Ezra Levant examines Canada’s Liberal Party collapse after two crushing by-election defeats—LaSalle-Verdun lost to a Bloc Québécois candidate pushing pro-Hamas messaging, mirroring the UK’s election of five Hamas-aligned MPs, while Manitoba saw just 5% support. The party’s inner circle, including Trudeau’s unpopular policies, drives MP fears, with Laura Palestini’s resignation symbolizing panic. Levant contrasts this with Brazil’s "juristocracy," where activist judge Alexander de Moraes wields power through secret trials, freezing Starlink’s $5M assets, and targeting critics like Rodrigo Constantino, who fled to Florida after persecution. Lula’s presidency, enabled by de Moraes, risks mirroring Venezuela’s authoritarianism under Chávez and Maduro, with outsider conservatives like Pablo Marsao facing systemic suppression. Western democracies may soon confront judicial overreach eroding free speech and accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
The Liberal Party of Canada just getting pommeled.
Incredibly, in Montreal, in one of the safest ridings in Liberal history, La Salemar Verdun.
That's where David LeMetty was.
That's where Paul Martin himself was.
Imagine losing that.
That's how much Trudeau is hated.
I'll also take you through a new poll that shows just how unforgiving former Liberal voters are.
It's actually amazing.
Hey, but first, can I invite you to get a subscription of what we call Rebel News Plus?
That's the video version of this podcast.
It's eight bucks a month, which might not sound like a lot to you, but boy, it sure adds up for us.
That's how we pay our bills around here.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe, and Bob's your uncle.
All right, here's today's podcast.
It's the news event of the year.
Canada's most controversial premier sits down with Canada's most controversial journalist, and everything is on the table.
Come watch Ezra Levant one-on-one with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in front of a live studio audience in Calgary.
Nothing's off-limits.
Nothing's held back.
Questions that would make Justin Trudeau invoke martial law.
Answers that will make Stephen Gilbo pee his pans.
You're not going to want to miss this one, but you have to be there in person at the Rebel News Live mega conference in Calgary on October the 5th.
Tickets are limited, so drop everything and go to rebelnewslive.com right now.
Special discounted prices for patriots and special extra high prices if you're with the CBC.
Go to rebelnewslive.com now.
Tonight, Justin Trudeau loses two by-elections badly.
So now he thinks maybe censoring the media will save him.
It's September 17th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Hey, who are you?
I'm...
I'm feeling pretty good today.
I saw two by-elections last night: one in Manitoba, one in Quebec.
In Manitoba, the Liberal Party, which is in government, Justin Trudeau, got around 5% of the vote.
Single digits.
That's like fringe party status.
Just incredible.
I mean, it was always an NDP stronghold.
The Liberals were never particularly strong there.
But my God, that's got to scare any Liberal MP in the West.
And Montreal was in its own way more astonishing.
See, that seat in Manitoba, it had been an NDP seat for decades, actually, but the one in Montreal was about as heartland for the Liberals as it comes.
It would be like Calgary in the Reform Party or the Conservative Party history.
Montreal, that is where the Liberals are.
The riding was called La Salemar Verdun.
In the past, it was called La Salemar.
That was Paul Martin's riding when he was finance minister and the prime minister.
Then it was David LeMetti's riding.
He's the disgraced former justice minister.
These are the kings, the titans of the Liberal Party, and this was the safest seat possible.
Incredibly, the Liberals were run out of the district.
I say run out of the district because I was thinking of what the Liberal candidate herself did last night.
She gave a speech and then she ran out of the room never to return.
I mean, she hadn't formally lost yet, but it was going so poorly.
She said a few things and then she ran out.
Here's the CBC trying to come to terms with that.
We're all trying to figure out why Laura Palestini gave that speech when she gave that speech.
You got any insight?
What's the vibe and the reaction at the headquarters after that?
Well, David, I can tell you one thing.
As much as she was energetic in her speech, she was also energetic in leaving the party.
She immediately left as soon as she gave that speech.
She did a few steps saying thank you to the volunteers, turned around, went out the door, and of course we followed her.
Thought maybe she was just getting some fresh air.
No, she got thrown away.
Now, early in the night, the NDP were doing very well.
In fact, it was sort of a three-way race.
The Bloc Hippoqua, who finally won, the Liberals, and the NDP.
They did well as the explicitly pro-Hamas party.
They had a pamphlet.
Their candidate had a pamphlet talking about Gaza, and the only flag on it was not the Canadian flag, not the Quebec fleur-de-lis, but rather the Palestinian flag.
And he did very well.
And you might recall that some Muslims in the Liberal Party had a boycott on the Liberal campaign saying they weren't going to help Justin Trudeau because he wasn't pro-Hamas enough.
This is shades of what we saw in the United Kingdom in July.
They had their parliamentary elections on July 4th, you might recall.
And whereas five Reform Party MPs, including Nigel Farage, were elected on the right, well, five pro-Hamas MPs were elected on the hard left.
Four of them were Muslim themselves, and the fifth was Jeremy Corbyn, a hardline anti-Israel, pro-terrorist.
I'd call them pro-terrorists, really.
And they ran on a Gaza platform.
Remember some of the victory speeches by those guys in the UK?
Terrifying.
Go home, find every brand and every product that has been supporting Israel and Zionism from the beginning of time and throw it away.
Throw it away.
Put the list on your fridge.
Tell your children when you go to the shop to buy sweets, do not buy this and do not buy that.
That is the least we can do.
We have been complicit indirectly for too long by electing these Zionists, these unjust leaders.
Well, we were only a couple thousand votes away from that happening in Canada and don't think that won't happen one day.
So a disastrous night for the Liberals.
And I say again, I mean, nine years or more into a party's mandate, by-elections are going to be a way for people to express their dislike with the incumbent.
It's not that surprising that in the dying days of a regime, people use by-elections to punish them.
But the depth of the hatred for the Liberal Party is something we haven't seen before.
Justin Trudeau lives in his own world, though.
I really believe that he follows his father's mantra.
I don't know if you remember, but Pierre Elliott Trudeau, his dad once said MPs are nobody 100 yards off Parliament Hill.
They're nobodies.
And I hate to say that's right.
There's 338 MPs.
How many of them would you recognize if you bumped into them?
The answer is pretty few because Parliament itself has fewer and fewer powers as it's all absorbed by the PMO.
There's a couple of cabinet ministers who are good for show and tell, but the number of people who actually make decisions is very small.
And most of them are not MPs.
So you're a regular MP.
You're going to be terrified by what you saw last night.
And if you remember when Justin Trudeau was accosted on the beach by our alumnus, Kian Bexty, Bexy said, are you avoiding your MPs?
And I think Trudeau very much is terrified of his MPs.
I mean, imagine what they had to say to him when he saw them yesterday, but that was before the election result today.
Here's Trudeau walking into parliament yesterday.
He had someone film him like he was very confident and strong.
But look at the stress on his face.
Look at that forced grin.
Even a trained thespian and dramatic actor, a high school drama teacher, substitute drama teacher like him, even he couldn't quite hide the stress and anxiety.
Even though he doesn't care about his MPs, they do control his future.
They could, if they wanted to, band together and boot him out.
Look at him make his entrance with his personal videographer yesterday.
Look at his face.
Take a look.
Ready?
Hey guys. How are you?
Good to see you.
Good to see you.
How are you doing?
How are you doing?
Good stuff.
Merci.
Let's go.
Yeah, it's not going well there.
They really are down to the palace guard.
Trudeau sounds like, I don't know if you remember during the Iraq war when the head of PR was talking about the mother of all battles.
And we were smashing, I don't know if you remember, but Saddam Hussein's spokesman, even as the tanks were closing in on Baghdad, was talking about how they were going to beat the great Satan and the little Satan.
That's what the Liberals sound like now.
Just, oh, we're confident, and oh, Canadians are truly with us.
I think that they're lashing out, the Liberals, and they've been doing so for a fair bit.
Trudeau's Overconfident Posturing00:15:19
Here's a story I should have mentioned when it happened a week or two ago.
Talib Nur Mohamed is a member of parliament of no account.
He's one of these nobodies that you wouldn't recognize other than he was famous for buying a house and flipping it, buying a house and flipping it, buying it and flipping it, buying it and flipping, which of course distorts the market, makes it hard for people who want to buy a house to live in.
He's a speculator, he's a profiteer.
He was who the Liberal Party chose to run in Vancouver.
And I think that's a slap in the face to people trying to find affordable housing in one of the most expensive cities.
But he's someone of no account.
He is sort of the deputy to the Heritage Minister.
So he has some say over a program that's very important to the Liberals, which is subsidies to journalists.
In fact, they just recently increased the subsidies that the Trudeau government will pay to journalists now.
I think it's about $30,000.
It works out to $30,000 per journalist in the program, which is pretty much half their pay.
And Talib Nur Mohammed was getting very frustrated that the media weren't as loving as they should be.
He responded to a criticism online by a journalist.
And this journalist is with post-media.
The journalist didn't really say anything that interesting, just was criticizing Mark Miller on something.
It didn't even mention Talib Nur Mohammed.
But here's what Talib Nur Mohammed, the liberal, said in return.
Your paper wouldn't be in business were it not for the subsidies that the government that you hate put in place.
The same subsidies your Trump-adjacent foreign hedge fund owners gladly take to pay your salary.
Holy cow!
Does he have some anger issues?
Trump adjacent, foreign.
He's so furious, and of course he doesn't like money.
He's very much against rich people owning newspaper companies.
He's all for using flipping houses to make a quick buck, but he's very mad, and he's basically telling a journalist, I'm your boss, know your place, and you'd be nothing if it weren't for my largesse.
That's really what he's saying.
There really isn't any other way to interpret his message.
Absolutely atrocious, a threat.
I mean, why don't you just add on and be careful we don't audit you at the CRA?
I mean, why not do that since you're throwing your weight around?
What was the most incredible thing was not that this was an attack on a journalist with a threat.
That's sort of known.
That's sort of what the whole subsidy program is about.
I like to say that the CBC is owned by the government, but the newspaper journalists are just rented by them.
And it's worse to be rented because, of course, you have to keep proving that you're worth the subsidy.
The CBC, someone like that post-media journalist would just be fired, though.
Anyways, the worst part of it was that the rest of the media was completely silent about it.
They were fine with it.
The Canadian Association of Journalists didn't say a word about this outrageous threat.
The Canadian Journalist for Free Expression, Penn Canada, none of them had a word to say because, yeah, they absolutely agree when you, you know, whoever pays the piper calls the tune.
So that's to leave Noor Mohammed.
But yesterday, as Parliament resumed, Karina Gould, who's really one of the palace guards, she had a scrum and she thought she would continue to leave Noor Mohammed with his little campaign and lecture the journalists, tell them how to cover Pierre Polyev.
And it's just an amazing lack of self-awareness here.
Listen to her little speech here where she calls Pierre Polyev a bully.
He's a bully.
And then she tries to bully him by calling him a fraudster.
What I want to talk about today is the fact that what I heard yesterday from Mr. Polyev was so over the top, so irresponsible, so immature, and something that only a fraudster would do.
When he is focused on having an election on the carbon price, what he's trying to do is distract Canadians from his real agenda.
When he talks about the fact that he cares about how Canadians are feeling in difficult economic times, what plan does he put forward?
When it comes to our seniors, the only thing that we've heard is that he wants to raise the age of retirement, cut pensions, and remove their access to dental care.
When it comes to families who are struggling, what are his plans?
Get rid of affordable child care and scrap the school food program.
When it comes to making sure that Canadians have access to good quality information in a time of incredible disinformation, what does he propose to do?
Defund the CBC.
And all of you as journalists can have experienced firsthand how he treats people who try to ask him tough questions, who try to have him face the scrutiny of what he puts forward.
And how does he react?
As a bully, as someone who will not stand to scrutiny, who will not respond respectfully, not just to you as journalists, but on the questions you're asking on behalf of Canadians.
Because your job is to get that information to Canadians.
And there's a reason why he doesn't want Canadians to know what his true agenda is.
And it's because he knows that they won't like it if they find out.
And so what we are here today, as Liberals in this House, going to do and what we're going to be doing moving forward is to make sure that we stand up every single day for Canadians, that we push back on his bullying tactics, that we push back on his irresponsible and immature antics in this place.
He's a fraud.
Like, you don't realize how hysterical you're sound.
He's got a hidden agenda.
He's been in politics for, I don't know, what, 20 years?
If there's a hidden agenda that he's still hiding, he's a pretty good hider because he actually served in government where he could do what was in his heart.
And I think if there's anyone who you sort of know what he stands for, it's Pierre Poly.
He's been saying the same things for decades.
But it wasn't just the lashing out and the stress and the anxiety in Karina Gould, calling him a fraud and a bully, which is sort of projection on both counts.
It was the instruction to the media.
Hey, you have to cover how he treats people who try to ask him tough questions.
Really, you're going there.
I happen to be with Rebel News, and two times we have applied to be accredited for the leaders' debates, which is bizarrely run by Trudeau's office.
He appointed hand-picked people, David Johnson, one of the people who have really nothing to do with running TV debates, one of the Kielbergers, and put them in charge of it.
And they banned Rebel News.
So twice we had to go to court to get in.
And even once we were in, and the judge said, yeah, there's no legal basis to keep out journalists that Trudeau doesn't like, Trudeau still wouldn't answer the questions.
So you just saw Karina Gould saying, answer questions.
And take a look at what Trudeau said when we finally got into court, sorry, into the debate commission.
And Trudeau was so furious at us, he refused to answer.
Remember this?
The reality is, organizations, organizations like yours that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation on the science around vaccines,
around how we're going to actually get through this pandemic and be there for each other and keep our kids safe, is part of why we're seeing such unfortunate anger and lack of understanding of basic science.
And quite frankly, your, I won't call it a media organization, your group of individuals need to take accountability for some of the polarization that we're seeing in this country.
And I think Canadians are cluing into the fact that there is a really important decision we take about the kind of country we want to see.
And I salute all extraordinary, hardworking journalists that put science and facts at the heart of what they do and ask me tough questions every day, but make sure that they are educating and informing Canadians from a broad range of perspectives, which is the last thing that you guys do.
Yeah, it just doesn't compute.
I mean, and that was Trudeau being polite.
How many times has he arrested us?
How many times have they arrested David Menzies alone?
Remember when our friend David asked Christia Freeland a simple question?
Trudeau's RCMP bodyguards swarmed David, smashed him against the wall, handcuffed him, charged him with assault.
And remember her smirk as she walked by?
Take a look just to refresh your memory.
Ms. Freeland, how come the IRDC is not a terrorist group?
Why is your government supporting Islam on me?
What do you mean?
You're under arrest for assault.
Why are you supposed to be?
You're under arrest for assault.
Yeah, they're out of control.
They're losing control of their emotions.
And I don't know if you know that name, Katie Telford.
She's the chief of staff to Trudeau, and really, I think, the only senior staffer who's been with him the whole time.
She's been there for the long ride.
And she doesn't tweet a lot.
Why would she?
She has an army of press attachés, not just in the prime minister's office, but in every cabinet minister's office.
There have got to be, well, I mean, 40 chiefs of staff for each minister that report to Katie Telford, each of which has a communications team.
This woman is like an orchestra conductor.
So it's very odd and unusual when she herself tweets.
Why would she tweet to a small number of people other than showing sort of her insider circle what the emphasis is?
Hey guys, here's the message.
It's really important you hear it straight from me.
So let me just show you a few of the tweets that she has retweeted or posted just to show you what she's thinking.
Here's a retweet of Mark Miller, and she's so excited that he's saying, cut the crap.
Shut your yap.
That's just so weird when someone as weird and gangly and effete as Mark Miller tries to be Hulk Hogan-ish.
It doesn't really work.
I'm a professional wrestler.
Shut your yap.
It just doesn't work.
You have to look like Alex Jones to pull that off.
But that's where, so your chief of staff for the whole government, that's the most articulate you can be.
Shut your yap.
Who is he talking to?
He's talking to any critic.
They're just, they want critics and opposition to shut your yap.
Here's another one.
Here she is retweeting another chief of staff that reports to her who says, there's a convention around parliamentarians that we're not supposed to call each other liars, he said, adding, Pierre Polyev is a liar.
So a liar and a fraudster and a bully.
Like they've just, I don't know if you remember, but when Trudeau ran 10 years ago or whenever it was that he first sought the leadership and then he ran in the election, he talked about sunny ways.
Sunny ways, my friend, not like that dour Stephen Harper.
Stephen Harper is so grouchy and so grumpy, but not me.
I'm happy and it's a new day.
Yeah, those days are long gone.
Now, the question is, how long will the Liberal Party accept a leader who is just flying that plane into the ground as fast as possible?
I mean, if you are losing La Salle Mar Verdun, which is the liberal heartland, not a single liberal is safe.
I saw the latest projection.
You know, polls come out all the time and then people break them down and do projections of the seat count.
It's not an accurate science, but if you're using the same process every time, you can track it over time.
I saw that the liberals are on track to be the third or fourth party to be absolutely destroyed.
Not quite a Kim Campbell, only two MPs left standing rebuke, but pretty bad.
I mean, there would be a handful of MPs in Toronto, a handful in Montreal, and that's pretty much it.
A sprinkle here and there.
But for example, my own atrocious MP, Yaara Sachs, would be flattened.
And all the MPs that we despise, I mean, really, it would be a massacre by the people peacefully and democratically taking Trudeau to the trash bin of history.
And so if you are a liberal MP, you can be a good boy or a big girl, good girl, and stay quiet and go along with this.
Or you can say, well, is there any better way?
Because with Justin Trudeau at the helm, we are going to all lose our jobs.
Now, maybe you don't care.
Maybe you were thinking of retiring anyways.
And so, you know, or maybe you're in one of the ultra-safe ridings.
But frankly, how much fun is it to be in opposition in the third or fourth party after having been in government?
Like, is there anyone in the liberal caucus who's feeling good right now?
And at what point do you say we're going to do what the Democrats in the U.S. did when they saw that Joe Biden was going to blow everything up?
Just have a coup, replace him.
And it's a lot easier in our parliamentary system than in their presidential system, by the way.
I think the answer in part is: is anyone standing in the wings, ready to go?
Do they have the courage to step up?
Because I think the liberal MPs are desperate right now.
It'll be fascinating to see that happen.
But in the meantime, the little inner circle, Mark Miller, Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Hamas caucus, I put them in the center of things, at least for foreign policy, Melanie Jolie, and Katie Telford.
In the meantime, they're going to loot the joint.
They're going to wring everything they can out for the next few months.
I mean, they don't know how long they have.
They want to have the election next fall, so that's a full year more.
But they don't know.
Maybe they'll be thrown out the window by the liberal caucus next week.
So they are using every day like it's their last.
And they're implementing extreme policies while they can.
They're absolutely raiding the financial coffers.
I mean, look at the 2 billion plus they gave away to a knockoff of Elon Musk's Starlink the other day.
Immigration.
They're flooring it.
Immigration is actually higher now than last year, if you can believe it.
2 Billion Given Away?00:04:05
They're going full blast with the censorship.
Oh, absolutely.
That remains their number one policy.
And I think they're taking notes from Hillary Clinton, who made just an astonishing statement about how people should be arrested for misinformation.
Arrested.
Here's that clip.
Just as Mueller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016.
But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda.
And whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrent.
Oh, they love Hillary Clinton.
So many times, Canadian liberals look to the Democrats in the States for their talking points.
And on censorship, they walk together in sync.
Here's some clips from Sheila Gonrid.
Sheila's done a great job recently of sort of a corruption watch.
There's an inquiry in corruption.
Let me just show you some of these insane clips of how the woman appointed to be in charge of Trudeau's green slush fund was slushing herself.
Take a look.
How many Canadian tax dollars were given out in conflicts of interest by liberal appointed board members at Sustainable Development Technologies Canada?
How much money?
Just the number would be helpful.
The total amount of money?
Yeah, the Auditor General pegged the number at $330 million given out in conflicts of interest.
Do you dispute that number?
The Auditor General stated that number.
It's obvious that that is accurate.
So you agree.
So, ma'am, are you proud of your time at Justin Trudeau's green slush fund?
It's a yes or no question.
The investments that STTC made into the clean tech industry has had an enormous impact on Canada.
I'm very proud of the work that STTC has done.
Yes.
Are you proud of the $300 million given out in conflicts of interest?
Are you proud of the 24 instances of your own conflicts of interest?
Are you proud that you used your position to help enrich yourself and your friends?
Again, I accept the commissioner's findings.
I recognize that there were two things that I could have been approved on in terms of that designation of recusing versus abstaining.
I know what it means to be in a position like you.
You're a smart woman, Ms. Verchern.
How is it, how is it possible that it didn't cross your mind, you didn't realize I've been on a number of boards, including the port of Quebec City, where I was also a provider prior to that, or a supplier rather.
And I completely stepped aside when I sat on the board because I knew I no longer was entitled to those contracts.
So how is it?
I can't fathom how you didn't realize that you had no business being there.
Mr. Chair, when I got on the board of STDC, I clearly disclosed to the minister, to the ICED people, to management, that I had a declaration that happened 18 months prior to me getting on that board.
Abacus And The Liberal Tilt00:03:05
That is the only real conflict that I've had over the whole term of my chairmanship.
Yeah, just that, like I say, some governments, when they're at the end of their natural life, they're tired and fatigued and aimless.
Not the liberals.
They're just stuffing things into their pockets.
They're like at a buffet that's told them to get out.
So they're just putting bread rolls in their pockets and some chicken here.
They're doing whatever they can to grab as much as they can and run out before it's over.
Hey, let me show you an amazing poll.
You know, I love to talk to you about David Coletto and Abacus, and you know the reason why, because that firm tilts towards the Liberal Party.
So if they say things positive about the conservatives or Pierre Polyev, they're not trying to fool themselves.
And it's like if the New York Times would ever say something nice about Donald Trump, it would be so shocking that they would do so.
You know it would be true because it would be against their every instinct.
So I love following David Coletto because he's a pretty good guy and I think he's pretty fair.
But second of all, I know I'm not kidding myself when I cite an Abacus poll.
I'm being conservative, so to speak, as in hopefully the truth is even better than what they say.
Look at this.
He asks people who say they're going to vote conservative, how likely are you to change your vote?
Like between now and Election Day, could you be moved?
You say you're going to vote conservative.
Will that change?
Well, look at the answers, unbelievable answers.
62% say, I will never change.
I am dead.
These are the people who say they're going to vote conservative.
Another 32% say it's unlikely.
And that's 94% of Polyev voters say, nah, nah, I ain't changing.
But look at this.
You see where it says LPC 2021?
Those are people who voted liberal in 2021 and have since flipped to support Polyev.
So those are people who fell out of love.
40% of them say never, never switch.
And you can understand that because if you actually fall out of love with someone and feel cheated or tricked or misled, you have a hard heart.
It's not that you just, if you voted for Trudeau in 2021 and now you've got this mess, you ain't going back.
The most astonishing thing in this abacus poll, though, is the number for women.
Now, I always thought that women were more liberal, that women, either for ideological reasons or because they thought Justin Trudeau was cute, would vote for him.
But according to David Coletto of Abacus, who is not a conservative booster, 67% of women who support Polyev will never change their mind.
I find that incredible.
I think Trudeau's days are numbered.
I suppose you can say that about all of us.
I suppose the question is: how many numbers?
Do you think he'll last the whole year?
I don't.
Stay with us.
Venezuela's Rise and Fall00:15:53
Well, I can't believe it was just a week ago that we visited Sao Paulo for the largest free speech rally I've ever been to in my life.
Scratch that, the largest rally I've ever been to in my life.
I would estimate there were around 200,000 people there.
And I was told by folks there that there had been earlier rallies by the same side of the freedom versus tyranny debate, the Bolsonaro side, that reached 1 million people.
They do it big in South America.
It was such a blur.
We flew down 10 hours on a night flight.
We did journalism all day, and then we came home the very next day.
So it almost feels like a dream.
But I think it was very important we went there because I saw no other English language journalists covering what I think is a very portentous battle.
Will Brazil lurch back to become a kind of dictatorship as it was just 40 years ago?
Or will it go down the path of freedom?
There's other freedom activists in Latin America, whether it's Naebukele in El Salvador or Javier Mile in Argentina.
Which road will Brazil choose?
And we're joined now by someone who follows Brazilian politics full-time.
In fact, he's a victim of Brazilian politics.
His name is Rodrigo Constantino, and he's actually a kind of refugee in Florida, if I understand correctly.
He joins us now by Skype Rodrigo.
Great to meet you in person.
My pleasure.
I appreciate it.
Well, thanks for joining us.
I had a crash course in Brazil.
I mean, really, you can't sum up a country, especially a country that large, in 36 hours.
But I feel like I got a good taste for the battle.
Free speech is part of it.
Elon Musk may be part of the solution.
It looks like a democracy from the outside with Lula, the president, and a judge, Alexander de Maurais.
But that's just the trappings of democracy underneath it is a bit of a tyrant.
That's what I took away from it.
But look, I don't want to say I managed to understand Brazil in just two days.
Help me out.
What's really going on?
And tell us a little bit of your story, because I know that you were directly involved.
Yes.
Well, I think you get totally right what's going on in Brazil.
We are not a democracy anymore.
And I'm pretty comfortable saying that because I'm a victim, as you mentioned.
Almost two years ago, I had my passport canceled.
Not even traffic dealers or drug dealers or homicides have this kind of punishment.
As a journalist, I had my passports, my passport taken away from me.
My social media is under censorship.
And with 1.6 million followers in Twitter, for example, they are not able to see my content.
And now nobody's able to see any content anymore because the Twitter, the X platform was banned from Brazil.
And also I had my banking accounts frozen.
So why?
Because of opinion crime, because I've been criticizing what Alexandre de Moraes and the Supreme Court, what they have been doing in the last three, four years.
So you're not supposed to criticize the electoral process anymore.
If you criticize Alexander de Moraes, you are attacking the system and the institutions, the democracy itself.
So to tell you the truth, I think Brazil is under the radar of many people right now.
And you're doing a great job showing that because we are kind of laboratory to what's going on in the West as a whole.
Like the left found out that they don't need the people and the Congress anymore.
If only they can have like six judges in the Supreme Court, they can rule.
They can do anything they want.
And Brazil is like a laboratory now for this kind of juristocracy.
You know, it was fascinating.
There were more placards and posters and signs criticizing that activist judge, Alexander de Moraes, than there were even mentioning the president, Lula.
Even though he's so famous, he goes by one name, like Madonna or Cher.
Everyone knows who Lula is.
But the one that they were most worried about at this rally that I saw the most signs about, there was even an impersonator with a shaved head and wearing a cape.
Like Alexander de Moraes, he dresses up like a cartoonish villain.
He really has been having secret trials with secret orders.
Is that how you had your passport seized and your account shut down?
Was it this same judge or was it another judge?
Is this why?
The same judge with his own decision.
He was not even through the Supreme Court.
Like he takes his decision by himself and persecutes and censors and go after.
And we had even political arrests in the country.
And one guy died in prison because of Alexander de Moraes.
So to explain why Alexander de Moraes was so popular in these protests and not Lula, it's because Lula is there again in the presidency because of Alexander de Moraes.
So pretty much Lula is now kind of a puppet.
The real tyrant, the one in charge and with the whole power to do whatever he pleases, actually, is Alexander de Moraes.
He included Elon Musk, one or probably the richest guy in the world.
He included Elon Musk in one of his inquiries, investigations.
And he could be arrested, for example, if he goes to Brazil.
Also, he froze money from Starlink, almost 20 million, which is $5 million.
He froze the accounts of Starlink because of what happened in the platform X.
So in terms of rule of law in the country, there's no rule of law anymore.
If somebody invests his money in Brazil right now, I think the person is crazy.
They don't see what's going on.
Wow, you said a lot of things.
Let me ask you a couple of follow-up questions.
When you say that DeMorais sometimes just acts by himself, I guess you mean there's not a hearing that's brought to him.
Normally, in courts, you have one side and the other, and a judge is in the middle, but you're saying that the judge himself came up with the case and made the decision without anyone arguing before him.
So, the people he goes after might not even be there.
Is that what you said when you said acts by himself, that he just sort of his word becomes law?
There's no even hearings.
Is that what you mean?
It's that and much more.
Yes, there's one trial, for example, that there was the defense lawyer there, and it's a famous guy now in Brazil.
He was in the protest that you watched.
Sebastián Cuello is his name.
He was the defendant of one of the political prisoners in the system, Felipe Martínz, accused of kind of preparing a coup and because he was in the airplane with Jaïque Bolsonaro, the former president, coming to Miami, but he was not in the plane and he proved that.
But Alexander de Moraes didn't care.
And Sebastián Cuello said some harsh truths in front of Alexander de Moraes.
He didn't like it, and now he closed.
Nobody can support the client anymore in front of the judge.
So that's one part of it.
The other part of it is that he was supposed to take the cases to the whole group in the Supreme Court.
And he doesn't do that.
He makes decisions by himself.
And sometimes, sometimes he takes the case for half of the Supreme Court.
We call the first Tuhuma and the second Turuma.
It's like a class.
There is one class and second class.
And he doesn't bother taking it to the whole group because he knows that former President Bolsonaro appointed two justices and they would go against his decision.
So he wants to make it sound like the whole group support him.
That's why he takes the decision by himself.
You know what?
The weaponization of the judiciary, it sounds like it's a whole other level in Brazil.
I want to talk about, and I knew this because Elon Musk owns the Twitter company.
To punish Elon Musk, they've gone after a different company called Starlink, which is the internet, the space-based internet that serves remote areas.
So in Brazil, that's particularly important.
It's an enormous country, much of it in the forest, remote areas.
So DeMorais, as you mentioned, has seized assets belonging to Starlink, even though that's not the same company as X or Twitter.
Elon Musk has a big chunk of Starlink, but it's an American company with many other shareholders.
And that's just sort of seizing something because you don't like the guy involved.
I mean, there's no way the two can be legally connected.
So let me ask you this.
My observation with the U.S. trade representative is that has got to be the most terrifying cabinet minister in the United States.
It's basically the person who goes out in the world and fights any country that is unfair to American companies.
He or she is the person that enforces trade treaties, launches international lawsuits, imposes tariffs.
Like the U.S. trade representative strikes fear into the heart of other countries more, I would say, than even the Minister of Defense, the Secretary of Defense.
It's the trade representative that goes to battle against our country of Canada over softwood lumber or things like that.
And you know, that preamble is to say, has the U.S. trade representative or has the United States government spoken out over the seizure of assets of an American company called Starlink that's got legally nothing to do with X?
Has America put its foot down or have they rolled over to Demarais?
Unfortunately, it's a Biden-Harris administration, and they've been pretty negligent with the national interests actually of United States citizens.
So, no, they haven't.
Through the ambassador in Brazil, they made clear that it's a dangerous path.
But imagine what could happen if Donald Trump would be back to the White House.
So, I think Elon Musk, close to Trump as he is now, he's planning on that.
And he kind of made a threat to Lula.
He said, I hope you like, I hope you enjoy flying commercial airplanes.
Because remember, that could happen.
The former president of Argentina, before Javier Mille, that is close now to Elon Musk or to Trump, was Christina Kirchne.
When she came to the UN in New York, she used a commercial flight because she was afraid the United States government would seize her airplane.
So that could happen to Brazil now.
We kind of become the axis of evil.
We are close to Venezuela, to Russia, to China, and we are making threats to U.S. citizens and seizing their assets.
And as you mentioned, Starlink is not a sole whole-owned company by Elon Musk.
He has partners, important ones.
It's important for national defense here in the U.S.
So I think they are messing with big guys now, and there's going to be consequences.
Yeah, I mean, we know Elon Musk because he's always giving interviews and he's always tweeting outrageous things and funny things and smart things.
But we forget that he's actually an industrialist.
He puts more satellites into space than anyone else in the world combined, more than the entire countries of China, Russia combined, times 10.
SpaceX is so important for the U.S. government, but he's an interesting character because he torments the likes of Joe Biden.
But America couldn't really operate without his technology.
You mentioned early on Venezuela, that perhaps Brazil is using Venezuelan-style tactics.
And that's interesting because, of course, the whole world followed Venezuela first under Hugo Chavez and then under Nicolas Maduro as it went from a country with so many riches, especially oil riches, and it became poor and people actually started to starve.
And they brought in brutal Cuban military to help control the people.
I don't think we've seen too much from Nicolas Maduro.
There was a question of the last election being outright stolen.
Is Brazil becoming the bad boy of South America?
What's the relationship with Venezuela and Brazil?
Do Lula and Maduro get along?
Do they have agreements, military or intelligence agreements?
Like what's really the shape of things?
Because I see two bright lights in Bukele and Javier Mille.
But those are smaller countries than Venezuela and Brazil.
Yeah, but Lula is pretty close to Maduro.
There is a thing called Foro de Sao Paulo.
It's where all those communists get together to decide the strategy to take power in the whole continent.
And Lula is pretty close to Maduro.
He always supported Maduro.
Maduro didn't become a dictator now.
This election was a fraud, as many others.
But the difference is that Lula is trying to play the good guy, the Democrat here, and he's complaining about what Maduro did and asking proof of the election process.
He's doing that as a theater to the West.
Because in the end of the day, he's close to Maduro.
He sent guys there, the movement that invades private property rural in the agro-industry called MST.
They are Marxists, they are communists.
And Maduro celebrated his victory with those guys.
They are pretty close to Lula as well.
So it's a shame, a theater, and everybody knows that.
So in the end of the day, yes, Maduro and Lula are close.
Maduro is always one step ahead of Lula, but this time, this time, he used some sentences that could be Alexandra de Moraes or Lula speaking.
Pablo's Threat to Sovereignty00:04:53
Like, who are you to judge what happened in our country?
He's a threat to our sovereignty.
It's exactly what Lula said about other governments in the West complaining about many things he's been doing.
So it's the same, the same strategy, theater.
And in the end of the day, we are close to China and Russia.
Those are the two systems in control in Latin America right now.
Well, how does it end?
Because I feel some of the same things that you're describing.
I think I see them in America.
The lawfare, the censorship, even, God forbid, the two assassination attempts on Donald Trump reminds me when Yair Bolsonaro was stabbed and lost half of the blood in his body just days before the election last time, or two times ago.
But I feel like everyone in North America knows that it's all coming to a point in less than two months.
On November 5th, so much will be decided for America and the world.
I'm talking about the presidential election.
What's everything aiming to?
When is the crisis?
What's the decision point in Brazil?
I saw Bolsonaro lead this huge rally in Sao Paul.
We were right at the front, him and his son and his entourage.
Will he be allowed on the ballot?
When is that next election?
Will the government continue to strangle free speech in the meantime?
Like I know everything's pointed to a resolution in America on November 5th.
When is decision day in Brazil?
Yeah, I don't think Bolsonaro will be able to run again.
There are some followers that are optimistic about it.
I'm not.
I think the system is made it very clear that, yeah, we won't accept it.
Maybe a guy that looks like a right-wing guy, a conservative, but in the end of the day is one of us.
It's accepted by the system.
That's our best call, I guess.
And we can look at what's going on because it's 2026, the next presidential election.
But right now, we're in the middle of a mayor election.
And Sao Paulo is the richest and most important capital of our country.
And Marsao, Pablo Marsao is his name.
He's a kind of a new Bolsonaro, the guy, the outsider against the system.
He calls every other candidate as a bunch of communists.
And the other day, the other night, one of them took a chair, a share, and put it in his head.
I think we got a video of that here.
Let's take a look about it.
Crazy, crazy.
That's crazy.
Just take a quick look.
Do you think that did that help him or hurt him in the polls?
Did people like him more or did they like him less after that chair smashing incident?
I think it helps because people are tired of the system of the legacy media, corrupt press, and all those communists disguised as Democrats, as liberals.
So, yes, I think it makes the point that Pablo Marsao is the outsider candidate there.
The one man against the whole system.
He doesn't have TV time for his campaign.
His party is a tiny party.
So, yes, he's running against everybody else.
And people likes it as Bolsonaro was helped in 2018 because of that.
Well, very interesting.
One Man Against the System00:03:19
Listen, it's great to meet you.
We'll follow along on Twitter, even if people in Brazil can't, unless they use maybe a VPN.
Rodrigo Constantino, good luck, stay safe and keep fighting.
Thank you very much.
I will appreciate the time.
All right, Oprigado.
There you have it.
Stay with us.
your letters to me next hey welcome back your letters to me Trumpington Fanhurst, what a lovely name, says, How would fairly providing internet to rural people at a low cost provide profit and kickback to Trudeau?
You make my point.
I mean, Starlink, and I told you my little anecdote, and I'm sure if you've used Starlink, you're saying Ezra.
Yeah, we know.
But a lot of people don't know because Starlink is wonderful if you're far-flung.
That's why it's perfect for the Canadian North.
That's why it's so important for Brazil, you know, in the rainforest or whatever.
You can get a great solution from Starlink for a few hundred bucks and then pay, I don't know, what is it?
I think it's less than $100 a month.
High-speed, reliable, low-latency.
I don't even know what that means, but it's great.
I can tell you because I used it myself.
But where's the, if it's not padded, where's the money for the lobbyist?
Where's the money for the bureaucrat?
Where's the money for the provider?
Where's the money for the gender analysis?
Hey, where's your gender analysis?
So, but the craziest part is Starlink is working now.
Like, it's amazing, right?
It is ready right now.
You can order your Starlink and get it shipped to your house right now.
This Telesat scheme is in the future.
Maybe, maybe it'll work.
Maybe it won't.
Is it really going to be as good as Elon Musk's?
Obviously, it won't be.
And they even have to hitch a ride with Elon Musk's satellites.
And that's the thing.
The whole point of government procurement is to spend as much as possible to share the wealth.
It's like I mentioned, that multi-billion dollar rail project, high-speed rail project in California.
They built like one mile, but they've spent billions on it.
That's the whole point.
Dee Flaherty says, isn't Mark Carney the CEO of TeleSat?
Nothing to see here.
No, he's not the CEO.
The CEO is a different guy, but Carney is involved with them somehow.
I saw a picture of them together.
Andy Lee went into that a little bit.
I don't want to go off the top of my head.
No, Carney is not the CEO of it.
But that's the crazy thing.
Mark Carney has so many fingers and so many pies.
And if he were to be hired as a bureaucrat in the civil service or in the PMO, he'd have to go through a bunch of ethics screens, and he'd probably have to divest certain things or recuse himself from certain things.
But no, no, he's been hired as a special advisor so he can still have all sorts of conflicts of interest and just give his special advice to Trudeau.
I think that Carney is going to be the one they choose to succeed Justin Trudeau.
I think Christopher Freeland is the most unlikable person in Ottawa politics.
And that's saying something because you've got some absolute duds there.
But I think Christy Freeland would be a disaster for the liberals.
Frankly, I think she would do even worse than Justin Trudeau.
Well, that's the show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.