Ezra Levant recounts covering Davos 2024 as an independent journalist, dodging Swiss police (who didn’t arrest him despite Christia Freeland’s "Putin spy" accusation) while interviewing Justin Trudeau, Mark Carney, and Donald Trump—who drew crowds for his blunt take on housing, trade, and conflicts like Ukraine. Levant contrasts the WEF’s opaque influence with government accountability, warning of rising European censorship against platforms like X, and questions whether Canada’s press freedom is eroding under globalist pressures. His firsthand experience underscores how Davos’s elite now shape policy without public scrutiny, leaving free speech in a precarious position. [Automatically generated summary]
We take a train from the town of Closters to Davos.
Then we spend the day walking up and down the promenade looking for VVIPs and oligarchs to talk to.
Then basically at sunset, we do the reverse.
Come back to the town we're in called Closters.
This is our Airbnb.
And the lads just edit.
We grab a bite of lunch or dinner rather.
And all the stories that we recorded during the day, the same guys who videotaped them now edit them and send them back to Toronto where at our office we upload them to the web.
So it's a whole busy process.
I was talking to a team and I think this Davos mission is the hardest of all the missions we do.
We go to some exotic places sometimes at Rebel News, but this isn't just a very far flight away.
So we're all jet lagged.
It's physically strenuous.
You're doing a lot of waiting, which is standing around, and then you're basically running to catch up with the oligarchs you spot on the street.
The cameramen have to run backwards.
And even, I mean, I hop and puff because I'm not in great shape, but also when you're trying to talk while running, I don't know, it's actually a pretty exhausting thing.
I think we're all looking forward to going home.
But we had a lot of success, not just today, but over the past few days.
And, you know, I've always said that the World Economic Forum has no official power.
It doesn't pass laws, for example, but it has enormous influence.
That is, the ideas that are generated here are widely adopted and shared by World Economic Forum members.
All sorts of quasi-governmental things happen, lobbying, schmoozing for contracts, meetings beyond the gaze of the media.
Because when you have meetings in Parliament or Congress, there's a record of them.
There's minutes, there's a transcript, there's a lobbyist registry, a foreign agent registry.
There's so many things that are checks and balances.
And you have an independent press snooping around, making sure nothing untoward is happening.
None of that is the case at Davos.
Well, at least we are independent journalists, even though we're given no official access to it.
There are a few other citizen journalists here, and I think it's fun to see them because it would be too depressing if we were literally the only ones.
But going to the World Economic Forum is pretty much a rebel news franchise, if I may call it that, that our people love.
And there's a reason for that is we come as prepared as we can be to ask tough questions to people from a whole different range of walks of life.
Citizen Journalists at WEF00:03:15
And over the past few days, Justin Trudeau and Christia Freeland were very high on our list.
Lots of other little people, I don't mean little people, little stories, little interviews along the way.
But as I was remarking to my colleagues here, and I think I mentioned on the show yesterday, it's sort of crazy that we have to fly halfway across the planet in order to interview our own country's MPs.
In one day, I talked to Justin Trudeau, Christia Freeland, Francois Philippe Champagne, and Melanie Jolie, or at least in the space of 24 hours, which is more access than rebel news is allowed to have of our government in 10 years.
And it's insane, and it's a reminder that we are not normal as a country.
We have restrictions on our press that are not normal, that are not normal.
I mean, another thing, you saw when I was walking or running down the street talking to Christia Freeland, she said, Oh, stop harassing me.
You're a Putin spy, or whatever she said.
I could ignore her.
And the police were somewhat alarmed.
They pulled me over when we were done the interview.
But after we just showed them our ID and they made some phone calls, they said, Okay, you can go.
Just, you know, take it easy.
And if we had been in Canada, we would for sure have been arrested, possibly taken to jail, handcuffed, and most likely charged with some offense.
The fact that the police here just said, Hey, just make sure everything's okay.
Like they were, you probably saw that question I asked the police.
I said, I support freedom of speech.
Do you?
And he said, Yes, of course.
Like it was, he was almost slightly surprised.
I would have to ask.
Remember that clip?
Take a look.
Answer Levant, a journalist doing journalism.
Okay, we need an ID now.
I'll show you an ID now.
Yes?
I believe in freedom of speech.
Do you?
Yes, of course.
Okay, good.
Then we're friends.
This is all being recorded.
Just for the record.
I'm more handsome now.
I'm more handsome than I used to be.
Thank you very much.
Can you stay here to this point?
Sure.
How are you?
Hi, thanks.
Good.
How are you?
Nice to meet you.
I'm Anzra.
It's my friend Lincoln.
How are you?
It's okay, guys.
Have a nice day.
Just leave.
If people don't want to speak with you, they don't have to.
You have to understand that, okay?
That's their liberty.
She was suffering us for most of that time.
She didn't look that happy.
No, she was not happy at all.
Okay, so have a nice day.
I'm sorry, but in none of my interactions with police in Canada over the past five or ten years, is that script there even remotely possible that I would say, I believe in freedom of the press.
Do you?
Of course.
Like it was almost like he was upset that I doubted him.
And sure enough, he was correct.
I can't imagine the Calgary Police, the Edmonton Police, the Ottawa Police, the Toronto Police, the RCMP, the OPP, the Quebec Police, the Surte de Montreal.
I can't imagine any of those police forces having as respectful an approach towards civil liberties as the Swiss police.
I'm sort of jealous.
It was interesting because, of course, Donald Trump was here and his speech, his 90-minute speech dominated, his presence here dominated.
In The Spirit Of Dialogue00:14:52
Mark Carney gave a speech that was well received by World Economic Forum delegates.
But as I tweeted, you know, it's a nice speech, very poetic, but how about read that out at the Algoma Algoma steel mill in Sault Ste. Marie?
How about read that out in one of the car factories in the greater Toronto area when you're losing jobs because you can't get a deal with the United States because you're constantly picking ideological fights?
Sure, giving a lovely speech about, hey, let's all rally together against the big bag in the United States.
You'll get an applause.
Absolutely.
You'll get a round of applause.
And I talked to the rapper, Will I. Am, who really loved Mark Carney's speech.
And I like Will I.
I was in the band, The Black Eyed Peas, and I really enjoyed talking with him.
But he's not a normal Canadian looking for work.
He's a zillionaire rock star who travels the world.
So he has the luxury of being inspired by Mark Carney's poetry.
The rest of Canadians have to live in a country where food inflation is amongst the highest in the G7, where our economy is weak, where the per capita GDP is weak in part due to mass immigration.
We have a lot of problems and sort of daydreaming about, well, what if Canada was super duper strong?
Well, we're not really.
And we can't replace the United States as our market.
We can't become our own market.
It's just not, you know, 80% of our exports go to the U.S.
We can't find a replacement for those sales within Canada.
It may sound good on paper, but it cannot happen.
Militarily, same thing.
First of all, don't believe the statistics that Canada is ramping up on military spending.
They're doing that by calling certain bureaucratic spending military spending.
It's an accounting trick.
But even if it were true, Canada simply can never match the United States militarily.
And we shouldn't try to.
Rather, we should try to be good allies and hammer things out behind closed doors, not fight in public.
Now, Donald Trump fights in public, but Mark Carney, in his own way, has been continuously prickling and poking the United States.
And I think it's for very suspicious reasons.
I think it's because he wants the United States to poke back.
So there's a wave of anti-Americanism that Mark Carney can ride into a majority government.
Oh my God, we have a crisis.
The Americans are out of control.
We need a snap election now.
Give me a majority government.
I'm the only one who can take on the evil Donald Trump.
That's basically how he won his first election.
Anyways, it's been a bit exhausting.
I'm a little bit tuckered myself.
Although, I love these trips.
I hope you've enjoyed them too.
Like I say, it's amazing how many people you can just approach at the World Economic Forum.
There are few bodyguards.
There are some bodyguards, especially around some fancy, super fancy VIPs.
But even then, you can still talk to the people.
No one's going to arrest you just for talking to them.
We can only dream.
Without further ado, here's a compilation of some of the videos we put out today.
Take a look.
Larry, how you doing this year in the spirit of dialogue?
Can we have a conversation this year?
Are you out for a conversation this year?
What about the spirit of dialogue, sir?
Did you mean it or is that another lie?
Obviously, since last year, you've been, I guess, promoted to the co-chair.
Is that because if you want a job done right, you might as well do it yourself?
Last year, you took photos of us, sir.
What did you do with those photos?
Why are you so quiet?
What does the spirit of dialogue actually mean, Larry?
Does it mean anything?
Is it like pretending you care about the carbon footprint, coming here on a private jet?
Why is your bodyguard pushing me into the street, sir?
I'm just asking you to keep your distance.
Excuse me, sir.
Watch the baby.
Why was the would-be assassin of Donald Trump in one of your corporate videos, sir?
Isn't that a bit weird?
Do you feel any responsibility as a Jew in the current climate where there's a rise in anti-Semitism and people blame Jews for everything, saying they want to control the world?
And when they need evidence, they point to you.
You're the example every anti-Semite gives, and it's hard to fight.
Do you feel any responsibility for that?
Don't touch my mic, mate.
Keep your distance.
Why are your bodyguards such thugs, sir?
Isn't that the true Larry Fink?
You have all this BS about conversations and dialogue, but underneath it, you're a thug.
Spirit of dialogue.
Spirit of dialogue.
This is what it looks like here in Davos.
How do you feel about Donald Trump saying you can no longer buy up residential homes and rent them out for profit?
Did you talk to him about that?
Do you agree with them that you've been predatory in your pricing for residential houses in America?
Have you consolidated power at WEF now that you're the co-chair?
What did you do with Klaus Schwab?
What did he do wrong?
The spirit of dialogue.
This is it.
Welcome to Davos 2026.
The WEF, the biggest pack of hypocrites, evil hypocrites like Larry Fink, who tell us how we've got to live when it comes to your carbon footprint.
You've got to eat bugs, but old mate here gets to fly in his private jet and when that one got tired, he's moved on to the spirit of dialogue.
Now we've got to talk to opposing voices just like this.
It means being surrounded by your goons.
This year he's not taking photos of us, but just as quiet, no shame.
What's your next project, Larry?
Your silence says everything, you know that.
Why do you suddenly not care about climate change here at WEF?
Why does it seem like nothing here is about carbon footprint?
Is that because the AI data centers kind of destroyed that narrative?
Will you admit that it was all a scam?
Why do you force DEI on the companies in which you invest?
Isn't that putting your own ideology ahead of shareholder rate of return?
Isn't your fiduciary to get the best, your fiduciary duty to get the best rate of return instead of imposing your ideology on the companies you invest in?
Are you still pushing ESG?
I see it everywhere.
What score do you think you get this year?
What's your social score?
Oh, everything.
Everything.
You've got your fans everywhere, Larry.
When was the last time you flew commercials, sir?
Or is that just for the little people?
What are you thinking about there?
Is BlackRock and WEF just the same?
Just the one organisation now?
Larry, final word to the world.
This is your chance.
This is your chance.
Larry, no, you don't want to say anything?
In the spirit of dialogue, there you go.
What do you think of the defections to Reform UK?
Would you ever consider defecting?
Where do you live most of the time?
Are you in California these days?
Richie, is Kier Starmer doing a good job?
Mr. Sunak, do you like Kier Starmer because he makes your poll numbers look good in retrospect?
Do you think Nigel Farage will make a better Prime Minister than you?
What's your biggest regret as Prime Minister?
Richie, biggest regret?
Richie Collins.
What do you think his biggest regret is?
Are you here in an official capacity, Rishi?
Are you trying to find support for the Conservatives, which look like they're dying?
How's it looking this year, boss?
That's an interesting question.
Interesting question.
Much more difficult, much more challenging, much more nuanced.
Very, very difficult this year.
Tony.
No, but that's very nice of you to offer.
Well, thank you, Richard.
Very difficult this year.
And anybody who says that there's any simple or obvious or easy answers is a fool or an idiot or both.
It's a feast for journalists, though, isn't it?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that.
Well, there's so much to cover, so much to analyse and interpret.
I agree with you on that whether or not it's a time for us to do our jobs It's a time for us to learn on money.
It's a time for us to get serious about what's happening.
And regretfully that there are no easy solutions.
I always remember John Major saying that to me once in an interview.
He said, if there are any easy answers, don't you think we'd have found them by now?
Do you think in some ways you're a bridge between the UK and the US because you've got a foot in both?
Oh, I think that's a very grand statement.
Well, I mean, you understand both sides, and there's sometimes an ideological or philosophical divide.
I'll take you on that.
I agree with you on that.
Yes.
Having been covered transatlantic issues and transatlantic alliances and business for the last 35 years, yes.
Do I understand it more?
Who the hell knows?
You know, who the hell knows at the end of the day?
Do you think that some of Trump's challenges to the UK are just puffery or do you take them seriously?
Oh, you have to take them seriously.
Seriously or literally?
Maybe there's a difference.
There's a huge difference.
Look, just this morning, I'm reading Scott Besant, U.S. Treasury Secretary, is telling everybody to chill.
Right?
He's pretty chill himself.
Right.
But how, but what does that mean in reality?
When you're actually, when the threat is actually being made, what does it actually mean?
How do you not take a threat seriously?
If you don't take it seriously and it transpires to blow up in your face, should you have taken it more seriously?
It's very easy to say chill, don't take it seriously.
It's very easy to say the president's not serious on this point, or it's a negotiating position.
But the reality is, even if it is a negotiating position, what is the destruction of trust that's taken place as a result?
That's the problem.
There's a lot of truth there.
Now, I've got to keep moving.
Okay, well, this is nice to chat with you.
Come on.
You look like you need a couple of those for later.
Well, you know what, Richard?
It's very nice of you.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Take care of yourself.
I'll share mine with him.
Why are you getting skirted?
Thank you, Mr. Ryan.
Ezra Levant, we spoke last year.
Do you think Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize?
Every time I ask you these softball questions... I don't do these interviews in a while.
Yes, you do.
You just won't do it with me because I'm asking you questions you don't like.
What's a Republican doing at a globalist swamp like this, anyways?
Are you here to watch Donald Trump?
Your front row seats?
This is a spirit of dialogue this year.
You're here every year, spirit of dialogue.
You're not really participating.
Or is it only dialogue for some?
See you later.
This Paul Ryan, he was a high-ranking congressman in the Republican Party.
He was actually on the presidential ticket, and he's been a bit pouty ever since Donald Trump won.
When I talked to him last year, he said the same thing.
I don't do interviews.
You're a politician.
Interviews are all you do.
He made a quick getaway, bravely running away.
For Rebel News, I'm Ezra Levant with my friend Bobby Yamini.
Why are you so hostile to questions from the press?
Is it because I'm conservative?
I just don't get that about you, Paul.
Were you ever really a conservative?
Or were you maybe just a pre-lobbyist who's bloomed into a lobbyist?
This is your true self, like a butterfly.
Are you still working out?
Watch yourself, you get it.
Yeah.
Yeah, great.
Thank you.
How do you think the World Economic Forum is reacting to Trump?
Because on the one hand... We're all excited to have him here.
Obviously, he'll be the star of the show.
Are they going to push back on Greenland?
Who's they?
York?
Well, NATO.
I mean, they sent one troop from the UK.
That's terrifying.
So, as Secretary Besson said just this morning in an open press avail, No one wants a confrontation here, but I wonder why the same people getting upset that the U.S. has an interest in buying Greenland fairly and squarely aren't upset that China and Russia are already there.
You know, they want American money for Ukraine, but they don't want America to call the shots in Greenland.
I don't know, maybe you have to be European to understand how to reconcile that.
Well, it's well said.
And the other thing is we love our European allies.
The fact is they're still buying Russian oil four years, nearly four years after the invasion of Ukraine.
So as of last year, we were in for $350 billion.
Europe was in for about $100 billion.
Last time I looked at a map, Ukraine is in Europe.
So obviously many people mispredicted last year at WEF and then the Munich Security Conference that President Trump was going to, quote, abandon Ukraine.
It has not gone that way at all.
He's been highly engaged.
He's trying to bring a peace there.
He's got his peace board signing an event in two days here.
Oh, good.
And so that's exciting.
And obviously the president will be talking about Greenland as well because it is strategic for its minerals.
We have defense interests there.
And as the Arctic continues to melt, there's more passageways, there's infrastructure concerns.
And the president wants to make sure that part of his legacy is bucking up the Western Hemisphere and keeping, as you saw in Venezuela, and keeping China out.
We're from Canada, and some Canadians have been worried about what the Greenland approach to our country.
What would you have to say to ordinary Canadians?
Should they be worried?
What should they be doing?
Well, Canada is a great ally of the U.S. and President Trump is highly engaged with Carney.
China's Arctic Ambitions00:02:28
Think about his trip to China.
He just went to China.
He just went to China.
I know.
But Secretary Busson said just this morning in a forum I attended that he great, let Canada trade with China.
That's great.
But the fact is that we're all allies, and I think that there's always going to be — people are always going to complain about President Trump because he has totally upended the elites and the establishment order, and people like to strike back against that.
Last question, you've been very generous with me.
Thank you for this.
The World Economic Forum is globalist.
There's lots of big socialists involved here.
It's very un-Trumpy.
Do you think he's going to sort of fire a few thunderbolts at the folks here?
What do you expect from his feet?
Can you get a little of this?
So he's going to throw a couple of thunderbolts.
I think he's going to challenge the globalist elite order.
And remember, if you're President Trump and two years ago, people were promising, promising, if not hoping, you'd never again be in the White House.
In fact, you'd be in the big house.
You get to swagger into Davos and you get to talk about all the great direct foreign investment that he's attracted, $18 trillion and counting in his first year.
He's going to talk about making housing more affordable and accessible to Americans.
He's going to talk about, obviously, economic security, national security, him trying to get more trade deals, more peace deals.
He will talk about China.
He will talk about Ukraine.
He will talk about Iran and Israel.
But he's also going to talk about cooperation.
And yes, he has Greenland very much on his mind.
And it shouldn't surprise anyone because China's already there.
And look what China did in Latin America.
They basically promised all kinds of money and infrastructure and other goodies to some of these countries if they would just not deal with Taiwan.
And then that just all disappears when Maduro is extracted.
So if I were the Cubans, I'd feel good too because the Cuban people.
Because remember what President Trump did, he signed an executive order just a few short days after Maduro was taken out of Venezuela, that there'll be a fund for the oil profits for the Venezuelan people.
That's important too.
So, thank you.
Thanks very much.
Veso Sobat says hello from Canada.
How about West Canada?
Thank you very much.
Bye-bye, guys.
Thanks.
What do you think Evan's doing?
I hope he's doing well.
Students Building University00:02:35
I love Evan.
Do you follow him at all?
Not closely, but I mean, he's a friend, you know, obviously.
We missed him from GZero Media, but he's a fantastic guy.
How about the Prime Minister himself?
How do you grade him?
This was his week, right?
How do you think he did?
Yeah, I gotta go.
Okay, cheers.
That's Ian Bremner.
He's the boss of the Eurasia Group, which is a lobby group and a government relations group based in the States.
Incredibly, it's where Evan Solomon worked.
Jerry Butts, the former senior advisor to Justin Trudeau, and it's where, I think, until this day, Mark Carney's wife works.
The first question I asked him was, are you part of Canada's cabinet?
Because really, half of the senior decision makers in Canada's cabinet work for that American.
He's a friendly guy, which I think masks just how powerful he is, at least in our country.
Extremely well.
We have defied the skeptics and critics because the university, four years after its foundation, is thriving.
And anybody who visits our campus can see what fantastic students we have and what a great atmosphere of intellectual freedom we've created.
I'm hugely proud of the University of Austin and especially of the students.
Right now it's sort of an entrepreneurial place.
The students themselves are building the university.
What do you expect it to look like in 25 years when there's a bit more of a culture that's set?
I think even sooner than 25 years, in just a few years, we'll be a much larger institution.
I've often said we have as a role model the early years of the University of Chicago, which grew extraordinarily rapidly in student numbers in its first 10 years.
10 years from now, I hope we'll have thousands of students and we'll occupy a larger footprint in downtown Austin.
What's the number one challenge you face?
Any startup is a challenge, but to do a startup in academia is really difficult because there's a lot of skepticism from the established institutions, but the established institutions just failed so badly in the last 10 years that they'll all benefit from our kind of competition.
We're trying to reinvent the university, reinvent governance, create new rules around the way a university works.
And I think within 10 years people will see that we've been a force for good not just in Austin but across America.
Reinventing University Governance00:04:25
I hope you'll allow foreign applicants as well from Canada one day.
Well we were constrained by the accreditors and not allowed to do that at first but that is about to change.
Outstanding.
It's great news.
Yep.
Thanks for taking the time with me.
My pleasure.
All the best.
Good luck.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
How are you doing sir?
Hi.
You're from the Bank of Palestine?
Yes.
What are you guys doing in Davos?
Networking.
What do you want to achieve?
Investments, networking.
What do you guys do to ensure that money doesn't flow on to terrorists in Gaza or the West Bank?
Follow KYC compliance procedures.
What are those?
What procedures exactly?
International standards.
Are you confident that none of your money goes to Hamas or Hamas affiliated groups?
Of course.
Compliance is king.
Do you think there's going to be peace in the Middle East this year?
That's what we work for.
Everybody should work for it, inshallah.
Thank you.
Mr. Radaz Levant from Canada.
I had already done my Rebel yesterday.
I'm from Canada, though.
I know very little about Australia.
But I wonder if you have views about.
I know the MO.
Well, actually, I have totally different questions than my colleague.
Oh, no, they won't be.
They absolutely are.
He's a rebellious guy.
Give me a word on the President Trump's speech.
Just give me your take on it.
Well, all I can say if you're from Canada is as follows.
Oh, Canada.
Hey, maybe you have a diplomatic future in Ottawa.
It's very cold there compared to Washington.
Well, this is quite this is quite summery here in Davos.
This is training.
Training for Ottawa.
Or maybe do you think being appointed to nuke in Greenland would be a hardship posting these days?
Yeah, nice try.
I love you guys from Rebel.
You're permanently rebellious.
Well, thank you, Ambassador.
Nice to meet you.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Nice to see you here.
Obviously, you're here because of Trump's visit.
Correct.
The president will come in here in a couple of hours.
I'm really looking forward to his remarks.
And I was going to talk about how the U.S. is back in business and we're number one.
And can always be a couple of surprises in what the president speaks on today.
I bet.
Now, we've been coming to Davos for five years in a row, and being anti-Trump and anti-Elon Musk is something that I think is the consensus here.
So you've got oil and water that are going to be mixed today.
What's going to happen?
Do you think there's going to be people converted to Trump's way of thinking?
Do you think they'll rebel against him?
What's your hunch about the delegates here, the V VIPs?
Yeah, I'd push back on that a bit and say that even last night as I was walking around my first night here in Davos, there were a lot of people who are very interested in what the administration is doing, what the president's going to have to say, and in particular the fact that the U.S. is still the best place in the world to do business.
That's the place where all the capital is moving to.
And everything that the president does becomes a top-of-the-fold front page story the next day.
So everyone wants to hear it.
By the way, there are a lot of Trump supporters here, way more than I would have thought.
Well, that's good to hear.
Last question for you.
I know you have a freedom of speech background.
You've worked to make social media more free.
Are you worried about the trend in Europe to become more censorious and this battle with the U.S. over platforms like X?
Absolutely.
So obviously we see what's going on with Ofcom in the UK, which is a massive issue.
And I know the vice president and the president have both spoken out on this, but very concerned about the EU and where they're going in their efforts to punish some of the American tech companies.
This isn't done yet.
This is going to continue to be a fight.
I don't think that the bureaucratic oligarchs in the EU are ever going to stop until free speech is extinguished.
But you can count on the Americans to fight that every step of the way.
Great to see you here.
Thanks for your time.
My bandmate, co-founder of the Black IPs, best friend.
You know what?
One line I've loved for 20 years is I'm so 2008.
You're so 2008.
So what we were talking about back then was AI.
And the video that came right after that was a song called I'ma Be Rocking I Body that, you know, low-key, high-key predicts like text to music.
Before there were LLMs and diffusion models, and I was.
Sweet be rocking rocking.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's our show for the day.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here in Davos, Switzerland, and around the world, to you at home, good night.