anyone who voted on the side of the position taken by Bull Connor that they were Bull Conner.
That is an interesting reading in English.
I assume you got into journalism because you like to write.
So did you expect that that would work with Senators Manchin or cinema?
No, here's the thing.
There's certain things that are so consequential.
You have to speak from your heart as well as your head.
I was speaking out forcefully on what I think to be at stake.
That's what it is.
And by the way, no one.
I don't think it's controversial to say that Joe Biden really isn't in charge of the White House.
He doesn't have the physical stamina.
He does a few events, a few very public interactions with reporters.
For some reason, and I don't quite understand it, they've built this fake replica of the Oval Office that he does weird press events from.
I just don't understand.
Maybe it's nothing, but it seems odd.
I know that Ronald Reagan was alleged to have Alzheimer's disease set in in the end of his second term.
Reagan was 78 years old when he finished his second term.
Joe Biden is 79 years old in his first term, and he's much foggier than Reagan ever was.
Let me show you a few more clips from the press conference, but then let me end on the most terrifying part, Biden talking about what he thinks of Vladimir Putin's plans to invade Ukraine again.
I promise I'll come back to that.
Let's start with this one.
Does Joe Biden think the upcoming midterm elections in America will be legitimate?
I mean, polls suggest Biden is deeply unpopular.
That's showing up in elections.
For example, a few months ago, the Republicans swept Virginia, which had gone for Biden just a year earlier by 10%.
Republicans almost won New Jersey, which was plus 16 for Biden a year earlier.
It's looking like it's going to be a disaster for the Democrats.
Will Biden accept the results?
I'll show you what he said, but just a reminder, the media party said it was atrocious that Donald Trump would be skeptical of the sanctity of the results of the 2020 election.
In fact, if you claim there was widespread voter fraud in that election and only that election, you can say it about any other election, but if you say it about that election, YouTube will suspend your accounts.
So here's what Biden said.
Speaking of voting rights legislation, if this isn't passed, do you still believe the upcoming election will be fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate?
Well, it all depends on whether or not we're able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election.
So he won't say he respects or trusts the results.
He's trying to pass a bill to water down voter fraud prevention.
Remember, he won in large part because of vote harvesting and mail-in ballots.
Those were actually legalized in the months before the 2020 election using the pandemic as an excuse.
That's why Trump was worried.
Trump was ripped for that.
And now Biden himself is saying he can't trust the voting system.
Whether Fox Or MSNBC00:02:53
So there were substantive things like that.
But again, just watching a human flashlight battery dying was the most salient part of the performance for me.
It's like when someone is tongue-tied, they can't finish their sentence.
And I don't know, you lean forward in your chair.
Maybe you want to help them by filling in the word they can't quite say, but you don't quite know what they're trying to say, so you actually can't.
Take a look.
5%.
One poll meant 49%.
I mean, the idea that the American public are trying to sift their way through what's real and what's fake.
And I don't think as I've ever seen a time when the political coverage, the choice of what political coverage the voter looks to has as much impact on as what they believe.
They go to get reinforced in their views, whether it's MSNBC or whether it's Fox.
And one of the things I find fascinating that's happening, and you all are dealing with it every day, and it will impact on how things move, is that a lot of the speculation and the polling data shows that the cables are heading south.
They're losing viewership.
Well, Fox is okay for a while, but it's not gained.
And a lot of the rest are predicted to be not very much in the mix in the next four to five years.
I don't know whether that's true or not.
But I do know that we have sort of put everybody in, put themselves in certain alleys.
And they decided that, you know, how many people who watch MSNBC also watch Fox other than they're a politician trying to find out what's going on in both places?
How many people, again, I'm no expert in any of this, but the fact is, I think you have to acknowledge that what gets covered now is necessarily a little bit different than what gets covered in the past.
I've had a couple, well, I shouldn't get into this.
But the nature, not the nature of the way things get covered.
Huh?
What do you think Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping thought watching that?
Now, one brave reporter just came out and asked about all that.
Take a look.
Vladimir Putin's Green Light00:11:10
Yes.
Thank you very much for this honor.
James Rosen with Newsmax.
I'd like to raise a delicate subject, but with utmost respect for your life accomplishments and the high office you hold.
A poll released this morning by Politico Morning Consult found 49% of registered voters disagreeing with the statement, Joe Biden is mentally fit.
Not even a majority of Democrats who responded strongly affirmed that statement.
Well, I'll let you all make the judgment correct.
Well, so the question I have for you, sir, if you'd let me finish, is why do you suppose such large segments of the American electorate have come to harbor such profound concerns about your cognitive fitness?
Thank you.
I have no idea.
I should point out Biden was only calling upon pre-approved reporters in a list given to him by someone else.
We don't know who.
Trump would call on whoever he liked, including his rivals and sworn enemies at CNN, for example.
Biden is scripted as much as possible, and he still failed.
Allison Harris, please.
But look, most of that is just personally embarrassing, and it just goes to people's confidence and trust in their government to fix things like the lockdowns and vaccine mandates and the pandemic in general and inflation and foreign affairs crises like the hasty surrender in Afghanistan that left hundreds of American citizens behind and gave billions of dollars in equipment to the Taliban, including an Air Force.
Really, it just tells Americans they have a daughtering half-their president.
No one really knows who in charge.
I mean, it's not this woman.
At what point does the administration say, you know what, this strategy isn't working.
We're going to change strategies.
Six former administration officials last week wrote that open letter urging the administration to change course, to change strategy.
Is it time?
It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day.
Every day, it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.
So, just so you know, Russia and the whole world has been trying to take the manager of Biden for a year.
I think they learned a lot from how he fled Afghanistan.
Not that he left at all.
Trump was slowly leaving too, but the panicky Biden retreat, chaotic, unplanned, leaving people and property behind, fleeing is the real world.
I mean, this image is just so outrageous if you're an American or even a Canadian, because we spent more than 150 Canadian lives in Afghanistan.
But imagine what you would think of that if you're Afghan or Taiwanese or Japanese or, of course, Ukrainian.
Can you trust anything Biden says?
Remember, Russia invaded Ukraine and permanently annexed a large swath of it in 2014 when Obama was president and Joe Biden was vice president.
John Kerry was Secretary of State because they, I mean, by then, Putin had Obama's measure.
Putin knew Obama and Biden, the vice president, would do nothing.
Trump was elected in 2016 and inaugurated in 2017, January.
And Russia didn't try a thing during his whole tenure.
Neither did anyone else, really.
North Korea, China.
Trump mopped up ISIS in a few months, really.
People knew Trump was tough and that he was sometimes unpredictable.
His enemies and friends both knew that.
But Biden malaise is the word, a flashlight with a dying battery.
So yeah, I think America's enemies are emboldened, even if Biden were to talk tough.
But what if Biden says in advance that, no, he actually won't do anything, anything at all?
So I think what you're going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades.
And it depends on what it does.
It's one thing if it's a minor incursion and then we end up having to fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.
A minor incursion?
What is a minor incursion?
A few cities, maybe?
Half the country?
I don't know.
Was the last Russian invasion a minor incursion?
Would China invading Taiwan be a minor incursion?
It's a little place.
The thing about sovereign countries is that any incursion is an act of aggression, an act of war.
One inch or one mile, it's like the law of assault.
It could be a punch in the face or it could be someone flicking your nose.
They're both assaults.
But actually, listen to the wording.
Biden said, we end up having to fight about what to do and not do.
Whoa, that'll scare Putin.
So the U.S. and its allies haven't even figured out their plan yet.
They still haven't, you know, decided internally, I presume, about what to do or not to do.
And he just said that to the world.
You know, Russian collusion, Russia gate, Trumping a Russian spy, all that hoax, that disinformation for years led by the media.
Putin didn't dare make a move on Ukraine or anyone really with Trump in power a year into Biden and a preemptive letter of surrender to Russia from the Democrats.
Even the Democrat Party's propaganda machine in CNN couldn't believe it.
Here's Jake Tapper, the biggest Democrat partisan around, who asked a CNN reporter on the ground in Ukraine what was going on.
Here's one of the many things that President Biden had to say about Russia and the possibility of an invasion, another invasion of Ukraine.
Russia will be held accountable if it invades.
And it depends on what it does.
It's one thing if it's a minor incursion and then we end up having to fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.
But if they actually do what they're capable of doing with the force amassed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia.
My guess is he will move in.
He has to do something.
So let us go now to Matthew Chance, who is in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, where I'm sure officials were watching with interest and maybe even chagrin.
Matthew, were Biden's remarks interpreted there as a less than wholehearted warning to Putin to not invade?
Well, I mean, that's an understatement.
I mean, they watched those remarks, I think, with horror.
One Ukrainian official who I've been in close contact with while this marathon press conference is underway said that he was, I'm quoting here, shocked that President Biden would give a green light to Vladimir Putin in this way, that the U.S. president would distinguish between an incursion and an invasion, and then suggest that a minor incursion would elicit a lesser response than a more full invasion.
The big concern, of course, which is what he was alluding to, is that it gives Putin, and this is another quote from me, it said it gives the green light to Putin to enter Ukraine at his pleasure.
And that's not just one Ukrainian official.
Other Ukrainian officials have responded in a similar way.
Kiev, in the words of another, is stunned by what President Biden had to say.
And the reason for that is twofold.
First of all, a minor incursion is perhaps the preferred option of Vladimir Putin.
When CNN says it's bad, you know it's really bad.
We're already seeing the cleanup.
I'm already seeing in my text exchanges with people around the president cleanup on IL State Department going on right now.
Now, look, I don't want Putin to reconquer the former Soviet socialist republics.
I don't want the Soviet Empire coming back.
I don't want Russia taking over Ukraine or the Baltics or Poland or anywhere.
I don't want to see them colonize the world again, just like I don't want China to colonize Taiwan or Korea.
But I also don't think it's up to Canadians or even Americans to go to a war with Russia over this.
I'm not saying I like Biden's surrenderism.
I'm just not sure that the other alternative has to be war.
The fact that Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, did millions of dollars worth of business as if he's a legitimate businessman, as if he was paid for anything other than his access and influence to his father, that muddies the waters here further.
I'm not even sure what side Hunter Biden is on, frankly.
He took money from both Russians and Ukrainians.
Gee whiz.
It might have been useful to vet Biden and his corrupt, drug-abusing, eminently blackmailable son before the election, don't you think?
I know every possible detail about Donald Trump's personal life and financial life and his tax returns and those of his kids.
The media was obsessed with finding traces of corruption or links to Putin.
What do we know about Biden other than that when Hunter Biden's laptop was revealed, Twitter and Facebook banned any media from publishing news about him?
Ironically, if Biden is in the payroll of Ukraine, I have no idea.
It's his sheer weakness that makes Putin know he can grab that land.
Hong Kong fell first.
Then Afghanistan.
Ukraine will be next, God forbid.
Maybe Taiwan soon enough, I fear.
I worry for South Korea and even Japan.
Maybe Iran will make a move against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
I don't know.
Weakness is tempting.
The answer is as it always is.
Countries must defend themselves.
After the Cold War, Ukraine had an enormous number of nuclear bombs left over from his time as a Soviet colony.
Incredibly, they agreed to give them up in return for worthless assurances from Bill Clinton.
No surprise there.
No one could rely on Joe Biden.
I think friends and enemies alike see that now.
I'm glad Israel and the moderate Arab states are friends now.
Maybe they'll be mutual defense partners.
Who would have imagined that five years ago?
And remember, that peace legacy, the Abraham Accords, that's a legacy of Donald Trump who did the impossible.
I don't know.
Maybe India will become a regional superpower to help check the ambitions of China.
I don't know.
I have no idea.
I just know that having a dying flashlight battery as president is more than just embarrassing.
I think he might just start a war that nobody wants except the very worst of the world's tyrants.
Stay with us for more.
Well, whenever we talk about U.S. politics, we like to check in with Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large with Breitbart.com.
Joel, I know you watched the president's press conference very carefully yesterday.
I just showed a few clips from it.
What would you say the most interesting or the most important part of yesterday's performance was?
Major Senate Fetterings00:14:45
Well, there were two major statements by the president that caused shockwaves, not just in the United States, but around the world.
One was about the legitimacy of the 2022 elections.
And he suggested that if he didn't see the Senate pass his voting legislation, that the elections would be illegitimate.
And he said that twice.
He was given an opportunity to clarify, and he clarified.
That's exactly what he meant.
Now, the next day, Press Secretary Jen Pesaki ran around the cable news channels and the White House briefing room saying that she believed, that the president believed the elections would be legitimate, even if his legislation did not get passed.
But that created some consternation, especially because there's this idea that Democrats have put out there that merely questioning the sanctity of our elections, as they did in 2000, 2004, 2016, that amounts to a kind of treason, insurrection should result in you being banned from social media.
So she had to do some cleaning up there.
The other major development was Biden accepting the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, essentially saying that Putin had no choice now but to invade Ukraine.
I think by that he meant that Putin had moved so many troops and so much materiel to the border with Ukraine that he would lose face if somehow he didn't invade another country.
So essentially, Joe Biden threw Ukraine under the bus.
And this after Democrats made such a huge deal out of Trump supposedly being too friendly to Russia, which was, of course, not the case.
And after they claimed that Trump had endangered Ukraine when they went after him in the first impeachment trial.
Now Biden has essentially conceded the territorial integrity of a supposed American ally, and we're all supposed to look the other way.
He did this as Secretary of State Tony Blinken was in Kiev talking to Ukrainian leaders, and they were absolutely astounded.
They said it was basically a complete surprise to them, that it was deeply disappointing, and it was a green light for Putin to invade.
So those were the two major developments.
Pesaki cleaned that one up, or tried to anyway, shortly after the press conference, but she was still splitting hairs.
The White House is still trying to say that some kinds of incursions by the Russians wouldn't actually be invasions.
And Biden, the day after the press conference, said, well, if there are assembled Russian military units, then they would consider that an invasion requiring a more serious response.
Well, he was vice president when Russia invaded and occupied Crimea.
It still does.
And it's not as if they came across the border in tank battalions.
They infiltrated quietly, one by one, with soldiers who were wearing unmarked uniforms.
They did this quietly, secretly, although people could see it was happening.
They weren't assembled military units.
So all Biden is doing is promising the same sort of appeasement that saw Crimea carved away from Ukraine through military force when he was last in office.
And the result of all of this is a complete shattering of any confidence that anyone around the world can have in this president.
There's no reason to believe anything he says.
He can't even get his own agenda passed.
Hours after the press conference, Democrats failed to pass those voting bills in the Senate, and they failed to undo the filibuster rule, which requires a supermajority to close debate and move to a vote.
So Biden is essentially adrift.
His presidency is over.
There's nothing left of it.
He's just sort of in charge, and he might react to things as they happen, but there's nothing left for Joe Biden to do.
And all he's doing right now is failing to do the things that his predecessor, his much maligned, dark, evil, terrible insurrectionist predecessor, Donald Trump, left for Joe Biden, like a successful vaccination program, like an economic recovery, like strong relationships with our allies.
Biden is undoing all of that, unraveling all of that.
And Jen Pisaki keeps saying, well, our allies are privately very happy that Biden is back, that democracy is back, and so forth.
But you can see the reality when you look at what's happening in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leaders are terrified.
Their people are terrified.
They're trying to project confidence.
And all Biden can do is say to Russia, well, you know, invasions cost lives.
You're going to pay a price.
And here are some economic sanctions that you're not going to care about because you never care about economic sanctions.
We might deny you access to the dollar in your banking institutions.
Not that they care.
They have commodities and they can exert leverage now on Europe because of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that Biden allowed them to build and Trump did not.
So Biden's presidency in policy terms is over.
There is nothing left for him to do.
He could get some wins, perhaps, if the United States government responds to whatever's happening in the world in some kind of a competent way.
But this presidency is now in a state of decline.
It is in a state of decadence in terms of its ideology.
Most of what the Democrats are pursuing is for their own ideological benefit, this idea of voting rights.
There are no voting rights bills.
No one's voting rights are threatened.
Democrats have yet to produce a single person who wasn't able to vote.
It's very easy to vote in this country, but they're going to talk to each other about how they're standing up for voting rights and equality and diversity and equity and all that stuff.
Meanwhile, Biden's approval ratings will continue to plummet.
His presidency is over.
There's just nothing left for him to do.
His agenda is dead and his leadership is bankrupt.
Wow.
I think you're right.
And I think a few proof points are popping up.
The statewide race in Virginia that went plus 10 for Biden a year ago, now a strong DeSantis-style Republican governor.
I just can't stop thinking of that phrase that Joe Rogan used for Joe Biden, saying he was like a flashlight that the batteries were running out.
And that's just exactly how it felt to me.
But let me say this: although he can't get things through the Congress, and he still has certain roles.
I'm not going to call them ceremonial, but the president has still the power to make appointments, for example.
Those can be fettered by the Senate.
But when he speaks for America on foreign policy, when he sends troops here or there, that really is within the president's power.
You correct me if I'm wrong constitutionally, but I mean, no one else speaks on foreign matters in the same manner that a president does.
And so, even though I think he bungled it, you're right, his presidency is over in terms of a positive agenda he wants to do.
But I think he can still do enormous damage with foolish statements.
I mean, give me one more second on this.
For example, when he said a minor incursion would be fine, he actually said, Well, and we would be fighting amongst ourselves what we could or couldn't do.
So he was sort of blabbing internal politics in public because his mind isn't sharp enough to say, oh, there's certain, if we have a weakness internally, if we're divided internally, don't say that publicly.
Show strength publicly.
So I think the fact that he still is, at least in name, the president, and at least on the org chart, the guy who gets to talk foreign policy, I think he could cause disasters around the world just because he's losing his wits.
Well, that's true.
He can certainly make more mistakes.
And you point out the power of appointments.
The issue of the Supreme Court could become something that unifies his party behind him once again.
For example, if there's a vacancy and he has the power to appoint someone, all of that is true.
But he has failed in the basic mission of his presidency.
He was elected as the alternative to Trump, the one who would restore a sense of normalcy and calm to the country.
He did that only by default because the Democrats called off the riots once Trump was no longer in office.
Most of these Black Lives Matter Antifa groups respond in some way to the political prodding and the financing that comes from Democrat activists or Democrat-aligned donors.
So they called off the shock troops, if you will, of the resistance.
But Biden failed to unify the country, and he was trying to explain in his press conference that when he said Republicans were like Bull Conner, the legendary, infamous law enforcement official who sicked dogs on civil rights protesters in the South.
When he was calling Republicans Bull Conner, he didn't literally mean they were actually Bull Conner.
He just meant they were siding with Bull Conner.
Now, there really is no difference, but he was trying to say there is one and that he ought not be held accountable for insulting Republicans, including people who have supported him in the past on issues like infrastructure.
So Biden is at the end of his rope.
There's nothing more he can do that's positive.
And yes, he has other things he can do that can be damaging, the appointments and so forth, but he may lose that as well.
The Senate could end up in Republican hands.
If that happens, there's no way Biden is getting anyone onto the Supreme Court.
He's not going to have an easy time appointing executive appointees and so forth.
And there's a real crisis within the Democratic Party.
You mentioned Biden speaking out about these internal deliberations about foreign policy and whether NATO would agree to this or that.
I agree with you.
That was extraordinary.
You know, when they asked Trump what his plans were, what he was going to do, Trump often gave an answer, which was, I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to do.
I'm just going to do it.
When it comes to foreign policy and dealing with terrorists, that was the right approach.
His enemies, our enemies, could not read what Trump was going to do, and therefore they didn't act.
They didn't want to provoke him.
Whereas with Biden, it's exactly the opposite.
Biden tells people what he's going to do or what he might do or might not do.
And what everybody knows is that he's going to do nothing or he's going to try to do something.
But if he does, it's going to be ineffective.
So Biden is out there speculating about whether Putin might do this or Putin might do that, a minor incursion, a broader invasion.
We don't know.
He hasn't made up his mind.
So Biden is now trying to guess what Putin is doing.
With Trump, it was the other way around.
But I think there's a reason Biden is doing things this way.
It's not just that he is losing mental capacity, although that may be true.
But he is trying to find an excuse for inaction by telling the American people that his hands are tied when it comes to Ukraine.
If other NATO members don't agree to what I want to do, he says, then I can't do it.
So therefore, it's not my fault that Ukraine might be invaded tomorrow by Russia because after all, I have to get NATO to agree with me if I want to do something.
That's not traditionally the role of the United States within NATO, but it is a convenient excuse for a Democratic administration that prefers quote-unquote diplomacy, i.e. inaction, to any other course of action and is looking for excuses.
So again, the presidency has no forward momentum.
He is essentially a caretaker president, and someone else is taking care of him.
It's not clear he knows what's going on in his administration.
This idea that the 2022 midterms would be illegitimate was refuted or tried to be refuted by Press Secretary Jen Pisaki, who seems to have a lot more power than a typical press secretary.
Biden's administration may be administered by other people.
So we're just left adrift as a country, and people are deciding to take matters into their own hands.
They're not listening to coronavirus restrictions anymore.
They're not listening to health policy directives anymore.
They don't trust the government anymore, and they certainly don't trust the media.
People are basically moving ahead regardless.
That's good in some ways.
It does mean that our economic recovery is going to be stronger because I think people will simply ignore Biden's policies.
But it's also bad in other ways.
And you're seeing, especially in foreign policy, that chaos is having consequences.
I mean, that's the thing.
Joe Biden says things repeatedly, and then Jen Psaki, a spokesman, comes out and says, no, no, no, that's not what he meant.
Well, says you.
Says who?
I mean, Biden didn't pull back some of those things.
Like, you've got to wonder who is the real decider.
Do you have a theory on that?
I mean, it's sort of a kremlinology.
I mean, I personally don't think that Joe Biden is the master of any brief.
Like, there are some political leaders that you know are reading every briefing note, every file in Canada.
Our previous Prime Minister Stephen Harper was known for reading every bloody briefing note and really engaging.
And I'm not going to say becoming an expert, but you couldn't hornswoggle him.
I don't think anyone believes that Joe Biden is getting into the details here.
I don't believe he's that attentive.
I don't think he has the stamina.
I don't think he has the work ethic.
I look at how many times he's on vacation in Delaware, not that you can't work from your home.
Who is actually the power behind the throne?
What's your theory?
I know this is speculation, but I just don't believe that Joe Biden is running the most powerful country in the world.
I don't believe it.
It's a kind of a Pulitzburo.
I mean, cremlinology is the right term.
It's a group of Democratic insiders who formed a kind of government in exile at a consulting firm called West Exec, I believe is its name.
And they existed in Washington.
They involved Pisaki and a variety of other people.
I think Pisaki was at the Brookings Institution, but they involved a small sort of cohort of Obama and Clinton alumni who believe that they represent the cutting edge of policy and so forth.
During the first Trump impeachment, there was this phrase that appeared for the first time in the public consciousness, interagency process.
When Colonel Alexander Vinman, Lieutenant Colonel Vinman, came out and said that he opposed Trump's policy on Ukraine, his main bone of contention was that Trump ignored the interagency process, that Trump thought that just because the Constitution gave the president the power to conduct foreign policy doesn't mean the president actually should.
No, the president has to delegate to these bureaucrats in the interagency process, which is sort of a way of saying there are different people who run different parts of the government and they're supposed to agree on everything.
I think we are being governed by the interagency process.
And the interagency is dominated by these lifelong democratic establishment apparatchiks.
And they are engaged in a policy or process of negotiating with each other about what the government should do.
Government by Committee00:09:41
Hence, the government can't figure out what to do at all.
So you've got Susan Rice, who has no domestic policy experience, but is now running the Domestic Policy Council at the White House.
You've got Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, who are Clinton alumni, supposedly running the foreign policy at the State Department.
Then you've got Jen Pesaki, who's a much more powerful press secretary, I think, than any of her predecessors.
She's not just running communications.
I think she is running policy to a great extent.
And you've got various other people in these little positions, and they're responding to donors on the outside, like the George Soroses of the world and so forth.
But they're basically conducting the government's affairs by committee.
And, you know, if you try to do anything by committee, you might get some consensus finally after much deliberation.
So there might theoretically be more unity going forward.
But as you know, almost nothing ever gets done by a committee.
If you try to write an article, for example, or I was a speechwriter, I used to hate when I had to write a speech by committee when different politicians would have to weigh in on the draft because it would mean that whatever I wrote had to be done from scratch, redone.
And committees just don't function.
So hence the United States government is essentially paralyzed by this interagency, which was held up as the epitome of competence under the Trump administration.
And how dare Trump go around them?
Well, it turns out the A team, the best and the brightest, don't know what they're doing and can't organize, as the phrase goes, you know, a piss-up in a beer hall.
They just can't do anything.
And that's why we are where we are.
And Russia is taking advantage.
China is taking advantage.
And we'll see if the 2022 midterms have any effect on it.
I think it might affect some of the policies.
It might restrain some of the worst tendencies of the left, which dominates within the Biden administration as part of this interagency.
But I don't think it's going to solve the problem.
And the question for 2024 is really going to be: can the United States rediscover strong leadership again?
And does that leadership have to come from Donald Trump, or is there another Republican who can provide it?
You know, when you say interagency process, I think that's an academic way of saying the deep state.
People need security and intelligence and, you know, unfireable.
They outlast any elected politicians.
They take care of themselves.
I think that's just a fancier way of saying the deep state.
But let me talk.
You mentioned Alex Vineman, and I had written him down on my notes here to ask you about him.
Because, you know, when Trump was president, you had all these deep state whistleblowers, defectors, you know, people who were just saying, I don't like what Trump is doing.
I have no constitutional authority to usurp that of the president, but I'm just mad about it.
Vinman, you know, was treated as some sort of hero.
And I didn't follow it closely.
I found it a bit confusing, to be honest.
But I presume these people wanted to strengthen Ukraine and protect it from Vladimir Putin.
I think that's what their goal was.
Has Vinman, who I think one time mused about becoming the defense minister of Ukraine, have those anti-have the folks who whipped up the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was a Russian agent, a Russian stooge, was subject to Russian blackmail, was soft on Russia, have any of these pro-Ukraine, anti-Putin conspiracy theorists had a word to say in the last 24 hours about Biden essentially?
No.
No?
Not at all.
I mean, Vinman didn't tweet at all or respond at all publicly to what Biden was doing to Ukraine.
And Vinman, of course, was so deeply, deeply concerned about the fate of Ukraine, the land of his birth and so forth.
But under Biden, it doesn't matter because these people are all about politics and power.
They're not about principle.
The one thing he did say on Twitter about Ukraine was he responded to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who was trying to project an attitude of confidence.
And he was mocking Zelensky and said, you better, I'm paraphrasing here, but said, you better tell your countrymen to expect the worst rather than telling them anything that's going to give them false confidence.
So it looks like Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vinman has basically given up on Ukraine, just like Biden has given up on Ukraine.
And the word came through today that members of Congress and various committees are being briefed by intelligence officials that they expect a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
There's not going to be a deterrent.
We are now playing on Vladimir Putin's TERP.
We are now discussing the absurd question of how to limit the extent of his invasion rather than how to prevent an invasion and how to hold Russia in check.
This doesn't stop at Ukraine.
I don't think the United States needs to be the world's policeman.
But we have NATO allies like Poland, for example, that fears Russian incursion as well.
We have a variety of countries in Eastern Europe, whether they're part of NATO or not, who want to be closer to the West, who are telling us that Russian invasion is a constant worry for them.
And somehow there's this idea that, like Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland, that if we just allow a little incursion into Ukraine, it doesn't matter.
The democratic establishment has learned nothing from 2014 and Crimea.
They've learned nothing of the positive lessons of Donald Trump's presidency, of strong leadership, of being unpredictable on the world stage, of making sure that our military is a feared threat, calling terrorists terrorists, making sure people know there's going to be retaliation if they cross the line.
None of that has been learned, and it's to their great disadvantage because they've achieved nothing in a year of foreign policy other than giving Iran time to accelerate its nuclear weapons program, giving the Houthis time to attack Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
There's been no progress at all.
China on the march everywhere around the world.
And so here we are.
We are basically at the end of this presidency in a functional sense.
You know, it's got no forward momentum, and it's a crisis for the country.
It's a crisis for the Democratic Party.
And there's no sane human being who could watch that press conference yesterday and feel like we're being led by someone who knows what he wants to do and who's stable about it.
Yeah.
Listen, you've been very generous with your time.
I just have one more observation I'd like to share with you, and I had forgotten about it.
But after the fall of the Soviet Union, when it sort of splintered into the former Soviet republics, Ukraine had a lot of nuclear warheads because they were stationed beyond just the Russian SSR.
They were around the former Soviet Union.
So in 1994, and you correct my history if I'm wrong here, Bill Clinton, along with other leaders, negotiated for Ukraine to give up its nukes, which maybe was the right idea for the world.
I don't know.
But in return for promises of territorial integrity, well, that was, I don't know, 25 years ago or more.
And I think there's a lesson.
At the end of the day, what diplomats said, there are no friends, there's only interests.
There's no permanent friends or enemies.
There's only permanent interests in foreign affairs.
Well, that's especially true with Russia.
You know, we don't have a reason to be enemies with Russia.
We don't have a reason to be friends with Russia.
We have a lot of interests that coincide with Russia, and we have a lot of interests that diverge.
So the relationship is always going to be complicated.
But the idea that we would simply roll over and allow Russia to take advantage of Ukraine after giving it security guarantees, as you point out, in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons, is so corrosive to American security generally because it means there's no advantage for countries in being aligned to us, at least while a Democrat is in the White House.
So you've got Saudi Arabia being punished by this administration for having worked with Israel and tried to counter Iran.
You've got the United Arab Emirates being punished.
They had an arms deal canceled or suspended by the Biden administration.
And now you've got Ukraine, which is being punished for hoping that the West might come to its aid.
And Biden is just debating what the definition of an incursion might be.
It's so ridiculous.
You know, when you go to Las Vegas, you always want to play with the House's money.
You win a few chips and then you can bet with those so that if you lose, you're not losing anything that you brought with you to Las Vegas.
Putin is playing with our chips.
He's basically decided that he's going to extract concessions from the West by marching all these troops and all of these weapons to the border with Ukraine.
It looks like he's winning because Biden is already negotiating in public about whether we would station strategic arms in Ukraine and so on and so forth, whether we would allow Ukraine to become a member of NATO.
He says it's not likely anyway, so who cares?
Those are all concessions to Putin that Putin has already achieved just by moving troops around within his own country.
And now we're having a debate about what a Russian military incursion might be that would require us to respond instead of what we did with Trump, where Trump would launch 59 airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad while the Chinese premier was eating chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago.
I mean, that's a real difference.
Yeah.
You know, we're lucky here in Canada.
As someone once said, we're a fireproof house far away from inflammable materials.
We're lucky enough to be right by the United States.
If we were Taiwan, Israel, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Poland, the Baltics, or, of course, Ukraine, we would be in a pretty tough spot.
I think it's dark days, and I hope the dominoes don't fall.
Joel, you've been very generous with your time.
forward to keeping an eye on your essays and columns and news reports at Breitbart.com.
Thanks for being here today.
Thanks, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Joel Pollack, Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart.com.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Quebec's Restaurant Reopening00:10:35
Your letters about Xinhua applying for parliamentary press gallery status.
Rob A says, gotta hand it to China.
Their 40 chess game is impressive.
Plus, they are willing to plant individuals for 20 plus years all about the long game.
Oh, exactly.
You know what?
Just as the parliamentary press gallery hears the application from the Communist Party of China, the government of Canada is refusing to let MPs see the truth about, I don't know if you remember, the Chinese nationals who were working in Winnipeg's very high security virus lab, and then the police raided the place.
The Liberal Party won't show the facts of that to MPs.
I wonder why.
Kerry says, does this mean Australia isn't the worst anymore?
Australia is pretty bad.
The state of Victoria in Australia is awful.
The way they treat that city of Melbourne breaks your heart.
But I think Canada's getting bad.
I don't know if you've seen just how awful it's getting in Quebec these days.
Janice Williams says, thank you for sharing this information with the public.
I honestly had no idea what was happening in my own country.
Well, how would you when 99% of the media is on the payroll?
And I really mean 99%, it's actually more than that.
You might recall a few months ago I published a list of 1,500 media companies in Canada that take Trudeau's subsidy.
I didn't even know there were 1,500 media companies in Canada.
Did you?
Anyway, let me leave you with our video of the day, a Quebec pizzeria that won't enforce the vaccine passport.
I hope they do well.
I get the feeling they're going to be crushed like Adam Skelly's barbecue was in Toronto with riot police and riot horses and 50 police cars.
Just outrageous.
I'll leave you with that until tomorrow on behalf of all of us here at Rubble World Headquarters to you at home.
Good night and keep fighting for freedom.
So I would just ask this restaurant owner and all other merchants to be patient.
If it's anything like we've seen in the past, we experienced a minimum of a 60 to 70 percent decrease in income.
I know it's difficult.
We have put in place the measures to help them financially.
We've done that.
I mean provincially we haven't really gotten anything from Quebec.
It's been all federal.
We've gotten empty promises as usual.
That's all they like to give.
So I'm just saying let's make sure that we don't go back and let's go and do those measures gradually.
That's the only thing I could say.
We'd like to say to other restaurants that are that are leaning or on the fence that there are hundreds and hundreds of people who are ready to fill up any restaurant who are ready and willing to join.
Hello everyone.
Here is something interesting that will happen in Quebec next Sunday on January 30.
A civil disobedience movement has been instigated by restaurant owners, sport associations, store owner and other entrepreneurs with the intention of reopening on that day without requiring the QR code associated with the vaccine passport.
This caused quite a star to the point that Christian Dubay, Quebec health minister specifically asked during a press conference to be patient and not to reopen for the moment.
So I would just ask this restaurant owner and all other merchants to be patient.
I know it's difficult.
We have put in place the measures to help them financially.
We've done that.
Here is what the owner of the Keste restaurant in Montreal had to say about this movement.
Why it's really important for you to join the movement to reopen on the 30th of January without vaccine passport?
So for us, the main reason we're doing this is because we think it's time that we all notice that there's time for change.
And we think that if you just ask for one portion of the population that are vaccinated to come in, you're not going to get nearly as much support.
You're not going to make as much of an impact and as much of a message.
So we think by including everybody, because at the end of the day, we're all in this together.
It's not like this is just one portion of the population that's faced with this issue.
So I think it's important that you include everybody.
And I mean, it is discriminatory to do what is being done right now.
And I mean, it's important that we all band together and make a difference as a unit rather than just separating society like it's being done right now.
How did you receive the decision from the government that they decide to close all the restaurants on the 31st of December?
It was the same kind of decision that it took from last Easter.
What was the impact on your business that day?
So as per usual, they announced it last second.
They don't give any forewarning.
They just throw it on you.
And so, I mean, for us, it wasn't as much of an impact as other restaurants.
We still lost half of our staff that aren't coming back because, I mean, they're fed up at this point.
They don't want to go into an industry that are going to be going on chomage, off of chomage, onto chomage, doesn't make sense.
So we lost half of our staff.
We've been closed ever since the last closing because we just were like, I mean, it's just, it's mentally just very frustrating.
So we've been closed for the past two weeks.
If it's anything like we've seen in the past, we experienced a minimum of a 60 to 70 percent decrease in income.
So that's another big thing we all experienced.
But for us, our food costs and our costs aren't as high as other restaurants.
But for other restaurants that have much higher costs, meaning rent, food costs, if you have steaks or if you have fish, your cost is obviously a lot higher.
Your food expires a lot quicker.
So for them, they all got ready in anticipation for New Year's, and they were only told the day before.
So for some restaurants, for example, because of also the SAQ has been on strike, everyone had to pre-buy all their alcohol.
Some restaurants bought over $100,000 worth of alcohol.
They bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of food that, unfortunately, had to just be either, well, the alcohol you can always return, but the food has to get thrown away.
So it was a big loss for everybody.
And it was, like usual, very last second without any warning and without any consideration to what we've all been through for the past three years.
The governmental help has definitely helped federally.
I mean, provincially, we haven't gotten anything from Quebec.
It's been all federal.
We've gotten empty promises, as usual.
That's all they like to give.
But I mean, on Quebec's end, they haven't helped.
Federally, they did provide rent subsidies and staff subsidies that definitely helped a lot.
But I mean, we don't need the money.
Like, keep us open and give that money to hospitals that actually need it.
There's no need to close us, keep on funneling money into restaurants to keep them open while they're closed, and then not give anything to the hospitals that are still struggling.
Like, it's just counterintuitive if you're saying that the hospitals are in need of help, not us.
So keep the hospitals open.
I mean, keep the restaurants open and give that money to the hospitals and actually fix the issue rather than just closing endlessly for the next God knows how many years.
And since you announced that you would reopen and disobey to the regulation of the government on the 30th of January, how the population did react to your choice, your decision?
Overall, I'd like to say it's been very, very positive.
So I'd like to say a good, I can't give an exact percentage, obviously, I'm just basing myself because it's me who's been answering all the messages on Instagram and on Facebook and going through them.
Minimum 70%, like minimum 70%, it's been completely positive.
We've had, obviously, like everyone has their own opinions on situations and we all have to respect that.
And we've had a good, like about a 30% just whatever comments and we've had like 5% of the comments just completely just awful.
Not even just becomes a discussion, just becomes a hatred towards somebody based on their views on life.
So, I mean, that's just, we knew we were going to face it.
So, it's obviously part of it.
And we knew it was going to come.
And, I mean, we work in the restaurants.
You're always going to deal with unhappy people.
So, it's just, it's part of the part of it all.
You know, a lot of other restaurants will open the same day?
So, as of now, we know that there's going to be, well, we're getting messages and we're going back and forth a lot of restaurants.
As of now, confirmed, we have obviously ourselves, Cafétier Europia in Laval.
We have one restaurant in Quebec City that we're talking to that will be announcing tomorrow.
So, I'm not going to give their name, I'll let them announce it.
They'll be announcing as well.
And then we also saw today that Saint-Houblanc will be joining as well.
They have three locations in Montreal.
And then, besides that, there's also Maison Instant Bun in Laval as well, who will be opening.
Putting your business at risk is something that is definitely scary for everybody.
I mean, we risk losing licenses, we risk heavy fines, we risk losing the support of our clientele because you're not guaranteed to have support.
You can either receive it or have people completely against you.
So, there's definitely that as a fear factor to make people jump in.
And another thing we'd like to say to other restaurants that are leaning or on the fence, that there are hundreds and hundreds of people who are ready to fill up any restaurant who are ready and willing to join.
And I'm sure there's a, well, not sure, I've seen that there's a ton of people who are ready to support anything that a restaurant may do.
There's a bunch of lawyers who are ready to back anybody up.
We have a community in Canada that is strong.
Canada is not divided as we all think.
I mean, there is a lot of people ready to jump on this cause and a lot of people ready to make change on this movement.
So, we will still be following all the sanitary measures because, like I said, we really want to push the fact that we want everybody on board.
So, there are people who are against the mask.
Obviously, there are people who are for it.
There are people for everything.
So, we're trying to find the middle ground where everyone can meet in the middle and feel safe if they come in one because we obviously don't want to, we don't want our clients to come in feeling like they're going to get sick and leave being sick.
So, we're going to follow all the sanitary measures.
We're having a crew come in next week to properly clean the place.
We're looking into getting some HEPA filters to also make the quality of the air in place.
I mean, it's going to clear out the air and remove 99% of bacteria as well.
So, we are going to be following ways to show that, look, there's a way where we can meet in the middle, and there's a way where we can do this properly, where you don't have to close us all the time.
There's a way we can do this properly and efficiently, and there's no need for us to be closed.
Because, I mean, like we all know, there's no statistic, there's no fact that says it was us.
Now, you're just pointing fingers and taking the blame off of yourselves.
So far, we can count more and more establishments joining in.
Some of them want to reopen, but keeping the sanitary measure in place, while others simply want to remove the vaccine passport that discriminate against a part of the population.
We can feel the impatience of the population for the reopening of these businesses while this day go down smoothly.
Remains to Be Seen00:00:36
That remains to be seen, but Ribbon News will be there to bring you the other side of the story.
This was Alexa for Riba News.
If you want us to fight against this vaccine passport, please go to fightvaccinepassport.com, chip in generously so we can hire a top-notch lawyer to go against it.
And if you think you are a specific case, please fill the form at the same webpage, fightvaccinepassport.com.