Ezra Levant and Ben Weingarten argue Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition—including Saudi Arabia’s $300M stake (2011) and unverified claims of Chinese espionage ties to TikTok—deserves scrutiny, yet Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals (10% cuts to an unnamed "big guy") remain uninvestigated. They link 2024 election risks to 2020’s permanent absentee ballot policies, citing bipartisan fraud warnings and Florida’s swift, transparent vote-counting under DeSantis, who may emerge as Trump’s successor despite establishment resistance. Biden’s cognitive concerns and Clinton’s election interference rhetoric hint at deeper GOP-Democratic fractures, while Doug Ford’s abrupt CUPE strike reversal raises doubts about his leadership consistency. [Automatically generated summary]
Today we're going to interview Ben Weingarten about the fact that they're still not done counting the votes in different states in America.
I think that's shocking.
But first, I want to talk about an even more shocking thing.
A reporter for Mike Bloomberg asking Joe Biden if he thinks Elon Musk should be investigated for a national security risk.
I'll show you the videotape.
It's incredible.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
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All right, thanks.
Here's today's show.
Tonight, a regime journalist asked Joe Biden to investigate Elon Musk for treason.
It's November 10th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Musk is a threat to U.S. national security.
And should the U.S. and with the tools you have investigate his joint acquisition of Twitter with foreign governments, which include the Saudis?
I think that Elon Musk's cooperation and or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at.
Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I'm not suggesting that.
I'm suggesting that it worth being looked at.
But that's all I'll say.
That's a reporter named Jenny Leonard.
She works for a news company called Bloomberg News, which is, of course, named after its owner, Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire oligarch who bought his way into being mayor of New York City and then tried to do the same with the presidency in 2020, but he failed.
Watch the video again.
I've seen enough press conferences to know when a question is set up, planned, orchestrated, choreographed.
Take a look.
Musk is a threat to U.S. national security.
And should the U.S. and with the tools you have investigate his joint acquisition of Twitter with foreign governments, which include the Saudis?
I think that Elon Musk's cooperation and or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at.
Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I'm not suggesting that.
I'm suggesting that it worth being looked at.
But that's all I'll say.
So Elon Musk bought Twitter, which is basically the town square for politicians and journalists.
And he made a tweet the other day endorsing the Republicans, which was a pretty tepid endorsement, by the way.
I don't think it moved a single vote.
I think it was just Musk's way of signaling that he was different from the rest of the Silicon Valley left-wing mafia.
He said, to independent-minded voters, shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties.
Therefore, I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the presidency is Democratic.
Boy, what a radical.
But actually, it is radical.
Other than Peter Thiel, can you name a single Silicon Valley tycoon who isn't a left-wing Democrat?
That's Musk's promise to Twitter users that it won't be biased to the left anymore, that it'll take a lighter touch at censoring people, that it won't pander to private interests and hidden hands.
I showed you the other day, how they had a whole team at Twitter dedicated to making the app compliant with the United Nations political agenda.
And they had a special portal for the FBI.
Remember, Twitter is the place that banned a sitting U.S. president because of mean tweets, but lets dictators from China and Iran publish their threats with impunity.
Musk has said he wants to ease up on the politics and the censorship and the private agendas.
Well, that can't be allowed.
Now, at the same time, Musk committed a terrible sin in the eyes of the regime.
And I mean that in the sense that President Eisenhower did when he coined the phrase the military-industrial complex.
Musk said that maybe getting into a proxy war with Russia isn't quite risk-free.
He said, if Russia is faced with the choice of losing Crimea or using battlefield nukes, they will choose the latter.
We've already sanctioned cut off Russia in every possible way.
So what more do they have left to lose?
If we nuke Russia back, they will nuke us, and then we have World War III.
Well, how dare you be against nuclear war, sir, you Putin apologists.
By the way, Elon Musk, who runs a satellite internet company called Starlink, has provided free internet satellite coverage to Ukraine to keep their internet working despite the disruption of their infrastructure by the Russian invasion.
And that's a donation, unlike arms dealers who are charging for their weapon sales.
I think Elon Musk is what he appears to be, a chatty public intellectual who likes to brainstorm in public.
He's not an enemy.
He's actually quite charitable, it seems, and he believes in freedom in an old-fashioned way, even though he's in industries that don't.
And I think he obviously supports Ukraine.
Well, that must be stopped.
You can't let Twitter, the marketplace for ideas of the modern age, you can't let it become uncensored and free.
Imagine if he lets Trump back on the platform and you can't have people questioning the war in Ukraine, even though I think he really is the most generous person in the world in terms of his outright donation to the Ukrainian cause.
Well, we can't have his free thinking.
Thus, the choreographed question about investigating him as really a foreign spy, that's the implication.
And that question, Musk is a threat to national security, including because of his connection with the Saudis in Twitter.
Well, fair enough.
I mean, here's a news story about the Saudis investing big time in Twitter.
This is from Forbes.
The headline is, billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed takes $300 million stake in Twitter.
I'll read a bit.
Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal has added Twitter to his long list of investments, putting $300 million into the social media company.
The billionaire investor announced the move in a statement saying the investment followed months of negotiation and due diligence.
Our investment in Twitter reaffirms our ability in identifying suitable opportunities to invest in promising high-growth businesses with a global impact, Al-Walid said in the statement.
It did not indicate the size of the prince's ownership stake in Twitter or the implied value of Twitter given the new investment.
Definitely worth investigating.
Except, can I point out the date of that article?
December 19th, 2011.
Saudi Arabia has been one of the biggest owners of Twitter for more than a decade.
In fact, when Elon Musk first made his bid to buy Twitter and take it private, the Saudis didn't want him.
Here's that same Prince Al-Waleed when Elon Musk first offered to buy it.
He said, I don't believe that the proposed offer by Elon Musk, $54.20, comes close to the intrinsic value of Twitter, given its growth prospects.
Being one of the largest and long-term shareholders of Twitter, Kingdom, that's his company, and I reject this offer.
And you can see the image appended to that tweet showing that the Saudis had actually upped their stake in Twitter.
And by the way, the Saudis used Twitter to spy on its users.
Here's one news story about it in The Guardian.
Just a few months ago, ex-Twitter employee found guilty of spying on Saudi dissidents.
Ahmed Abu Amo found to have given users personal information to Mohammed bin Salman's aide.
So for more than a decade, the Saudis have owned a huge chunk of Twitter and have used it to spy on users.
But no problem.
Twitter took out the real enemy, Donald Trump.
But now that Elon Musk wants free speech and endorses the Republicans, he's a national security risk, especially for his links to Saudi Arabia.
And Joe Biden says it's worth the government looking into.
And that Bloomberg reporter, eh?
What a question.
She never thought to ask that question about Saudi Arabia before, even though it's owned a huge chunk of Twitter for a decade.
I don't think she's ever asked that question about TikTok, has she?
TikTok, which is a huge app, especially for young people, is run by China as spyware on millions of Westerners, or Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant.
None of that concerns Bloomberg or Joe Biden.
Hey, I wonder if that has anything to do with the Biden family's financial deals with China.
This is a story from the Washington Post.
Hunter Biden, who has no discernible skill or experience, he landed huge business deals in China and Ukraine and Russia.
You know, his laptop, which has been verified as accurate by the mainstream media, talks about all these deals giving 10% to the big guy.
Gee, I wonder who that possibly could mean.
The whole world knows that Hunter Biden is for sale.
He's a story in the BBC.
You don't think every Chinese or Ukrainian or Russian oligarch knows the entry point into the U.S. administration?
For all the allegations of Donald Trump or his family somehow benefiting financially from his presidency, there was nothing like this.
Which perhaps explains why Chinese companies like TikTok are not subject to investigations, but Elon Musk's Twitter is.
Seriously, just today, the White House confirmed it.
Take a look at this video.
The president yesterday said that it should be, that Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter should be looked into as a potential threat to national security.
Can you offer anything about why?
And he also said there are many ways to look into that.
How would you look into that?
Well, you heard the president yesterday, and the CFIAS process is the normal process through which transactions that might have a national security nexus get reviewed.
And I will defer to the CPIS process rather than comment on it further from this prototype.
CFIAS stands for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.
It reviews national security threats emanating from business deals.
That's what they're talking about there.
Now, Cepheus hasn't investigated Hunter Biden because Hunter Biden is a good Democrat.
So why would they?
But who was that reporter who asked the setup question?
Like I say, she works for an oligarch named Mike Bloomberg.
He has some interesting views on China.
Let's just say that.
I wonder if it's related to the fact that he's made huge investments in China.
Take a listen to him.
I'm going to play a full clip.
This is just incredible.
Mike Bloomberg talking about China.
So the United States currently accounts for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
China accounts for roughly 30% of greenhouse gas emissions.
How do we, even if we get to net zero, how do you get China, India, and the other countries to be good children?
China is doing a lot.
Yes, they're still building a bunch of coal-fired power plants.
They're still burning coal.
Yes, they are.
But they are now moving plants away from the cities.
The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China, and they listen to the public.
When the public says, I can't breathe the air, Xi Jinping is not a dictator.
He has to satisfy his constituents, or he's not going to survive.
He's not a dictator?
No, he has to.
He has a constituency to answer to.
He doesn't have a vote.
He doesn't have a democracy.
He doesn't have to go to the bottom.
That doesn't mean he can survive if his advisers gave him...
Isn't the check on him just a revolution?
Yeah, I can have a revolution.
No government survives without the will of the majority of its people.
Okay?
It's just he has to deliver services.
The Chinese Communist Party looks at Russia and they look for where the Communist Party is, and they don't find it anymore.
And they don't want that to happen.
I mean, the idea that the Chinese government is responsive to sort of a democratic expression of fresh air.
Of course they are.
I mean, I'm looking at the people in Hong Kong.
Go back to the state.
I'm wondering whether they're trying to get away from the public.
Go back and reduce the days when you have big pollution in Beijing and they're doing something about it.
That's ridiculous.
The trouble is you can't overnight move cement plants and power plants just outside the city that are polluting the air and you have to have their product.
So some of it takes time.
And there's always in government, even governments that aren't what we would call a democracy, there's lots of stakeholders who have vested interests and they have an impact.
And that's why if you listen to the young millennials, let's go in and solve the problem overnight.
Yeah, that would be great if you didn't have to fund it and get it through legal things.
So Xi Jinping, the dictator of China, is not actually a dictator.
And again and again, he says this.
It isn't a gaffe.
It wasn't a misspeak.
He's adamant about it.
I mean, he wants more money.
He doesn't have enough.
And he'll say that Xi Jinping is a great Democrat, a great man of the people, because he's got big investments in China.
Huge shout out to that reporter, by the way.
Her name is Margaret Hoover, for pressing him on it.
Good for her.
You don't see a lot of journalism like that.
Now, why is this all relevant to us here in Canada?
Well, because most things in America are relevant to us because Twitter and Facebook and the rest of the big tech companies dominate Canada just as much as they dominate the U.S. and because Justin Trudeau is doing the same thing, accusing his political opponents of being in league with foreign enemies.
They've even accused us here at Rebel News of being Russian spies.
Why Is Election Confidence Diminishing?00:12:08
What a laugh.
I remember when the media and the Democrats said that Donald Trump was the fascist bully who was threatening free speech.
No, that was just them projecting.
It's Biden who's taking on all the trappings of a fascist leader.
And don't think Trudeau won't either, as his invocation of martial law proves.
Stay with us for more with Ben Weingarten.
Well, it's been two days since the U.S. midterm elections, and the mighty state of Florida, which I'd have to Google it, but I've got over 20 million souls there.
They counted all their votes in about an hour.
Same thing in Texas, another very large state.
But for some reason, states where Republican insurgents are challenging Democrat incumbents, well, two days into it, and they've only counted half or 70% of the ballots.
I'm not quite sure why.
If developing countries like Brazil can count an enormous number of votes, Brazil, I think it's the fourth most populous nation in the world, if they can do it in one night, why can't the United States?
Is it on purpose?
Is it to allow some wiggle room there for some jiggery pokery?
You're not even allowed to ask such a question.
You'll be called an election denier.
But it remains undeniable that in places like Nevada and Arizona, where you have Republican challengers that are on the hunt and are very close, looks like we won't have the result for days or maybe even a week.
Very bizarre to me.
But joining us now to help pick things over is our friend Benjamin Weingarten, the deputy editor of Real Clear Investigations, who joins us now.
Vice Guy, Ben, great to see you again.
I remember when we stayed up very late talking with you on election night 2020.
And I remember things were looking very promising, and then suddenly quirky things started to happen very late at night, and polls were delayed, and poll workers said they were going home and new tranches of votes were found.
And I have that same sinking feeling again when I look at the candidate for governor in Arizona, Kerry Lake, when I look across the map.
And there's some parts of America that are still counting.
And it just strikes me as hard to believe.
Yeah, there's a bit of deja vu all over again.
And I'm probably only marginally less bleary-eyed than I was during that 2020 election night and then the days that followed it.
But there's a reason, I think, that history to the present is rhyming in this instance.
And that is that many of the voting procedures, the rules and regulations that were temporarily put in under cover of Chinese coronavirus in 2020, oftentimes unduly in terms of not the legislatures making the laws that then impacted the process.
Those have gone from temporary and emergency to permanent and normalized.
And so consequently, what you see is that we don't have an election day and night in America anymore.
We have elections for weeks.
And we don't have in-person voting with identification overseen by election workers with then observers slash challengers there as well watching the whole process for the vast majority of voters.
Instead, we've essentially gone to an increasingly remote voting model.
And that is to what election officials attribute these slowdowns to, this collection of votes over a series of days and these various tranches of votes and the need to verify them and all manner of complications essentially layered into the system that we never had for pretty much the entirety of American history.
You talk about Florida, the fact that they were able to collect the votes and have results on election night the way it had pretty much always been here, with the exception of some very, very tight races historically.
Florida's population is over 20 million.
Arizona and Nevada combined have a population that's about half the size of Florida's.
So when you ask the question, you know, essentially, why can't Arizona and Nevada do what Florida does?
Well, Florida has gone out and had very restrictive, so-called restrictive, i.e. secure, election integrity-focused, robust election rules and regulations put on the books.
Arizona and Nevada have not.
And I would argue it's not a matter of can't.
It's not an inability to count the votes and have a result on election night.
It is a willingness.
And that raises the question of why would you endorse a system that leaves it to we're counting votes and we're finding new tranches, et cetera, and we're 60 or 70% through two days after the election and we don't know when we're going to be able to certify all these ballots.
Why is it that we have that system?
And the Democrats and apparently some GOP establishment members who didn't push back against those 2020 standards, apparently they're comfortable with a system that opens itself up to insecure, unsafe, non-secret ballots or at very minimum the potentiality for it.
And that raises all manner of questions about the confidence of elections.
You know, I tweeted something about this before.
The further you get from having elections on an election day in a booth, the less confidence you have in the vote.
The longer it takes to count the votes after election day, the less confidence you have in the outcomes.
And that's not the case that Republicans across this country made, even though it was on the ballot in certain instances.
And what you see right now, particularly in Arizona, is the remarkable instance where essentially the chief election officer in the state, Katie Hobbs, is on the ballot and winning through this process where the votes are being counted, Hobbes versus Wake.
And she's going to be responsible for certifying the vote at the end of the day.
There's a huge battle about all this across the country.
I wrote an in-depth report on this for real clear investigations that we put out on Election Day.
There's been a huge battle that's going on, but as Republicans and conservatives see it, they are way behind in terms of setting the rules of the game and being involved in the process, the election infrastructure.
And when it's dominated or appears to be dominated by one party, that obviously calls into question the outcomes.
You know, it's not by accident.
More than a decade ago, George Soros and his Open Society Foundations set up an attorneys general project.
And their goal was to put Attorneys General across America with the very explicit rule of amnesty, amnesty for immigration, amnesty for crimes.
And you see those radical Soros attorneys general across the country.
This is not a conspiracy theory.
This is one of their public projects.
They also set up a secretaries of state project.
And of course, the Secretary of State in Washington, that's what Americans call their foreign minister.
But the Secretaries of State on the state level, they're not foreign ministers.
They're in charge of running things like we've just described, running elections.
And it is not a conspiracy theory to say that these are run by operatives.
This was the campaign plan of George Soros, who was largely successful.
And I don't know.
I mean, let me take it in a different context.
Let's talk about other contexts, contests, like prosecuting someone for a crime.
You have a prosecution and you have a defense, and they both are vying very hard for the positive outcome.
And there's a concept in criminal law called the chain of custody of evidence.
Like if something is, if some piece of evidence, if a gun, if a bullet, if a knife, is seized, you have to know where that, and the debate will turn on that.
The prosecution will turn on that.
Well, was that gun or fingerprint known every second of the journey from when it was seized to when it appears in court?
They call that chain of custody.
Or was it allowed to be tampered with?
Was someone alone with the evidence?
That's enough to get a prosecution of someone thrown out.
Well, an election is a kind of trial where millions of voters are the jury.
But what happened, I mean, maybe I'm stretching the analogy a bit, but their ballots, really their verdict, that's not subject to the chain of custody.
When you say, I've just found thousands more ballots, or they were mailed in, or they weren't dated, but we found them.
I suppose it's a different thing that's subject to the chain of custody, but you'd have to be a fool to believe there's no jiggery pokery.
So much turns on it.
So much money, so much power, so much influence turns on it.
And if you simply say, well, I don't know when it will be done, and I don't know where we found these, who could possibly credit it as being accurate?
I find it appalling that this is happening in a first world country like America.
I agree with you.
And by the way, Jimmy Carter and Jameis Baker put together a bipartisan report on federal election reform back in 2005.
And what they said in that report is that absentee ballots have the most potential associated with them for fraud.
And it's just a matter of logic.
It's not to say that there's been evidence of widespread fraud in the range of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of votes, but that's in part because it's really hard to detect fraud.
So I don't know that we would even know the size, the scale, the scope of the fraud, absent whistleblowers or some other means of catching it.
But it's just by very nature of the system.
If the ballot is being delivered to someone's home, you don't know who they're interacting with.
You don't know who's filling it out.
You don't know if they're being coerced, persuaded, induced to vote a certain way.
And now we have this concept of ballot harvesting that's also been normalized in this country, where essentially ballots can be collected en masse in certain states by law and in other states illegally and cast.
You know, the ballots can be delivered and then taken and distributed.
So there's just all manner of opportunities, the potentiality for fraud.
And that undermines confidence in the system, a representative government.
And by the way, all of that aside, the fact of the matter is that even layering in whatever margin of fraud we might associate with the races, and I do think that this system, the further you get away from a system, in-person voting with photo identification, I mean, heck, I went to a comedy club in New York City two weeks ago, and I needed to show a photo ID.
And they were very strict about it.
And it's not like I'm a child.
I'm pretty sure they knew I was of age.
You didn't have to show a photo ID where I vote at my precinct in New Jersey.
You say, what's your name?
What's your address?
Okay, you're in the book.
Sign your signature here.
That's it.
The fact that a comedy club arguably has more security associated with it than elections, there's something very wrong there.
And it's like that across this country in far too many places.
Now, all that said, I think there's another aspect of this election worth talking about.
And Democrat dominance of the machine is a vital aspect of it.
Their get-out-the-vote operation is dominant.
A Biden administration executive order that has been too little focused upon, which called for every government agency to put resources into registering and getting voters to participate, potentially partnering with third-party groups, purportedly nonpartisan.
DeSantis vs. Trump00:14:34
But as we know from the Zuckerberg case, not the case in 2020 where you had private dollars to the tune of hundreds of millions funding election administration and oversight and management, often in concert with these third-party, putatively nonpartisan, but generally progressive groups who may have had the same thing again en masse in this election.
But the fact of the matter is, look, you had someone like John Fetterman in Pennsylvania who literally was beyond compromise.
So first we had Joe Biden, now we have John Fetterman.
It was exposed to the light of day that he couldn't form a coherent sentence in a debate.
That debate happened two weeks before the election when hundreds of thousands of early votes had already been cast.
But nevertheless, what does it say that Democrats can run someone who's wholly compromised and literally not there, really, mentally capable of doing the job of a senator, which is reading, thinking, persuading, debating, arguing, making a case for something?
And he still won.
And I make it even bigger.
Look, in this country, everything is directionally poor.
You had polls showing that 75% of people were very angry about or at least unhappy with the performance of Joe Biden and the Democrat Party more broadly by proxy here.
You have people who are, we are poorer, we are less secure.
And still, Democrats turned out tens of millions of people.
They crushed people's jobs.
They stunted the learning of their children.
They crippled us via gas prices.
They imposed all the tyrannical COVID-19 acts, decrees upon us.
The list goes on and on.
They still churned out tens of millions of people.
And I think, in one side of things, you have to credit Democrats for that.
That is how disciplined and how much of a machine they've built and how well they've conditioned people who are Democrats to vote Democrat.
By the same token, the fact that Republicans, we don't know what their message was, is a massive indictment.
I said to friends of mine and family before the election: you know, voters out there overwhelmingly rank inflation and the economy as kind of their number one concern.
Understandably so.
I could not tell any of them what the Republican message is on here's what we're going to do to make your life better in the face of this inflation or to counter the policies of the other side.
So there are multiple levels here of failure.
And I think on the Democrat side, success.
The one shining beacon of success on the Republican side, beyond knocking off the Driple C chair in New York, and I'd say the impressive performance of Lee Zeldin for governor in New York and others in New York, as well as JD Vance, for example, winning in Ohio.
And we'll see what happens with the Senate and gubernatorial races, Nevada, Arizona, et cetera, is obviously Florida, where Florida had a red wave of red waves.
It was a massive win, obviously, for Governor DeSantis and then all the way down ticket as well.
But then also a red wave relative to a country that did not have a red wave.
And I think that stands as an example of the right message, the right messenger.
And not only that, but the proof was in the pudding of the fact that Florida stood as a magnet for conservatives.
And in fact, many of these states, including New York, for example, you could say that potentially Lee Zeladin was the victim of Governor DeSantis' success with the New York transplants leaving New York, going down to Florida, and turning Florida into a bright red state.
You know, that's a great point.
Florida had the largest in-migration from other U.S. states in the Union, and California and New York had very high out-migration.
And who would move from a deep blue state, who would move from L.A. or New York to Florida?
Well, maybe it would be a Democrat, maybe, probably.
I mean, listen, it's not a political strike that determines if you're happy with the lockdown, but probably freedom-minded people went to the freedom refuge.
And so you're right.
Maybe some of that DeSantis win, like he won by, I think, a million and a half vote margin or something.
You take a million of that and sprinkle it around America, you probably tip a few places from blue to red.
You're right.
DeSantis was so successful.
And it was amazing to me to see that not only did he dominate Cuban Americans, but other Latinos.
He won, I think, 55% of the Puerto Rican vote, which I traditionally think of as Democrat voters.
And I have to say that the combination of his success, not just ideologically and in using the instruments of power, like I love watching him fight with Disney, a fight that I would have thought was impossible.
He just did it.
And then not only is he strong ideologically, but he's a winner.
And Donald Trump's central brand as president and in the private sector was I'm a winner.
I can do things.
I can get it done.
I can build this.
I can fix the Central Park skating rink.
I can have a hit TV show with top ratings.
I host the funnest things like the Miss America.
Like I'm a winner, winner, winner, winner.
I can win these trade deals.
And he was a winner.
And I think that offset the things about Trump that were sometimes irritating to people or caused his allies to sort of cringe.
Well, the guy was a winner.
But the winner this week was Ron DeSantis, and some of the Trump endorsed candidates did not win.
I think that some of the Donald Trump magnetism is gone.
I like the guy.
Don't get me wrong.
I think he was a great president.
I wish he was reelected in 2020.
But I think the case for DeSantis is stronger than ever.
Look at that winner-win.
Yeah, certainly there are many of those who are, I mean, almost timed to whatever the final point in election night was before people tuned in, declaring Ron DeSantis essentially the odds-on favorite for the nomination and wanting to discard Trump.
My personal view is that Donald Trump should never be underestimated.
Both of these figures bring tremendous capabilities to the table.
Donald Trump put on the map places and people that were never on the map for the way.
Yeah, of course, a huge ally of DeSantis and endorsed him for governor in Florida.
I think that the demise of Donald Trump and the rise of DeSantis that's being argued, I think we have to let the process play out and we have to let both of them make their cases to the American people.
Sort of the conventional wisdom around DeSantis essentially is that he's Trump, but younger, without the baggage, hyper-competent, and he can bring sort of all Trump's positives to the table and none of Trump's negatives to the tables.
On the other hand, Donald Trump, again, is someone who did lead a movement, who put places on the map that had never been on the map in recent memory, certainly, for Republicans, and who has an intense fan base and a large fan base that's unmatched, certainly in my lifetime and maybe in the political history of America.
And that shouldn't be discounted.
Still in polls prior to midterm election night, Trump had a significant advantage over DeSantis.
But obviously, this was a huge resounding victory for DeSantis.
And this helps in building the case that he is essentially, he is the next Trump.
He is the person to inherit that mantle.
I just think, I think it's way too early to call it one way or the other.
But absolutely, he's done an exceptional job in using executive power to put forth a policy program that's broadly appealing.
And that's one of the reasons why the left hates him so much.
And if he continues to do well, he'll be subjected to even more intense attacks, the likes of which we haven't seen before.
And it's going to be fascinating to see this dynamic play out.
In fact, we're going to see a proxy battle, presumably, between these two figures when it comes to the runoff election in Georgia on December 6th, where there's going to be cause for DeSantis to go to Georgia on Herschel Walker's behalf in this Senate contest against Raphael Warnock.
And there's going to be cause for Donald Trump to go down there as well.
It's going to be fascinating to see how it plays out.
It gives me pause.
The establishment members who are out there saying it's DeSantis' time now, I don't think he will be co-opted by that establishment, but there are people out there who have hated Donald Trump's guts forever, and they look for any excuse they can possibly use to say, now we have to discard him.
He's awful.
He's the worst.
It's time to move on.
That, you know, it concerns me that they're circling around here.
But that said, I think these are two formidable figures in their own right, each with remarkable track records of accomplishment and achievement.
And it's going to be fascinating.
It's going to be historic to see how this plays out to the extent there is a struggle essentially for the soul of the Republican Party between these two men.
Well, I'm a fan of both, and it is a tough dilemma.
I want to ask you about Joe Biden.
I think that the Democrats were putting on a brave face of unity until the midterms were done.
Very few local candidates invited Biden to campaign for them.
I mean, he wasn't exactly a charismatic figure.
Even during his own campaign, he really didn't draw crowds.
Now that the midterms are over, do you think the knives will come out to replace when even for those who like Joe Biden, and I don't know who such a person would be, just in terms of energy level and cognitive decline, the prospect of him running again in two years for a four-year term.
I mean, it's so unlikely.
And you've got to think that, I don't know, maybe Gavin Newsom wants to take a crack at it.
Kamala Harris, I think, is just an awful person, but she probably wants her chance.
I don't know.
There's got to be others championing it the bit.
Maybe Betto thinks he'll have better success nationally.
Do you think that the keepers of the Democratic Party, which are probably the New York Times and a few other institutions like that, do you think they're going to say, all right, Biden, time to have a graceful exit?
I remember my friend Joel Pollock said to me he did not think that Biden would run again in 2024.
Do you share the same view?
Well, first, let me just say I think Republicans everywhere would be cheering from the rooftops if Robert Francis O'Rourke, if the Democrats waste tens of millions of dollars on him yet again, or Stacey Abrams for that matter.
You rightly note that there was more than a whispering campaign of organs like the New York Times and the Washington Post before the election essentially calling Joe Biden a liar, pointing out, which we've known for decades, but they were actually saying it out loud.
They were talking about his myriad weaknesses and so-called gaffes, which are really him not being cognitively sound, self-evidently, I think.
But then he sort of got the last laugh on election night because there wasn't this shellacking in spite of the widespread disappointment with him as president.
He himself said, or at least aides around him have leaked, that he plans to run in 2024.
He was asked essentially by reporters, hand-picked, I believe, and telegraphed, do you plan to change on anything going forward, given where the polls were going into this race?
And he essentially said no.
Now that the people are learning about my agenda, it's going to be even more popular.
So he continues to put up a brave face and say essentially that I'm full speed ahead, whatever speed that is, and running.
I can't imagine that, to your point, and Newsom et al. won't be running against him in 2024.
I'm not sure what the benefit is for him to run in 2024.
He's made the case essentially before that if it's Trump, then he poses the best chance of anyone among the Democrats.
I don't know if that's true.
So my thought had always been that, especially if there had been a huge shellacking for Democrats this time around, that he would have been pushed out before 2024.
Now he would probably make the case, how could you do that?
Look, my agenda didn't kill us essentially in a historically awful environment and when the precedent for midterms is that the incumbent party gets crushed.
So I now am less convinced, I guess, that he won't be running.
That said, I could easily see him losing a primary if he is to be, if he is to throw his hat into that race in 2024.
I just don't see how Democrats could possibly feel confident with him at the helm.
But then again, all that said, imitation is the highest form of flattery.
And you talked about the fact that he literally ran a basement campaign in 2020.
And other Democrats mimicked that.
John Fetterman mimicked that this time around.
Katie Hobbs refused to debate Carrie Lake the entire time.
That seemed to work.
So if nothing else, Democrats have emulated him to some extent.
And progressives evidently view him as a useful vassal for putting forth their agenda with, I guess, a purportedly moderate, old white male face to it.
And I think they think it appears that that's effective.
Now, all that said, I expect things to markedly decline by any number of measures over the next two years.
And that's going to impact things as well.
And I don't think that the American people, by any stretch, resoundingly voted for high crime and being poorer in this election.
So those trends continue.
And we'll see if there are Republicans who actually run with a compelling vision to combat that going into 2024.
Give me 30 seconds.
Do you think Hillary Clinton wants to take another crack at things?
I absolutely do.
She's out there.
She cut a video right before the election for the progressive group, Indivisible, talking about how Republicans are already poised to try to steal the elections in 2024.
Why would she be out there right now?
Democrats would not want her out there right now, I think, is the face of the party that she is, I think tells you all that you need to know about Hillary's never-ending aspirations for power.
Wow, imagine a Trump versus Hillary second battle.
Thanks very much for bringing your smarts as you always do.
What a pleasure to catch up with you.
If you don't know Ben, you got to.
He's the deputy editor at Real Clear Investigations and the author of important books.
Ben, great to see you again.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks for having me.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters.
Brenda Witt says, how are a million votes not being counted?
Tabulators conveniently not working.
No paper.
Voters turned away.
One candidate won when he died last month.
Bags of ballots found in sewers.
Voter fraud.
Many strange things being investigated.
It is nuts.
I mean, just have a piece of paper, have a pencil.
And, you know, well, how do you add up tens of millions of votes?
Well, you don't have one person add them all up.
It's in every state, in every county, in every polling location.
You probably in a district, you could have 200 little areas where they're adding up a thousand votes.
You know, you can count a pile of a thousand votes in the course of an hour or two.
What's this whole business of taking weeks?
Marco Darko says, Ezra, as an American, I always enjoy your take and appreciate very much listening to your point of view.
I just found your channel yesterday and subscribed.
All of you, Rebel News, do a fantastic job.
Thanks again.
Well, that is very friendly.
I appreciate that.
We do have a couple of American reporters.
Got Jeremy LaFredo in New York and Katie Davis Court in Seattle.
But listen, we're very interested in America because it affects what happens in Canada a lot, too.
Richard Short says, Bernier is the only one who has had the courage to speak the truth, even though everyone knows it and is silent.
Well, I give Maxime Bernier that.
During the worst of the pandemic and the lockdowns, when Aaron O'Toole, the Conservatives, was silent, when all the provincial premiers were gung-ho with the lockdowns, Maxime Bernier spoke out.
So you've got to give him that.
And he's speaking at the Rebel Live conferences in Toronto and Calgary.
If you don't know about that, go to RebelNewsLive.com, RebelNewsLive.com.
We've got these great conventions coming up where we have about 15 speakers, each for about 20 minutes, just giving her all day.
Keynote speakers include Tamara Leach, the trucker hero.
So that's coming up November 19th in Toronto, November 26th in Calgary.
Go to RebelNewsLive.com.
All right, that's the show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
Apparently taking a strong stance and invoking the notwithstanding clause and declaring a strike illegal, that has all gone by the wayside in a matter of just 72 hours.
It's not on brand anymore, as Doug Ford would say.
And you know, when it comes to being on brand, I think we have seen with the passage of these last few days what brand Doug Ford represents.
That's right, Doug.
Stick this in your cherry cheesecake.
David Menzies for Rebel News here at Queen's Park in Toronto.
And so it is that the government's war with QP, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.
You see, folks, on Monday, Doug Ford, well, he bent the knee.
You know, folks, I just, I don't want to fight.
I just want the kids in school.
That's what I want to do.
You know, I'm past the stage of fighting and it's not worth it.
People don't want it.
Parents don't want it.
We thought when he invoked the notwithstanding clause, this was going to be Doug Ford's 1981 Ronald Reagan moment.
You remember back in 81, Ronald Reagan told more than 11,000 air traffic controllers that if you don't get back to work from your strike, you're fired.
We cannot compare labor management relations in the private sector with government.
Government cannot close down the assembly line.
It has to provide without interruption the protective services which are government's reason for being.
It was in recognition of this that the Congress passed a law forbidding strikes by government employees against the public safety.
Let me read the solemn oath taken by each of these employees in the sworn affidavit when they accepted their jobs.
I am not participating in any strike against the government of the United States or any agency thereof, and I will not so participate while an employee of the government of the United States or any agency thereof.
It is for this reason that I must tell those who fail to report for duty this morning, they are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.
Well, they thought Reagan was bluffing.
He wasn't.
He fired them.
And sure, for that summer, there was all kinds of delays at airports, but eventually new air traffic controllers were hired.
But imagine that from the moment the notwithstanding clause was invoked on Friday, something changed by Monday.
And on Monday, that's when Ford announced he didn't want to fight anymore.
Those were his words, folks, that he was bending the knee, that he didn't, that he wanted QP to end their strike, and in return, the government would revoke the notwithstanding clause.
And it's an outrage because who speaks for Ontarians?
And by the way, just take a look at the people that Doug Ford is acquiescing to.
Cameraman Lincoln Jay and I came to Queen's Park on Friday when there was a big illegal strike on the grounds.
Just check out some of the comments those QP scholars had to say.
Why do you say that?
Why do you say that?
Because you're f ⁇ ing right-wing trolls.
You're f ⁇ ing down.
Hi, sir.
I'm just trying to make sense of your site.
Oh, really?
Don't talk to fascists.
Who would the fascists be here?
You, Rebel Dude.
Cupie, that's the plant-eating dinosaur, eh?
Yeah.
You know, they're far right.
Oh, what does far-right mean, sir?
That's all, but turn the map upside down, and which way is up?
Okay, just letting you know.
There's been an intervention by Mr. Dress Up near sign here.
What is eco-social to your scab reactionary fascistic media?
So get lost.
How am I a scab by doing journalism on the lawns of Queen's Park, sir?
Yeah, that's it.
We're done.
How's it going?
I said, oh, that's not very ladylike.
You can have nothing.
Go away.
That's not very communist of you.
I thought it's all about sharing the wealth.
Just go away.
Can you say that?
Yeah, f ⁇ you, you're right-wing ass.
I don't think he understood the question.
Yeah, I did.
I'm going to fing you.
Why?
Why, Elijah?
I f ⁇ ed you.
Yeah, so in my book, that might have been the greatest advertisement for homeschooling ever broadcast.
And yet, here we are, just 72 hours later, and Doug Ford has called it quit.
So what was it?
Was it public perception, perhaps?
Was he getting some blowback?
And that made him quit the war against CUPE?
Or do you think, folks, it was his new best boyfriend?
I'm talking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who Doug Ford stands shoulder to shoulder with.
Was it Doug Ford?
Was it rather Prime Minister Trudeau?
Yeah, I know it's hard to tell them apart these days.
Was it Prime Minister Trudeau admonishing Doug Ford for invoking the notwithstanding clause, even though, of course, the Prime Minister invoked his heaviest hammer in the toolbox, that being the Emergencies Act back in February when it came to dismantling the Freedom Convoy?
I think it is.
I think Doug Ford thrives on getting the approval of his new best friend.
And that is what made him revoke the notwithstanding clause.
And when asked in a press conference how the strike was going to get resolved, because CUPE still want more pay, of course, and it's always for the kids, mind you.
Doug Ford said he wasn't privy to give that information.
Imagine if the province was a publicly traded corporation, folks, and there was some crisis.
Could you imagine the board of directors telling its shareholders, no, we can't tell you anything about what's going on behind the scenes.
That's private.
No, it's not.
This is a public issue.
It's a public union.
These are public schools.
The Ford PCs should be transparent.
But apparently taking a strong stance and invoking the notwithstanding clause and declaring a strike illegal, that has all gone by the wayside in a matter of just 72 hours.
It's not on brand anymore, as Doug Ford would say.
And you know, when it comes to being on brand, I think we have seen with the passage of these last few days what brand Doug Ford represents.