Ezra Levant and Joel Pollock dissect the November 8th U.S. midterms, where Democrats face historic polling losses due to Biden’s divisive messaging—like labeling "MAGA Republicans" as a threat—while Republicans exploit economic frustrations with inflation and crime. Arizona’s Senate race sees Blake Masters surging against Mark Kelly amid record migrant crossings (2M+ under Biden), and GOP infighting over McConnell’s funding strategy may escalate post-election. Meanwhile, Ukraine tensions rise: 4,700 U.S. troops deployed near its border, Zelensky’s reckless UN calls risking nuclear war, and Republicans vow to end unchecked aid if they win the House. Canada’s Ottawa truck convoy protest reveals government overreach, with Trudeau’s team allegedly weaponizing child welfare threats against peaceful protesters, exposing a pattern of COVID-era authoritarianism. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, less than two weeks to the U.S. midterm elections, how bad is Biden going to blow it?
It's October 27th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Well, it is less than two weeks from now that the United States will have its midterm elections.
You know what those are.
The entire House of Representatives, that's the Congress, is up for re-election as they are every two years.
A third of the important Senate are up for grabs.
And of course, the whole thing is a form of proxy vote on the President of the United States.
He is not at the ballot box until two years from now, if he does indeed run.
Of course, there are other races at the state level.
A lot of the governors are up for grabs.
Our favorite guy, Ron DeSantis, is in a battle.
Let's talk about this because I think there is a lot of momentum these days that suggests the Republicans might do very well.
I've never seen polling that looks so bad for the Democrats.
I took you through that New York Times poll before showing you the shocking numbers of Americans who feel the country's on the wrong track and who incredibly think the media is a threat to democracy.
Joining us now to help us talk about this is our dear friend, Joel Pollock, the editor at large of Breitbart.com.
Well, what a pleasure to see you, Joel.
There's so much going on, and you're the right guy to talk to you.
You have a bit of a specialty following the Democrats, even though you're a more Republican-leaning guy.
What's the state of play less than two weeks to go?
We are witnessing a surge in Republican support as we get closer to Election Day and a corresponding collapse in the Democratic Party's support and chaos in its messaging.
The turning point seems to have been around late August, early September.
And I would suggest that Joe Biden's prime time address on September 1st, in which he declared that quote-unquote MAGA Republicans were a threat to the country, was a key moment, not because it frightened many Americans into thinking that their civil liberties were in danger, although it certainly did feel that way to those of us on the right.
But it told Americans that the president of the country was not that interested in the things they care about.
He was more interested in politics.
He was more interested in things going on in Washington.
And he was not talking about inflation.
He wasn't talking about gas prices.
He wasn't talking about crime.
He did mention a couple of his accomplishments in that speech, but that wasn't the purpose of the speech.
The purpose of the speech was to demonize opposition.
And he left an open space, a vacuum really, in which Republicans were the only ones talking about bread and butter kitchen table issues.
So Democrats started losing momentum.
And what's happened in the last couple of weeks or so is that as Republicans have started to feel that victory is within their grasp, they have surged even more.
It's almost as if voters are choosing to side with the winner because it feels good not just to be on the winning team, but also to send a very clear message.
And independent voters, as well as Republicans, know exactly what that message is, which is that wokeness has failed as a governing policy and that Americans want a return to common sense, whether Democrats or Republicans are in charge.
You know, it's funny you say that wokeness has failed.
Just over the last couple of weeks in Canada, we've seen the same thing.
And I know Canada and the United States are very, very different, but there is sort of a continental consciousness.
We follow American news media.
Fear Of The Unknown00:02:56
We're subject to the same cultural tides.
In Vancouver, left-wing city analogous to San Francisco or Seattle, the woke incumbent was thrown out for a pro-police successor.
Just this week in Ottawa, a non-binary woke candidate was trounced by a moderate.
I think that wokeness has gone so far.
And take a look at this.
This is a video just the other day.
Here we are two weeks ago, oil prices, inflation, all sorts of crises, and Joe Biden sitting down with a transgender activist talking about how he feels to be a girl and how he would think that it's a human right for children to have surgery or puberty blockers.
Here's a quick clip of that.
Take a look.
Thank you.
And it feels like Republicans have turned trans and non-binary people into this thing to blame society's downfall on in some ways.
And this narrative is not only dangerous to our mental health, but also our physical safety.
And particularly, trans women of color are being murdered at an alarming rate.
More than any other group of people.
Thank you.
How can Democratic leaders be more effective in advocating for us trans people and our families and our lives and our opportunities?
I'm not being facetious when I say this, being seen with people like you.
I mean it.
I genuinely mean it.
People fear what they don't know.
They fear what they don't know.
And when people realize, individuals realize, oh, this is what they're telling me to be frightened of, this is the problem.
This is, I mean, people change their minds.
People just don't know enough to know.
And it's not because of intellectual incapability, it's just lack of exposure.
And I think that it's really important that we continue to speak out about the basic fundamental rights of all human beings.
And the idea, the idea that what's going on, you know, in some states, I won't get into the politics of it, but in some states, it's just, it's outrageous, and I think it's immoral.
The trans part's not immoral.
What they're trying to do to trans persons is immoral.
Thank you.
And do you have any messages to the families of trans folks that are seeking options for their children but are struggling to find resources?
Do you have a message to those parents?
Yeah, I do.
This is blood of your blood, bone of your bone.
And it is, again, speaking to my son, when he spent a year in Iraq and he was a decorated soldier.
Emphasizing Transgender Issues00:03:36
He volunteered to go.
He had to give up the Attorney General's job and then came back to it.
And he started a foundation I'm not allowed to talk about now because I can't raise money for it any longer.
But it was for abused children.
And one of the things he did is raise millions of dollars, this organization, to basically educate parents as to what they should not be afraid of and to educate the community as to what is what is just pure hyperbole.
And so I just think it's a matter of leaders speaking out and saying, as I told you, I mentioned a young woman who used to be on his staff, used to be on my staff, who is now a state senator.
And she's trans, and she's No, state senator in the state of Delaware in an area that was historically very conservative, the part of Delaware.
And she's running unopposed this time.
So things are changing.
Things are changing, but it's a matter of us acknowledging that there's nothing to be, just because it's different, there's nothing to be fearful about.
Substance of that.
The fact that he's choosing to go woke in the dozen days before the election.
Is that on purpose?
Was that an accident?
Is he trying to stir up his base?
Why would he do that?
The entire Democratic Party midterm campaign strategy is aimed at the progressive base of the party.
That means they're emphasizing issues like abortion and race, and they're emphasizing issues like transgenderism.
The percentage of Americans who identify as transgender is very, very small.
Probably a broader percentage, primarily among Democrats, identifies generally with the sense that transgender rights are a form of civil rights.
But there are also many people on the conservative side, probably more people as a percentage of the population, who feel that the crusade for transgender rights has gone too far.
It's begun to trample women's rights, and it's begun to harm children.
You saw this come up in the debate earlier this week between Governor Ron DeSantis and former Governor Charlie Crist.
Charlie Crist used to be a Republican, became a Democrat, and is now challenging Ron DeSantis for his old job back, not so much as a serious candidate, but as a kind of professional troll to rough DeSantis up before he decides to run for president someday.
But Charlie Crist accused Ron DeSantis of abusing LGBTQ people, and Ron DeSantis pointed out in rebuttal that it's illegal in Florida for 15-year-olds to get tattoos, but Charlie Crist wants to encourage them to be able to get double mastectomies.
And that's the absurdity that is striking many Americans, particularly parents, who feel that the schools are indoctrinating their kids, not just with transgender ideology, but in general.
There's a sense that the Democratic Party doesn't understand what the needs of American families are today, and that nevertheless, when they're in government, the Democrats don't want to let parents control anything.
They don't want to let communities control anything.
They want to control things according to the ideological dictates of their own party.
And so Americans are pushing back in a very big way.
It's not just in a national way.
It's also, as you've pointed out in Canadian examples, it's at the municipal level.
Election Deniers Debate00:15:56
There are contests such as right here in Los Angeles, where a woke Democratic favorite, Karen Bass, who was leading by double digits in early October, is now behind in the latest poll to moderate Democrat Rick Caruso, who's a billionaire developer.
He's carpet bombing the airwaves with advertisements, and so he's outspending his rival.
But he's also bringing a message that the city has to get back to fighting crime, getting homeless people off the streets, and making LA the nice place it has been until recently.
Whereas Karen Bass is promising business as usual more of the same.
She herself was a victim of crime.
A few weeks ago, her home was burglarized and the thieves stole her guns.
Imagine that, a left-wing progressive Democratic Party candidate with guns in her home.
We don't really know very much about why she had those guns or what the guns were, but in any event, she went from proclaiming in the spring that she felt perfectly safe in Los Angeles to explaining to voters that she now finally understood why they feel unsafe in the city of Los Angeles.
Wokeness, Black Lives Matter, transgenderism, these are all tremendous problems for the Democratic Party, but they are unable to extricate themselves from these ideological anvils.
And so Republicans are gaining in places where Republicans weren't even competitive until a very short time ago.
We're even seeing Senate races like the race against incumbent Dick Blumenthal in Connecticut start to look like a competitive race where the Republican, who's a Cuban Jewish immigrant named Leora Levy, is gaining on him.
And I think the race is now in the low single digits in terms of the gap between Blumenthal and Levy.
This momentum is continuing.
Joe Biden said a few days before the two-week deadline that he expected polls to swing back in the Democrats' direction before Election Day.
That could happen to some extent as voters start to feel a little bit of premature buyer's remorse, let's say.
I mean, you always feel a little bit worse about the party you've elected once they have responsibility.
So maybe people will start to look at these Republican candidates now that they look like they're going to win in many places.
And they might start to say, well, wait a minute, what do these people stand for?
But the problem for Joe Biden is that his party has imposed vote by mail across the nation, which means that millions of ballots have already been cast.
And so if you have second thoughts about the Republican you voted for, it's too late.
So Democrats are hoist by their own petard now.
Vote by mail could work against them if there is something like a return back toward the Democrats.
But I don't think there will be.
Republicans are experiencing a surge of confidence, unlike anything we've seen.
I have to say it's actually more confident in the Republican camp than it was even in 2010 when there was that Tea Party wave election.
And I want to explain why very briefly, if I could, as I finish my answer here.
In 2010, there were a number of very weak Republican Senate candidates.
Maybe the candidates themselves weren't so bad, but they were brought down by controversies that the media were able to amplify.
In 2022, up until August, we were told that the same thing was happening, that Republicans had nominated a bunch of losery candidates in a lot of these Senate races.
And Democrats were actually spending millions of dollars on Republican primaries to make sure that the pro-Trump candidate, the MAGA Republican candidate, emerged as the victor because they thought these right-wing candidates, these crazies, these deplorables, would be easier for Democrats to beat.
But what has happened as voters have started to tune into these races is that they've looked at the Democratic candidates and the Democrats aren't so good.
And worse, they are tied to Joe Biden and his agenda.
There are no Democrats who've made any sort of real independent stands, aside from Kirsten Sinema in Arizona, who's not up for re-election this year.
Nobody has really tried to make a career out of objecting to or dissenting from the Biden agenda.
And so all of these Democrats, whether they're good or bad candidates, are tied to Joe Biden.
So the Republican candidates who were once thought to be weak or too extreme and so forth are now being looked at by voters as a better alternative than the woke, left-wing, incompetent, and Joe Biden-associated candidates that the Democratic Party has put up.
So the candidates' weaknesses are not the same potent argument for Democrats that they were in 2010.
That's also because of conservative media.
There's now a much greater ability to push back against some of these media narratives.
Carrie Lake, who's running for governor of Arizona, gave a masterclass in how to respond to some of this stuff.
She was being pestered by journalists about whether she believed Trump had actually won the 2020 election.
She then read out to these journalists a list of Democrats who had denied previous election results, including Hillary Clinton, who claimed that the 2016 election had been stolen.
So she put the journalists in their place, really, and showed the double standard they were using.
That's a new weapon that conservatives and Republicans have had thanks to the growth of conservative media like my own website, Breitbart News, and others.
Let me just copy the Joel Cooze here.
With absolute confidence, I think that Republicans are going to have a very good night on November 8th.
Wow.
You know what?
Know that Kerry Lake interaction you're referring to.
She's actually amazing.
She's so tough.
I just want to play for the viewers that interaction.
And she was ready for it.
And she's got a style.
Take a look at Carrie Lake in Arizona, just clapping back at the media.
Take a look.
If you're going to start throwing around terms like election denier, let's remember who the other election deniers were: Hillary Clinton and all the Democrats.
Next question.
So the question is, over the weekend, everybody, you took Google all over the world.
Your name was ringing everywhere.
And one of them, yes, ma'am, because I have the scale.
And one of them has, most of them were asking, is she an election denier?
Carrie Lake.
And that was like going around on all different cable news.
Why do you elaborate on this?
I'm actually shocked you asked that question, George.
Actually, Anthony, where's Anthony?
Once in a while.
Here, Anthony.
You know, I did a little, actually, Anthony, Anthony, how old are you?
20.
Are you a journalist?
No.
Well, you did better research than half these people.
Let's talk about election deniers.
Here's 150 examples of Democrats denying election results.
Oh, wow, look at this.
This is from Joe Biden's press secretary.
Reminder, Brian Kemp stole the gubernatorial election from Georgians and Stacey Abrams.
Democrats saying that.
Is that an election denier?
Oh, look at this.
Just heard Republican Ryan Costello said it would be difficult for Stacey Abrams to win because she lost her state bid, but yet she's still claiming she never lost.
This is Hillary Clinton.
Trump is an illegitimate president.
Is she an election denier?
This one says, was the 2016 election legitimate?
It now definitely is a question worth asking.
That's the Los Angeles Times.
So it's okay for Democrats to question elections, but it's not okay for Republicans.
It's a crock of BS.
Every one of you knows it.
We have our freedom of speech, and we're not going to relinquish it to a bunch of fake news propagandists.
If you want a copy of these, I'm sure that Anthony would help you get a copy and help you learn how to be journalists, but look it up.
It's been happening for a long time.
Since 2000, people have questioned the legitimacy of our elections.
And all we're asking is that in the future, we don't have that have to happen anymore.
When I'm governor, excuse me, when I'm governor, we're going to make sure we have honest elections.
We want the Democrats, the Independents, and the Republicans to all know that their vote counted.
We want fair, honest, and transparent elections, and we're going to deliver that for the people.
But just remember, guys, this is one page after Hillary Clinton says George W. Bush was selected president, not elected.
So let's start.
If you're going to start throwing around terms like election denier, let's remember who the other election deniers were, Hillary Clinton and all the Democrats.
It's not the first time she's done that.
I can't help myself.
I want to show you that time when a CNN reporter asked her for an interview and she referred to CNN Plus, which our Canadian viewers might not know.
That was a pay-per-view, paywalled site of CNN.
People thought they loved CNN so much they would pay to get special.
Anyhow, it was shut down.
You have to know that to understand the joke.
Here's Carrie Lake being very tough.
In fact, I felt bad for the CNN reporter who dared to ask her this question.
Take a look.
Hi, Yuri.
Hi.
Nice to see you.
You don't have a mask on anymore.
Give a loud while we're six feet apart.
Do you have a minute to chat?
I'll do an interview.
Okay.
As long as it airs on CNN Plus.
Does that still exist?
I didn't think so because the people don't like what you guys are peddling, which is propaganda.
Thank you.
That's Carrie Lake.
Do you think Kerry Lake has a shot?
And Blake Masters, I think he's also running in the same state, but for Senate.
How's Arizona looking?
Is that state look like it might go Republican?
I think Kerry Lake will win.
She's running against Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
And Katie Hobbs has two big problems.
One is that there have already been some issues with the ballots in this year's election.
Your job as Secretary of State at the state level is different from the job of Secretary of State at the national level.
Our Secretary of State runs the State Department, is responsible for American foreign policy.
But at the state level, the Secretary of State is responsible for, among other things, registering voters and administering elections.
So for Katie Hobbs to admit that there were thousands of ballots that were incorrectly printed while she's trying to convince those same voters who are getting those ballots that she ought to be their governor, that's a big problem.
The other problem is she's simply a far left-wing radical.
When Donald Trump was president, she referred to Trump supporters as neo-Nazis.
Not exactly a good look.
And then I guess there's a third problem she created for herself, which is that she's refusing to debate Kerry Lake.
She says that Kerry Lake is an election denier and blah, blah, blah.
So she doesn't deserve to be on a platform.
She doesn't deserve to be in a debate with her.
That does not go over well with voters in any state.
Now, as for the Senate race, you've got incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly, the former astronaut, defending his seat against Blake Masters.
Blake Masters is surging, and Mark Kelly has an outstanding resume, but since he's been in the Senate, he got there two years ago in the election to replace one of the outgoing senators.
I believe it was John McCain, the remainder of his term.
He's done nothing.
He's basically just been a party hack, go along to get along.
He suffers in contrast or by contrast to his Democratic colleague, Kirsten Sinema, who also represents Arizona in the Senate and who has used her position as a moderate as leverage to get concessions out of her party and to be the key vote in a number of Senate battles.
So she has actually been a moderate.
She's bucked her party and she has won goodies for the folks back home.
Whereas Mark Kelly has not done anything of note.
And his big problem, again, is Biden.
Arizona is a border state, and Blake Masters scored points in their recent debate when he pointed out that Mark Kelly had done nothing on the border and that Biden has allowed record numbers of migrants to come across the southern border.
We just saw the numbers released last week.
Well over 2 million migrants, a new record for the last fiscal year.
So Arizona is still a toss-up in the Senate.
I do think Kerry Lake's going to win for governor.
There are a number of other Republicans who will do very well in Arizona as well.
There's another point here that I want to illustrate.
There's been a fight within the Republican Party over the funding of Blake Masters.
And Mitch McConnell, who leads the Republicans in the Senate and has done so since 2006, he pulled out funding at one stage.
He's playing a lot of games in a lot of these races with his funding.
And he's backing his favorites, but he's abandoning those he doesn't like.
The most notable case is in Alaska where the Republican nominee, a woman named Kelly Chewbacca, is officially endorsed by the Republican Party.
She's running against incumbent Lisa Murkowski, who is nominally a Republican but ran on a write-in vote last time to save her seat, or actually in 2010.
But Murkowski has since been expelled by the Republican Party for all of the left-wing votes she has taken.
And locals are angry.
In fact, the Alaska Republican Party voted to censure Murkowski for and for and Mitch McConnell for backing Murkowski.
So McConnell is spending heavily on Murkowski against Chewaka, Chewbacca, again, the official Republican candidate.
And I think there may be a reckoning when all this is over because McConnell has tried to back these establishment-friendly candidates, but a number of the insurgent candidates are winning.
Take New Hampshire, for example.
There's a Republican running there, General Balduk.
He is a retired military officer, and he was endorsed by Trump.
And Democrats spent upwards of $40 million in his Republican primary to make sure that he was the one who emerged the victor from that primary because they thought that the Trump MAGA Republican would be easier to defeat in the general election.
Well, Balduk has been rising in the polls, but Mitch McConnell pulled all of the funding he controls for the National Republican Senate campaign out of New Hampshire.
Now, Balduk has tied the polls anyway.
He's now in a statistical dead heat with incumbent Democrat Maggie Hassan.
But Mitch McConnell has abandoned the state, so it's no thanks to McConnell.
If and when Balduck wins and he gets to Congress, he's not going to be beholden to McConnell.
We could see something of a revolt against McConnell with this new Senate class, whether or not Republicans are in control, because McConnell has made such a mess of these endorsements and this spending.
Plus, he's been there so long.
I mean, he's been in charge of his caucus for 16 years, as long as Nancy Pelosi, by the way, has been in charge of the Democrats.
I think you're going to see some rallying around alternative candidates to lead the Republican Party in the Senate, maybe even Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who's been outstanding in backing these candidates even when McConnell abandoned them.
So that's another dimension to what's happening in Arizona and around the country.
I want to be very conscious of your time.
Do you have time for a couple more questions or do you have to run?
I want to get back to issues because these individual races are fascinating.
And even though we're in Canada, we like to follow American political leaders.
But let me talk to you more about some themes.
I thought this was a fascinating ⁇ you mentioned Ron DeSantis versus Charlie Christ.
They had a debate earlier this week.
And unbelievably, Christ, who has been for lockdowns, tried to flip it around and claim that DeSantis was for lockdowns.
And the one thing Canadians know about Ron DeSantis is he was not for lockdowns.
He kept the schools open and he was not for forced vaccines.
I couldn't believe my eyes, but this tells me maybe lockdowns and lockdownism are polling so badly, Democrats are trying to gaslit us.
Here, take a quick look at this exchange in a Florida gubernatorial debate.
And I would also say this.
You mentioned, Liz, that people are flocking to Florida.
That would not have happened if Charlie Crist had his way.
He wrote me a letter in July of 2020 saying you need to shut down the state of Florida.
He said you need to force people to shelter in their own homes.
Charlie Crist's Lockdown Rhetoric00:05:42
That would have destroyed the state of Florida.
That would have caused our tourism industry to go into the toilet.
It would have locked out millions of kids from school.
I rejected Charlie Christ's lockdown letter.
I kept this state open and I kept this state free.
And we now have the biggest budget surplus in the history of Florida.
We have a 2.5% unemployment, second lowest on record.
And we just did the biggest tax cut in Florida history.
Governor, that's time.
Congressman, we have 30 seconds for rebuttal.
Thank you very much.
Well, Ron, that's rich.
You're the only governor in the history of Florida that's ever shut down our schools.
You're the only governor in the history of Florida that shut down our businesses.
I never did that as governor.
You're the one who's the shutdown guy.
We need to have somebody who is at the helm that understands it's important to listen to science, to do what's right, to utilize common sense.
You don't just shut down at the outset, and then when it's politically convenient for you, you want to open back up the store political and you lose the profit.
That's not right.
It's not as the people deserve.
Governor, you have 30 seconds.
So he opposed having kids in school.
His supporters sued me to keep the kids out of school in 2020.
And how critical was that decision?
We just got the nation's report card, the results from all 50 states.
Florida number three in fourth grade reading and number four in the country in fourth grade math.
And if you adjust that for demographics, we are number one in the country in both.
That would not have happened if we let Charlie Chris and his friends lock our kids out of school like they did in California and like they did in New York.
We did it right in Florida.
Well, Joel, is that just Chris trying to blunt DeSantis' strength?
Is that just trolling, as you said earlier?
Or are the Democrats really trying to pretend they were never for this lockdown to begin with?
You have to give credit to Charlie Crist.
He's not a very good member of Congress or governor.
He loses a lot, but he is an expert at this kind of political rhetoric.
And even though I think on substance, Ron DeSantis won the debate, Charlie Crist outperformed expectations.
He is very, very good at delivering these attack lines.
And you're absolutely right.
Lockdowns are so unpopular that if you associate any candidate with lockdowns, it hurts them.
What Charlie Crist was saying was true, which is that Ron DeSantis did lock down the state.
What he left out was that DeSantis locked it down for the 15 days that Donald Trump asked the entire country to lock down.
Remember, 15 days to slow the spread.
And then DeSantis promptly reopened the state, and he defended his decision to do so in that debate by saying he had to save jobs, he had to save businesses.
And that's why people are flocking to Florida because he did so.
But Charlie Crist points out correctly, although partially, that it was Ron DeSantis who locked down the state.
Well, yes, it was also Ron DeSantis who had to deal with a pandemic.
I mean, it's not like he just locked down the state for no reason.
This was a pandemic that policymakers, whether Republican or Democrat, were struggling to understand.
But once those 15 days were over and the spring breakers had been sent home, you remember those scenes of college kids partying on the beach when people thought that coronavirus, COVID-19 was an absolutely deadly disease like Ebola.
That shocked people to see kids pouring beer down each other's backsides and drinking.
You know, people just thought, this is crazy.
Why are these kids partying?
DeSantis kept the beaches open.
This is terrible.
But yes, it was effective for Charlie Crist to do that because if you associate anybody with lockdowns, even though they're anti-lockdown, it does hurt them.
I don't think it's going to be enough for Christ because Florida is full of voters now who understand that Ron DeSantis is the difference between prosperity and failure.
They look at California, they look at Texas, they hear from all the people arriving from New York and Illinois abandoning these blue states for Florida.
Florida feels like a free country.
When you go there, it does feel, certainly during the height of the pandemic, it did feel like the only part of America that was still America.
Everybody knows that.
Nobody's going to forget it.
Ron DeSantis is going to walk to an easy victory.
But what Charlie Crist is doing there is he's denting Ron DeSantis.
He's trying to give him some cuts and bruises so that if Ron DeSantis does decide to run for president, whether in 2024 or 2028, he has damaged goods.
And that was a theme that Christ kept coming back to in that gubernatorial debate.
He kept reminding voters that DeSantis is thinking about running for president.
And actually, one of the best points Christ made was when he asked DeSantis to say whether or not he would serve another full four years or whether he would run for president.
DeSantis didn't answer, partly because it was against the rules for Chris to ask him the question.
But Chris commented again and again, even though he was breaking the rules of the debate, Christ commented again and again on Ron DeSantis' failure to answer that question.
Now, that might be fine for Republicans.
There are many Republicans who would like to see Ron DeSantis run for president.
But Christ is basically trying to make Ron DeSantis out to be a self-interested politician.
And they want people to see him that way nationwide rather than what he has also been, which is the most effective governor in the entire country.
There's no one even close, maybe Greg Abbott of Texas.
There have been a couple of other good Republican governors, but there is nobody who has been as bold and as successful as Ron DeSantis has been in running his state and managing it through various crises over the last few years.
Chances Of Nuclear War Decrease00:12:02
Last question for you, foreign affairs.
And this is what scares me.
We see Russia's invasion of Ukraine using conventional weapons, not going as well for the Russians as perhaps they thought it might.
An enormous amount of American weapons, and according to the New York Times, CIA men in Kiev directing a lot of the Ukrainian military, a lot of intelligence.
And I think the Americans are, I think it really is a proxy war, which might be to America's advantage to grind down Russia's military, although I don't know what Ukrainians think about being the battleground.
But here's what scares the heck out of me, Joel: Vladimir Putin, former KGB agent, probably a murderer, certainly an authoritarian imperialist, a bully, he's got nukes.
And he's been talking vaguely about using them.
And Zelensky on the Ukrainian side is telling NATO to strike first.
And there's talk of retaking Crimea.
I am genuinely worried.
And then we see this video by, I think it was NBC.
The 101st Airborne has been dispatched to the Ukrainian border, and they're embedding journalists.
And there's a real drumbeat of war.
Here, take a quick look at this NBC patriotic homage to the first deployment of the 101st airborne since the Second World War.
At a Ford operating site, we watched as U.S. soldiers and Romanian troops pounded targets in a joint ground and air assault.
The tank rounds and artillery fire are real.
So is the enemy.
Meant to recreate the fight against Russian forces in Ukraine.
A message to Russia and NATO allies alike.
We're here.
The real meaning for me to have the American troops here is like if you were to have allies in Normandy before any enemy was there.
In all, roughly 4,700 soldiers of the 101st Screaming Eagles from Fort Campbell, Kentucky have been deployed to reinforce NATO's eastern flank.
You've had an opportunity to watch, observe, and possibly study the Russians.
What do you think of them so far?
So we're closely watching them.
So we're building objectives to practice against that replicate exactly what's going on in Ukraine.
We're the closest American unit to the fighting in Ukraine.
And what does that feel like?
What does that mean?
It keeps us on our toes, right?
Ready to fight tonight is a message that we've heard repeatedly.
It's not just about defending NATO territory, but if the fight escalates and NATO partners are under threat, they're fully prepared to cross over into Ukrainian territory if ordered to do so.
Joel, I'm worried that this may be the October or November surprise.
I'm worried that in a desperation to change the channel from the bad economy and wokeism, that there's going to be some general or someone in the White House who says we need some incident.
I'm not engaging in a conspiracy theory, but why would you move the 101st airborne to Ukraine now?
Why would you do that now?
I'm nervous about that because I'm against nuclear war.
And I think that Joe Biden is in a desperate political strait.
Am I too nervous about these things?
No, I think you're right to be nervous.
I do think, however, that if Biden tries to start or provoke a direct conflict with Russia or some kind of Russian use of chemical or nuclear weapons or anything like that, I think it will hurt Biden.
So I don't think it helps the Democrats to have Ukraine flare up beyond what it is right now.
I do think that you're going to see peace talks start finally after the midterm elections if Republicans win the House.
And the reason for that is that minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who would become the new speaker if Republicans win the House, and almost everybody thinks they're going to, except for Nancy Pelosi.
By the way, Nancy Pelosi predicted Democrats would win the House and she said, you can take it to the bank.
That's exactly what she said about the 2016 presidential election when she swore that Donald Trump would never be president.
You can take it to the bank.
So she has a very good record of being 100% wrong whenever she uses that phrase.
Republicans are going to win the House.
And Kevin McCarthy has said that when Republicans take over, the blank check for Ukraine ends.
That doesn't mean we're not going to support Ukraine.
It doesn't mean we're going to back away from Russia.
But it does mean that finally, and I'm a very hawkish person, okay?
I was very much in favor of the Bush administration, the Obama administration, the Trump administration doing whatever they could, and Obama often didn't, but doing whatever they could to help these former Soviet satellites.
Because I do think and did think, and I was warning since 2008 that Russia was a very serious threat.
Many of us were ignored during the six years in which Obama tried to appease Russia.
But nevertheless, the problem is we have not been demanding anything in return for our money.
We ought to have learned from Afghanistan where billions were stolen through corruption, that you have to have monitors to make sure the money is being properly spent.
You also have to have some commitment from the Ukrainians that there are going to be peace talks, that they are committed to negotiating.
Now, I understand they don't want to negotiate with enemy soldiers on their territory.
But on the other hand, they're asking the world to intervene in a way that could trigger a nuclear war.
Vladimir Zelensky, who I happen to admire in many ways, made crazy statements at the United Nations opening and has said things about punishing Russia, launching some kind of punitive military effort.
Nobody has an interest in that.
There are going to have to be conditions attached to this aid that require Ukraine to sit down at the table or at least show a willingness to reach a diplomatic solution because the military approach right now, while it may be necessary when Russia's on the outskirts of Kyiv, is now threatening, as you say, nuclear war.
It's also threatening the energy supply to Europe.
It's threatening the global economy.
It's threatening the supply of wheat and grain to the developing world.
There's been some agreement around shipments from Russia and Ukraine of grain and fertilizer, but who knows how long that'll last.
So this war could draw in the entire world, whether militarily or economically.
And the Ukrainians are completely intransigent.
And they are that way because the Biden administration is completely intransigent.
And the reason they're doing that is not just because of some kind of foreign policy calculation, but because of domestic politics.
Democrats decided suddenly when Donald Trump won the presidency that Russia was a major geopolitical rival.
I mean, remember in 2012, Obama was mocking Mitt Romney for talking about Russia as the number one geopolitical foe.
He said the 1980s called, they want their foreign policy back.
Well, just a couple years later, Russia seized Crimea.
And it was really this domestic political event that Democrats blamed on Russia that caused them to hate Russia with a blinding passion.
And I think they're actually after domestic political revenge rather than any kind of real-world calculation about how the world ought to work.
I don't think they've thought this through because even if they get everything they say they want, let's say Vladimir Putin is ousted.
Let's say Russia's military collapses.
Well, what does that do?
It just leaves China as the last player standing.
China then turns Russia into its northern colony and now is much stronger than ever.
It's sort of like the mistake George W. Bush made in Iraq.
If you destabilize Iraq, Iran becomes the dominant power in the region.
And the failure of the post-war occupation led that to happen.
So I don't think Democrats have thought this through.
When Republicans take the House, there is not going to be any more of this freewheeling spending on Ukraine.
They're not going to cut off funds.
They're not going to pull the plug out from this war effort.
They're not going to pull the rug out from under Zelensky, but they are going to demand that Americans get value for money and they're going to prevent Ukraine from dragging America and the rest of the world into this war.
I do think that that's what Vladimir Putin is waiting for.
I think he's likely to wait for it.
He knows he's going to get a better agreement by waiting for power to change hands.
Again, not because Republicans are pro-Russia, but because they are not doing what Democrats are doing, which is spending wildly, giving Ukraine whatever Ukraine asks for, not checking what the money is being spent on, and allowing Zelensky to make these crazy statements on the world stage, and some of them really are crazy, without any thought to the consequences.
I think things are going to settle down.
I think they're going to calm down a little bit.
It's not going to be to anybody's liking.
Russia will probably end up with some of that Ukrainian territory, unfortunately, and the world will have to reckon with the problem of allowing a dictator to take land through force.
But Putin's only going to get a fraction of what he wanted.
And Ukraine will have defended its sovereignty.
NATO will have expanded its boundaries.
It already has done so.
So I think that's where the war is basically going to end.
So a vote for the Republican Party is, in many ways, a vote to avoid nuclear war.
And that's not because Republicans are making better promises than Democrats on the subject of war and so forth.
It's just that they're not going to spend the money.
And when the money starts moving or stops moving, as Donald Trump would often say, that's when the real decisions get made.
So I think that, oddly enough, and strange as it may seem, maybe counterintuitive in some ways, I think that the chances of nuclear war are lower after November 8th than they are today.
Well, fascinating and terrifying at the same time.
I hope you mentioned ballot problems in Arizona.
That New York Times poll I went through the other day showed that a significant number of Americans are still very worried about the integrity of elections, including the one in less than two weeks.
So hopefully there won't be shenanigans there.
Joel Pollock, senior editor-at-large of Breitpart.com.
Great to spend some time with you.
Thanks for taking us through the interesting landscape.
Thank you.
Always good to be with you.
Yeah, Rangon.
It's a pleasure to have you.
Stay with us.
My final thoughts are next.
Boy, it's great to talk with Joel.
He knows so much about so many different districts.
I knew about some of the cases he was talking about, but not all of them.
I wish I had more time with him.
I think I would ask 100 more questions about oil and why Joe Biden just won't buy Canadian oil through the Keystone Excel pipeline, but went begging cap in hand to the Saudis and the Venezuelans.
I think this clip here should probably be shown by every Republican candidate until election day.
The economy, strong as hell?
I'm concerned about the rest of the world.
That makes sense.
Yes, our economy is dumb as hell.
Inflation is worldwide.
Worse off everywhere else it is in the United States.
So the problem is the lack of economic growth, sound policy in other countries, not so much time.
And that's how it's worldwide inflation.
It's consequential.
Yeah, I don't know if anybody believes that.
There's another trend that I think is evident in Florida and elsewhere, that of Republican Latinos.
None of this woke Latin X stuff.
But I saw a new poll.
Service Concerns in Ontario00:06:41
I don't know if you saw this.
Myra Flores, the Republican Hispanic candidate in Texas, is actually more popular amongst Latinos than Alexandria Oquezio-Cortez, the queen of woke.
So many interesting things going on.
We'll find out soon enough.
And you bet it absolutely does impact us here in Canada.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rubble World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
The most heinous things done to the truck convoy by the police in Ottawa was threatening to take their children from them.
And today I can tell you that based on documents submitted to the Public Order Emergency Commission, the directive to do this came directly out of the prime minister's office.
Now, for those of you who don't know, and I don't know how you couldn't, the convoy to Ottawa took place during the end of January and all the way through to the middle of February this year.
Thousands of truckers and their supporters converged on our nation's capital in Ottawa to protest for the end of remaining COVID restrictions, including what ignited it all, a cross-border vaccine mandate for long-haul truckers.
The largely peaceful protest, and police data supports this, was extinguished by the invocation of the War Measures Act 2.0 at the hands of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Truckers and their supporters were treated like common terrorists when their own government invoked a counter-terrorism law called the Emergencies Act to seize their bank accounts, to take their trucks, to seize their assets, their businesses, their insurance policies, their gasoline, their diesel, their firewood, their food, and their liberties.
Because the Emergencies Act gave the police extraordinary powers of search, seizure, and arrest.
And it was all for the crime of inconveniencing a few thousand people who live in downtown Ottawa.
And of course, most importantly, embarrassing the prime minister.
Right now in Ottawa, a fail-safe built into the Emergencies Act is unfolding for the world to see.
The government must hold an inquiry within one year of invoking the act to prove the necessity of it.
And And being loud, inconvenient, or over saying you're welcome in the nation's capital, well, those, they don't qualify.
You can see all of our coverage and support our independent journalism at truckercommission.com.
Now, let's get back to the kids.
According to the Ottawa police, being a blue-collar freedom lover who didn't want to be away from their kids for several weeks at a time, well, I guess that makes you a bad parent.
Ottawa interim police chief Steve Bell, as you saw off the top of this video, made that subtle threat to parents in a press conference, hinting that their children would be seized from them, from loving parents, good parents, for taking that journey to Ottawa to fight for their children's futures.
Now, on Monday at the Public Order Emergency Inquiry, the aforementioned Trucker Commission, it came out that former Chief Bell made the announcement to seize kids after taking the advice of Crisis Communications Grease Balls Navigator.
He didn't consult with the Children's Aid Society before planning to use them as enforcement tools of the state.
Just take a listen.
Police service gave where it was said to the media and in the public that OPS had concerns for the children of the protesters in Ottawa and OPS wanted to discuss enforcement with the Child Aid Society of Ontario.
You're aware that happened.
So you said the Ontario Police Service, I believe you mean the Ottawa Police Service.
Do you have a document we can reference with that media release or is that a clip?
It's a clip.
So I do recall, I don't specifically recall references to enforcement, but I do specifically recall the discussion around our concerns with children in the footprint, particularly as the situation there was becoming more volatile.
So I was the one who was liaising with the Children's Aid Society, and they were, that was something in gaps we identified, that was a gap that we identified.
I should have had conversations with them prior to that announcement being made.
But as a result of the announcement, we were able to work together to identify the proper mechanisms that we would use in the event that we did identify children who needed, do needed support within the red zone.
But the idea to start seizing kids actually came from the prime minister's office.
Navigator just bundled it up into a nice communication strategy.
Let me show you these documents.
It's on page seven of a summary of a call made on February 6th between the city of Ottawa, the federal government, and the provincial government of Ontario.
The call includes senior managers at the city of Ottawa, chief of police at the time, Peter Slowly, representatives from Public Safety Canada, Brenda Lucky, the RCMP commissioner, and other public safety and emergency officials.
And finally, Jodi Thomas, Justin Trudeau's national security advisor.
And I think it's important to note that she's a woman, despite her gender-neutral name, because as a woman, I find the suggestion she makes here absolutely despicable.
Again, I say it's on page seven of these notes.
I'll publish them for you so you can read them for yourself.
Don't take my word for it.
She says, as a parent, how is enforcement officials addressing the children in the trucks?
Looking at it from a child welfare perspective, exposure to nose, I think they mean noise here, and diesel fuel can be a major issue.
Can action be taken from the initial perspective?
This woman wanted the kids taken.
You see, the government had taken the fuel.
They were going to take bank accounts.
They were towing trucks.
And this is all after the government over the last two years had taken their jobs, their freedom of movement, their ability to go to school or go about with their faces unobscured, their ability to go to church and the numbers they wanted, their ability to visit their elderly and have whomever they wanted over into their homes during the holidays.
And then the government was going to take their kids when they finally stood up.
This Trucker Commission is exposing just how evil our government has been to its own citizens.