Ezra Levant visits Joel Pollack amid post-fire chaos in L.A., where recovery lags behind Maui’s, and debates Canada’s strained ties with Trump’s U.S. Pollack’s Deal of the Century proposes a $13T oil pact over annexation, framing Canadian energy as ethically superior to Russian or Saudi sources. Levant slams Trudeau’s symbolic ICC warrant against Netanyahu and CF-18 jet threats to Ukraine, calling them radical and ineffective, while Pollack argues Trump’s tariffs—timed near winter—are strategic pressure to force policy alignment on fentanyl and China. With Trudeau’s term ending soon, Pollack sees Canada’s future in pragmatic cooperation, not symbolic dissent, as U.S. influence like Miller reshapes global priorities, leaving Canada’s self-absorption behind. [Automatically generated summary]
Last I visited him in person was when he toured me around the Pacific Palisades.
All the houses that were burnt down, his was singed, but not burnt to the ground.
Thank God.
We're going to talk today about Canada-U.S. relations.
I really haven't ever talked to Joel about that before.
We always talk about domestic U.S. politics, but Canada and U.S. are loggerheads.
What does it mean?
We'll talk to him about that.
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Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Well, the last time we talked to Joel Pollack, unfortunately, we were surveying the wreckage in the Pacific Palisades, the neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, that was burnt to a crisp.
Thankfully, Joel's own house was spared, although the whole neighborhood, including the infrastructure to live there, was gone.
So he had to live somewhere else.
I was shocked to see the mayor of Los Angeles say it could be three to five years before anyone before the area is rebuilt.
And I believe it.
We were just in Maui a year and a half out of the fires there.
And I would say at most 5% of the lots have the first inklings of reconstruction.
It's really a disaster.
Hopefully who they'll do well.
We'll talk with him maybe for a minute about that.
But really, Canada-U.S. relations have been at the center of our country over the last few weeks, more so than at any time since the 1988 federal election, where Brian Mulroney was championing a free trade deal that was to transform our relationship with the United States.
Since that time, we've sort of got along with the U.S. pretty calmly, even when our leaders were naturally opposed to each other.
Stephen Harper and Barack Obama couldn't have been more different, but both were professional enough not to let their personal disputes become a quarrel.
In fact, to Obama's credit, he didn't disrespect Harper by nixing the Keystone XL pipeline until Justin Trudeau actually took office.
Well, let's get straight to it.
Joining us now via Skype from somewhere in California is our friend Joel Pollock, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
Joel, good to see you.
How is your neighborhood going?
Give us a short update on that first.
Well, Ezra, there are a number of obstacles still arriving every day, really.
New challenges as people are trying to rebuild, but we are making our way through day by day.
And there's a lot of demolition going on, which is good.
A lot of trucks, very hard to get in and get out.
When you were there, it was the end of January, and they hadn't yet started removing the debris.
That has begun now.
So the Army Corps of Engineers and private contractors are moving into the neighborhood and clearing debris.
New construction hasn't started yet.
That's where the obstacles come in.
There are all kinds of financial obstacles and bureaucratic obstacles, but hopefully we'll overcome them.
Just give me one more second.
The mayor, am I correct to say that she said this could be three to five years in the making?
Now, that sounds very opposite to that fire hall town hall meeting that you were at with the president, where he was very much focused on urgency.
Has this go slow or go fast dispute being resolved?
Well, it really depends what you mean.
When she's talking about five years, what does she mean?
It wasn't really clear to me what she meant.
It is conceivable that the entire city could recover in five years and look completely new with no empty lots and no other problems.
I mean, if everything goes well, there's actually a sort of best case scenario that the county, not the city, the county has prepared that says, yes, if everything goes right, if the rebuilding starts right away, in five years, things could look pretty normal.
But things could be almost normal within about two to three years.
So that means there might be some debris.
There might still be some construction, some empty lots, and so forth.
But two years out or so, you should start to see the Palisades become relatively inhabitable with some people returning to their homes full-time and some grocery stores and other amenities available and returning basically to the status of being a livable community.
Yeah.
Well, I tell you, we went on from the Pacific Palisades to Maui, and it was very pessimistic.
People had given up.
They had left the island of Maui either to go to another island or back to the U.S. mainland.
There were still disputes, political disputes, about what would become of some of the prestigious real estate.
Would it be turned into a developed tourist place?
Would it be an eco-place?
So they really feel forgotten out there.
And everyone we spoke to in Maui had cautionary tales for Los Angeles.
It was really quite heartbreaking.
Well, listen, thanks again for touring us around your neighborhood.
I can only imagine how emotionally difficult it was.
That was your home, and you were touring us around on a journalistic mission.
So thanks for that.
Sense of Isolation00:15:06
Joe, let's switch gears and talk about Canada-U.S. relations.
It's really not something that you and I have ever spoken about.
We've probably talked to each other 40 times over the course of time.
We're usually talking about U.S. domestic politics.
Sometimes we're talking about the Middle Eastern foreign politics.
I really have never seen this much Canada-U.S. politics really in almost 40 years.
And even then, it was a Canadian internal debate about how friendly we get to the U.S. We've never had this kind of sparring with the U.S. before, and it is disconcerting to many people.
And I don't think Canada knows how to reply.
Some Canadian politicians are trying to out tough guy Donald Trump, and I don't think that's going to work.
Others are trying to ignore some of the more personal jobs.
How does it look to you?
Is this whole thing just some internet trolling by the president who's famous for giving his critics mean nicknames?
No, I think Trump is trying to bring Canada and Mexico onto the same page as the United States when it comes to fentanyl and other policies.
I think he prefers to see himself as the leader of North America, not just of the United States.
And he wants to confront the challenge of China really speaking for the entire continent and not just the United States.
It's not that he needs Canadian support necessarily, but I think there is a sense in the United States that Canada is off on its own direction with regard to China, at least under Justin Trudeau.
So I think he's trying to bring everybody into step more than anything else.
Yes, he also believes in tariffs economically.
He believes that they're good for the economy, that they raise revenue and so forth.
And once upon a time, they did.
But you'll find many economists today who point to some of the negative effects of tariffs and so forth.
I think Trump is also determined to show that the United States can take more pain than any other country.
I don't think that any amount of retaliation is actually going to shake him from this course.
It could damage American consumers, damage the American economy to some extent.
And he, in a sense, is suggesting he's prepared to take some of that in order to win these trade battles, whether it's with Canada or China or Europe and so forth.
So I think this is about Trump assuming a mantle of leadership economically, politically, geopolitically, militarily, and moving forward.
He really is trying to redesign the world away from the chaos and the drift of the last couple of decades and take strategic control of places like Greenland, like the Cape of Good Hope and elsewhere, where he wants to do what China has been trying to do, which is to dominate the most important sea lanes and to dominate space and to dominate key strategic points.
And so I think he wants Canada completely on board.
And the irony is that even though it's a trade war, I think the things that Canada could do to avoid the trade war have nothing to do with trade or tariffs.
They largely have to do with border enforcement and a kind of harmonization of diplomatic and military policies.
You know, I think a lot of what you said is right.
And there's a moral hazard in negotiating with Justin Trudeau in that he's leaving in a week.
So he can't make a deal.
And he likes to go out as Captain Canada who stood up to Trump.
That's a better way to end his sordid decade in the public square.
And even his would-be successors, there's a race on in the Liberal Party to find a successor.
And it'll likely be eco-banker Mark Carney, who used to be the head of the Bank of England, before that, the head of the Bank of Canada.
He's at the World Economic Forum.
He was a director there.
He was the United Nations ambassador for net zero.
So he is sort of an Al Gore kind of figure.
He's sort of your central casting Canadian, basically.
But he also drinks mullsons and watch hockey or what does he do?
But he sort of left Canada to make his fortune.
He has an Irish passport and a Canadian passport.
He was the chairman of Brookfield Asset Management, sort of a baby BlackRock.
So he's sort of like an oligarch.
I know Brookfield.
Sure.
So anyhow, he's.
Well, look, I mean, let me just, let me, it doesn't really matter.
Everything you told me about this, you told me in the first sentence, which is that Justin Trudeau is leaving in a week.
And I regret not being better informed about Canadian affairs.
I knew he was leaving.
I didn't know when.
Now this all makes sense to me in a way it didn't before.
So you can see the wheels turning on television here.
But if Trump knows Trudeau is leaving, then of course Trump is going to pile on the punishment until Trudeau leaves.
And then Trump is going to say that it's because of Trump that Trudeau left or quit or was thrown out.
It's a win that he can portray as a win, even though it was happening anyway.
That's how Trump does things.
He sees opportunities for symbolic victories and he takes them.
And so, in a sense, yes, I think the trade war will continue until Justin Trudeau leaves office.
And then I think Trump will declare victory.
And maybe both sides will be willing to compromise.
Maybe the new Canadian government will come in and offer Trump some of what he's been asking for.
But also, I think it's possible Trump might back off as long as he can claim victory from Trudeau.
That would be my guess as to what would happen.
You know, I'm starting to feel that way because he put our tariffs on about a month ago and then immediately took them off.
And then he put them on a couple of days ago and then immediately took them off.
And I watch Howard Luttnick, his commerce secretary, who I think is smart.
He's very close to the president.
He talks about, he's really into international commerce.
That's his title.
That's his job.
He was the head of Canada Fitzgerald before this.
And I think he lacks, I mean, he's got a lot of chutzpah.
He's a larger-than-life personality, but he doesn't have some of the Trump drama.
So I look to Lutnick as sort of an interpreter of what Trump is doing.
And he, it's almost like Lutnik is saying, hey, guys, it's going to be okay.
We're just going through this because we need you to bend the knee a little bit more.
Don't freak out.
Like, I feel like when you listen to Trump, go hear what Lutnick has to say for what is actually going to happen.
I mean, I don't doubt that the president is the boss, and I don't doubt that he has a certain goal.
But I find it reassuring that a man who is in the business of business is his right-hand man.
I'm not sure what to make of that, but I find like it's just tariffs on the auto sector really would work in Mexico because you bring the factory up to America.
But in Ontario, our auto sector is right across the river from Detroit.
And the same automobile is made on each side of the river.
That vehicle goes back and forth.
And so some of the biggest objectors to the tariffs were from Michigan.
They were saying, you're actually sort of smashing us.
And then the other major part of Canadian exports to the U.S., by far the largest, is oil.
And the thing is, you can't move the oil sands to the United States through taxes.
They just can't move them.
So I feel like the tariff weapon, which could be used against China or Mexico in certain ways, I feel like it sort of doesn't fit in the Canada-U.S. context because, I mean, and by the way, last comment, who do you think owns Ford Canada, GM Canada?
Who do you think owns half the oil sands companies?
They're American companies on this side of the border anyways.
So I feel like tariffs aren't even designed for our relationship.
Am I being too, I don't know, too Pollyannish?
I think Canada could do very well in this whole confrontation by giving up certain things that don't really cost Canada anything to give up.
I think the new incoming prime minister, if he's so inclined, if his World Economic Forum ties don't lead him in the wrong direction, I think he could make a far greater show of surging support to border enforcement, of working with Donald Trump on combating fentanyl.
You know, Peter Navarro, Trump's trade advisor, was on Fox News earlier this week, and he talked about how some of the fentanyl manufacturers are moving their pill factories to Canada.
If that's true, it'd be great to see Canada cracking down on that.
You know, give Trump the fentanyl enforcement that he wants and send the message that Canada is in this fight with him.
And I would put it exactly that way.
And then I think the response will be very warm.
This really isn't about protecting American industries from Canada.
Although I will say that Trump's principle of reciprocity, that whatever Canada does in terms of tariffs or non-tariff barriers to trade, the United States is going to exact a similar price.
I think that's very popular.
I mean, even if it means there are some quote-unquote retaliatory tariffs, I think that the principle of reciprocity is actually going to be very popular and very effective.
And economists actually are okay with it as a means to generally lowering tariffs.
Because once you're going to get charged exactly what you charge others, then you might think twice about charging people or subsidizing industries, which are those subsidies can be non-tariff barriers to trade.
So I think it's relatively painless for Canada actually to bring this to an end.
It just requires new leadership.
Look, don't forget also, Trudeau was part of the international global elite that mocked Donald Trump.
Literally, there were those open mic video moments recorded with Trudeau and Boris Johnson having a laugh at Trump's expense, just the way the Germans laughed at Trump's expense until Russia essentially ate their lunch.
You know, I think it's just about leadership and it's about telling Donald Trump and the American people that we respect your leadership now.
Trudeau never respected, well, first of all, he never respected Canadians, I don't think, but I think he just couldn't find it in himself really to respect Donald Trump, except in this obsequious way, which didn't earn him any points with Americans.
You know, when he rushed down to Mar-a-Lago, it certainly didn't endear him to Canadians, but I don't think he won any appeal from the American public either.
And that's why Trump continues to belittle him.
He's the governor of Canada and so forth.
I think Trump knows Canada is obviously a sovereign nation.
It's a very large country, not easy to govern from Washington.
The history of American efforts to take over Canada is a rather sad one.
So, I mean, look, culturally, yes, and we've stolen all your comedians, but and some of your hockey players.
But, you know, I think that the relationship is going to be excellent going forward.
I just think that Canada needs to get on board on fentanyl and look, on China in general.
Canada has a different relationship with China.
It's one I think that was far too close in previous years.
It's one that became problematic with the arrest in China of Canadian citizens, the unjust arrest in retaliation for Canada helping the United States arrest a Chinese executive.
I think that Canada and the United States have to be unified on China, and that includes fentanyl.
Fentanyl comes from China, their components come from China.
And I think once Trump senses that Canada is going to follow his leadership rather than try to act as a kind of alternative America, you know, that's how Trudeau seems to us down here.
Like he's the nicer version of whatever exists on the North American continent.
You know, he's not like those Americans.
He believes in climate change and he likes Bollywood and he wears blackface or whatever, whatever it is he thinks will appeal to people.
I mean, but he is, in a sense, playing a character role, Trudeau is or has done, which is that the Canadians are the nice Americans.
American, I mean, broadly in the North American sense.
And, you know, it was common for a while among American backpackers during the Iraq War when Americans were getting accosted all across Europe.
Americans would sew a Canadian flag on their backpacks so people would leave them alone because Canada does have that interpretation of being nicer than Americans.
But I think that era of alternative identity or kind of using us as a foil for Canadian identity, I think that has to end.
And it absolutely can without too much cost from Canada.
You know, I watched as the entire world watched the riveting interaction between Vladimir Zelensky and Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
And at first I just saw the short clips where after, you know, omitting the first half hour of their friendly interaction, I started watching really when Zelensky challenged JD Vance.
What do you mean by diplomacy?
How do you accept Putin?
He broke the, like when Zelensky started talking back and sort of cross-examining JD Vance and talking over Trump.
And I thought, ooh, talking over Donald Trump is not something that I don't think he's ever abided in his life.
But if you look at the longer exchange, it felt like Zelensky wanted his cake and wanted to eat it too.
And by that, I mean he wanted to be able to spar with Trump, disagree with Trump, maybe even embarrass Trump.
Under his breath, he said bitch towards JD Vance, which is sort of a shocking lack of self-control.
You can do that, but not if you're taking hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons and funding and U.S. intelligence.
Like, you just have to pick a lane.
And when he went to Europe the next day, and they said all the nice things to him, but none of them had the boots on the ground, none of them had the army, none of the weapons.
And I think Zelensky, in his own way, was, you know, he wanted all the good stuff of being a friend of America, but in return, maybe he wasn't, like, you're never going to be America's equal, but you can be Batman to America.
You can be Robin to America's Batman.
That's how I put it.
You know, there's a senior partner, a junior partner.
There's no other country in the world in the West that's going to be equally as dominant to the hyperpower.
But if you want all the benefits, like Canada gets the benefits of the free military protection.
So maybe we shouldn't be so snippy towards Trump.
Maybe we shouldn't insist on our 285% tariffs on U.S. dairy goods.
Maybe we should allow American banks into our markets, which we don't really do.
Maybe we should allow U.S. cell phone companies.
So they're actually quite minor things compared to what we get from being America's best friend.
But I think that for a generation, Joel, the entire world could sort of flick at the giant and just assume the giant didn't feel it or didn't notice it.
And I think Trump is noticing and he wants people to pick a lane.
You can either spar with us or be on our team.
Defining Canadian Identity00:03:39
You can't do both.
The Europeans are being experts at doing both for a generation.
And Canada, too.
We have an anti-Americanism in our blood.
In fact, Trudeau, when he went down on, I think it was Anderson Cooper's show, he was asked, what's the definition of a Canadian?
He said, not an American.
Canadians are incredibly proud of being Canadian.
One of the ways we define ourselves most easily is, well, we're not American.
As if that's a dirty thing to be.
That's what I mean.
It's just not good enough for Canada.
It's not good for our relationship, but it's really, that's not what it can mean to be Canadian.
I'm surprised he said that.
I hadn't actually seen that.
Oh, he says that all the Canadians are not going to say that.
Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, in my own life, people ask, what's the content of being a Jewish person, right?
And if your only response is, well, I'm Jewish because of anti-Semitism, well, then you're letting this other thing define you.
And it's no way to go, really.
I mean, we're not.
It's all possible identity.
Yeah, there's no content to it.
I mean, you've got to have some kind of positive content to it.
And, you know, I joke about Molsons and hockey and things like that, but Canada is a very special place.
I mean, it's really a fantastic country with an incredible diversity of geography and experiences.
But look, it is a northern country and it has this vast expanse that is just incredible.
You know, I used to look at maps of Canada.
We took a road trip once when I was a kid to Montreal and we had a map of Canada.
And I sat there in the front passenger seat next to my dad when he was driving our old VW van from Chicago through Detroit and then Toronto and Montreal and just marveling at this vast wilderness and everything in it.
And, you know, Canada is an amazing, amazing place with incredible people.
I flew up to Canada back in December, I think it was 2022, with my daughter to see a cousin of mine.
I actually have cousins on both sides of my family in Toronto.
And a cousin of mine was in production of Joseph and the Amazing Technical Dream Code.
And it was just so great to be in Canada.
I mean, many things in Canada do feel comfortably close to what we're used to in America, but the essence of being Canadian is something different.
It's something special.
And I'm not Canadian, so maybe I'm not the best place to decide what that is or ought to be.
But there's something special about being Canadian, just as there's something special about being American, but it's not the same thing.
And yeah, we should.
An American, no one in the United States says I'm not Canadian.
Yeah, it would be look.
I do think national identity has to be more than the metric system and the addition of the letter U into certain words.
There's something to it.
And we have fun with it.
We have fun with the little sibling rivalry, if you will, on the continent.
And the hockey games were thrilling.
I mean, the Canadians deserve to win, I think, because even though they lost that first game, I saw in the Americans' faces in that hockey game that they didn't believe they could win it.
It was weird.
There was just an extra fight, I think, the second time around, which is good.
I think there's a very productive relationship to be had.
I do think that the Trudeau version of Canadianism, if you want to call it that, is a kind of parody of a stereotype that Americans have about Canadians, which is that they're just too liberal and too alternative.
Ukraine's 51st State Riddle00:15:05
And if I can be crude, I mean, too kind of unmanly.
I mean, the carefully coffed hair and stuff, it doesn't actually represent any real Canadians you might encounter, but there's a kind of idea that, yeah, we're the kinder, gentler version of America.
And I think, yeah, if that's how Trudeau styles himself, I'm not surprised that that's what his answer was.
But, you know, Canadians are tough and Canadians are cool.
And, you know, some of the greatest things are done by Canadians.
I mean, whatever.
I'm starting to ramble here.
You'll have to forgive me on three hours of sleep.
Oh, well, listen, I'm grateful for your time.
Yeah, let me tell you.
It's just a special, special place that has to have its own identity on its own basis.
And I think it does.
And look, again, I just think that the key to unraveling this whole dispute is actually probably pretty simple.
Let me throw something at you.
I don't know if I told you, but I just published a short book called Deal of the Century: The America First Plan for Canada's Oil Sands.
Joe, let me just take a minute on that.
About a dozen years ago, I wrote a left-wing book called Ethical Oil, The Case for Canada's Oil Sands.
And I took all the arguments from the left who said they cared about the environment, peace, economic justice for workers, civil rights.
And I said, okay, if you really believe those things, let's compare Canadian oil with oil from everywhere else in the world.
And I put it to you that Canadian oil is the fair trade coffee of the world's oil industry.
He was using left-wing values to make the case that don't buy from Saudi Arabia or OPEC or Russia, buy from Alberta.
Now, I think it's time to make the America first case for Canadian oil.
And I wrote the book trying to think: well, how does Donald Trump think?
He thinks take world assets away from China.
He talks about big real estate deals in Greenland or Panama or even Gaza.
And he wants things in return for economic access to the state.
So I thought, well, there's 170 billion barrels of oil in Canada's oil sands.
That's enough to make all of America's, fill all of America's important needs, to get rid of all the Saudi and other OPEC countries.
Canada can fulfill it for 50 years, a 50-year deal, $13 trillion worth of today's prices.
And I thought, sign a deal for all the oil.
It's better than annexing Canada because you get the good stuff, the oil, without the hassle, you know, a French quarter that wants to be bilingual, the Electoral College that's going to go Democrat most of the time.
I don't think, I mean, look, sorry to interrupt you.
I don't even think you need to make, I mean, look, it's a wonderful case to make.
I just don't think you even need to make that.
I think there are certain symbolic issues that Trudeau took a stand on that did sour the relationship between the two governments.
I remember just off the top of my head when he was asked, for example, would he honor an international criminal court warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Nizano of Israel?
And he said he would.
I mean, that's just insane.
It's insane.
And the United States is not party to the International Criminal Court for that reason, because before they started going after the Israelis, they were coming after us.
The first people to be targeted in this way by the ICC were U.S. military personnel who had served in Afghanistan.
And the ICC started investigating American soldiers.
And that's when, under the first Trump administration, they slapped sanctions on the ICC and barred them from entering the United States and refused to issue them visas.
And that was the reason Trump opposed the ICC.
Now, we weren't party to the ICC anyway.
It had no jurisdiction over Americans.
But when they decided that jurisdiction didn't matter and the fact that we didn't sign a treaty didn't matter and they could investigate us anyway as a master as a matter of customary international law, that's when Trump said, okay, enough is enough.
We're going to protect our military.
Trudeau then gives legitimacy to that court by saying, oh, yeah, we'll honor these arrest warrants because we're signatories to the Rome Statute and we have to do that.
I mean, that's so absurd.
It's against American interests directly, and it's against Israel, obviously.
But it also just suggests a Canada that has been overrun not by liberalism, which we kind of laugh at a little bit and enjoy, but it's overrun by radicalism.
And that's something I think that really put Americans off.
So there are a few things like that, I think, that Trudeau did.
And mocking Trump with Boris Johnson and so forth.
And in the last few days, thundering about how he's going to defend Ukraine when Canada has 63 fighter aircraft and they're going to send something like 16 or 17 to Ukraine.
I mean, that's like a massive proportion of Canada's air force.
I mean, it's just absurd.
They're 40-year-old jets, I should tell you.
Joel, I don't even know if we have that many that fly.
They're CF-18s from the 70s and 80s.
We no longer, I don't know if you know this, Canada did not participate in the last European NATO exercises, the largest NATO exercises in years.
Canada was not there because we could not interoperate.
We didn't have the machinery or the men.
Canada's fighting.
Right.
So Trudeau postures as this great friend of Ukraine, right?
But he can't actually back it up.
So I think that kind of thing irritates Americans.
It irritates them because then it feels like you're doing that based on our defense and our economy.
And you're dissenting from our way of doing things, which is your right, of course, but you're doing it while also benefiting from American protection in large design.
I'm not trying to come across the wrong way.
I'm just telling you how some Americans see Trudeau's antics.
So I think Trump isn't just waiting for Trudeau to leave office.
I think he's ushering him out the door.
And I think Trump very much wants to be seen as the person who got rid of Trudeau.
And then after that, I think you'll see things open up a little bit more.
But Trump, again, Trump looks for these symbolic victories that he can really hang on a flagpole or something.
I mean, he, you know, so I think Canada can give him some of those at a very little cost, very low cost to Canada or to Canadian sovereignty and independence.
I mean, I think I was put off a little bit by, I think, the premier of Ontario, was it Ford, who was on our television?
I mean, I thought he made a very good case against the tariffs and how much they could hurt industries on both sides.
But then he started threatening American electrical consumers.
I mean, I didn't think that was appropriate, and he should have said something about fentanyl.
And Peter Navarro, the Trump trade advisor, who was on right after him, said, Well, I didn't hear anything about fentanyl.
Would it really have killed Ford to say something about drugs?
I mean, it's again, it's so easy.
And you just have to snap yourself out of the Trudeau mentality.
And, you know, just you can be tough.
And I know politicians want to look tough, and I understand that.
But also offer a compromise to Trump, something he can hold up and wave and tell the American people, you see, I got this because I made this tariff threat.
And then everybody goes home happy, and you don't have to agree with Trump, but there it is.
Yeah.
I think Doug Ford, he's trying to out-bully Trump.
I don't think that's going to work.
I see the Premier of New Brunswick, a province of less than a million souls, which supplies a lot of fuel and fuel oil to New England.
The largest refinery in Canada is in New Brunswick, and it serves New England.
She's talking about cutting New England off from home healing oil.
Yeah, you know, I was going to say this earlier.
All of that would have been more effective if it were done in October or November, but we're coming out of winter right now, so nobody cares.
You know, you're going to threaten the electricity, you threaten the oil.
I mean, it just looks stupid.
I mean, you know, so I understand it, right?
I understand.
And Canadian, I've also, you know, heard Canadians feel hurt and upset.
Why is he doing that?
Some of that's true.
Now, that you can believe.
Yeah.
No, I'm not discounting that.
I'm saying that's real.
So I get that.
I get that.
But again, there's something else happening there as well, which is Trump is really confronting countries like South Africa, which is in a strategically important location and is siding with China and Russia and Iran.
And the South Africans are saying, wow, he's going after Canada.
I mean, if Trump's going after America's best friend, he's really going to come after us.
So it's also partly about projecting a threat to countries that aren't so friendly with us.
I think that's a lot of it.
Pour encouragé les otres, as they say in French.
And I think that's what it is.
And I think, and for all the fake friends in Europe and NATO, I tell you, Joel, I just can't get enough of these tiny little countries in Europe, like the prime minister of Luxembourg, who says, we stand with Ukraine.
I looked it up.
They have 939 soldiers in the whole.
It's a city.
It's not a country.
But he's the prime minister.
Or Kaya Kallas, the new foreign minister for Europe.
She's from Estonia, population 1.3 million.
And I got nothing against Estonia.
I'm not being mean.
I'm just saying they're cosplaying.
They're dressed.
It's like a costume party.
Well, we know Trudeau is very good at that.
Yeah.
Well, and but that's the thing, is none of them is they, at the end of the day, it's America.
And I think Canada, in some ways, Trump is right.
We have, and I don't think we hit it.
We had free health care for a generation because America paid for our national defense.
And I think that's true.
And I think that Trump is saying, I mean, look at his offer to Canadians.
Come on over, join us as a 51st state.
We'll give you American dollars and we'll give you a good military protection.
And by the way, that's not a bad offer.
Now, it doesn't deal with the emotional and loyal pride and patriotism that a lot of people have.
The analogy I use is like going up to a married person and saying, would you like to marry me?
I know you're not divorced right now.
A lot of people would feel deeply offended by that, but someone who's contemplating a divorce anyways might say, okay.
And I think.
If you want to stop Trump from doing that, you'll say, all you have to do is say we agree to be the 51st state on condition that you accept the metric system.
That'll end the conversation.
Well, I mean, there's a lot of little quirks like that.
Like I mentioned, French-English bilingualism.
Well, how do you think?
See, that actually is not, that could be popular.
I mean, you've got New England, a lot of people speak French.
Of course, New Orleans, down there, Louisiana.
We're in some ways, you know, Trump declared English our official language, you know, and it was about time.
But we are, practically speaking, often a bilingual country.
You know, here in Los Angeles, you hear Spanish all the time.
You know, in my area, now where I'm living, you know, you hear Farsi and Hebrew and everything.
Listen, I don't want to take up too much of your time, but what I'm leaving with is that you think a lot of this last-minute banter by Trump is just basically kicking Trudeau as he exits the door.
Because, first of all, why not?
Second of all, Trudeau, it's ridiculous that he's even negotiating or anything.
And by the way, he's not just hiding.
Like, he dissolved Parliament because they were going to vote him out.
So he suspended Parliament.
Like, he really is being cowardly.
He's ringing out these last few hours.
Maybe you're right.
I think Trump, and maybe the new leader of the Liberal Party, who will immediately become prime minister, which is bizarre, because he's not a member of the parliament.
He's just a guy on the street.
Well, Brookfield Asset Management, who's going to become our new prime minister without even a seat in parliament.
He's just gone from a regular guy, regular guy who lives in three different countries, three different passports on the board of directors of the World Economic Forum.
He's going to be selected as our prime minister.
Let me throw one more tidbit to you, Joel.
In the liberal leadership race that selects Mark Carney, foreign nationals are allowed to vote in it, and kids as young as 14 are allowed to vote in it.
So you will have foreign children choosing Trump's new counterpart in Canada.
So I don't think the craziness is over just yet.
Last word to you, my friend.
Look, I think that it's one of the most important partnerships in the world, and it's going to stay that way.
But Canada, I think, needs to become a little more like America in some practical ways without losing its Canadian identity.
I think that's what Trump is trying to say.
So, yes, fentanyl, but also become a little more open to free enterprise and a little bit more open to a tough stand against China, which hasn't always been the case.
I mean, I know my impression is it's become tougher since the arrests and the whole fiasco.
But I think that Trump wants a unified front against China.
So when the Canadians say, why isn't he starting by picking up in China?
I think it's because he doesn't want Canada doing an end around and kind of developing ties with China while America is stuck in a confrontation.
So look, I think he wants North America to work in concert, and this is part of his way of doing it.
I think it's also good he's doing this at the start of his presidency.
You know, he's getting all the unpleasant stuff out of the way early and leaving himself so many ways of doing good things further down the road.
He's done some good and fun and happy things also.
But the tariffs in the beginning, the big mass firings of federal workers in the beginning, the confrontations with China and with lately Ukraine because of Zelensky's behavior, out of the way in the beginning.
I think this is setting him up to have a more successful presidency, and that'll benefit Canada as well as the United States.
Well, I like your view, and I would even call it optimistic.
And I think that's because we Canadians are obsessed with ourselves, whereas the United States has a few other files on the go.
I mean, I don't know if you know this, Joel, but all 13 Canadian premiers, it would be like all 50 U.S. governors, went to the White House.
No, they didn't have a meeting with Trump.
Just all 13 of the went there and mid-level staffers met them.
That was the day the king of Jordan was there.
I think the day before the president of India was there, prime minister of India.
Ukraine was.
So it's a bit of chutzpah for 13, you know, it would be like the smallest 13 governors demanding an audience.
Trump was busy.
Trudeau couldn't be bothered to attend.
But my point in telling you that is Trump had bigger fish to fry.
wasn't an insult that he didn't meet with the canadian premiers he was trying to well there's another thing going on there There's another thing going on there as well, which is that, look, Trump has already assigned an ambassador to Canada.
So Canada is actually high on the priority list.
It's not that you're not.
Stephen Miller's Influence00:01:39
The issue there is also that Democrats have put a hold on State Department confirmations.
And so in some ways, if you want to meet with senior diplomats, you're stuck with the president and the secretary of state, who might, as you point out, be otherwise engaged with heads of state and things like that.
And there just isn't the same infrastructure in place yet because Democrats are using a parliamentary maneuver to withhold their approval of nominees to basically get back at Trump for cutting USAID.
And it's all politics.
But, you know, that might have also been the problem.
Look, though, yes, the governors met with senior or the premiers met with more junior staff at the White House.
But Stephen Miller, who I think they met with, he may be the deputy chief of staff, but he's an extremely powerful.
Oh, he's amazing.
It wasn't him.
It wasn't him.
I think he's the most powerful guy in that White House other than Trump himself and maybe Letnick.
He's amazing, Stephen Miller.
You know, it's funny.
In Israel, the most recent, he just left, but the most recent chief of staff of the IDF was at the rank of lieutenant general, you know, as if he were sort of, you know, not quite general enough.
You know, I mean, sometimes the deputy is more powerful than the.
He's the keeper of the flame on everything from immigration to handling the media.
When Stephen Miller is deployed, I stop everything and listen.
And he was, frankly, my favorite appointment in the whole administration.
I know you got to go.
Thanks for being generous with your time.
We've been talking with Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.