Ezra Levant exposes Mark Carney’s Debates Commission as a tool to censor Rebel News, despite legal victories in 2019 and 2021, culminating in its 2025 surrender under pressure. Meanwhile, he warns New York risks electing Zorhan Mamdani—a DSA-backed radical with ties to anti-American Islamism—whose symbolic policies (like defunding police) may alienate moderates fleeing cities like NYC for Florida. High foreign-born voter rates and federal resistance could undermine Mamdani’s governance, while Carney’s climate-driven attacks on Canada’s oil sector fuel Alberta’s quiet autonomy movement. Both cases reveal a broader trend: ideology over pragmatism, eroding national stability and media freedom. [Automatically generated summary]
A new report from Mark Carney's Debates Commission, that's the government bureaucrats that run the leaders' debates, has paragraph after paragraph about rebel news.
I'm going to read some of it to you because it's sort of appalling and it's sort of funny and sad at the same time.
I'll let you be the judge of it.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com and click subscribe, eight bucks a month, and we use that money to keep the show strong so we don't have to take any government money.
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Tonight, the government says it can't block rebel news from the election debates anymore.
So the entire press conference should be canceled.
I kid you not.
It's October 28th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
I want to read to you something just amazing from Mark Carney's Government Election Debates Commission.
It's actually Trudeau's debates commission, but Carney hasn't changed it, so it's his now.
They wrote a report a few weeks ago, and they're just obsessed with rebel news.
It's sort of amazing.
I want to take you through it, but first, please let me give you five minutes of history just as a refresher of the background here.
But you'll want to stick around to actually look at their report.
There is no reason why the government should run the election debates of a country.
Strike that.
There is a reason.
There's just no good reason for it.
For a century and a half, Canadians managed quite well with our own election debates, even as technology changed from the newspaper and leaflet days to the days of radio to TV to the internet.
I literally cannot remember anyone ever in my whole life saying, hey, these election debates have a problem, and that problem can be solved by putting them in the hands of the government.
I'm not saying the debates are perfect.
Sometimes the format is better than others.
Sometimes the hosts are better than others.
But what's that got to do with who owns and controls the debates?
Imagine giving it to government.
The big media companies typically work together to host a few marquee debates that they'd all spend some money on producing as nicely as possible.
Other organizations were free to host their own debates too.
I think, for example, in 2015, the Globe and Mail had a debate on the economy.
Here's just a few seconds of that.
Live from Calgary, welcome to the Globe and Mail Leaders Debates 2015.
Please welcome tonight's co-host, Globe and Mail political reporter, Jane Tabor.
Welcome to the Globe and Mail leaders' debate on the economy, and welcome to Calgary in the Palomino Room at the BMO Centre in Stampede Park for a very special and exciting debate, one that's focused on only one topic, the most important issue of election 2015.
the economy.
And there's no better place for this debate than where we are tonight in Alberta.
So the Globe and Mail made a few decisions.
They weren't going to include the leader of the Bloc Québa Croix in their English language debate.
Makes sense.
And they weren't going to invite the fringe candidate from the Green Party.
You could say that's unfair, but the Liberals, Tories, and NDP all thought it was fair enough to participate.
And if you don't like it, well, have your own debate and convince people to attend yours and watch yours.
That's how it used to be.
But while it's obviously not in the public interest to have politicians take over an important feature of democracy like the debates, it could be in the private interest of the incumbent who could then appoint the debate commission with his friends and set it to his advantage.
And so it was that Justin Trudeau simply nationalized the debates commission and took it over.
I mean, he created it, and he put his hand-picked people to run it, including bizarrely personal friends, like Craig Kielberger from the corrupt Kielberger family.
Remember them?
There was also a far-left environmental activist, a lobbyist named Megan Leslie, who used to be an NDP politician.
They put her on the commission.
And the whole thing was run by longtime Trudeau family friend David Johnston.
In other words, it was packed with activists with an axe to grind or just plain old Trudeau family friends.
Again, a multi-million dollar government solution to a problem that simply didn't exist.
And the whole point of it immediately became obvious.
The Debates Commission didn't do a better job than the media did at staffing the debate or organizing the debate or scheduling the debate or producing the debate.
No, there was nothing better about it.
In fact, there was little that was different about it.
Although with a global warming lobbyist on the commission, you knew in advance it would be obsessed with global warming.
No, the main difference, maybe the only difference, was that the Debates Commission used its government power to ban journalists that Trudeau didn't like.
It's that simple.
So in 2019, that's the first election after the Debates Commission was enforced.
They banned a small number of independent media, including Rebel News and our friends at True North.
And they were really sneaky about it.
They let us know at the last minute possible.
I think it was on like a Friday, and the debate was, I think, on a Monday afternoon, if memory serves.
So no notice, a surprise, ambush, and they gave no reasons.
So it was pretty obvious why.
Well, you know what happened next?
I've told you this story before.
It's one of my favorite stories.
We lawyered up, and so did True North.
And it was a miracle.
We actually found a judge who was free on the Monday morning and a courtroom that was open and available and stabbed.
It was really a lot of things that went right.
And the case was heard very early Monday morning, if I recall, going from memory here, and Mirabelé Diktou, wouldn't you know there's a miracle?
The judge agreed with us that it was unfair.
And that thing about being unfair is that if you were a government, you have to be fair.
Especially if you're taking away freedom of the press.
There's that whole Charter of Rights thing.
If this had been the Globe and Mail's private party, the Charter would likely not have applied.
But it was the government's event, and the government has to follow the Charter of Rights, and you can't just ban journalists because you don't like them.
So we won.
And the federal court ordered Trudeau's commission to accredit us immediately.
Amongst the court's findings were that the government didn't have clear rules.
They didn't give us any good reasons for banning us.
The ruling from the Debates Commission was sent to us by just some guy, some rival reporter, not even the debates commission itself.
There was a lot of weirdness that the court didn't like.
So we got in.
And it was glorious.
Here's some of the questions we asked in the scrum back then.
Hi, Mr. Trudeau.
Since your multiple use of blackface became an international scandal, Canada's international reputation has been irreparably harmed.
Have you reached out to any African leaders or any leaders from the Middle East to apologize for your conduct?
Canada will continue to engage in a positive, constructive way around the world, standing up for human rights, engaging with leaders right around the world, because we know that promoting our values and prosperity for everyone around the world is good for Canadians and creates better opportunities for everyone.
So that didn't answer the question at all.
Have you spoken to any African leaders or leaders from the Middle East to apologize for your personal conduct?
I have continued to engage with leaders around the world in a responsible way.
During an election campaign, my focus is connecting with Canadians as I was able to tonight.
And I was very pleased to see so many of the questions turned to the environment in all sections.
There was a clear contrast between those on stage who don't think we should be fighting climate change and those of us who do.
And again, we are the only party with a clear plan to fight climate change.
So that was 2019.
Well, the government hated that.
Trudeau hated that.
So instead of following the law, he instructed his friends on the Debate Commission to reverse engineer an excuse for banning us.
So instead of waiting until the last minute to ban us, they did what the judge said and gave us plenty of notice.
Instead of having no rules, they had long and complex rules.
Instead of giving us a one-line reason, I think it was an 11-page reason we were banned.
And a government official, not some random guy, told us the bad news.
So they took their 2019 court case, they read it carefully, and they said, okay, so we did four things wrong.
Let's fix all those so we can ban rebel news and not have a problem.
They must have spent hundreds of thousands on lawyers trying to patch up all the holes in their 2019 case for 2021, for the next election.
And it looked pretty bleak.
I remember our lawyer in 2021 told me we had no real chance, but of course we fight anyways.
And again, it was a miracle, just amazing.
The judge from the Federal Court of Canada again ordered the government to accredit us.
It was like a thunderclap.
Trudeau himself was outraged.
The only reason that I'm allowed to ask you this question is because today the federal court ruled that the government doesn't have the right to determine who is or is not a journalist.
This is the second election in a row that the court has been libertarian.
Your government.
Do you still insist on being able to make that decision and why?
First of all, questions around accreditation were handled by the press gallery and the consortium of networks who have strong perspectives on quality journalism and the important information that is shared with Canadians.
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.
Oh well.
And then the next election came around 2025, a few months ago.
And we applied again for accreditation and another miracle.
Three miracles in a row.
The Debates Commission didn't actually try to stop us.
They knew that if they dared to stop us, they would be defying the courts once, twice, a third time.
Imagine banning us in the face of two court rulings.
The judges would be furious with them.
So they just surrendered to us and allowed us to have our journalists.
And it was wonderful.
And the other media were outraged.
Oh my God, they were so mad.
But tough noogies.
I mean, once every four years, we get to ask the Prime Minister a question.
It's good for him.
But boy, did the Liberal media howl.
Literally, they shouted.
They shouted at our reporters when we asked the question.
The microphones didn't really pick it up, but when Drea Humphrey asked this question, other reporters started shouting at her.
The atrocious liberal hack, Justin Ling, trying to shout down a woman.
Here's Drea's question.
Hello, Mr. Sing.
Drea Humphrey.
Your party takes great pride in standing against hate, such as white supremacy, Islamophobia, and all.
Sorry, I didn't get your outlet.
Drea Humphrey with Rebel News.
Okay.
Your party.
You know I'm going to go with this, all right?
Can I speak?
Yeah, you can.
I'm just going to say, you know where I'm going to go with it, though.
Wow.
Your party takes pride in standing against hate, such as white supremacy, Islamophobia, and online hate speech.
Yet you stay silent about ongoing attacks against Christians, even after conservative MP Jamil Giovanni's order paper question revealed that over 200 churches have been targeted by arson and vandalism since claims of remains being discovered at former residential schools swept the nation in 2021.
These claims have been disproven by bands that excavated and remain unproven by those that have not.
Will you condemn the rise in acts of hate against Christians today and explain what your party will do moving forward to keep Christians safe from hate in Canada?
Again, thank you, but I'm not going to respond to an organization that promotes misinformation and disinformation like Rebel News.
So no, I'm not going to respond to your question.
Wow.
What she said had no misinformation in it.
Perhaps you didn't hear me.
Over 200 Christian places of worship have been attacked in Canada since 2021.
Many served First Nations communities.
Many were historic.
And they diverted police and resources and put others at risk.
What do you say to Canadians who see your refusal to answer, especially from one of the few media outlets here that are not funded by the state, as proof that a vote for you is a vote for a dangerous radical party that gaslights the public into thinking it stands against hate when its silence is instead embolding Christophobia?
Your question is another example of why I don't respond to agencies like Rebel News that promote misinformation and disinformation.
And later on, that wicked liar at the CBC, Rosemary Barton, just couldn't stand the fact that Drea gets to ask one question every four years.
And in this case, it was of that loser, Jagmeet Singh.
You won't even, I mean, that loser, who cares?
I mean, he was, he's so unimportant, but oh my God, Rosemary Barton didn't want poor Jagmeet Singh to have to answer a question from Drea.
Regime Media Dominance00:12:29
I think we have to sort of address the elephant in the room.
How are these people chosen to answer these questions?
And I don't know if either one of you have an answer for that, but I think there will be people at home saying, some of these seem like odd questions.
Some of them aren't getting answered.
How come we've heard so often from this one particular outlet?
Any idea what's going on?
There's three right-wing, very right-wing media.
We can call them media websites that are present in there.
They get in line to ask a question like anybody else.
Their accreditation has been approved by the Commission of Debates.
And so they get the right to stand in line and ask a question that they choose to ask.
In this case, you saw Mr. Singh, and this has been his position for some time, to refuse to answer questions.
Rebel News in particular, traffics in misinformation, facts, lack of facts, and as you heard in that question, which was woven with some truth and some things that weren't true.
Yes, there have been burnings of Christian Catholic churches.
Yes, there have been remains of Indigenous children found in various places around the country, which she misrepresented.
We'll see if Mr. Polyev gets any questions from right-wing organizations.
I would suspect no.
Okay.
Holy moly, does the regime media ever act like they own the place?
And by the place, I mean Canada.
They shouted, they stomped their feet, and I mean that literally.
It was sort of amazing.
But most of the rage from the regime media was not towards us.
It was towards the debate commission for not fighting us in court a third time.
They kept saying, look, the debates commission kept saying that, look, the courts agree with Rebel News.
We're going to lose if we fight them again.
What could they do, indeed?
And this guy, Michelle Cormier, who sort of runs the Debate Commission, he went from interview to interview, just being pummeled by the regime media.
I actually felt a little bad for him.
So time passes.
The debate's over.
Here we are.
It's fall.
And this Government Debates Commission releases their annual report, something that probably three people in the whole country have read.
But I'm one of those three people.
And I want to read to you a couple of fascinating parts of their report because it shows how awful these government bureaucrats are.
So this is the report.
You can find it online.
Can I read about a couple minutes of it to you just to show you their thinking?
So it's called 2025 Media Accreditation Policy.
That's what I'm reading from.
It's halfway through the report.
Given the judicial decisions in both 2019 and 2021, the Commission determined that media representatives seeking accreditation for the leaders' debates in 2025 would be accredited based on their assignment by a media organization.
For this purpose, the Commission's policy defined a, quote, media organization broadly as one that either produces original news content related to coverage of Canadian or international political news or covers political, social, and policy issues.
The Commission's media accreditation policy was published in August 2024 to ensure that organizations had ample time to review it in advance of applying for accreditation.
The policy also stated that participation in the post-debate press conferences would be limited to one reporter and one still photographer per media organization in order to allow participation by as many different media organizations as possible.
Now it gets fun.
Rebel News took the position that each of its five stated divisions, you know the five Rebel News divisions, don't you?
Rebel News Canada, Rebel News French Division, that's Alexa LeBo and Guillaume-McGroix.
Rebel News' Ontario Division, that's our buddy David Menzies, Rebel News' Prairie Division, that's our friend Shiloh Gunn Reed, and Rebel News's West Coast Division, well, that's Drea Humphrey, don't you know, was a separate media organization and threatened legal action to obtain urgent injunctive relief if one reporter from each of these divisions was not allowed to participate in the press conferences.
Well, of course we did.
For the same reason that the CBC had their English division and had their French division and all of their dozens of staff there.
Do you really think we're going to restrict ourselves to just one reporter and let the CBC state broadcaster have like a dozen people there?
No, thank you.
We're on par with them.
And the debate commission obviously agreed since they approved it.
Here, let me keep reading.
Given the previous cases, and rather than devote resources to responding to an urgent injunction, especially on a compressed timeline, the Commission agreed to provide five reporters from Rebel News with passes for the press conference.
To ensure an equivalent level of fairness to all media organizations, the Commission then provided additional press conference access to other organizations based on the number of platforms or outlets within their organization.
For example, for the CBC, this meant that rather than one reporter, four reporters would have access to the press conferences, one each to represent CBC News, its main network, news programming, CBC News Network, CBC Radio, and CBC.ca.
So you see, we had the same status at the CBC.
Fair is fair.
They hated that.
They normally get, there's so many CBC staff there.
It's so gross.
So we just want to be treated equally, and they agreed.
So here's where they start to whine, because our people got in line to ask questions sooner than the other media, who I might say are just a teeny tiny bit lazy.
So here's what they said about the fact that we got in line.
The 2025 debates generated heightened media interest.
Just over 200 applicants from 60 organizations were accredited, representing a 30% increase from 2021.
During the French debate, the first of the two debates, representatives from one media organization asked four of the 16 questions that time permitted, limiting the opportunity for other media organizations to ask questions.
Yeah, so did the CBC.
What's your point?
Get in line.
I mean, just stop lazing about.
Frustration over this imbalance, frustration by whom, buddy, combined with a difference of opinion about who should and should not have received accreditation.
Well, who cares about, who cares?
Escalated the following night at the English debate.
The ensuing disruption in the press room ultimately resulted in the Commission's decision to cancel the leaders' press conferences following the English debate over concerns that a respectful and functional environment for the leaders could not be guaranteed.
Translation, other media started to shout at us, so instead of letting us ask more questions along with the rest of the media, they just shut the whole thing down.
They came up with a lame excuse, a respectful and functional environment.
What does that even mean?
Our questions were perfectly respectful.
It was the regime journalists who were condemning us, heckling us, shouting at us.
And it was that loser, Jagmeet Singh, who was so disrespectful to Drea.
But it was the Debate Commission's only way to stop us from asking more great questions was to ban everyone, shut the whole thing down.
Now, I think you know all this because we told you about it while it was happening.
It was extremely exciting.
But here's the news part.
Here's the go-forward.
Here's how the debate commission handled the fact that they're just not allowed to block us.
The courts won't let them block us.
They know the courts would shred them.
So here's their summary of the whole thing going forward.
This is the news in their report.
Options for the next debates.
Media coverage of the debates, both immediate and in the days following, amplifies their impact and extends their reach.
However, if reporting focuses on events in the media room, Canadians are less likely to focus on what the leaders said during the debate itself.
Controversy, which overshadows the debates themselves, is not in the public interest.
The Commission is committed to keeping the focus and attention centered on the debates.
That's just some made-up thing.
Oh, Canadians can't handle learning that regime journalists shouted down the rebels.
So, hey, keep your focus over here.
Even if that were true, so what?
If politicians say something strange or powerful or interesting, or if they get an interesting question to them in the scrum, why should that not be the news?
Why is it the Commission's job, government bureaucrats, to make sure people focus only on what the government wants them to focus on?
They're sure better not be a controversy in the election.
Oh my gosh, we can't have a controversy in the election.
That's the last thing we want in an election.
Anyways, let me get back to their report.
Following the 2025 debates, the Commission faced a number of fundamental questions.
Should the Commission continue to manage media accreditation?
Should the Commission continue to manage the post-debate press conferences for the media to engage in the leaders following each debate?
Should the Commission be involved in trying to define journalism?
Now, I'm going to skip ahead a bit.
There was no consensus on any of the issues related to media accreditation and the press conferences of party leaders, nor was there a consensus on what constituted a media organization, what defines journalists, or what is a journalist.
Some stakeholders noted that journalism is not a regulated profession like law or medicine, and that there is no legal definition for journalism that can be upheld in court.
That's true.
In fact, that may have been us who said that.
Now, you'd think this is where the government bureaucrat might have a little bit of self-awareness and say, so what are we doing here again?
Why are we in this position?
What possible benefit has there been to the public by putting us in charge?
The one thing we were hired to do, censor journalists on behalf of Trudeau and now Carney, has been found to be illegal.
Let's just shut her down.
Are you kidding?
These are bureaucrats.
Let me read what they decided.
Commission's recommendation: after carefully considering the feedback received, the Commission recommends that it should continue to accredit the media and provide them with working spaces and facilities for live broadcasts.
However, the Commission should not provide facilities for on-site press conferences by party leaders.
Parties may organize their own press conferences at another location if they wish.
As in, the government is now going to shut it all down, all the questions, because they can't handle the criticism of rebel news by the regime journalists.
Because Rebel News has four questions, apparently, instead of three or whatever they think is the right number, because other journalists shouted at Drea.
So they're panicking.
They're simply going to eliminate journalistic scrums afterwards altogether.
They can't do their job.
They don't know how to handle it.
They hate the mean girls of the media party.
They're just going to abandon their work, but still get paid, of course.
The whole public rationale of this debates commission, if you believe it, which I don't, it was all about censoring rebel news.
The whole public rationale was to have maximum exposure, maximum transparency, maximum participation, maximum viewership.
You'd think they'd therefore accredit maximum journalists.
But too many people at the CBC and the rest of the regime just hate us so much and bullied the Commission's boss so much.
Seriously, he was abused by every other journalist there for daring to accredit us, even though he had no choice in the matter.
So they're just nuking the whole thing.
As in, they would rather burn the whole village down.
They would rather destroy the entire scrum, the entire part where journalists get involved, rather than let us ask questions of rebel news.
They pretty much put it that way.
They note that the other journalists shouted at us, were ill-behaved, they reject us, and we saw that how they just swarmed the debates manager for daring to let us in.
So they pretty much say it out loud: quote: While the Commission could seek to organize and manage press conferences with clear and enforceable rules, for example, limiting the number of questions per media organization, a system for who gets to ask questions, and a code of conduct to manage these rules, rules alone may not be sufficient to guarantee a respectful and functional environment and could lead to contention and litigation over their imposition.
Now, I'm not exactly sure what that means other than the obvious because they or the regime media can't handle rebel news being allowed in there.
They're just deleting it.
They're just stopping that.
They have a monopoly in debates.
It's not like there's anyone else that's going to have a debate.
So we gave them monopoly, and it's too tough for them.
It's too hard.
So they're just going to cut it in half.
The fun part was asking the questions of the leaders afterwards.
But this all suits Mark Carney just fine, doesn't it?
I've always said there will soon only be two kinds of journalists in Canada: those paid by the government and those banned by the government.
Mayor Of New York City00:09:43
We're getting closer to that every day, aren't we?
Stay with us for more.
Well, it's just days away from the election of a new mayor in New York City.
And normally, city mayors are not the substance of rebel news diatribes.
I mean, really, a mayor is very limited in power, isn't it?
But the mayor of New York City is different.
Of course, New York City is an enormous place.
Their police force alone is a major counterterrorism unit when you think about it.
But more than that, the city is so symbolic.
It's a symbol of freedom, of capitalism, and ever since 2001, the symbol of resisting Islamism.
But it looks like the next mayor of New York City will be an Islamic, I'm not going to say fundamentalist, because I don't think he practices the Islamist lifestyle, but he is a combination of an alienist, Islamist, and a communist.
And we'll see if my characterizations are accurate in the weeks ahead.
But I would say that he is in the mold of Sadiq Khan of London, maybe even Olivia Chow in Toronto.
I think more than anything, he wants to erode the American-ness of New York.
And that is why it's of interest not just to all Americans, but to people around the world who love New York City and America.
I've heard him called the leading figure in the Democratic Party and perhaps a portent of what's to come.
Joining us now to talk about this in the United States is our friend Will Chamberlain, who is senior counsel for the Article 3 project.
Will, I don't want to be too dramatic, and I don't want to overstate things because I don't need to, because I think the facts are strong enough.
I don't think Zorhan Mamdani is a deeply observant Muslim on his own, but I think he sees Islam as a battering ram against America the same way he sees socialism as a battering ram against America.
And I think he's basically will take a coalition of everyone who's against America, and it just happens that he's Muslim.
I don't think that actually colors his attack.
I think it's just another tool in his quiver.
What do you think of Zorhan Mamdani?
I think that's the right way to look at it.
I think he's a third world leftist is the way to understand it.
And if he were a third world leftist who was any different religion, his politics wouldn't really be that different.
Maybe they'd have less overt sympathy for Hamas, but I don't think that's the driving force of his politics.
I think the leftism is the driving force of his politics.
And you can see that in terms of what, you know, what is he, what is he animated by?
And, you know, even today's statement, I think the one that came out that was super viral today, the one this morning where he's talking about if the boot on your throat is that of the NYPDs, it's laced up by the IDF.
That fits into the broader third worldist leftism that we see all over the world at this point, this sort of idea, this anti-police, anti-authority politics that also finds resonance in the struggle or the resistance of Hamas.
Yeah, if you look at the two opponents to Mamdani in this election, there used to be a third one, the incumbent mayor, but there's Mario, sorry, not I was going to say Mario Cuomo, the son of Mario Cuomo, an old time Paul, Paul used to be the governor of the state, is running, but he feels old and he feels a little bit corrupt, the charges against him.
And then you have Curtis Sleewa, who's sort of a radical cram fighter.
He was the founder of the Guardian Angels, I think, if I got the name right, that would sort of ride the subways.
So I think the split on the vote on the right is certainly going to help.
But I keep looking at the attacks mounted against Mamdani, and I keep thinking those are not going to work.
Like making fun of him for being a socialist, making fun of him for being a silver spoon socialist, for fibbing, for being a bit of a con man and a bit of an actor.
I think those arguments would work on people like you and me.
But I think so much of his base just says whatever it takes, just be a wrecking ball.
If you have to lie, if you have to be a dramatic actor, if you have to be different people in different moments, like his accent changes.
Sometimes he's black.
Sometimes he's East Indian.
Sometimes he's good old American.
Things that would normally make you and I say, oh, this guy's a slippery fish.
It seems to me that those will not work on his base because they know who he is and they say, whatever it takes, man, just get the job done and detonate this place.
They're sort of nihilistic in that way.
That's how it looks to me.
I'm up here in Canada, though.
What does it look down there in the States?
I mean, he's going to perform about as poorly as any Democratic Party candidate for mayor has in the last 25 years.
I mean, you can go back to Eric Adams.
Eric Adams won 67% of the vote in the general election.
Mandani is probably not going to get a plurality, even if he does win.
And so there's, and Cuomo, having lost the primary, is still going to come in and poll 30 to 40% of the vote.
That's still, that's a remarkable lack of confidence in the guy.
I mean, New York is such a heavily Democratic city.
And for in a general election, a guy to win, the Democratic candidate, the Democratic Party-linked candidate to win with less than 50% is a pretty significant blow to his general appeal.
But I think that of that 50%, yeah, there's just a lot of people who are always going to vote for the socialists.
There's a huge contingent of socialists in New York City.
It's a remarkable percentage.
And I think a big part of the problem, if you will, is that a lot of the sort of moderate Democratic voters who might have voted for a Cuomo or fought harder against Mandani in the primary, they left.
They left in COVID.
They left for Florida.
They left for North Carolina.
So what you end up having left in New York is kind of a more hardcore Democrat.
And so I think that the city is somewhat doomed to be run by the hard left for the foreseeable future, which is not good for New York City.
It's not good for the United States.
Yeah, I mean, he really has radical positions.
Like he's a big defund the police kind of guy.
There's a social media post by him where he gives the finger to Christopher Columbus's statue.
Like, so all these things sort of make people say, right on.
And so I think they forgive this policy or that policy.
One of the attacks Andrew Cuomo made on him is that Mam Danny really hasn't actually done anything.
He's just been in political life.
He's been a talker.
He's never run anything.
And again, I think that's true.
But I think his base does not care.
I mean, they're not voting for a doer.
They're voting for a symbolic smashing of the status quo.
Am I too simplistic?
No, I think you're right.
And I really don't believe that they've fully thought through what the consequences of this will be.
And it's not as simple as, oh, we'll just tax everybody in New York City a lot more.
Well, then they'll leave.
That's really easy.
It's a city.
They can move.
If we get the Republican to win to New Jersey, they can just literally move across the river and go live in Newark or in Jersey City or in any of the New Jersey suburbs.
Or they can move to Florida, North Carolina, which many of these businesses already did.
A huge amount of finance in New York City has already moved either to Charlotte, North Carolina, or down to Miami and Palm Beach.
So I expect that trend will continue.
And it doesn't take too many of the wealthiest people in New York City to move for there to be a massive gaping hole in the New York City budget.
I think the budget of New York City is something like double the entire budget for the state of Florida.
It's an enormous, enormous budget.
And that's already being allocated to any number of different social programs.
Mamdani's ideas of universal child care for everybody, that only works if you keep the billionaires in your city.
If they leave, you don't have the money for it.
I don't know if you know this because I'm sure it's specific to New York, but what powers does the mayor have?
I know there are other city councilors who are vehemently against Mam Danny.
And we've seen Trump himself say a lot of money goes through the White House and I'm going to turn off the taps.
I mean, remember, Trump, in many ways, is actually still a New Yorker.
Most of his real estate is there.
Icons around the city are named after him.
He lived there for a long time.
Between domestic opponents, like civic opponents, and Trump's aggressive executive orders, and maybe the Department of Justice trying to thwart some of the racial favoritism that Mam Danny proposes.
Do you think he's going to be able to do some of the dramatic things he poses?
Does he have the power to do a lot of the things he's promising, or does that get watered down in Tammany Hall politics?
I don't know, actually.
This is where my lack of familiarity with New York City's specific laws is going to hurt me.
I don't really know the answer to the exact division of power between the city council and the mayor in that city.
I would suspect that the city council will do what the mayor wants.
I don't think they want the DSA marching outside their houses, so I suspect that he won't face a lot of internal resistance in New York City proper from other politicians there.
I will say I think he'll get a lot of resistance from the federal government.
I don't mean, remember, Donald Trump is a New Yorker.
He's not going to be happy about seeing the city where he spent most of his adult life turned into some communist hellhole.
So I think that there's going to be real resistance from the Trump administration to continuing to fund what New York City is doing if they're going to act like idiot socialists.
And I think that might be the ultimate constraint, that there's just a fundamental financial constraint imposed by the government saying if you don't behave normally, then what's going to happen is we're going to cut off your funding.
You said DSA, that stands for Democratic Socialist Alliance.
Born Citizens Debate00:04:36
Is that right?
Democratic Socialists of America.
It's, I think, the soft communist political party, political party, political faction of the Democrats.
So the more radical left-wing part of the Democrats, I don't know what the equivalent would be in the Republican Party, but this is basically the vanguard pulling everything to the left.
These would be the Bernie Sanders people, am I right?
Or even further left than him.
Yeah, as far left as Bernie Sanders and further, there's no right-wing equivalent, honestly.
There's no right-wing institution designed to infiltrate the Republican Party, get its own candidates nominated and in hardwire cities.
There's nothing resembling the DSA.
The DSA resembles, if anything, the sort of American Communist Party of the 1940s and 1950s.
You know, it's an infiltrating party, an infiltrating force.
They call themselves socialists, but their politics are communist.
Now, in other cities, Palestinism is a really driving force.
I spent some time in Ireland.
I'm shocked by how many Palestinian flags I see there, including draped on major buildings.
Ireland couldn't be further away from Gaza.
There are no Jews in Ireland.
It's just a very strange observation.
Now, London is a little bit different.
There's an enormous number of Muslims.
And I point out that in the last UK election, there were five or six seats where independent candidates, not Labour Party, but independent candidates, ran on a pro-Gaza platform and won.
They said, lend your vote to Gaza.
And there were enough, in combination, Muslim activists and woke anti-Brits to win, to punch through.
Is that a factor in New York, or is it not Islamified so much?
I'm just trying to understand the factor of ethnicity as a cohesive voting bloc.
That's certainly a factor in certain parts of the UK.
Is it a factor in New York?
Not yet.
I don't think there's enough Islamists in the United States in anywhere except Dearborn, Michigan, to really do that.
And I think, I mean, that's a function of distance.
It's a lot farther away from the Middle East.
We just don't have as many Muslim immigrants as a portion of our population.
I mean, I think it's 1% total of the United States.
Now, what we are seeing in England is very terrifying and a reason to restrict Muslim migration dramatically for sure.
Last time I checked, the percentage of New Yorkers born in a foreign country, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was about 36%, which it sounds like quite a large number.
And if you, according to the polls, the foreign-born ones who are now American citizens are much more likely to vote for Ma'am Danny.
And that could be he's living the same experience as us.
He'll be a deflector of racism.
Although I don't think credibly any of the candidates could be called anything close to racist in New York.
I just think that maybe there's a sense of affiliation or he knows what we're about.
I don't know, but I know that Canada, we have a number of cities where the number of foreign-born citizens is over 50%.
There's one city near Toronto called Brampton that is 59%.
What does it mean to be a country, a nation?
The root word is to be born, natal.
Can a nation have a cohesive identity and a culture and a patriotic unity if a third or a half of its members are new arrivals?
Can that work?
Has it ever worked before?
No, not as far as I know.
I don't see how it could conceivably work.
I think that you need some sort of strong anchor in the center of a society that people are expected to assimilate into to make immigration work properly.
And immigration on that scale is devastating to a nation's cohesion, to patriotism, to the ability to unity internally.
It leads to massive sectarianism.
I mean, we're already seeing that sectarian politics.
You know, for all the talk about dual loyalty for people who are supportive of Israel, you have people, as you described, running on single-issue platforms, namely, and the single-issue being a conflict a few thousand miles away from them, right?
Lend your vote to Gaza.
This is in Blackburn, England.
What does Gaza have to do with anything?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's very interesting to me.
Now, I don't know how the Constitution treats where you are born, but I'm guessing that Zorhan Mamdani cannot run for president under the U.S. Constitution.
Massive Sectarianism Risks00:02:21
You correct me if I'm wrong, because he's an immigrant to America.
That's correct.
He's not a natural-born citizen.
He was born in Uganda.
He can't run for president now.
But putting that aside, he seems to be the most energetic force in the Democrats right now.
AOC, again, I'm in Canada, so I'm not consuming as much American content as you are.
It looks like AOC, she's not the rocket she was a few years ago.
Gavin Newsom, he's trying a series of things to become a national figure.
But if I had to say who has the energy, the momentum, the money, the narrative, the style, who's got the youth, the vigor, I disagree with him on just about everything.
But you can't deny Zorhan Mamdani's got it.
He's a hell of an actor, at least.
Yeah, so I quote that line from the big Lebowski, at least it's an ethos.
The Democrats, as a party, don't have much to run on because if you think about it, they ran on Obama's presidency for a long time, and most of that is overtaken by events or obviously a bad idea.
I mean, Obamacare, the health insurance market has failed.
That's why we have this huge fight now over extending some Obamacare subsidies.
The Iran deal imploded and was proven unnecessary by Trump strikes on Iran.
You name any part of Obama's legacy and it's all dissipated.
And so the mainstream Democrats don't even really have a platform right now.
And so they don't really know what they're for except being against Trump.
Whereas then you have somebody like Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, who knows what he wants.
He wants communism.
He has a platform.
He has a program he wants to see implemented.
And that naturally, I think, draws energy out of their party away from the people who are just kind of trying to perpetuate a legacy that no one really likes and even Democrats don't really like very much.
You know, Mamdani's family is interesting.
His dad is a really radical left-wing professor, hates America, says so bluntly.
His mom is actually a filmmaker, I think, affiliated with Disney, if I'm not mistaken.
So he grew up in a radical household, but also a successful household, and a household where acting and reading roles and being dramatic.
And he was a rapper, for heaven's sakes.
Like he tried showbiz.
And I think more than he's a communist, he's an anti-Americanist.
He is Muslim.
He is an immigrant.
High EQ, Low Integrity00:04:15
But I think his core is like Trudeau.
Trudeau was a dramatic actor who could memorize lines, who could fake empathy, who had a high, you know, emotional EQ, as they would say.
I don't even know if that's a thing, but he could connect with people.
I see that in Mandani.
And when people finally fell out of love with Trudeau, they didn't just move from I like him to I dislike him.
They moved from I like him to I hate him because I now see what a charlatan he is.
It was all the polling in Justin Trudeau's later months was do you like him or do you hate him?
Not do you dislike him?
I see the same trickiness, the same obvious BS, like the male feminist BS or the I'm fine with the Jews BS.
I just, I think he's tricking a lot of young people, especially a lot of young women, who find him dreamy, just like Trudeau.
And I think that if Mamdani wins, it's going to be because the vote is split by the moderates and he's getting a lot of media attention and money.
But I think it's because he's bamboozled a lot of people.
He's just a kind of, I don't know, grifter's the wrong word.
I think he's a dramatic actor who's bullshitting his way into power.
What do you think?
Yeah, I think it's government by theater kid.
You know, there's a lot of that on the Democratic side of the aisle.
And, I mean, you know, you can get into office and then you got to run the city of New York.
And as he's never had experience running any kind of enterprise of any sort.
The biggest enterprise he's ever run is his campaign.
That's it.
He's, you know, mid-30s, has, I don't know that he's had a real job in his entire life.
And he's going to run the city of New York.
He doesn't understand the first thing about the city of New York.
He became a citizen seven years ago.
That's it.
I mean, he's no business running even like a small city.
I think there's something to the way, the ego involved in thinking he ought to be the mayor of New York.
It's a remarkably egotistical position for him to hold.
Yeah.
Well, they said a lot of those things about Sadiq Khan, and he remains the mayor of London, and certainly he is putting his stamp on it.
And again, is he Islamist?
In some ways he is.
It's more what he tolerates than what he does.
And of course, he has his fanaticisms, whether it's environmental extremism or soft on crime.
I fear that what has happened to London, God forbid, may happen to New York.
Last question to you.
You talked about how the ultra-rich are mobile.
Of course they are.
New York has an enormous inertia, enormous center of gravity.
It's been down before.
I think of the 70s, the bad old days before Rudy Giuliani helped turn it around.
So New York has some resilience, even though people might move away.
Is the, you know, you know, that phrase, an immovable object and an irresistible force.
There's a lot of things in New York that will not go easily.
I mean, it's a city full of fighters.
It's a high politics, high-stakes city, has been for 400 years almost.
Can it resist Zorhan Mamdani and eject him?
Or can he break New York and make it mold to him?
If you had to bet on it, will he be successful in transforming that city?
Because he wants to transform it.
Yeah, I think so.
I don't think the same inertia is there.
I think a lot more people will exit.
I feel like it's a different world than it was in the 1990s in terms of there being alternative cities and places to live.
I think the move to a lot of work being remote, being done over Zoom, being done on the internet, I think it's just the stickiness of New York, I think, has gone down dramatically.
I don't think it's as important for people to stay there to do their work.
And as a result, you know, if Mamdani really does succeed in implementing his program, I think people will sit and stand up and say, you know what?
The weather's better in Miami anyway.
Yeah, wow.
You know, never forget that Detroit was once the city in America with the highest industrial wage.
It's hard to believe that, that Detroit was the city everyone wanted to go to to get rich.
And it was politics that undid it.
Strong Turnout in Singapore00:02:57
Will, great to catch up with you.
We've been talking to Will Chamberlain, the senior counsel of the Article III project.
You can follow their work at a3paction.com.
Great to see you.
Keep in touch.
Let's talk after the election.
Absolutely.
Happy to do it.
Thank you very much.
Well, there you have it.
Didn't mean to depress anyone.
Stay with us.
Your letters to me next.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
By the way, we like to pick our letters from your comments under the show.
Of course, only Rebel News Plus subscribers can make those comments.
So it's great to see familiar names.
I see that Michael Gillory has a question.
He says, rather than using the powers entrusted to them for the benefit of Canada, you're talking about the AC and trade talks, they've turned us into hostages of their agenda.
Is there any way Canadians can be set free to enjoy the wealth of natural resources, which can benefit many countries who've asked to trade with us?
That's the thing, is I see Carney was in Singapore today.
Singapore is a very energetic place.
It's sort of like Hong Kong, but not under the thumb of Communist China.
They don't have a lot of natural resources there.
They surely could benefit from our LNG natural gas, probably from our oil as well.
But Mark Carney is against those things because of carbon.
Don Haricek says, no oil and gas man speaks again.
Yeah, did you think that Mark Carney, after spending 20 years going to war against oil and gas, and by the way, his wife is even more radical than him.
Did you really think that maybe that suddenly he believes in oil and gas?
Yeah, not really.
On my interview with Sheila Gonread last night, Bruce Hatchett says the large crowd versus the naysayers proves that autonomy is possible in Alberta.
It certainly is possible.
Now, whether or not there's enough momentum there to have a kind of Brexit is yet to be known.
Brexit, that's when the UK left the European Union, they had a few things going for them.
First of all, they had Nigel Farage, who was an eloquent speaker, well-known, who campaigned full-tilt, and he was a force of nature.
I don't think the movement in Alberta has that.
Second of all, it was a very grand moment.
People realized that this was do or die.
The whole nation of the UK was talking about it.
So there was a strong turnout, and it was a very motivated turnout.
I'm not sure if that's the case on the ground yet.
And I don't know.
It was an impressive turnout.
Will that turn into 51% of people voting in a referendum?
Well, we'll see.
I tell you one thing: if Mark Carney blocks Alberta's oil pipelines, you might just see an independence vote in Alberta.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.