Ezra Levante highlights a Spark Advocacy poll (Trudeau-linked, 1,200 Canadians via Abacus Data) showing 45% support shutting down the CBC, with 66% of conservatives, 57% in Alberta, and 55% under 30 favoring defunding amid accusations of bias on oil sands, pipelines, and provincial rights. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson’s exit from Fox—triggering a $650M stock drop—and the cancellation of O Canada, a documentary featuring Rebel News stars like Levante, Menzies, and Lavoie, underscore media suppression trends, including Bill C-11/C-18, which critics argue could cripple free speech. Carlson’s global reach, from exposing Pfizer’s Albert Bourla in Davos (20M Twitter views) to amplifying dissenters like Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr., contrasts with Canada’s domestic-focused establishment, revealing how foreign scrutiny—like his coverage of the Trucker Commission inquiry—exposes systemic cracks. [Automatically generated summary]
He was by far their biggest talent and biggest draw.
I wonder what he'll do next.
I'll talk about that with Ben Weingarten.
But also, I'll take you through an incredible new poll by a liberal polling firm showing that nearly half of Canadians want to sell the CBC.
This is a five-alarm fire for the liberals.
I'll take you through the poll.
Hey, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
It's only eight bucks a month, but we need that dough to pay our bills because, as you know, we don't take any money from the government.
We're one of the few Canadian media that don't.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe, eight bucks a month.
Bob's your uncle.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, a shocking new poll by a Trudeau-connected lobbying firm shows that nearly half of Canadians want to sell the CBC.
It's April 24th, and this is the Ezra Levance show.
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
Hey, stick around.
We're going to have a hearty conversation with our friend Ben Weingarten about the shocking departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.
I got a lot to say, and I know Ben does too.
But hey, let's talk first about the liberals.
They're so crooked.
They're always selling influences just in their blood.
I saw the shocking news, speaking of shocking, about the $13 billion payment to Volkswagen, one of the richest, largest companies in the world, to get them to build, what, a factory worth $7 billion in Ontario?
Yeah, math doesn't really add up.
Trudeau's never been good with math.
How many Liberal Party lobbyists do you think got their payoffs for that?
This is a government that bans natural private sector investment in the oil sands or mines or pipelines, but they tax the productive sector to give a free factory to one of the world's richest multinationals.
By the way, do you really think these will be new jobs?
They're just going to hire away talented auto workers from other companies in the industry.
This is inflationary.
It's wasteful.
It's the government picking winners and losers in business.
It's extremely unenvironmental, by the way.
If you think car batteries are environmental, I encourage you to Google rare earth minerals like lithium and just see how they're mined and by whom and in what conditions and Google what happens to those batteries when the car is done.
Yeah, non-environmental.
This is the government that shut down tens of billions in natural investment in pipelines and literally turned away the leaders of Germany and Japan when they came to us begging to buy our clean natural gas.
Trudeau said there was just no business case for it.
We are in a situation in the short term where we will do what we can to contribute to the global supply of energy by increasing our capacities in the short term and explore ways to see if it makes sense to export LNG and if there's a business case for it to export LNG directly to Europe.
And that's something that economic conversations are going on between businesses in Canada and in Germany.
Then those countries signed huge deals, including with America and with the dictatorship of Qatar.
There literally is no possible business case for spending $13 billion to getting a $7 billion plant.
So Trudeau loved it, obviously.
I wonder how deep Gerald Butz and the rest of the lobbyists are into this one.
So yeah, corruption is normal for these folks.
And I mentioned that because I note that a year after Trudeau became prime minister, his communications director, Katie Purchase, her husband Perried Sergis opened up a lobbying firm to lobby Trudeau.
Let me say that again.
I mean, it's not shocking at all.
The husband of Katie Telford, Trudeau's chief of staff, is part of a firm that bills 84 million bucks to Trudeau to manage rent assistance.
So it's not really rent assistance.
It's Liberal Party insider assistance.
This is what they're all doing.
Anyway, the company set up by the husband of Trudeau's communications director is called Spark Advocacy.
And they published a poll the other day.
It's a liberal shop, a Trudeau influence machine.
So I'd normally take what they say with a huge grain of salt.
It's going to be pro-Trudeau propaganda.
So when it's critical of Trudeau, or at least embarrassing to him, when they report something dangerous to him, when they warn him of something, I take it seriously because you know they don't say that normally or lightly.
So look at this.
I spotted this yesterday.
CBC support is softer than you might think.
It's not quite 100 years old and it's not a sure thing.
It will make it to 100.
That's their headline.
And there's a story, as you can see, written by Bruce Anderson, another Liberal Party insider who is the dad of that same Kate Purchase, Trudeau's first communications director.
So it's all in the family over here.
Let me read.
Shut it down?
As conservative leader Pierre Polyev ratchets up his campaign to defund the CBC, many observers are tempted to believe that he is alienating a huge swath of Canadians.
Not necessarily.
I'm thinking of Chantali Baer, the Toronto Star.
Oh, she's also with the Trudeau Foundation, by the way.
But she doesn't mention that most of the time.
It's a little secret she doesn't bother telling her readers about.
She wrote this the other day.
It's an article in the Toronto Star.
Pierre Polyev is in trouble in Quebec, and he is himself to blame.
And if you click the link, here's a bit of the story.
Pierre Polyev is in trouble in Quebec, and he has himself to blame.
Francois Legault is already playing nice with Justin Trudeau and attacks on the CBC aren't helping, Chantali Baer writes.
And if you look at the story, I'll read a line from it.
Until now, Polyev's English-only vendetta against the CBC has largely gone unnoticed in the province.
But that ended with the Conservative leaders' latest vocal efforts to depict the CBC as a propaganda tool of the Liberal government.
In Quebec, Polyev's high-profile crusade raised a host of fresh questions as to how a conservative government would treat Radio Canada.
That's the Quebec wing of the CBC.
Funny enough, Chantale Baer does not disclose that she also works for the CBC.
Bit of a pattern here.
Defends Trudeau, defends the CBC while she has taken cash from each of them.
Sounds about right for a Quebec liberal, but is it true?
Is attacking the CBC really as dangerous to the conservatives as the Toronto Star and the CBC say?
I mean, it's usually crazy to take political advice from your opponent, but is it true?
Well, let's ask the consummate Liberal Party family, Kate and Perry and Bruce, over there at Spark Advocacy.
Our Spark Insights research reveals that across the country, 45% are drawn to the argument, shut the CBC down and save tax dollars.
And only a bare majority, 55, choose, I value the CBC and want it maintained, given these two alternatives, sample size 1,200 nationwide.
And the polling was done by Abacus Data.
That's crazy.
45-55?
Even with the CBC and the rest of the media in full war mode, the Toronto Star helping, Trudeau personally helping, almost half the people are ready to flush the CBC.
I'll read more.
This is a liberal firm, I repeat.
To be sure, conservative voters, 66%, lead the way in enthusiasm for shutting down the corporation, but just over one in three, 36% of liberal voters feel this way, and a third of NDP voters do too.
A striking number in the mix has to do with younger people.
A majority of those under 30, 55%, would close the CBC down.
And while Albertans, 57%, lead all regions and desire to end the CBC, Quebec residents are not that far behind, 47%.
Yeah, young people just don't trust the CBC.
55% of people under 29 want to defund it.
Of course they do.
They're watching Netflix or Amazon Prime or Crave or HBO or Disney Plus or a sports network or whatever.
No one wants to watch the CBC, let alone be forced to pay for it.
I'm surprised that so many seniors like the CBC.
Normally seniors are more conservative, but I guess they're just in a rut.
They're in a habit of watching it, a routine.
You watch something for 40 years, you know, before the era of 100 channels and a million websites.
You get used to it.
It's comfy.
Even if you don't like it, it's like an old pair of, you know, slippers.
Obviously, Conservative Party and PPC party members hate it, but even a third of the NDP.
And if 36% of liberals disagree with Trudeau and want to sell it, he's in trouble.
Obviously, Alberta and the prairies, but almost 50-50 in Ontario and Quebec.
But my favorite question is the one reason for this, defund or not to defund.
That's a good question.
But look at this.
Is CBC news propaganda?
While most people don't think CBC news is propaganda, a striking 40% believe the opposite.
Once again, young people are far more likely than older people to feel this way.
Again, young people are the most skeptical.
55% say the CBC is propaganda.
It goes down by age.
Again, you'd think older people would be savvier or more skeptical.
And look at the provincial stats.
The prairies despise the CBC, but they're only returning the favor on issues that matter to the prairies, from the oil sands to mining to pipelines to agriculture, the carbon tax, to firearms, to provincial rights, to opposition to forced French bilingualism.
The CBC is a propaganda agency.
It's not even really a question or a matter of opinion.
It's just true.
Here's what liberal Bruce Anderson had to say.
What to make of it?
Times have changed in the media landscape, and there's far less attachment to the CBC than once was the case.
Presumably, this has to do a lot with the explosion of options for news and entertainment in the digital age, which is reflective in the massive age differences.
But there is also possibly a lack of anticipation or consideration of what would be lost if the CBC was no more.
If people think it's not that necessary, then cutting government spending in this area seems like an easy choice.
Yeah, guys, you don't know what you're missing.
You don't know what you'll lose.
Sure, yeah.
There's tons of 18 and 20 year olds who just can't get enough of this hour as 22 minutes and the politically correct comedy.
Yeah, they don't know what they're missing.
Here's more.
These numbers don't exactly say that conservative leader Pauliev has a winning strategy, but they should put to rest the notion that he's speaking to a tiny sentiment of the most rabid parts of the right wing.
Hey, by the way, have you ever heard someone in the establishment say the words rabid left-wing, by the way?
But Bruce and the liberal lobbyists are obviously worried.
So the liberal lobbyists say the CBC should do some lobbying.
I presume they should hire their firm.
Let me read.
The CBC, regardless of how the near term of this debate plays out, clearly has a fight on its hands to reconstruct a strong attachment with Canadians and to bolster credibility, something that will be made more difficult the more politically contentious the topic becomes in national politics.
Hey, speaking of which, you know the president of the CBC, Catherine Tate?
Ben Weingarten On Tucker00:13:54
You know she's an American who's based in New York, right?
And she commuted to Toronto back and forth in New York every week, in America.
And she refused to move up to take the job permanently.
She's the one who had to fly every week during COVID because she was so essential.
You couldn't leave your house, but she had to fly.
Catherine Tate, did you know, this is a great story I saw the other day, that not only is she an American, but she literally donated money to Hillary Clinton's campaign.
An American living in America, donating to Hillary Clinton, that's who's running Trudeau's CBC State broadcaster.
Gee, I wonder why she's just not clicking with 45% of Canadians or any young people.
Stay with us for more.
A big conversation about Tucker Carlson next.
Well, I enjoy working with Rebel News, and every once in a while we do a video that goes super viral.
I think back a couple months ago when we were in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, and the video that Abiy Amini and I took when we encountered the president of Pfizer just on the street, Albert Boerlin.
We scrummed him.
We had a walking scrum for three minutes.
That was seen on Twitter alone.
The video was watched 20 million times.
And there's a thrilling feeling because anywhere you go in the world for a few days, and actually for months thereafter, people refer to that.
It's very exciting.
And the only place where you could dial that up and be sure for it to happen was, at least in my life, whenever I was invited to appear on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News.
It was live, which was very exciting.
It made you on your adrenalized best foot forward.
Typically, his guest segments were very brief.
They were five minutes or less.
But as soon as I stepped out of the satellite TV booth in Toronto, my phone would blow up.
People all over America, and indeed the world were watching.
People sometimes who I hadn't spoken to in years said, I saw you on Tucker.
The reach of that show was staggering.
What we could only hope to achieve once a year with the odd viral video like in Davos, you could dial up every single night.
An enormously powerful show.
And I would have to imagine that despite the attempts to blacklist it and blackball it for advertising, I can only imagine it was an enormously profitable show too.
When you have up to 5 million people tuning in, by far the largest show on cable news in America, you're making money.
And of course, he was a major driver behind Fox News' subscription program called Fox Nation.
But shocking news today, Tucker Carlson is out.
His last show was on Friday, and there's a little rebel news angle to it as well.
As you may have seen in his two-minute trailer the other week, Tucker was working on a documentary about Canada that heavily featured Rebel News.
Just for your enjoyment and to sense what I don't think you will ever actually see, what we will ever actually see, here is that trailer that Tucker Carlson was going to release in full one week from today.
Take a look and lament.
Welcome back from the Fox Studio lot in Los Angeles.
We're happy to be here.
For more than 100 years, the United States has, as a matter of official policy, opposed dictatorships around the world.
But what if tyranny arrived right next door?
What would that look like?
And what would our government do in response?
Would we liberate the people living under authoritarian rule as we have around the world?
That is the topic of our upcoming Tucker Carlson Originals documentary, O Canada.
Here's a first look at what we found.
The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it.
Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries.
The United States of America is different.
Fortunately for the oppressed, America's influence is considerable.
Roger Target Mark on his lips.
Oh, mankind.
We like to say people kind.
Exactly.
All right.
The police then moved in and arrested me.
In the entire time that I was in Prizley.
They shut me point blank.
My mouth, my nose, my high spirit.
I received bruises.
My hands were bleeding.
Please show me arrest right now.
I was arrested and cuffed and put in jail.
The greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.
We care about saving innocent lives.
The tyrant will soon be gone.
The day of your liberation is near.
Well, Tucker Carlson is out.
A report in the LA Times suggests that Rupert Murdoch, the big boss himself, was the one who made the call.
I don't doubt that for a second.
You don't fire your most successful TV asset without the boss making the decision.
People say it may have been related to his coverage of the deep state, including the role of Ray Epps, the accused FBI informant in getting Republicans to storm the Capitol buildings in what my friend Gavin McKinnis calls the great meandering.
Others say it may have something to do with the settlement paid by Fox News to Dominion Voting Systems.
I don't think Tucker Carlson was particularly deeply involved in that, but whatever it is, it is a seismic event when the most compelling figure on the right of center in the highest profile TV show in America is suddenly defenestrated, thrown out the window.
Joining us now via Skype to talk about it is one of our friends who is not quite the biggest, but one of the brightest voices in American broadcasting, our friend Ben Weingarten, who joins us now via Skype.
He's a columnist with Newsweek and Epoch Times.
And like me, I'm sure he was in awe of the power and the reach of Tucker Carlson.
Ben, am I right?
Was Tucker, perhaps other than Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, perhaps the most consequential figure in American conservative movement?
I think you're absolutely right.
And as a testament to it, the long knives were out for Tucker for years on the left with attempts to blacklist him, Chuck Schumer calling for him to be taken off of TV,
a whole litany of people who wanted Tucker gone, precisely because he actually put forth compelling counter narratives that resonated with millions and millions of Americans and gave voice to their hopes,
fears, ambitions, and also covered the contrarian stories or saw the angles to stories that others would not and interrogated them forthrightly and with passion and conviction.
And I think that's why he garnered such a massive audience.
And it's a huge loss, I think, for Fox.
It's a huge loss for the country and arguably the world.
Although by the same token, I expect that whatever Tucker does next will be exceptional and impactful.
And I should add on a personal note, you noted Tucker's, how powerful he was when you would go on his show and expose to Americans what was going on in Canada and the increasingly draconian and illiberal policies being imposed there, which presaged a lot of what we've seen happen in America.
But on a personal level, I've corresponded with Tucker numerous times, very humble, very down-to-earth, always willing to be supportive and helpful.
And so on a personal level, I feel a loss for him and again, for the country.
And what you saw on television was who he was and is.
And I only expect great things to come.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I've never met him in person, but the Democracy Fund, which is the civil liberties charity in Canada founded to fight the lockdowns, he attended via Zoom on a giant screen, a one-hour civil liberties town hall in Toronto.
It was broadcast around Canada, of course, for an hour to talk about civil liberties in Canada.
And I think he truly cares.
I mean, most Americans forget about Canada because it's that boring, cold place where nothing much ever happens.
But Tucker keeps an eye on Canada.
And he really, often he would cover stories that the Canadian regime media themselves wouldn't cover.
And that's why I'm very sad that his Canada documentary may never air.
You know, I checked the stock market, and Fox News is a publicly traded company.
And I'm not sure where it is right now, but at the exact moment I checked, the stock was down 4% in the one hour after that announcement, which is about $650 million U.S. or about a billion Canadian dollars.
Imagine a billion dollar value.
That's an incredible amount.
And as you say, whatever Tucker Carlson does next, I understand his executive producer was sacked at the same time.
That duo, they could go anywhere.
They could join an existing rival network like Glenn Beck today said, please come join us.
Daily Wire would do the same.
He could start his own thing.
He could go to Rumble.
And wherever he goes, I think he'll immediately, it's sort of on a much larger scale when Project Veritas lost James O'Keefe.
He was so integral to that brand that when he popped up with his O'Keeffe media group, a lot of people just follow.
They said, I'm here for James O'Keefe.
And I think that Fox News has a lot of quality people in it, besides Tucker.
It wasn't just a one-man show.
But where Tucker goes, millions will follow.
And who knows?
Maybe he'll start his own thing.
I'm actually sort of excited to see where he goes next, even though I'm very sad he's left Fox.
Yeah, to some extent, stepping back and looking at the trajectory of media and a world where Substack has empowered so many truly legitimately independent journalists, whereas you noted, platforms like Rumble have sprouted up and the regime hasn't been able to crush them yet.
Maybe the more intriguing question than why and how did this go down as it did is what happens next for Tucker?
What's his next act?
And what does that presage in terms of the state of non-legacy corporate progressive globalist media?
So I think it's very intriguing and I'm sure he'll view this as a huge opportunity and to some extent liberating as it is for anyone who leaves a major corporation to either strike out on their own or pursue other opportunities as well.
So it'll be fascinating to see what this means for the marketplace of media itself, what it means for Tucker, and then what it means for the dissident voices in the West who he's helped elevate to such great heights.
You know, I was just watching a clip of his yesterday on the Ukraine war.
And that war is so establishment, both Republicans and Democrats.
I mean, talk about your deep state.
There's a lot of shenanigans there.
And it is very difficult to question that war, let alone oppose it.
And the things he would say and the bluntness with which he said it, just yesterday is watching him talk about it.
And I marveled at that, wow, Fox lets him have his say.
And, you know, he has other contrarian dissonant voices that you wouldn't even say are on the right, like Tulsi Gabbard or Glenn Greenwald.
Or, you know, there are some people he has on his show who I think you would even call leftists, but they're principled leftists.
And they're often contrarian.
They're non-compliant.
And he spoke so bluntly.
I just wonder what it was in the end that did him in.
I don't believe it was the Dominion voting system thing.
I think it was the fact that everything single thing he said was contrary to the dominant narrative.
And I don't care how big you are at Fox, and I don't care how big Fox is in the world.
The deep state is bigger.
And I'm, frankly, in retrospect, surprised he laughs so long.
He lasted so long.
Yeah.
And, you know, I think there's an interview, or I think I saw some reporting talking about how one day he will follow as well.
He was talking to someone whose head had rolled over wrong thing, and he essentially said it'll happen to me too.
And as you note, there's so many different issues where he took a contrarian line, which just flew in the face of what elite kind of conformist conventional wisdom was.
You ticked off some names.
I'd add RFK Jr. to that list, who he had on recently after he announced his presidential run.
These are people you're not allowed to have on in good company.
And he was willing to slay sacred cows, whether it was the Russo-Ukrainian war, whether it was January 6th and the myriad narratives around January 6th, whether it was the Chinese coronavirus and the vaccines.
We can go on and on.
He talked about the things you're not allowed to or not supposed to talk about.
And I think that's why he garnered such a massive audience.
Elon Musk's Impact?00:09:49
And it resonated with those who had no voice in so many other media.
So that was why he was so successful because he struck a chord because he said things that people felt in their heart, but couldn't articulate or didn't have voice for and to.
And that was why he was such a powerful force and I think will remain a powerful force.
It's also worth noting, you know, Dan Bongino recently also said that it was an amicable thing, couldn't agree to terms with Fox.
But it's interesting to see what's shaking out in the marketplace.
And the poetic aspect of this, if there isn't anything to laugh about, is that Don Lemon also fell today at CNN.
Obviously, a favorite personality that Tucker focused on as well.
It's sad today, but that is, I guess, kind of an interesting tota.
It seems like there's a big shakeup that's going on across the corporate media world today.
Yeah, Don Lemon, just for our viewers who've never heard of him, and in fact, many Americans have never heard of him.
He just, you know, both were TV personalities.
One had 10 times the viewership of the other and was likely fired for ideological reasons.
Here's a clip of Don Lemon making a strange statement about women in their prime.
I think this was the beginning of the end for Don Lemon.
I don't really understand this comment, and I think he'll be replaying it over and over in his mind for the rest of his life.
Take a look at Don Lemon talking about when women are in their prime.
Nikki Haley isn't in her prime.
Sorry.
A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.
What do you talk about?
That's not according to me.
Prime for what?
It depends.
It's just like prime.
If you look it up, if you Google when is a woman in her prime, it'll say 20s, 30s, and 40s.
I don't know what that is.
Oh, I got it in that.
I agree with that.
So I think she has to be careful about saying that politicians aren't in their prime.
We need to qualify.
Are you talking about prime for like child barring or are you talking about?
The facts are Google and everybody at home.
When is a woman in her prime?
It says 20s, 30s, and 40s.
I'm just saying Nikki Haley should be careful about saying that politicians are not in their prime and they need to be in their prime when they serve because she wouldn't be in her prime according to Gilgal or whatever it is.
Yeah, that was an unusual way to end it.
But I don't think that I think that was just the last straw.
And I think that Don Lemon just didn't have the army.
That's the thing about Tucker Carlson is like flavorful media like Rebel News.
People love Tucker.
I mean, no one would say, I love Don Lemon.
I'd follow that man to hell and back.
I would do anything for Don Lemon.
I must watch Don Lemon.
No one talks like that.
No one says that in Canada about CTV or global news.
No one believes in Don Lemon as a leader, a thought leader, an anything leader.
But people felt that way about Tucker and even people around the world.
I'm a Canadian and many of the issues are only collateral to my Canadian-ness, but I found him, like you say, very articulate.
And what always I found remarkable, like I said, his show is done live.
And obviously he has a team and there's preparation and there's a script.
But it always blew me away how quickly he could move, how quickly he could digest complicated issues and express them every night of the week live.
That is a very difficult thing.
My show is live to tape.
So if there's a big screw up, we can fix it.
If something goes wrong, he just went nothing but net.
It was incredible.
There's a real talent there.
The guy's been in broadcasting for decades.
You might remember him in the early days in Crossfire, which was the two-by-two debate show on CNN, which I really thought was good.
They wouldn't do Crossfire anymore, by the way, because that suggests that you can have contrarian viewpoints.
But on everything from global warming to Ukraine war, you're not allowed to have control.
So the whole concept of Crossfire is impossible today.
You know what?
I'm going to take your approach, Ben, and I'm going to be hopeful about what comes next.
I'm wobbled and rocked a little bit because I always thought Fox News was the big, strong castle, the fortress that would never fall to the bad guys.
But I feel like the knight of the castle was just ejected from there, and I'm a little nervous.
Well, I hope it's not the case.
I think it's a huge loss, however you look at it.
Clearly, Fox believed that the benefits outweighed the costs of Tucker.
There are people there with a lot more experience who get paid a lot more to think through those questions.
But all I can say is it's sad for Americans and for the world that he will not continue to have that platform.
But I have no question that he will continue to speak boldly and courageously.
And he spoke pretty darn freely on Fox.
I suspect he'll be even more liberated without a corporate structure over him potentially, depending upon where he goes next.
And I think it's important to stick the silver lining in fairly dark days for the West generally.
Yeah.
You know, there's a saying, the graveyards are full of indispensable men.
It's a way of saying that no one is irreplaceable.
I mean, there are some people that are one in a million and one in a billion.
I think of Elon Musk, and I'm scared by the risks he takes.
I mean, he has said contrary things to the narratives, even more blunder and more in the form of a troll than Tucker Carlson.
In quick tweets, Elon Musk has said shocking things about everything from transgenderism to, frankly, the war in Ukraine.
And I worry for him, even though he's the richest man in the world and one of the smartest men, everyone is vulnerable in their own way.
And it's, who knows?
I mean, in one theoretical future, Tucker Carlson could work on Twitter.
I mean, Elon Musk has talked about long-form video on Twitter, making Twitter the everything app like WeChat is in China.
I mean, I don't think that would happen.
I don't think Tucker Carlson would want to do that.
But that is an incredible possibility.
You know, a couple of months ago, there was a bit of a foofra between Stephen Crowder, who's a commentator and comedian on the right, who was with Blaze Media and YouTube.
And he had a contract negotiation with Daily Wire, and it fell apart and it was a little bit acrimonious.
But the startling thing from that whole engagement, Ben, I don't know if you were following it, is that the Daily Wire offer to Stephen Crowder, it had lots of asterisks and caveats in it, but it was a $50 million offer, $5.00 million.
And there's no doubt, I mean, Stephen Crowder would be the first to say that Tucker is even much bigger than that.
I think that if Tucker does this right, he could be even bigger than he was on Fox, and he could do all sorts of things where he owns the content, owns the data, owns the lists, and builds up a machine.
He is such a tentpole, as they say, that he could create a whole new vehicle, let alone if he joined something incredible that was already existing like Daily Wire or Blaze Media.
I'm trying to be positive because I think the sky is the limit for him.
I really do think that.
And he's probably safe enough.
He's probably saved enough money that he's not in any rush.
He probably got a big severance under the terms of his contract.
I'm sure they paid him out.
You know, he may have had a eight-figure payout for all we know.
So I think he's a man.
I think he's only in his mid-50s.
I think he can do whatever he wants.
Maybe this is, you know, one door closes, another door opens kind of moment.
I'm just brainstorming in real time here, Ben, because this only came out a few hours ago, and I'm still sort of shocked by it.
Yeah, look, I think he was at the height of his powers.
There have been plenty of prominent personalities to leave major networks in the past, and few have been able to then actually go build a small or large empire on their own.
Several have tried.
Tucker will have the benefit of other entrepreneurs who have taken that risk before.
There's also more technology that allows one to be able to potentially go out on their own.
Like you said, he has an impassioned fan base, people who would go to that monologue every single night.
He's an exceptional writer, speaker.
He's obviously incredibly hardworking.
And I think if anyone was going to be able to achieve that potentially on their own, it's Tucker and have a direct relationship with their viewers and interview interesting people and do what he was doing at Fox Nation and elsewhere as well.
So, you know, I think if there was ever a time and a person to put it all together and be able to succeed, he might be the one.
And it's going to be fascinating to watch.
And wouldn't it be the quintessential kind of American story of the rises and falls in the careers of exceptional folks in the public discourse space and the media and beyond?
As you noted, one door closes, but perhaps it leads to an even greater triumph after the fact.
And again, either way, what I think is most imperative is that Tucker's voice needs to be out there.
It needs to be amplified.
And he puts forth a perspective that's interesting.
It's unique.
It's compelling.
It's provocative.
It's funny as well.
And that's why he was as successful as he was and as successful as he will be going forward, I believe.
Well, you remind me that he's fallen and risen before.
He did great on Crossfire until they sacked him as a result of an attack on him.
At least that's what it looked to be by Jon Stewart, the liberal comedian.
Well, he came back and he helped found the Daily Caller, which is a fairly serious and significant website.
And then, of course, his show on Fox.
Rise and Fall00:05:00
So here's a guy.
In a way, he's a serial startup guy.
I mean, I think he's more talent than business, but there's a guy who's been knocked down and gets back up, knocked down and gets back up.
And this is a kind of a knockdown, obviously, but I think there's exciting things afoot for him.
And I can only imagine the offers being sent to him, not just by Glenn Beck and Daily Wire, but it wouldn't surprise me if OAN and other groups like that.
It wouldn't surprise me if Spotify is making a hell of a deal of an offer right now.
And it wouldn't surprise me if he's thinking, well, maybe I'll start my own thing.
Very, very interesting.
And I appreciate you talking to us about it.
I care about Tucker Carlson because I felt like he actually cared about Canada.
And that's a weird thing for Americans to care about.
Most Americans just simply, they don't hate Canada.
Of course not.
They just, they're not moved by Canada.
They find Canada boring.
And for the longest time, we liked that, I think.
I close as I ended, which is I'm a little bit sad that we will likely never see that documentary on Canada that really starred rebel news personalities.
I was interviewed.
David Menzies was interviewed.
Alexa Lavoie was interviewed.
I think it was going to be really the story of rebel news.
And I don't know if we'll ever see that.
It certainly won't air on Fox Nation.
They're sort of erasing the past, I think, with him.
Ben, it's great to catch up with you.
I meant to talk to you about your latest essay in the Epoch Times.
We'll just put it on the screen for a minute.
With dissent now criminalized, free speech faces a big chill.
And of course, that's a comment about some extremely partisan prosecutions by the Biden presidency.
By the way, Tucker Carlson was heavy on this story.
We don't have time to talk about it today, Ben, but I feel like we talked about the important news in the conservative movement.
And for us as conservative media in Canada who had a connection with Tucker, I think it was the right thing to do.
Really glad to see you.
And like me, I'm sure you'll be waiting to see what Tucker does next.
Won't that be amazing?
Thanks again for your time.
Thanks for having me.
I wish things were still boring, but we have the blessing and curse of living in interesting times.
That's exactly what they say.
There you have it.
Ben Weingarten, you can see his work at newsweek.com and at the Epoch Times, some of our favorite people over there.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Chris says, hi, Ezra, if I were a big tech CEO, I would make sure no links to Canadian content would be allowed.
After all, I'm in the business of making money and not in handing it out.
C11 can only work if there is financial gain for big tech.
C-11 and C-18 are opposing forces from a financial perspective.
As a CEO, I'm first beholdened to my investors.
Canada will go dark on the internet.
I don't think I quite understand everything you're saying there.
But the whole idea of the internet is that you click from link to link to link to link, and that's the fun of it, and that's why it works.
That's the network effect, as they say.
And people share, and it's the most democratic grassroots idea that's ever been promulgated.
That's what's so amazing about it.
The idea that you have to pay for the pleasure of linking to someone is anathema to the entire concept.
I don't think it's going to work.
That's what C-18 would require big tech to do for the mere pleasure of having someone show up in a Google search.
Showing up in a Google search is a good thing.
That's why Google makes their money by selling those searches.
It's crazy that Google would have to pay someone to link to them.
It feels like the law was written by someone who's never used the internet before.
Jack says, now that Tucker Carlson is no longer with Fox, where do we go from here to get our rebel message out to Americans and Canadians besides the web?
You know what?
I had a good discussion about this a moment ago, as you know, with Ben Weingarten.
I don't know the answer.
Tucker really loved Canada.
I love talking about Canada.
And I'm just so frustrated that our documentary with him is not coming out.
At least I don't think it's coming out.
I'd be surprised if it does.
He cares more about Canada than most American media and certainly most of any size.
I like the fact that he cared about Canada because there's something quirky about the Canadian establishment.
They often don't care if there's a problem raised domestically.
But when foreigners take notice of it, oh, they noticed us.
That's certainly how it was with the Truckers.
And you'll remember during the Trucker Commission inquiry, evidence was brought forward that Trudeau was embarrassed overseas.
And that's what made him want to crack down on the Truckers.
He was embarrassed in the face of other world leaders.