Ezra Levant reviews 2022’s pivotal moments—400M views from the trucker convoy, Rebel News’ legal battles (2,100+ cases), and global reporting like El Paso’s migrant crisis, where 80,000 crossed since August despite Title 42, with 70% of children unaccounted for. He contrasts mainstream media’s silence with Rebel’s crowdfunded, uncensored approach, now at 50 staff, and warns of 2023’s authoritarian threats, from Trudeau’s election gambits to Canada’s "woke" policies banning teachers like Busty Lemieux. Levant vows to keep exposing systemic failures while celebrating Rebel News’ eight-year fight against censorship, tech demonetization, and bureaucratic suppression—proving independent media remains essential in an era of state-backed narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
It's December 22nd, and this is the Azra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious thug.
Well, hello, and it's almost Christmas.
It's incredible.
It's already Chanuka.
The two holidays are going to overlap this year's, which they sometimes do.
You probably have noticed that we always publish this show on statutory holidays and over Christmas.
We typically pre-record a show.
We do a long-form interview or something that's a little bit more evergreen and won't go stale immediately.
We want to talk about general themes, but we like to do the show all year round.
And the company's taking a bit of a break over Christmas.
It's going to be my first time flying on a family vacation in three years, actually.
Going to take a week off, but doing a bunch of shows in advance, those long-form interviews.
We've pre-recorded some great ones.
An amazing conversation about fossil fuel energy with Alex Epstein, who's so good.
Harmeet Dylan, you probably recognize her from TV.
She's that fighting Republican lawyer.
She was helping with the recount in Arizona.
Going to talk about the truckers, of course, going to talk about freedom.
Going to talk about lawyers for freedom.
We've got some amazing long-form interviews for you next week.
I'm proud of them.
And hopefully you'll have a chance to sit back with a cup of coffee or tea and watch those over your Christmas break.
There are exciting things afoot here at Rebel News.
A whole bunch of interesting and great things happen all at once.
I don't know what you thought about our RussianReports.com.
That was our special compilation page dedicated to Jeremy Lofredo's trip to Moscow.
Now, he's safely out of that country.
So we can tell you a few things we did to help with his security.
One of the things is we actually waited till he was safe and out of the country before we published them because we did not want to alert Russian authorities that he was there on the ground until he was beyond their reach.
We also made special arrangements in advance with a criminal lawyer in Moscow in case things went sideways.
And we did one or two things that we're going to keep in our back pocket in case we have to do it again.
Very interesting reports from Jeremy.
And it's not quite as black and white this war with Ukraine as either side's media would suggest.
I thought his reports were fairly nuanced.
And most importantly, they just followed the facts.
So that was Jeremy in Moscow.
And we'll talk to her in a moment later today.
But while Jeremy is interested in the border between Russia and Ukraine, Katie Daviscourt, one of our newest reporters based in Seattle, is interested in the border between Texas and Mexico.
She is on a mission.
We call it rebelborderreports.com.
That's just an amazing story of hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing the border.
Imagine Wroxham Road times 10.
We have some other journeys coming up.
I will be going to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in less than a month.
Now, I'm not going to participate, obviously.
I'm going there to do journalism, to investigate, to see if I can pin down people who are there, including Canadians.
What are they doing there?
Why are they making policies for the whole world outside of our proper political legislatures?
Why do the oligarchs get to scheme and plan our lives away without ordinary people?
And I don't know, it was a bit of a personal highlight for me, as you saw in yesterday's show, an interview with the Premier of Alberta.
She's been on the job only a couple of months.
I pressed her on questions I thought rebels would want to hear, not just what the standard media party questions are, but I asked her a lot about freedom, if you recall.
Now, we work for our own conscience and we work for your support.
But it's nice when our rebel news journalism is recognized by leaders in the industry as outstanding.
And in just the last week, Jeremy LaFredo was on the largest cable show in America, Tucker Carlson tonight.
Our friend Sheila Gonrid, our chief reporter, was on both the Laura Ingram show on Fox and Glenn Beck's show talking about assisted suicide in Canada, including the disgraceful government of Canada suggesting to veterans that they kill themselves.
David Menzies was on Fox talking about Busty Lemieux, that insane teacher in Ontario with the enormous prosthetic chest, just crazy, crazy stuff.
I want to show you just a little clip of each, not the whole thing, but to show you our journalists on the big stage.
Here's a quick clip of Jeremy and Tucker Carlson.
Coming on, I'm certain you will be attacked as a tool of Putin, but let's ignore that and get to what you saw there.
It looked from the grocery store that sanctions are not hurting Moscow too badly.
Yeah, I was on my way to Russia and I saw the New York Times said that there's Soviet era shortages.
The Washington Post said something along the lines of that there's essential goods scarcity.
Foreign policy, they put out a report that said that the economy in Russia is in a black hole that's, you know, of proportion that's never been seen before.
And so, you know, I was a little nervous going there.
And, you know, I went to rural areas outside of Moscow and I went to grocery stores like you just saw.
And, you know, things were cheap.
And, you know, they had more things than the Whole Foods here in New York City.
And, you know, what is the goal?
What is the goal of these sanctions?
The goal is obviously to cause unrest, shortages, make people unhappy with the government.
Hopefully people will take to the streets.
And at the end of the day, we want regime change in Russia.
We want a different government.
We won't show you the whole thing.
I just want to give you a teaser.
Here is Sheila just doing great work, shining a light of scrutiny on the, I hate to say the word medical assistance in dying.
It's euthanasia, people.
It's doctor suicide.
It's awful.
Here's Sheila.
John Reed, editor-in-chief of Rebel News.
She's running a national campaign to force the government to end this practice.
Sheila, it seems to me that they're selling assisted suicide with a very sophisticated, fun, kind of adventurous message.
What the heck is going on up north?
Laura, I just want to thank you so much for your interest in this.
Unlike the corporate media here in Canada that's been tainted by Justin Trudeau's bailouts at Rebel News, we're one of the few independent outlets that can still speak about these issues freely, but also with the sense of horror the issue rightly deserves.
We see companies do this all the time.
We see them align themselves with government on issues like climate change and BLM and reproductive issues.
They go woke.
This is what it means to be woke in Canada now.
So why wouldn't corporations align themselves with this next anti-human, anti-life thing?
I just want to point out to you how extreme Canada is on this issue.
Justin Trudeau's government has removed the 10-day wait time from when you ask for medical assistance and suicide and when you receive it.
And you don't have to do it in writing.
You can just verbally ask the state to kill you.
To put this all into context, we had about 16,000 deaths in Canada related to COVID.
Depends on how you count that, of COVID or with COVID, but it was 16,000 deaths.
We know that there were 10,000 requests in writing for medically assisted suicide, and that doesn't take into account the deaths that occurred because somebody just verbally asked for it and received it on the very day that they asked for it.
I think it was his first time on a big American channel, but David Menzies, he owns that story of the teacher with the prosthetic chest.
Here's David and Tucker having a chuckle.
It didn't seem like they got the joke when they sent the cop over to you.
Like they didn't think it was funny.
Oh, no, indeed, Tucker, and a pleasure to be with you.
Thank you so much for having me.
This is the thing about the Uber woke Halton District School Board, Tucker, is that they're all down with radical transgenderism, including a teacher who dresses up as a grotesque caricature of a woman as if he's a drag queen, but only for the kids in shop class to see that, not when it comes to their school board meeting.
So when I came there, what happened after that is we received a letter and Tucker for asking insensitive questions.
I am banned for life at the Halton District School Board head office, all of its properties and all of its schools.
I will be immediately arrested with trespass.
They've said that in writing, so you're absolutely right.
Canada is devolving into a police state with every passing week, my friend.
So it's okay to wag the pathetic breast in the face of children in your classroom, but it's not okay to show up wearing them to a school board meeting.
Do they explain why?
Oh, no, they don't explain.
They don't communicate.
They know better.
And we'll talk to her more today.
But Katie Daviscourt, I think this is her debut on Tucker Carlson with her reports from the El Paso border.
You know, 90% of our journalists, obviously, are here in Canada, but we do have a couple of Americans, and it's interesting that their work is getting acknowledged.
Were those pictures from the airport?
I mean, would any person who landed at El Paso airport have seen that?
Why is this the first time we are seeing this?
I'm just amazed that no one said anything until you.
Right, Shucker.
Tucker, thank you so much for having me on.
Now, I would tell you right now that it's not going to make much of a difference if Title 42 is halted or not.
There is a clear invasion happening in El Paso, even with Title 42 in place.
And it is shocking.
I hopped off the plane at the El Paso airport, made my way to Baggage Cream, and that's when I noticed more than 100 illegal immigrants sleeping on the ground with Red Cross blankets.
Now, the facilities here in El Paso, they are all at max capacity.
They cannot hold any more people.
And so they are letting them out onto the street, sleeping in freezing conditions with their babies, whole families.
This is a humanitarian crisis.
So the airport has turned a portion of the facility into a makeshift holding center.
And so I went around and I asked the people where they're from.
They told me the Dominican Republic, Peru, Colombia.
But what I found most shocking was one of them said to me, who gave you the permission to film us?
And I thought to myself, who gave you guys the permission to enter into the United States illegally, which is a crime.
But to them, to them, the borders are open.
The Biden administration, they need to be held accountable for dereliction and crimes against the American people.
And where's NBC News in the New York Times and the Washington Post?
Why is it left to a Canadian news site to bring this information to Americans?
I just, I don't understand.
I don't want to use the word cover-up, but I don't know another word to describe what we're seeing.
And I'm grateful to you for showing us what's actually happening.
Thank you.
Well, it's the year end.
So besides the weakness of standard, it's a good time to review 2022 as a whole.
A year ago, I remember December of 2021, felt like there wasn't a lot of hope.
There was a flight ban.
I, like millions of Canadians, was not allowed on planes and trains and boats in my own country, the second largest country in the world.
Vaccine passports turned ordinary citizens into little SS officers.
Your papers!
Show your papers!
Police brutality had just become acceptable, the norm.
So-called conservatives like Jason Kenney and Aaron O'Toole and Doug Ford were enforcing hardcore lockdowns and violating civil liberties.
There was no Ron DeSantis up here, was there?
And then in the midst of all this, Trudeau was re-elected and not just re-elected, reelected specifically on a platform of demonizing and taking away equality and showing intolerance towards those who made a different medical choice.
It was the worst campaign, and he won and felt vindicated.
It was dark times.
I remember our Christmas party, if you could call it like that, last year.
It felt like an underground resistance.
We found a restaurant in the greater Toronto area, a little conference center, that agreed to allow us to have a Christmas party without vaccine passports.
And I had a heart-to-heart with the owner.
He said, well, I'm going to ask.
So I can say I asked, but you can answer.
No matter what you answer, you'll be allowed in.
There were lots of little acts of kindness like that.
It was weird.
It was like we were, I don't know, I won't say it was like we were hiding from the Nazis because, of course, the consequences to us was not a death camp, but to hide from the authorities, to hide from snitching neighbors.
That's what life was like just 12 months ago.
I love the feeling here at Rebel News.
It felt like we were fighting all battles at once.
It was, I imagine how it must have felt a little bit in the Battle of Britain.
Remember that?
Early in the war when a handful of British Spitfire fighter pilots staved off the Luftwaffe and probably saved the UK, what Churchill said never had so much been owed by so many to so few.
I'm not saying that, again, I'm not comparing what we did to the heroism and the physical courage of the Battle of Britain, but the odds, the long odds, fighting against the whole world and the tremendous solidarity and team spirit that came from that, that was exhilarating, even though we felt like we were surrounded.
It was amazing to watch our young team come together.
Alexa Lavoie and Lincoln Jay, two of our new reporters at the time, they worked 23 days straight in Ottawa covering the trucker convoy.
Sid Fizzard and Kian Simoni went down to the Coutts blockade, were embedded with the truckers for nine days straight, and they didn't pack their clothes on the way down.
They just went there to cover the story for one night and end up staying for nine days.
Rebel News' Heroic Moments00:14:44
Why would people work like that?
Well, like I say, they knew it was a heroic moment.
They knew history was in the making.
And I think that Rebel News helped to set Canada free.
You know, there's that old Zen saying, if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear, does it make a sound?
Well, if you have a trucker convoy, if you have people standing up for freedom, but the only reports of it are filtered through the haters and the media party and the propagandists at the CBC who claim that these are foreign-funded Vladimir Putin organized bad actors with disinformation.
My point is you could have had a wonderful trucker convoy, but if the coverage of it had been directed by Trudeau and his henchmen, it would have been a very different outcome than if there were citizen journalists, largely from Rebel News.
There were a couple of others there too.
I'll give credit to people like Andrew Lawton and Rupa Subramania and Viva Fry to name a few.
But Rebel News dominated the coverage, as you know.
In the month of February, we had 400 million views and impressions of our rebel news stories, more than in the entire previous year combined.
You've heard me tell you that statistic before.
It was a year's worth of eyeballs in one month.
And the reason is we were telling the truth about the freedom movement, and they won.
They won.
The fever broke.
People realized that not everyone was in support of things.
Now we're back to freedom.
Here we are in December 2022.
How did it happen?
Well, it happened because of the truckers.
It was an organic, grassroots, populist uprising.
The elites did not help us.
They were all in lockstep together.
Conservatives are taking back their parties, at least in the province of Alberta and federally, not yet in Ontario, although I hope that comes.
Rebel News had a role in all of these things.
We also, if you recall, created the Democracy Fund in 2021, and it really found its stride in 2022.
Right now, the Democracy Fund has eight legal staff, four lawyers, and four paralegals.
Just a reminder, the Democracy Fund came out of an idea that Rebel News started called Fight the Fines, when we helped ordinary people fight tickets and charges and even criminal cases.
Our very first client was Arthur Pavlovsky, the Christian pastor from Calgary.
That was client number one.
There are now more than 2,100 cases across Canada, and it grew to be such a big project, we spun it off.
It's no longer run by Rebel News, but rather by an independent CRA-compliant charity with its own board of directors, its own staff, its own budget.
It's frankly one of the greatest things I've ever been involved with.
Of course, I'm a volunteer over there.
I work at the Rebel News side.
The Democracy Fund didn't just help 2,100 people, including spectacular cases like Arthur Pavlovsky's.
It received intervener status in various courts of law, both in Windsor, for example, in one of the trucker cases, and at the Emergencies Act inquiry in Ottawa.
Of course, Rebel News covered that inquiry very intensively with our pop-up studio, Airbnb, in the city of Ottawa, where we were for more than a month, giving intensive day-by-day coverage.
In 2022, Rebel News doubled in size.
It settled in at around 50 staff.
That's pretty big.
And the team was forged in the battle.
That feeling of solidarity for being working on the streets of Ottawa in the biting cold for 23 days in a row.
Even those awful moments when our staff was attacked physically in a way that forged a team, a team of principled non-conformists.
What do I mean by that?
I think the number one characteristic for becoming a rebel is not did you get a journalism degree or even do you have a certain ideology is are you willing To tell the other side of the story, even if the whole world is shouting at you to comply with them.
Can you have enough confidence in yourself and your conscience to know that you may be right, even if the whole world tells you you're wrong?
It's like Kipling said in his famous poem, If, Can You Keep Your Mind While Those Around You Are Losing Theirs?
That's 2022.
What's 2023 looking like?
It's just a week or so away.
Well, it's always tough to predict, but I think that there is trouble on the horizon.
I think the same forces of authoritarianism that were on the march with the lockdowns and then with the Emergencies Act, I think they're coming back.
Why wouldn't they?
They were vindicated in their own minds.
I think that the Alberta election will be an early test of freedom.
I am worried, I'm genuinely worried that Rachel Notley, the NDP premier who so devastated that province, that she'll be back.
And I think that Danielle Smith, who I interviewed just this week, I think she has a lot of strong suits and she's a good communicator.
But I am worried that Rachel Notley and more importantly, the media party want to dethrone Smith and they just might.
I think it's possible that we have another federal election in 2023.
Remember, we had one in 2019 and then one in 2021.
So why wouldn't there be one in 2023?
And Justin Trudeau could engineer it.
Of course, Jagmeet Singer, the NDP doesn't want one, but it may be in Trudeau's interest to do so.
I think there's going to be a possible federal election.
And the media party, which is the most powerful political party in the country, well, they are worse than ever.
I mean, just remember the other week, there was this media party conference in Ottawa where reporters were calling for police to silence their online critics.
Here's Rachel Gilmore and other media party insiders demanding that the cops arrest people who do mean tweets to them.
We're not in a position to protect our journalists from this hate.
And that's why I think the conversation has to be a bigger conversation.
It has to be something that's talked about at a policy level, at a law enforcement level.
You know, we don't have the tools to actually, you know, go after these people.
It was gross how the public safety minister was there nodding along the whole time.
Of course, that's just individual journalists wanting their personal enemies silenced.
But Justin Trudeau has several censorship bills marching through parliament very quickly that will certainly become law in 2023.
Censorship bills so bad that Facebook is even talking about turning off its news department, stopping all news stories because the rules that Trudeau is foisting on them are so onerous.
Twitter has said that the rules that Trudeau is contemplating are the kind of rules that you would expect to see in North Korea.
And that's what Twitter said even before Elon Musk bought the company.
I think that censorship is going to be the big battle of 2023.
And remember what I said about Rebel News covering the Trucker Convoy with 400 million views and impressions.
If you were Justin Trudeau and you already control 99% of the newspapers, radio stations, TV companies, and the digital news sites, the one or two that you don't control, that's all you see.
You can't get them out of your mind because, you know, it's like having a dam with a single hole in it.
The hole is all you think about.
And if there is a hole in the dam, the water gets through.
And that's my point.
As long as there is one media company in Canada that is telling the truth, you can have all the TV stations and the Global Mail and the Toronto Star telling the Trudeau line if there's an alternative.
So Trudeau wants to snuff out those handful of independent journalists left.
And we are the biggest and the most influential of the independent journalists.
He is coming to kill us.
Well, he'll face every ounce of ingenuity and fight we have.
I promise you, we will not go easily.
Rebel News is traveling again, not for vacations, but for work.
You probably saw Drea Humphrey, Alexa Lavois, and Tamara Ugolini, all of whom joined us during the pandemic, recently in Berlin at the World Health Summit.
I mentioned that I'm going to the World Economic Forum in Davos looking for Klaus Schwab.
I'll be there with our chief reporter, Sheila Gunreid, the great Avi Amini from down under.
So we are doing some judicious traveling around the world.
As you saw, Katie Davis Court is down in El Paso, and Jeremy Lafredo just got back from Moscow.
In all these cases, we travel economy style.
We stay in Airbnbs or affordable hotels.
We are not going fancy.
And most importantly, even if we're in interesting places from a tourism point of view, we are not there for tourism.
As you can see, Katie is looking at the migrants crossing the border.
Jeremy was interviewing people on the streets of Moscow.
And when we are in Davos, we have one mission, and that is to hold those oligarchs to account.
It's exciting, that's for sure, but I believe it's important journalism.
And when was the last time you saw a CBC journalist or a Global Mail journalist go to Davos to actually ask a tough question?
So how do we measure success here at Rebel News?
Well, I told you one way already, by measuring the number of views and impressions that our stories get.
And in February alone, we had 400 million.
Many of those were around the world.
We were showing the world what was going on in Canada because they weren't getting that information from CNN or the CBC.
We don't just tell stories.
Once in a while, that can feel a bit voyeuristic.
You know what I mean?
If you're just watching something but not doing something about it.
I remember the moment I called up Arthur Pavlovsky when I saw him being abused by police for feeding the homeless.
And some switch was flipped in my mind.
And I moved from being a voyeur saying, look at this and showing the picture to saying we bloody well have to do something.
And I called up Arthur and he agreed to accept our legal help.
That is, I think, one of the things that makes Rebel News special.
One of the ways we stand out in Canada is we have a video news gathering style.
We're not just commentators.
We are out there with the camera pointing at the story that was important for covering the trucker convoy.
But I think the real special sauce at Rebel News is that every once in a while we say, whoa, this is so wrong, what's going on here.
And no one else seems to want to fix it.
We will fix it.
And we crowdfund for different causes.
And as you know, we're defending 2,100 people.
We spun that off into the Democracy Fund, for example.
We're breaking stories all the time.
Sheila Gunn Reed does a lot of that through access to information requests.
We're holding conservatives to account.
Now, you know, we hold liberals to account.
I've written a number of books about Trudeau alone.
But the reason we hold conservatives account is not just to show that we're independent-minded and that nobody controls us.
But it's so that conservatives know that if their party starts to deviate, we're going to call them out.
And it's not going to be in bad faith, and it's not going to be gotcha-style journalism.
But there is no conservative party in this country that can call us up and say, shut up.
Oh, believe me, they have tried.
And I think that's one of the reasons why some conservatives are less comfortable talking to Rebel News than you might think, because they know if we criticize a conservative politician, it's going to be a good faith criticism from the right.
It's not going to be the kind of gotcha criticism from the left that their own supporters will ignore.
If we're criticizing a conservative politician, odds are it's because that conservative politician is not very conservative anymore.
Case in point, the aforementioned Jason Kenney and Aaron O'Toole.
You know, I get a lot of positive feedback for the work we do here.
All of our reporters tell me they get the same thing on the streets at Rebel News events.
As I mentioned, I've started flying again after being on the no-fly list for being unjabbed.
And even on Air Canada, something happens because one of the cases that we took during the lockdowns was the cases of the flight attendants who didn't want to get the jab and they wanted to grieve the new rule, but their union refused.
So the Democracy Fund helped the flight attendants to take their union to the Industrial Relations Board to force them to represent them.
It's called duty of fair representation.
And wouldn't you know it, CUPE, the union involves bent the knee.
And so I have to tell you that when I fly on Air Canada, I'd say about 50% or even more of the flights I'm on, a flight attendant saw that story and someone who probably wouldn't follow rebel news, but they knew that we were championing flight attendants.
That's just one of the many cases we took.
I really enjoy that feeling.
I think I told you a few weeks ago, I went to Melbourne, Australia for Abhi Yamini's wedding, and it was a wonderful.
It was actually my first foreign trip in three years.
This week I'm finally going on a vacation with my family.
But that was a half business trip, half wedding trip, I suppose, to see Avi.
And the first place I went to when I got out of the cab looking for my hotel room, I just popped into a bar asking for directions.
And the guy said, you're with Rebel News.
I couldn't believe it.
Halfway around the world, people knew.
That's a good feeling.
That's what I live for, more than the approval of a politician or another person in the establishment.
If we are being viewed around the world by grassroots people, that tells me we're connecting.
But you know what?
Fans, they might be flatterers, right?
Everyone sees someone they recognize, maybe a minor celebrity and say, oh, I'm such a big fan.
Are you really?
Or are you just having a fun moment because you recognize someone?
I think just as important of how your fans treat you is how your foes treat you.
And the reason I know rebel news is so important is not actually because a flight attendant says thanks for your help or because some guy in a bar in Melbourne recognized me.
Now, I mean, that feels good.
But what tells me that we are on the right track, what tells me everything, is how the establishment treats us.
Fans vs. Foes00:06:46
Not just the establishment conservatives, like Aaron O'Toole, but how the Liberal government and the Parliament and all the institutions of power try to silence us.
The case in point, the QCJO News License, the Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization, you can remember that that's a new journalism regulation in Canada where journalism companies have to apply to the government to be approved.
And if you are approved, you get all sorts of perks, including free money.
If you are not approved, not only do you not get access to press conferences, but Trudeau's plan is to have the search engines, YouTube, Google, Facebook, Instagram, downrank non-QCJO news license companies and uprank or boost his trusted friends.
You could also call it the rebel news blacklist rule.
As you know, Trudeau and his friends denounce us.
They've been denouncing us for years.
Here's him and Ahmed Hassan reading word for word the same denunciation of us in parliament.
Remember this?
To see the conservatives engage in peddling rebel media conspiracy theories, you don't have to go back that far.
Here is the disgraceful Justin Trudeau saying he simply will not answer any questions from us, even hours after the federal court said we are journalists and we are allowed in.
Remember this and his treatment of Alexa Lavoie?
Israel is the more vaccinated auxiliary rappelle de vaccine.
In the construction rest of the vaccine, it is my vaccine.
Maquisción and Canadien desert have a rappelle de vaccine.
The privilege or personal and obligations of the prime minister or abolition.
J'ai partagé ma perspective sur ton organisation hier soir.
Je n'ai plus rien à dire.
Ça demande bien qui vous êtes.
Merci.
But it's one thing for them to rig the rules against us as in this QCJO news license.
It's one thing for them to denounce us and be petty and not answer us, but they physically attack us.
And our media party competition is silent about it.
Here's a clip that I've shown you before.
It's a partial, only a partial compilation of how Trudeau and his henchmen and his allies physically attack rebel news.
Not just with mean tweets that Rachel Gilmore wants arrested.
I'm talking about with fists and batons and even a gun.
Take a look at this.
Here are the thugs.
Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!
What are you doing?
Get off me!
Hey, this is assault.
I'm on a side.
What is this?
I'm on a sidewalk.
What is this?
You cannot crush me!
No Russian alert!
It's me!
My f**k!
Are you kidding?
Are you kidding?
It's time!
We've been through this so many times with you guys.
I need to hold my cameraman.
Hey, what's going on?
I need to hold my camera.
The reality is, organizations, organizations like yours, yours, that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation.
I won't call it a media organization.
Your group of individuals need to take accountability for polarization that we're seeing in this country.
It's disappointing to see the Conservatives engage in peddling rebel media conspiracy theories.
I share my perspective on your organisation yesterday.
You can't say anything.
You're a censorious thud.
You've physically assaulted me.
And so did you.
And so did this thud.
The likes of CBC and the other members of the media party, they're in there, they're reporting in the warmth, but they can't even give us the opportunity to ask one bloody question on a public sidewalk.
Fuck.
Why the f are you here?
We're working.
Plant your f off.
Here, there's for your fing membership.
There's for your rebel news.
Go f yourself, lady.
Go f yourself.
Go f yourself.
Would you like me to turn it up?
Here you go.
Go f yourself.
You're no fing friend to native people.
Go f yourself.
I am native.
Playing that f card.
You're telling me I'm playing the race card?
Yeah, you are.
Get the f out of here.
Are you playing hockey here?
No, I'm just coming to check in on our facility.
So I'm going to check.
You're not supposed to be here, actually.
Okay.
Can you get the presentation?
We already spoke to Darcy Henton.
He said there should be no problem for coming.
What?
Sorry, what is that?
Sorry, why?
Now, this is an administrative penalty notice.
Oh, for what?
Yeah.
This is for shaking hands with the public?
No way.
Why Viewers Matter00:04:05
You don't have to maintain a distance of at least two meters from another person.
I'm going to release you.
You go back in the prohibition.
You have to wear a moat.
If you don't, you're going to be behind.
You understand?
Again, like this?
No, you go look to jail, basically.
I hate watching that video.
You're probably asking why I show it to you.
I show it because I find it's motivating.
It gives me a feeling of dedication to my staff who would suffer like that for the sake of telling the truth.
Imagine the character of people who would endure that kind of violence and yet show up for work the next day ready to go again.
Those are very, very impressive people who work with me here at Rebel News.
I'm delighted to be in their company.
We tell the other side of the story, something everyone used to believe in, but is so rare these days.
And every once in a while, we stop to try to make a difference.
And I think, well, my friends, I think we have.
You know, Rebel News turns eight years old in February.
I can't even believe it.
It's hard to imagine how far we've come since then.
Do you remember my very first video?
Here it is.
Sun TV faded to dark.
Sun News faded to black.
Faded to black, eh?
Well, you know the saying, you can curse the darkness or you can light a candle.
I am mourning the loss of the sun.
Best job I ever had.
Most amazing colleagues, most passionate viewers, most loyal friends.
But now what?
I don't have tens of millions of dollars to start a new TV station.
I don't have political connections to the CRTC.
I don't have a billion dollars a year in corporate welfare bailouts like the CBC gets.
So what can I do?
I mean, I don't even have a studio.
I am literally standing in my house right now.
How pitiful is that?
Well, actually, it's not pitiful at all.
Actually, it's pretty exciting because while being an official TV channel has its perks, it also has its drawbacks.
It's regulated by political hacks at the government CRTC.
It has bossy sensors, politically collect wieners at the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council.
And of course, you only get onto those TV sets that cable companies allow you to do.
And on the channel of the placement of their choosing, and at the price they grudgingly agree to pay you, all of those hurdles, all of those barriers, and for what?
For a medium that is quickly being eclipsed by the internet, where you are seeing this now.
10 years ago, YouTube didn't even exist.
It was literally invented in February of 2005.
Netflix used to mail you copies of DVDs in snail mail.
Imagine that.
Now it streams endless movies and TV shows direct to your home whenever you want them.
They're even making their own original movies now.
And there are countless competitors to YouTube and Netflix and Apple's iTunes, all offering you the freedom and access and convenience that the traditional TV industry just doesn't have and that bureaucrats and politicians wouldn't allow anyways.
A TV camera used to cost more than $100,000.
There's still tens of thousands of dollars for the fancy ones, but this high-definition video is being shot on a camera that cost a couple of thousand dollars.
I'm looking forward to getting out of this living room, by the way.
That's code for my wife has given me a direct order to get out of here.
But seriously, how much does it cost to set up a small studio or to do a show even from the street?
Yeah, we're not in my living room anymore.
We're around the world.
Thanks to our team here, the Rebel News, 50 strong, too many to name now, but for every person you see on camera, there's two behind the scenes.
And most importantly, thanks to you, our viewers at home, as you know, the government would shut us down.
The big tech companies have demonetized us.
Activists on the left try and silence us and deplatform us.
But you, our viewers, make it possible.
Thanks for that.
And I promise you, we will do everything we can to be successful in 2023 to tell the other side of the story and maybe help fix the world.
Border Patrol's Battlefield00:11:17
Stay with us for more.
Well, as I mentioned, in the past week, we have had so many rebels covering so many big stories.
And my barometer for how big our stories are is if we get invited to the largest cable news show in America, namely Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News.
And I mentioned that because I know we've hit a big story hard.
If Tucker's team calls in from New York and says, hey, can we talk to one of those rebels?
Now, we've had Sheila Gunn Reed and David Menzies, two of our longest serving rebels appear on Fox in the last week.
But we also had our two newest rebels on Tucker's show, Jeremy LaFredo, with his Russian reports.
And our next guest, Katie Davis Court, one of our newest rebels, based in Seattle, Washington.
Well, she is actually down in El Paso, Texas.
What's she doing down there?
Well, she is covering what can only be called an invasion.
Hundreds of thousands of people pouring across an unguarded border.
And you can see her reports at rebelborderreports.com.
Katie Daviscourt joins us now by Skype.
Katie, great to see you.
I'm glad you're staying safe because it really is a kind of lawlessness there, isn't it?
It's almost like a battlefield of sorts.
Oh, yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
Sorry, so Wendy.
So I'm in El Paso and across is Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, which is actually the murder capital of the entire world.
So it is a lawless, there is an invasion happening right now in the United States.
And President Biden, the lefty mayors seem to be doing absolutely nothing about it.
Well, let's put some numbers to that because in Canada, we have an open border called Wroxham Road.
And every day, dozens of people come over.
But at that border there near El Paso, it's not dozens.
It's hundreds, maybe even thousands a day.
Is that right?
You're absolutely right.
So thousands line up daily.
A few hundred have been actually entering into the U.S. daily.
But more than 80,000 illegal immigrants have been released into the city of El Paso since late August.
So that is just a little bit over three and a half months.
80,000.
And the facilities are at max capacity.
So they're just all over the streets of downtown sleeping.
That's crazy.
I mean, the footage that I think got you the invite on Tucker Carlson's show was just when you arrived in El Paso, you were just coming in from Seattle to El Paso to do the story.
You land at the airport.
And before you went looking for the story, the story came looking for you.
Hundreds and hundreds of people just lying on the floor.
These were not travelers.
Like I've seen people sleep in airports because their flights are canceled because of the snow.
That's happening right now.
These were not travelers.
They were pedestrians who came across the border, had to sleep somewhere, and they just shoveled them into the airport.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the holding centers are at full capacity and the airport has turned into a makeshift holding center.
And so I decided to go around and I asked people where they're from.
They said Colombia, Peru, Dominican Republic.
And one of them had the audacity to say to me, who gave you permission to film us?
And I said, who gave you permission to enter into the United States illegally, which is a crime?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know what?
They're learning chutzpah right away.
They're learning audacity right away.
I guess they know how to operate in the United States.
Now, you were, so you're in El Paso, which is in the Texas side, but you cross over and you're sort of in this in this wilderness area.
Is that how you would describe it?
And why don't you introduce this next clip of you discovering children?
And that's the part that breaks my heart because you know these children are being used.
Sometimes, I hate to say it, they're being trafficked sexually, especially young women.
The number of young women who are raped along the journey to get over the border is shocking.
There's all sorts of abuse.
The children are used as pawns because the traffickers who are called coyotes think, well, you have a kid, you're going to have special treatment when you're arrested.
So tell us, set up this next video clip and then throw to the clip.
Why don't you tell us what you saw and then we'll play the clip, Katie?
Yeah, so I was driving down the highway of El Paso and along to the right is the U.S. southern border.
And I noticed a group of illegal immigrant children waiting on the side of the border.
So I got out and I started asking them, you know, where they're from.
So they had just illegally entered into a very accessible.
So the United States border, it is not secure.
And you can, anyone can easily enter into this one part where they have removed a crate on the border side.
And so they just easily walk along this wall and then enter through a hole and boom, you're into the United States.
So I ran into a group of children.
There are about six of them.
But what a lot of people don't know and what you mentioned earlier is that only 30% of the immigrant children coming into the United States are with their birth parents or biological families.
70% are actually being trafficked and go missing.
They are unaccounted for once they enter into the United States.
So this is just the true definition of a humanitarian crisis.
This should be the biggest story in America right now.
And mainstream media refuses to cover it except Fox News.
Yeah, Fox News and of course, Rebel News.
And we're so proud of what you're doing here.
Let's look at that clip right now.
These kids and these adults, men, women, children, people of all ages, they get across the border.
And then it seems to me that they're not really trying to be evasive because when they're picked up, it's not like they're driven to the border and booted out.
At least, correct me if I'm wrong.
It's just like Wroxham Road here in Canada.
In fact, the crazy thing at Wroxham Road is that the Mounties, the police, are luggage boys.
They will literally help illegal border crossers carry their luggage if it's heavy.
It's just so humiliating for the Mounties who have a great history of upholding the law.
Is it the same there in the States that once they're across, they know they're not going to be booted out.
And so they want to be found because they want to get food, clothing, shelter, medicine.
Is that an accurate statement?
Very accurate.
They actually wait for Border Patrol to come get them because to them, once the Border Patrol gets them, they are granted safety and pretty much asylum.
So the United States government and just other NGOs, nonprofit organizations, bring them food, new clothing, provide them blankets, and they are treated actually better than the normal homeless person that you'd see on the streets.
But something to mention is I am specifically here because Title 42 was going to expire, except it was recently blocked by SCODIS.
The Biden administration wants to expire it, which means that anyone that comes into the United States will get pretty much be granted amnesty.
And so the city of El Paso ended up declaring a state of emergency ahead of right before it was halted.
And they actually deployed the Texas National Guard on the border on the El Paso side of the border looking to Ciudad Warez, Mexico.
And that did prevent a lot of the illegal immigrants from lining up.
But what the Texas National Guard did was they actually directed the illegal immigrants to go down one mile and have Border Patrol pick them up, which they did, and then illegally brought them into the United States.
And it's just a matter of time, probably a few days before they're just released into El Paso.
You know, you said up to 80,000 of these migrants are in El Paso.
I just Googled it.
And El Paso has about 700,000 people.
So it's a fair-sized city, but 80, but more than 10% of the souls in that city right now are migrants.
I don't know how that can even work.
Like just shelter, bathrooms, medicine.
Obviously, there's no school.
Like that's just such a shocking number.
I remember a few months ago when Ron DeSantis flew some border crossers to, I think it was Martha's Vineyard or some really fancy schmancy East Coast liberal elite tourist hideaway, like maybe 100.
And the whole Martha's Vineyard went into panic mode.
And, you know, they bust them out and they, you know, they gave them like a bowl of soup and then kicked them out.
How dare you come to our tourist haven?
It's shock 80,000 in a city of 700,000.
I can't believe other journalists are not there.
I mean, that's one of the things that Tucker said to you is you're seeing stunning things.
It's not like you literally just stepped off the plane.
You didn't have to go hunting for it.
The story came to you.
I can't believe that's not Front Page News and every newspaper across America.
Yeah, me as well.
I mean, just my time being here, I've only been here for a few days and I've just had stories fall into my lap left and right.
I mean, I'm headed.
I'm headed home tonight, but I'm right before I leave, I'm going to go check out this spot where state troopers are actually stopping semi-trucks.
They have about a five-mile line and they're checking for human trafficking.
So I'm going to go set up and see what I can find before that.
But why isn't that even on the news?
They're just not.
Yeah, they're just not covering it.
It's terrifying.
And by the way, some of those semis can be death traps, obviously.
That's not a way for humans to travel like cattle or cargo.
But that's how desperate these folks are.
And they've been given that hope by the Democrats.
Just come across.
Everything will be fine.
And, you know, on the one hand, you got to admire the determination of people who want to come to America, but this is a lawless way.
It's a dangerous way.
It's a disorderly way.
It disrespects those who came in the country legally and properly.
It's not sustainable.
And I believe the Democrats are doing it for one reason only.
They believe that these people will become Democratic clients.
Either they'll eventually be Democratic Party voters or they'll be part of the Democratic welfare state or whatever.
I think that it is purely political.
And it's just shocking that the actual numbers.
Constituency Politics00:03:16
Now, Katie, we're so proud of the work you've been doing there.
We've set up a special compilation page.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
It's rebelborderreports.com.
Is that right?
Yep, rebelborderreports.com.
You guys can go there and help donate to offset our travel costs because it's so important that independent media is here on the ground showing you guys what the mainstream won't show you.
That's right.
And in addition to your ticket, we brought a cameraman.
And I'm glad that the cameraman's with you.
Just an extra set of eyes because you're in sort of a wild place and just have another person around gives me a degree of safety, feeling of safety.
Katie, thanks for this great work.
And we'll keep watching your stuff, including your mission tonight to see those semi trailers.
Stay safe, okay?
Yep.
Thank you, Ezra.
We got about five more reports coming out.
So wow, I can hardly wait.
Thank you.
There she is, Katie Davis, Courtney.
You can see why Tucker invited her on to tell this powerful story.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Hal Lisnick writes about my interview with Danielle Smith and says, kaboom, you did it.
Ezra, you broke the media party tonight with your Danielle Smith interview.
You were a class act.
Danielle is the future to save Canada.
Rebel is the real narrative.
Thank you.
Well, I was grateful to have more than half an hour with her.
And I asked some obvious questions, but I also wanted to ask some questions that I knew only a freedom-oriented journalism, the journalists would ask.
And I hope I did.
Bruce Atchison said, hi, Ezra.
Thanks for interviewing Danielle Smith.
Just having her on the show proves she's willing to address the folks she once harmed in December 2014.
I helped on her election campaign as the constituency secretary.
During November, she got us delegates fired up about her 500-day plan.
All the while she plotted to cross the floor.
I felt hugely betrayed, and so did our constituency.
The only thing I disagree strongly about with Premier Smith is hydrogen.
It's inefficient to make it.
Hydrogen is difficult to contain.
It also makes steel brittle.
Any leak would cause an explosion hazard, much worse than natural gas.
I wish she'd get off the green scam bandwagon.
I have to say, I had the exact same reaction when she mentioned hydrogen, but I didn't want to take up time debating her and giving my point of view.
I can do that later.
I can do that right now.
I knew I had only, actually, we were only scheduled for 20 minutes.
I think we stretched it to 33 or something.
So I thought, I'm not going to spar with her.
I'm just going to try and get her to answer as many questions as I can, and I'll analyze it and think about it afterwards.
But yeah, you're right.
I think she's buying into the narrative that we have to get past oil.
We're not moving past oil and gas, and we shouldn't because it's a bounty for the world.
Nick Bonet, if I'm saying that right.
Hi, Ezra and staff.
I just finished listening to your interview with Danielle tonight and wanted to thank you for taking the initiative and producing such a great interview with our premier.
I'm writing tonight asking if you would consider making this content public.
I know it is behind the paywall, but I feel the more people can hear this interview and listen to her speak so candidly and practically, always with the interest of Albertans in the forefront, the more momentum she would build in her campaign and touch the hearts and minds of many more Albertans doing a shift of dishwashing on New Year's Eve.
That was priceless.
When was the last time you heard a politician premier at that talk like this?
Sneak Preview Released00:00:57
Cheers and thank you for the enormous amount of work you and your team do in bringing us the real news.
Much appreciated.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and all the best in 2023 to everyone there.
That's a very nice letter.
The answer is yes.
I wanted to give that interview first to our paywall people, to you, because you're spending eight bucks a month and I want to, you know, treat you as priority people because you pay the bills.
We are, however, releasing it, I think, a different clip a day for three or four days.
And we've already put some of it up on Twitter.
So we will put the entire video up in its, you know, the full interview.
It's more than 30 minutes.
But you got the, it was like a sneak preview that you got.
Yeah, obviously we want it out.
And soon people are going to be focused on Christmas anyway.
So we want it out pretty quick.
But thank you for your kind words.
Well, that's the show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubber World Headquarters, you at home.