Ezra Levant joins Vivek Ramaswamy at the Iowa 80 truck stop town hall on December 22, where Ramaswamy ties COVID mandates and WEF’s 2030 zero-emissions rules to a "Great Reset" authoritarian agenda, calling Trudeau a "useful puppet." He warns Nikki Haley’s policies—like government-issued social media IDs and funding Ukraine—could be riskier than Democrats’, positioning himself as the true "America First" heir beyond Trump. Ramaswamy hints at potential Trump suppression, from ballot removal to assassination, suggesting his base might pivot if blocked. Levant praises Ramaswamy’s sharpness and consistency across audiences, noting his family’s campaign involvement, and speculates this U.S. dynamic could reshape Canadian civil liberties debates regardless of the election outcome. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm here reporting on the U.S. presidential primary campaign.
I was invited to attend a town hall meeting by one of their candidates, and I went, and it was very interesting.
I'll share with you what we did, but I also want you to see it because it was a feast for the eyes.
So please go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
That's the video version of this podcast.
It's eight bucks a month.
I know that's not a lot of ton of money to you, but boy, it sure adds up for us.
It's how we pay our bills.
That's RebelNewsPlus.com.
All right, here's today's show from Iowa.
Tonight, a day on the U.S. presidential campaign trail.
It's December 22nd, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
You censorious bug.
I'm standing at the Iowa 80, known as the world's biggest truck stop, and indeed it is in Iowa, a US state.
What am I doing here?
Well, it started a few days ago when I got a direct message on Twitter out of the blue directly from one of the candidates running to be president.
Of course, he has to run to win his party's nomination first.
I'm talking about Vivek Ramaswamy, a name that I don't think most Americans had heard of a year ago, but in the last few months, he's really caught fire in large part due to his high-energy debate performances and his very strong Trump-like policy portfolio.
Here, I just want to give you a taste of him.
There were some incredible moments, not just sparring with other Republican candidates like Nikki Haley, but also taking it to journalists in a way that we haven't seen, well, since Trump.
Let me show you a few of those debate performances and a few of those media scrums right now.
I love it how he doesn't shy away from the press.
Take a look.
You want somebody who's going to speak truth to power, then vote for somebody who's going to speak the truth to you.
Why am I the only person on the stage at least who can say that January 6th now does look like it was an inside job?
That the government lied to us for 20 years about Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9-11.
That the great replacement theory is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic Party's platform.
That the 2020 election was indeed stolen by big tech.
That the 2016 election, the one that Trump won for sure, was also one that was stolen from him by the National Security Establishment.
Okay.
And actually planned the Trump-Russia collusion hopes that they knew was false.
There's a reason why I'm the only person on the stage who can say these things.
That's what it's going to take, not people who were licking his boots one time and now Monday morning quarterback came and criticizing him when it's going to be.
Foreign policy experience is not the same as foreign policy wisdom.
I want everybody at home to know that I was the first person to say we need a reasonable peace deal in Ukraine.
Now a lot of the neocons are quietly coming along to that position with the exceptions of Nikki Haley and Joe Biden who still support this what I believe is pointless war in Ukraine.
And I think those with foreign policy experience, one thing that Joe Biden and Nikki Haley have in common is that neither of them could even state for you three provinces in eastern Ukraine that they want to send our troops to actually fight for.
Look at that.
This is what I want people to understand.
These people have, I mean, she has no idea what the hell the names of those provinces are, but she wants to send our sons and daughters and our troops and our military equipment to go fight it.
So reject this myth that they've been selling you that somebody had a cup of coffee, stint at the UN, and then makes 8 million bucks after has real foreign policy experience.
It takes an outsider to see this through.
Look at the blank expression.
She doesn't know the names of the provinces that she wants to actually fight for.
Understanding Truckers' Courage00:05:48
And there's a puppet manager right there.
It's the donors.
They're the owners right there that are.
Well, that's Vivek Ramaswamy.
And I know that some people have disparaged him as being, well, he's just like a debate club candidate or he's too precocious or he's too snarky.
Well, so what?
I mean, I like the fact that he's a good debater, that he's quick on his feet, that he has facts at his fingertips.
I like the fact that he pushes back against the media.
As I've always said, the media party is the real political party to worry about, not the Democratic Party in the States or the Liberal Party in Canada.
So Vivek Ramaswamy sent me a direct message saying he was having an event at this truck stop about truckers.
And would I come on town?
And I said, well, what do you mean?
I'm not an American.
I mean, I'm interested in things.
They basically said, come on down, take in our town hall on truckers.
And I said, well, can I get a one-on-one interview with the candidate?
And they said yes.
So let me show you a little bit about my day.
As I say this, it's just after 10 p.m. Eastern Time.
I started my day this morning at around 5 a.m.
Got up, went to the airport, flew to Chicago, which is the closest international airport here, drove for three hours.
We got here a little bit early, but that was fine.
We had a chance to visit some interesting things at this truck stop.
There's a lot going on in the truck stop, not just, you know, rest stations and things like that.
For example, there's the world's, well, I don't know if it's the world's largest truck museum, but a very large truck museum that I went through, which was very interesting.
I got here a few hours before the town hall, so that's what we did, Lincoln, our videographer, and myself.
And then there was like an everything store for everything and anything you could ever want as a truck driver, from fancy steering wheels to beds for the little sleeper compartment to all sorts of chrome.
It was pretty cool.
And you got into the trucker vibe.
They really love truckers here.
But then we made our way to the theater.
Yes, they actually have a theater here.
And Vivek Ramaswamy came in and he gave some remarks.
And it was about trucks.
I'll tell you that.
There was a lot of truckers, some Teamsters in the audience.
There were people asking about truck policy and truck regulations and government rules about trucks.
Some of that was interesting enough because I'd never heard it before.
But holy moly, did he get my attention when he started talking about the Canadian truckers and the Freedom Convoy?
All right, let me show you unedited every word he had to say about Canadian truckers.
To have an open conversation with you all about what we're able to do to address certain foundational issues in this country.
I want to start with one of them, which is actually honoring and respecting the Canadian envoy, the Freedom Envoy, who, frankly, a year ago was the front lines of exposing a lot of the corruption, not just in the United States, but in the West.
You all remember that?
When you had a number of Canadian truckers, cross-border truckers included, who stood up against the unjust COVID-19 vaccine bands, who stood up against a lot of the unjust policies, locking down our economy and otherwise, and had the courage to do what many of us in this country otherwise did, to actually take a stand and say hell no to a government that had reached far beyond its legal scope.
They were penalized for it.
Remember what happened is actually they locked the bank accounts.
They locked access to the financial institutions of many of those truckers and used the financial system to weaponize through the back door what the government could not properly do through the front door in Canada under the laws and in this country under the laws.
I think that that was a moment, though, for me.
That actually probably for me was the moment that woke my eyes to say that these are the guardians of freedom in this country.
Not just in this country, but in the West, in Canada, the United States alike.
And so since then, I've taken an interest in a lot of the policies affecting our truckers.
You know, people don't show up to do something like that unless they actually have a properly motivated reason to do it.
So why the heck were these truckers properly frustrated on behalf of the rest of it?
Part of the rest of us.
Part of it was the COVID-19 mandates.
But part of it was a deeper failure to stand for the backbone of our economy.
Wasn't that interesting?
He really followed the Canadian trucker situation and he really grasped it.
I get the feeling he actually follows rebel news.
How else would he have known to send a direct message to me if not?
He also had some comments about globalization and the World Economic Forum.
And I could tell he had some deep knowledge.
Here's a quick sample of that.
But that's the kind of conversation we need to have.
The ideas I'm sharing with you, these aren't black ideas or white ideas.
These aren't even Democrat ideas or Republican ideas.
They shouldn't be.
These are fundamental common sense.
It's not controversial.
This is common sense.
American ideals.
To say that every person should be free from regulatory overreach, that every person should be free to achieve the maximum of their potential without anybody standing in their way.
And know the truckers of this country should not be an exception to that standard.
That we will say no to the World Economic Forum's standards of 2030 zero emissions standards for truckers.
Amen.
Zero emissions by 2030, says the World Economic Forum.
Truck no.
That's what I say.
Forget that.
We're not going to have some globalist standard imposed from on high for a made-up climate change agenda when we have actual real problems to address right here in this country.
Six Events Later00:02:15
Well, that was pretty exciting, but it wasn't really my place to get involved there.
That was a real sort of town hall for Iowa truckers with a presidential candidate.
It was very interesting, but I spoke to Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign team, and they said, well, I could ride with them in the candidate's bus from this event, which was his sixth event of the day, to his seventh event of the day.
And that I had a chance to interview him in that bus ride.
I have to say, after six events, I would be tuckered.
I would be misspeaking words tripping over my tongue.
He was as sharp as he was.
Well, I can imagine.
At the beginning of the day, he certainly seemed high energy to me.
Here, without further ado, here's my 15-minute heart-to-heart with Vivek Ramaswamy.
We talk about everything from Justin Trudeau and Klaus Schwab to Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.
Take a look.
I'm Azure's my colleague Lincoln.
I don't know how you keep your energy high.
Six events, you're going to event number seven.
It's got to be a blur.
How do you say high energy?
You know, I'm guided by my purpose.
I mean, if you're guided by why you're doing something, you're guided by the why, then you know what?
The energy comes naturally.
And seven events, that's not a particularly heavy day.
Come on.
We've gone up to 11.
What?
Yeah, 11 events in a day is our peak so far.
Well, you're keeping remarkably lucid for 10 events a day.
I see you have one of your kids with you.
What's that like?
It's great.
I usually will, so my wife, she's a surgeon at Ohio State.
She's a throat surgeon.
She'll come out here Fridays through Mondays or on the campaign trail, wherever we are.
One of the things I've found, though, is it's helpful for me in particular.
And it's also good for our kids to have this experience, but staying grounded as a family.
So sometimes I'll bring the older guy, sometimes I'll bring the little guy, and then we'll reunite on weekends.
That's how we've been making this work as a family.
And I wouldn't say it's always logistically the easiest thing, but thankfully we've been still doing it together as one team approach as a family.
And it's been actually an incredibly rewarding experience to have a shared project with our kids and to be able to do it this way is, I think, very grounding for me.
Donald's Vision for America00:15:27
Well, he seems very brave.
He wasn't shy about being out in public.
And I don't know.
I wonder if he understands the gravity of what's going on.
Yeah, I wonder too, actually.
I think that my sense is, he could tell you I'm running for president.
He could tell you that I care about freedom of speech.
He's learning the Pledge of Allegiance.
I think that he knows that we're doing something important, that his parents are taking the time to do something that they value that is important and worthy, and that he's an important part of it.
I think that much he processes for sure.
It was pretty great to see him.
Hey, let me talk about the subject matter.
You had a trucker town hall where you really got into details.
But for me, the way you described what happened in Canada and the freedom convoy of truckers and how Trudeau cracked down on it, you had a lot of info about the seized bank accounts.
How were you following it?
Why was Canada, which is normally sort of a boring subject for Americans, you knew more facts than I think many Canadians did.
Well, I was following it very closely at the time.
Part of this is, so I was pushing back against what's called the ESG agenda in the United States.
And I don't know if those were me too.
Okay.
So the use of financial markets to do through the back door what government could not do through the front door.
I mean, I wrote two books about that in the last several years.
And I started a company in the U.S. called Strive to push back against a lot of those ESG orthodoxies in corporate America.
So, and I can go into, you know, my world and what I was doing then.
But when I saw what happened in Canada, first of all, I was dead set against any type of government top-down mandates anyway.
I think that there was, there's going on in the world what we, you know, some refer to as the Great Reset, the dissolution of boundaries between the public and private sector and even between nations to impose a single hegemonic agenda that is in the design of supposedly making for a better world and increasingly creates an autocratic dictatorial globalist hegemon.
And so when I saw that land in the doorsteps of Canada, I had just started taking an interest in how some of the issues I was looking at in the U.S., like the ESG cancer, was really a transnational phenomenon.
And so I went, you know, I went pretty deep into what ended up happening there.
The weaponization of the financial system to be able to freeze bank accounts or access to bank accounts.
That's what Trudeau used in an unprecedented move.
I think that is in some ways a harbinger, a warning of what could come here to the United States if we're not careful on issues relating to allowing the ESG cancer to spread, the use of a central bank digital currency, something that's being debated in the U.S., has profound implications for us here in the U.S.
And so, yeah, you're darn right.
I paid attention to it.
You mentioned in your speech today the World Economic Forum, and I heard you just mentioned the Great Reset.
That's one of their themes.
There was a book by Klaus Schwab.
You know, I actually can't remember.
No, no, no, no.
That was one of his, he wrote two books.
One was called Stakeholder Capitalism and one that was called The Great Reset.
I actually wrote a book review for the Wall Street Journal.
They asked me to, of his book, Stakeholder Capitalism.
And so, you know, it was, let's just say, it wasn't a very charitable review.
But I believe in being able to understand the best arguments for the other side.
And I can tell you, it is far more frightening than the way it's caricatured.
The real argument is more frightening than the caricature.
It's the desire to impose effectively the old world European view, a rejection of democracy, a rejection of a self-governing republic, to say the people can't be trusted how to sort out climate change or COVID-19 or racial injustice for that matter.
That can't be left to the people.
It has to be a small group of aristocratic elites from the mountaintops of Davos that make that decision for everybody else.
And I think the right answer and the right response to the great reset is what I call the great uprising on the other side, which says hell no to that vision.
I'm a citizen of this nation, not some nebulous global citizen fighting climate change.
That's what I think those Canadian truckers were saying.
And I think that they were part of what I consider to be this transnational great uprising that's the response to the great reset.
You mentioned Trudeau in your remarks.
You're mentioning him again now.
What do you make of the man?
He's been in power for eight years now, even though he has a minority government.
He's got a coalition.
Is he a cautionary tale for Americans?
I don't think Americans follow Canadian politics too closely.
What should an American know about Justin Trudeau?
This is a preview of coming attractions.
I use that sarcastically, unless we course correct here.
He's like a Klaus Schwab Jr., sort of a Klaus Schwab disciple.
And I think that he is somebody who is a useful puppet.
I mean, it's not that this guy is some sort of shining intellect that is somehow a visionary in his own right.
He's not.
He's a pawn for a managerial class, both within and outside of Canada, that uses people like him as a pawn to advance a, you know, transnational globalist agenda that has a single hegemonic view that is fundamentally skeptical of self-governance, does not believe in people's ability to govern themselves, believes in a worldview where people need to be told what the right way is or isn't to live by a small group of aristocratic elites in the back of palace halls.
That was the old world European view.
It's what's alive and well in Canada, unfortunately, today.
And the idea that Trudeau is actually the guy calling the shots is a joke.
He's just a puppet, a pawn for that deeper, what I would call permanent state.
And I think that much similar to the United States, I think that that's a big part of what you're seeing happening in Canada now as well.
I don't want to take up too much of your time because I can only imagine you want to keep your energy for that last meeting.
But let me ask you a question about the primaries.
And you invited the last one.
You want to come to that last one and just join us.
Why not?
sure we're on we're on our way and then uh we'll as well You're right here.
Yeah.
Well, we'll consider us accepting your invitation.
You used the phrase America first, I heard, in a little gaggle afterwards.
You talked about making America great.
Those are slogans that Donald Trump popularized in his first run.
Trump has had very positive things to say about you, especially your debate performance.
That said, Trump is way ahead in all the polls.
I mean, the polls might be inaccurate, but it suggests he's out front.
How do you run a primary where he is nominally and on the ballot, he's your opponent, even though you seem to be carrying the fire, carrying the torch for his ideas?
Well, I don't think they're his ideas.
I mean, George Washington, these are George Washington's ideas.
And it's up to each of us to carry the torch forward, to take that further than George Washington did in 1796 when he left office.
And so, yes, Donald Trump, I give him immense credit for a lot of his accomplishments in this country.
But I think I'm going to be able to take that America first agenda that began with George Washington, that continued through Ronald Reagan, through Donald Trump, now through me, taking that to the next level.
I think I have fresh legs.
I think I'm able to reach the next generation in a way that he's not.
And I don't mean to be cynical here, but let's also get very practical.
I don't think this system, that permanent state, is going to let him get anywhere near that White House.
And I think that that may sound dark, but you look at what's happening in Colorado or in California or other states.
I think anybody who thinks that it's just going to be a honky-dory, straightforward path that they even let Donald Trump get anywhere near that White House again, that existing establishment, I think that's a naive delusion, actually.
And so it's my job anyway to stand for this agenda, take our America First Agenda to the next level.
I'll honor Donald Trump and his legacy.
But I think there are forces at work in the United States that have determined not to let him anywhere near.
And it's my responsibility to make sure that we have standard bearers who can take the America First Agenda to the next level starting in 2024.
That's what I'm in this race to do.
And I think next year is going to be a complicated and turbulent year.
I mean, that's the truth.
Last question.
Nikki Haley, who I thought had no chance, seems to be rising.
She seems to be the establishment Republican candidate around whom the elites are coalescing.
Do you take her seriously as a threat?
And do you think she will be the anointed candidate of the official party?
I don't take her seriously in any sense.
I mean, she's not really an independently thinking, functioning agent.
She's a pawn.
She's a puppet, propped up by what I think should be taken seriously, which is a permanent state, the deep state.
And there are cronies in the mainstream media that have decided that this is going to be a useful pawn to advance their pro-war, corrupt, pro-censorship agenda in this country.
And I think that's actually the dirty little secret here.
Many of the people who were before propping up the left, from Reid Hoffman to Larry Fink, they're now propping up Nikki Haley.
So in some sense, they say, who needs Democrats when you have somebody like this running in the Republican Party?
Same people who are trying to keep Trump off the ballot are the ones who are propping up Nikki.
Interesting how that works.
And so Nikki Haley is more or less irrelevant as an individual and as a human being.
She's just another, you know, old school corrupt class politician bought and paid for and looks to make money off politics.
That's a familiar story.
There's nothing new about that in American politics.
But I think what is new is the level of aversion to Trump in particular that they've decided to coalesce and prop up this puppet.
But I think all the more reason, I think that's the way this is going to go is they're going to try to, I mean, I think one way this could go is they effectively, by hook or by crook, by hell or high water, decide Donald Trump.
They're going to keep him out.
You see the entire system conspiring to make that happen, trying to prop up Nikki Haley, who I think in many ways could be more dangerous to the future of this country than even many Democrats.
Look at her pro-censorship agenda.
Every social media account has to have your government-issued ID tied to it.
Imagine that if that were tied to the Canadian truckers in a central bank digital currency.
It's a worse world than Orwell could have imagined.
Using our own money to ship money to Ukraine so that some kleptocrat over there can buy a bigger house.
That's not America.
And I think that I'm offended by what she and more or less the people who are propping her up represent in this country.
And I'm going to make sure that nobody like that comes near the levers of power in Washington, D.C. Unlike others, I could make a clear statement and tell you she will now come nowhere near being my vice president or anywhere near my administration.
I can be clear about that.
I'm not afraid to say that.
And I think that that's a part of why I'm the proper standard bearer for taking our America first movement to the next level, because I can say that without hedging.
What happened to Ron DeSantis?
He was such a golden governor.
He was world famous as a freedom-oriented governor, especially during the lockdowns.
His campaign hasn't really caught fire.
What's your diagnosis?
I think Ron's a good guy as a governor.
I think he should remain.
I think it'll be good for the people of Florida if he remains as a governor.
I think to be a president, you need to have a vision for where we're going as a country, not just executing somebody else's vision.
And so, you know, I respect Ron has been a good executor in the state of Florida.
But I think when you think about who needs to lead this country, it needs to be somebody with an independent vision of who we are and what we stand for.
That's why I'm in this race, and I think we're going to be successful.
It's great to meet you, and we'll attend your next event.
Thank you.
Here we are, I think yeah.
What do you think about?
I did my best to ask short questions and listen more than talk.
You know my style.
Sometimes I say, blah, blah, blah, blah.
What do you think?
Now, I didn't want to do that in this interview.
I wanted maximum content from the candidate.
And when I asked him about Trump, I said, look, your ideas sound Trumpy.
Your style is Trumpy.
You're even using Trumpy slogans.
His first response was, yeah, well, so did George Washington.
Okay, good point.
But then he said something that terrified me and I can't dispute it.
He said, what if Trump is not allowed to win?
And as he pointed out, look what they're doing.
The Connecticut Supreme Court said that Donald Trump is not allowed to be on the ballot because he participated in an insurrection.
By the way, that's not true.
Donald Trump has never been charged with insurrection.
It's simply a political blacklisting of him.
And that's catching on with other Democrat-controlled legislatures or courts.
And I've said this for a while, and I don't want to sound crazy about it, but I do know I saw with my eyes the footage of Yair Bolsonaro being stabbed in public just days before the election in Brazil last time.
I'm going to show you that terrifying footage to show you what happened to a populist conservative leader that everyone in the establishment wanted to stop.
Remember this?
There have been other political assassinations and trillions of dollars and war and peace is at stake.
The rise of China, Iran, and couldn't be bigger stakes in the next election.
And do you doubt that there are some people who would do literally anything, including, God forbid, may it never happen, an assassination to stop Donald Trump?
And he was more modest in how he put that, but I've said it the way I've just said it.
I think it's absolutely a possibility.
Four U.S. presidents have been assassinated.
I hate to say it.
And even if they don't physically assassinate him, will they jail him?
Will they bump him off the ballot?
And immediately the light bulb went on for me.
If Vivek Ramaswamy is the heir to Donald Trump, if he is Donald Trump, the next generation, if he's Donald Trump with pizazz and very high energy and, you know, 35 years younger,
and if he does not alienate the Trump base, in fact, if he pays them homage and if he treats them with respect and if he uses phrases that ring a bell with them, and if he continues this way, and by the way, Donald Trump returns the favor.
Here's Trump, when he was asked to won a debate, he said Vivek did.
Well, we like Ramashwami.
You know why?
Because he likes Trump.
I like him.
I tend, I mean, this is probably a personality defect, but I tend to like people that like me.
So if Vivek Ramaswamy treats the Trump base with respect, as he has, if he uses the language that resonates with them and with others, and if, God forbid, Donald Trump is stopped from running, where does that Trump vote go?
Some of it will go to Ron DeSantis, the governor.
Very little of it would go to Nikki Haley.
But how much would go to Vivek Ramaswamy?
I think a significant portion would.
And maybe that's a possibility here.
If instead Donald Trump runs and becomes president, I think for sure he would appoint Vivek Ramaswamy to some position, perhaps in cabinet, perhaps even vice president, perhaps an ambassador, perhaps a position involving technology or something.
I don't know.
If Donald Trump runs and loses, Ramaswamy is young enough.
He's only in his 40s, I believe, that he could certainly be a candidate in 2028.
Ramaswamy's Political Future00:02:19
It was very interesting, and I thought for the first time I saw the path there.
I enjoyed spending 15 minutes one-on-one with him.
I enjoyed watching him at his truck stop event.
And then, because we rode the bus with him to his next event, we stayed for a few minutes at the next event.
And he had used similar messaging, which we would expect.
You can't do seven events in one day and change it up every time.
And why would you?
You're repeating the message to a new audience.
It would be strange, actually, if you changed your message.
So it was fascinating to see him give that message with the same energy again.
It looked like the seventh meeting of his day was for Indian Americans in Iowa, which was very interesting.
I didn't know there was a lot of Indian Iowans, but there certainly was enough to pack a room in a small town in Iowa.
Well, that's my day.
It's sort of late.
We've got to drive back to Chicago and then take the flight back to Canada, but I think it was worth it.
I felt a little bit of excitement.
The rooms were not huge.
There was about 75 seats in the theater here in the truck stop.
Looked like there was probably double that in the Indo-American meeting.
Those aren't bad numbers, considering you're in small towns in Iowa and you have all the candidates stumping at the same time.
I have to say, my opinion and my impressions of Vivek Ramaswamy increased tremendously.
And I'm rooting for the guy.
It was interesting to spend the day with him.
By the way, I reached out to both the Trump campaign and the DeSantis campaign.
The Trump campaign said that they could not accommodate me.
I get it.
The DeSantis campaign wrapped up today.
I was hoping to spend some time with them either today or tomorrow, but they're off for Christmas.
Hopefully I'll be able to connect with them in the new year.
It's interesting to watch politics at the retail level in America.
I think their system is more democratic than ours in Canada.
And in any events, theirs will certainly have an impact on us no matter what way it goes.
And I'll tell you one thing, if Vivek Ramaswamy ever does become the president of the United States, we'll have in the White House someone who's very attentive to Canada and cares more for our Canadian civil liberties than Justin Trudeau ever did.