Shaun Newman Podcast - #571 - Conrad Black

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

At one point his companies ran over 400 newspaper titles in North America and he headed the third largest newspaper group in the western world. He is the founder of the National Post and has sat down with the likes of Donald Trump, Justin Trudeau and Klaus Schwab. Tickets for Tucker Carlson in Edmonton at Ticketmaster.com Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastE-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Phone [phone] – general sales line, ask for Grahame and be sure to let us know you’re an SNP listener.

This is Danielle Smith. This is Tammy Peterson. This is Alex Kraner. This is Curtis Stone. This is Tom Longo, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. How's everybody doing? Happy Monday.

Hope everybody had a good weekend. We, well, I'll tell you a little bit of the weekend here. Let's do this first. Silver Gold Bowl, they're North America's premier precious metals dealer with state-of-the-art distribution centers in Calgary and Las Vegas. I was talking about them having a promo coming up. So Silver Gold Bowl, they're running. a limited time promo where new and existing customers can get a 10-ounce silver bar at spot

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everything would. These are the guys. Dex season is upon us and Windsor is, uh, well, tech season is not upon us. Like this is, this is Monday. This is Monday. My brain is, like, where am I? I don't know where I am today. Oh, boy.

Dex season is definitely not upon us, Sean. Don't think I have to tell anyone else that. When deck season is going to be upon us. do I you know like it's at this point in time I'm like do I just go back and restart the entire thing I'm not going to but this pains me the brain is functioning at whatever Monday is functioning at very low today I guess very very low they are the builders of the podcast studio table and when it comes to when we're talking mantles decks windows door sheds podcast studio tables character wood character would you know chunks of wood you're just not going to find anywhere else when Plywood is the place. Stop in here in Lloyd Minster today and go see Charles, Mr. Carly Colossom and his team at Windsor Blighwood. Man, I'm just, let's get on with the show. It's kind of like, let's just get on with the show. Oh, oh. Ticker, ticker, ticker, Tucker Carlson tickets. There's still some available on Ticketmaster. That's probably your easiest spot. We got to, you know, we went from, I didn't know too many people going from Lloyd to now we're taking a bus.

just because people are going to be, oh, a bus going for Lloyd, it's already full. It's got me, it's already full. You know, that's how quick it happened. We went from, I'm going to drive up with Mel and we're going to, you know, have a little bit of fun to now there is 56 people all hopping on a bus together. So Tucker Carlson's going to be a fun show Wednesday night in Emmington. He's also in Calgary Wednesday at noon, but as far as I know, Wednesday in Calgary sold out. Rogers Place, ticker, see what is going on here? Ticket master.

You know, we gave out all the tickets. I'm trying to muscle through here, folks. I'm really trying to. I'm trying. I'm trying. We gave out all the tickets on substack. And then, of course, here on the podcast, if you did not get a call, I'm sorry that you did not win any of that.

Our big winner was Ray Lynn Armstrong. She won a VIP meeting great with Tucker Carlson. That was pretty cool. And there was a whole bunch, Trisha Rue, Jerry Wimph, I hope I say that right, George Stack, Kevin Damon, just a whole bunch. There's a whole bunch of winners, and we drew them on last Thursday. I said Wednesday, and then we finally got to it Thursday. So thanks for everybody participating.

And, of course, if you haven't signed up on the substack, please go subscribe. We release exclusives there all the time. and we'd love to have you over there and partaking in the community. We're trying to slowly build and facilitate there. All right. Enough for me, blabering on and falling all over myself today. Let's get on to that tale of the tape. His companies ran over 400 newspaper titles at one point in North America

and headed the third largest newspaper group in all the Western world. He was the founder of the National Post. He's interviewed people like Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau. I'm talking about Conrad Black. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. I am joined by Conrad Black.

Sir, thanks for hopping on. Thank you for having me. You know, if I've ever heard a guy on, I think you'll be episode 571 on this side, and there's a couple who stick out who have a voice for radio. Sir, you have it. And you have a great voice when you start rattling off. I assume you've been told that lots. I have not.

I have not. My wife occasionally hints at it, but not as far as I've got. you know for for the audience you're going to be out here in in emminton this coming week on stage with rex murphy and tucker carlson so i wanted to throw that out i want to talk about that a little bit but before we get into all of that conrad um you know it's it's funny i was born in 86 and you know i got digging into all your you know um your life i guess and i'm like huh i i knew a little bit about here and there, but, you know, you were in the throes of things when I was being born. And so I wondered if you wouldn't tell me a little bit about yourself. I know we don't have

forever today, but I wouldn't mind just hearing a little bit about Conrad before we talk a bit more about Tucker Carlson and you being on stage and all that good stuff. Hey, I'm a little uneasy about talking about myself. And in the unlikely event, anyone shares your interest knowing more about me in the past. You know, it's out there, although it should be read with caution unless I wrote it myself. But, well, look, in a word, my family were a well-to-do family, and I had a, I didn't much like school, but I did like university. I developed the theory that school teachers were essentially people who didn't make it in the world of adults. So they retreated to a world of little people where they could throw their weight around,

and that most of them weren't really qualified to teach very much. But I have had some experience of teaching since then, and I've raised my opinion of that occupation a bit. But I did have a nice time at university, and I went to Carlton Laval and McGill, and my thesis at McGill was the basis of my first of my first. first book about the longest serving Premier of Quebec, Maurice DiPlessi. And at the same time, while I was in the law school at LaValle, I associated with a couple

of friends of mine, and we bought some little newspapers. And then this group grew and grew, and it eventually grew to be one of the biggest newspaper companies in the world. And among the titles that we owned were the Daily and Sunday Telegraph in London, circulation of over a million, and the spectator. And in the United States, the Chicago Sun Times, the Jerusalem Post, the leading newspapers in Australia, and a majority of the newspapers, daily newspapers in Canada, including the National. Post, which we founded, and the Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, and the Vancouver Sun and Province. And there were over a hundred smaller daily newspapers in 30 states to the United States. So it's a big business. But I got a look at the internet and saw the implications of it for the newspaper business. And we made an order of

withdrawal from that business until a legal controversy developed over the conduct of one of my associates who had done bad things and didn't tell any of us but this was in an American situation and he threw himself on the mercies of the plea bargain system in that country and which enables you to to get a very reduced sentence for yourself if you you can help convict somebody more prominent than yourself. And several associates of mine and I were the victims of that. And it was an outrage. And we said it was an outrage.

And it was ultimately been acknowledged by the government of the United States to have been an outrage. But in the meantime, it drove that company into bankruptcy. And I was reduced to comparatively straightened economic circumstance. And I've been rebuilding my fortune as well as I relaunched my career as a writer of books, and I've been pretty active in that field. So that's what I do now. I write comments in websites and newspapers,

which I'm well paid for. And it's much easier, really, than being a newspaper owner. You're just paid for your opinions. You don't have to bother with agitating stock minorities and newspaper unions and that sort of thing, and the joys of dealing with the banking system. And I write and I write books. So that's, I mean, it's, I'm not representing it as any great dramatic paradigm of how to conduct one's life.

But here we are. You've lived, you've, you've, you've lived quite the life. You've seen a lot of things that most people will not and experience a lot of things that most people don't want to go down the same road. You know, when I got digging very lightly on you and, you know, I, you know, not stumbled because it's everywhere, you know, that at one point you were the third largest newspaper group in Western world is the way it's written. I don't know if you'd say it was larger than that, smaller than that.

No, I think that's accurate in circulation, yes. For me, I look at that and I go, here's a guy that can answer one of my questions that I've been, you know, stumbling around, if you would, just a kid from small town Saskatchewan now in small town Alberta. Through COVID, everyone went all these globalists, they're sitting in a backdoor room, you know, smoking cigars and came out with this brilliant plan and then they controlled all the media and yada, yada, yada, here's a guy sitting across from me that. they would have had sitting there would have been like, well, that guy owns all that. That's why they're putting that message out. And that's why they're censoring all this side in there. And did you see all that? Or what are your thoughts on that?

You're blending together two different things, the sort of Davos group, which I do know something about since I attended it for 20 years myself. Indeed, I succeeded the late Bob Maxwell as the head of the media section of it. And it was actually quite useful for me. because we got a lot of prominent media owners and operators there, and it was good to kind of talk shop with them. But I knew Claus Schwab, the founder, quite well, and I went to a number of plenary sessions as a panelist. And when I started there, it was in the very early 1980s,

before you were born, as it turns out, and the Cold War was still going on. and the Dabos spirit was really one of elitism and not so much a policy agenda, because the European leading figures in Europe knew that much as they would wish it otherwise, they had to have the Americans help them to be sure of keeping the Russians out of Western Europe. But after the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union disintegrated, then there was this compulsion of the sort of Euro-man to develop a new agenda for the world. And while many of them weren't even conscious of it, I became aware of the fact that in their minds, or at least in the back of their minds was the recollect. that Europe had governed the world, really prior to World War I.

They'd got it terribly wrong with the world wars and such exaltations of their political imagination as the communists and the Nazis. But that now, and they'd had to rely on the Americans to keep the Russians out of Western Europe, but now they didn't need the Americans anymore, and they would all stand on each other's shoulders and go back to ruling. the world. And so they devised them. They wouldn't articulate it this way, but after a while, I recognized this was sort of in their thoughts. And so they produced an authoritarian socialist schedule. And you remember dealing with a continent, which for obvious reasons, is still in a state of horror at what governments can do. But they are also, for obvious, reasons of paying Dane Guild to the working class and the small farmers for the upheavals that they can generate.

So their optimum is by North American standards quite a socialistic one and therefore quite an authoritarian one. Now, that thinking was much represented in the public health administration ethos that took control when the pandemic came to prominence. but it got tangled up in American politics. The leaders of the Democratic Party saw right away that they could condemn Trump as being anti-science and reckless and negligent about public health if he didn't shut the country down. And then as soon as he did shut it down,

they could blame him for the worst depression since Herbert Hoover. And so in the United States, it was basically politically driven, But this, how should I put it? This was the, incidentally also the serving to the administrative class in the public health sector, Dr. Fauci and others, of an intoxicant against which they were resistless. So the anti-Trump forces use the lust and appetite for authority of the public health bureaucracy to impose a shutdown on the United States, which like almost everything that happens in the United States was emulated in Canada and other places. And they did so for the purposes

of embarrassing and removing from office of an incumbent present. And all the chickens are coming home to Roos now. But I just gave you a, I mean, some people might disagree with me, But it is a carefully thought out analysis that I built up over throughout the period since the pandemic of what actually happened. So we had a sort of health control bureaucracy completely out of control with a blank check from the media, national political media and the intelligentsia and the academy in the United States to do a screw job on the incumbent. president. And this tied in with the growing and rampaging appetite of Davos man to take over the world on behalf of Europe and go back to telling everybody what to do. So that's what we're dealing with. It's falling apart. Now it's almost completely disintegrated and the wheels are coming off in all directions. And Trump is probably coming back as president. But that's where we are.

You mentioned meeting with Davos for 20 years. Did you think, you know, to me, most people don't admit that anymore. No, no, I never went there, right? They try and sluff it off as they'd never been, you know. When you try and cover up my past. No, I had a purpose to go. It was, look, I had lunch with Rupert Murdoch there once, and that's where we ended the price war, the London price war.

It was a business justifiable decision. I, the political part of it, I thought was nonsense. But there were a few other dissenters around like Henry Kissinger and Richard Pearl. And we had a good time just putting out our viewpoints, which were minority viewpoints. But in those days, people listen politely to them. I suppose because of the prestige of Kissinger and the others, not because they'd like to hear it. But they did, they did listen to us. Well, I guess the question I was going to ask, Conrad, you know, when you've been there for 20 years,

I actually make sense. You're going there for, you know, some very high profile people from your industry are there to on and on. But you go, the political stuff was nonsense. Well, you just look at the young global leaders. You look at all the ways that close Schwab is, you know, I wish I could do the evil accent, which I can't do. And I won't, I won't try and do it here. But, you know, he's a rather a nice man, believe it or not. But he's like a Frankenstein monster.

He's out of control now. But he's a nice guy. And he's built up a great thing. I mean, look, it's a non-stripped little town. Nobody in the right minds would go there even to ski. But he turned it into one of the centers of, you know, policymaking in the world. So, you know, he's in his way and by his lights, he's a success. Well, sure.

But now where you sit when you say he's Frankenstein, he's something worse. Like, I mean, at this point, he's enacting global policy across things he knows nothing about in countries he knows very little about. Wouldn't you agree? He has an excuse, though. He makes recommendations. He has no official status anywhere. I agree with you that what he proposes is happening, although I think it's fraying badly now, but it has happened.

But that is to be blamed on the policy makers, the official leaders in the countries that took all his rubbish seriously. And, I mean, he has no standing to tell. the Dutch or the Belgians or the Canadians, you know, what they should do in the public health field or anywhere else. But the Davos generates this ethos, which is an authoritarian homogenization of everybody run by a kind of science fiction bureaucracy. And he's just he's just the president of the center where these ideas emanate from, he can't be blamed for legislation or official edicts in other countries. He has no official status anywhere, not even in Switzerland. So he's more like the

Marx than the Lenin, if you will. That's it. I feel like that's letting them off a touch easy, but I get what you mean. I understand. He's not the worst of our problems. He's not a bad Who's the worst of our problems then? If you sit there and go, who is the worst of our problems? That is an interesting question. Because a lot of people would say the World Economic Forum or all these different things like the UN or the WHO and all the agreements that are trying to pull all these countries together and operate from the one world government, the globalist view. But who does Conrad Black think? Not only what you just said, but in the case of Europe, a Europe where all authority,

resides with the commissioners. The European Parliament has no authority. It's just a talking shop. They don't enact anything. The commissioners, once they're installed, are not subject to removal, and their edicts have the authority of the European Union. And for example, the European, the, what do you call them, the Euro integrationist in Britain, who I fought against every day in the telegraph titles and ultimately successfully. They claim that when, in effect, that when Britain voted to join the common market under Ted Heath, that it had voted, it had just got on the European train wherever the train took them.

And that's not the case. And that's what the voters determined at Brexit. They were for common market. They probably still are. But they were not for an ever closer union. And they were not for taking the system of government. that has evolved reasonably satisfactorily in Britain for nearly a thousand years and stripping the parliament and the other institutions of Britain, their court system, and making it subordinate

to people who are not responsible to any legislators or electorates directly in Brussels. And the idea, incidentally, of any country in Europe, with possibly including Belgium itself, being governed by Brussels, is one that appalls everyone. No one is in favor of it. That's why these people have, it just got completely out of control. And because they managed to swaddle themselves in the fastest possible progress away from the terrible past of still living memory of dictatorships and pogroms and war in Europe, they made far more yardage than they should have. But nobody actually serious, no, no, I don't mean not one single person. I mean, no majority seriously approves of the Davos agenda.

It's just a bunch of elitist thinkers and not very original thinkers at that. I mean, when, not to put on airs or hobnob with people of greater prestige and myself, but when Henry Kissinger and I and some others said, you know, suggested alternatives to what they were proposing, And they looked at us as if we had two heads. I mean, two heads each. I don't mean Henry and me together. I would hope we had that. But if you ask me who the greatest offenders are,

I think it's a kind of a faceless group, you know. And this is part of their insidious and insinuating nature. They, it's hard to identify them with, you know, Emmanuel Goldschmidt's five minutes of hate where we can say there is the evil party, you know. And it's more a matter of identifying policy options, trends, and psychological currents behind it and condemning those. But you get people who really do get dangerously above the barricades who become easy targets. Fauci is one of them. Biden is one of them, although I don't think he really knows what he's doing. He's fronting it for a lot of people.

Obama is one of them, and he's largely ducted it because of it being so unfashionable to criticize anyone but a white Christian in the United States. But you get implementers in different countries, and so each country has its own wicked person. who will be eventually punished. And aren't? And aren't a lot of those tied to Klaus Schwab? You know, I just... Well, I think a lot of them...

Influence, you know. I think they... It's not so much Klaus. He's the convener. But, yeah, they all get together in this appalling little town. I gather they've built better hotels since my time, but the hotels were awful. The food was awful.

But it was, you know, there were no, you know, he had to walk outside considerable distances to, to get from one meeting room to another. And it was, you know, you shouldn't, unless you're dressed up like a member of the Norwegian army in January, you almost froze to them. I mean, the whole thing was a physical ordeal to listen to a bunch of people who sound like Klaus Schwab, that Swiss, Dutch, droning intonation of an absolute monotone, barely audible uttering bureaucratic nonsense,

the implications of which are so chilling that they undoubtedly added a great deal to the revenue of the alcoholic beverage dispensing places in Davos, which were well patronized anyway because it was so brutally cold, I said. I believe you've got to sit with a few different world leaders over the course of your time. I'm sure a lot that I don't know of.

But three came to mind when I was, I don't know, thinking about sitting and asking a few different questions. One of them is currently leading Canada and Justin Trudeau. Another is, you know, is former President Donald Trump, who, you know, right now the looks of it, he should be the slam dunk leader on this next election, but I will not put anything past anyone at this point. And then you also interviewed Boris Johnson once upon UK's prime minister well before I believe any of them were actually the prime minister. Having that opportunity, I'm just, where you like, oh, this guy's getting me good or, you know, like pick on Justin Trudeau, fancy socks, where you like this guy, I can't imagine what Canada's going to be like under this guy. or I don't know, I guess just curious your thoughts on those three men in particular, and maybe more so just here in North America on Trump and,

and then the counterpart Trudeau, right? Like what Canada was electing versus what the U.S. was electing. No, I just want to understand the question of me. What I thought of them when I first knew them? Yes. Yeah, well, you got to sit across them no different than I'm, obviously it would have been in person. But like I sit here and I'm sitting, Conrad, and you're getting a feel for who I am and I'm getting a feel for you who you are.

Maybe you knew the Trudeau's for a very long time. You know who Justin was when he came walking on your show and you went, oh, yeah, okay, Justin, not a big deal. And you've been surprised at what he's done. I highly doubt that, but maybe I'm wrong. And Donald Trump, I assume, would have been the same way. I just, what were your first impressions of two men who rose to be world leaders of North America? Donald Trump, I knew starting about 25 years ago,

because we owned the show. Chicago sometimes, which had been owned by a department store owner Marshall Field. So it was a low-rise building. And it was in downtown Chicago. So it was a prime site for redevelopment. And obviously there was a profit to be made there. So we put it out to, you know, serious developers. And his was the winning bid.

And all my American director said, hang on to your wallet. He's a scoundrel and so forth. He'll charge you for his jet fuel. So, you know, we watched. it closely and he was one of the best partners I ever had. He came in exactly on time, actually slightly ahead of time and built a splendid building. You know, Chicago is proud of its architectural tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Roe and others. It's an excellent building, 98 stories. And he had it filled with first class occupants ahead of time.

and it was just a very happy association. And then he was a neighbor in both New York and Palm Beach. So we saw him and Melania quite often. And they came to dinner at our house and vice versa. And so, yes, I know him. And I was impressed with him as a businessman as a person to have dinner with. He's a delight. He's very polite.

He doesn't try and dominate conversation. He listens well. He's a wonderful raconteur. He's a very entertaining person and an authentic comedic genius in addition to other talents. And I got to know him well enough that he told me how much polling he did. And this is now going back into the last days of the 1990s, so 25 years ago. And he had this idea that he could get. a great office because of celebrity.

That's why he never much cared whether publicity was favorable or not. And he thought he had a sort of PT Barnum genius that some acts of hoaxterism, while outrageous in themselves, would be endearing to a large number of people. And he was right. He has considerable insight into mass psychology. And so I could up to a point see him coming politically, although I had my doubts that it was really fundamentally much more than a publicity.

In addition, it was publicity game. And I had my doubts that he could actually get elected because traditionally in the US, if you don't work your way up the ladder a bit in elective office, or public office, anyway, even unelected ones. or have a military command that you've been famous in, you know, you don't really get very far historically. So that is an illustration of how remarkable his achievement has been and in being the only person ever elected president who never held any public office or sought one or any military command. I would say if you're talking about him currently,

I am on balance very much a supporter of his, not uncritically, but in general. I think he was good present in policy terms. He ended unemployment. He ended illegal migration. He ended oil imports. He ended the most extreme freeloading in NATO. He put a stop to the North Korean president firing missiles over Japan. He started to respond seriously to the Chinese threat, which hadn't been recognized as a threat before.

And there were clearly stylistic infelicities, and the presidency of the United States should be conducted in a somewhat more dignified manner than it was by him. But with that said, I just make two points. no one in the history of that office prior to being elected to it or achieving it by being the vice president and the presidency is vacant. Not one of them achieved as much prior to being president as Trump did except those who were fundamental to the founding of the country and its institutions, Washington, Jefferson and Madison, and those who commanded great armies victoriously in just war. Grant and Eisenhower.

Next to them, no one, none of the other, what is it, 39 people who've been president of the United States had a prior career as accomplished as he is. And the second thing I'd say is that no one who has ever held that office has been so illegally and relentlessly assaulted in his attempted execution of it. And the last thing I'd say, unless you want me to go on. One is that his survival of these onslaughts, these completely spurious legal onslaughts, the Russian collusion thing, two, a fatuous impeachment trials. And these are ludicrous indictments. It's an astonishing act of human perseverance.

And the result of it in political terms is that the Trump haters hate isn't there anymore. They hated the blowhard, the bully, the character. of the ugly American, which Donald as a public person could be at times. And the Trump that's there now is a confident man, certainly, is a billionaire and former president should be, but is an underdog fighting unfair oppression, and people identify with that, and they're right to identify with it. And it will be, I think, one of the great moments

when Kant and emotionalism subside in the history of it is written properly. One of the great moments in the development and flourishing of American constitutional democracy, that a larger number of Americans were appalled by the corruption of the system for the purpose of destroying a political opponent by the people manipulating the system than disapproved of Trump, although obviously great many people do disapprove of him. So I gave him probably more of an answer than you wanted, but there it is. There's no such thing as more of an answer, Con, right? I appreciate you sharing your thoughts.

The lovely thing about a podcast, sir, is there is no, we got to be out in two minutes and go to commercial. It's like the newspaper column. I've only got, you know, another. It's what I love about this forum. It's what Joe Rogan's done so well, right? It's a loud people like yourself that have a ton between your ears that people like myself want to hear about. You know, I wasn't even a thought yet while you're at. at the, not the height of your career binding stretch,

but you're in the middle of it. You're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, cruising right along. No, no, I'm not 80 yet. I'm not 80. No, no, I meant the 1980s, the 1980s. Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, I was, I had some, I did some good things in 1980s. The, um, um, on, on Justin Trudeau, that's a much, you know,

he's a younger man with a less extensive history. Um, they, I've known him in a way since he was very little because I knew his father fairly well. But he, look, I think he's a very nice man. I think what you see in a way is what you get. He's a nice guy who has generally, he's well-disposed to people, and he's an altruistic person who wants to make the world better. I think he deserves some credit as a political leader. I mean, he took the liberals from being the third party, not even the official opposition, and brought them in with a majority.

and against the government that on its record should have been reelected, Harper. So it's easy to denigrate him more than he deserves. With that said, I don't think his government has been a success. I think it's been posturing an image, and in policy terms, all we have is an excessive truckling to the most extreme grievances of the native victimhood industry without doing much for the natives. and an absurd and neurotic in former psychiatric terms, preoccupation with gender, which is a fraudulent issue

other than to the extent people are discriminated against unfairly for some gender-related reason. We have two sexes and how people develop their sexuality is up to them. They can do whatever they want as long as they don't get into coercion of the unwilling or public indecency. And all these embellishments and these suggestions that there are 280 genders or something. This is just fatuous and we should wash our hands of it at once. And for the rest, he's taken the, because it's the ruling dogma in the Canadian Liberal Party,

He's drunk the Kool-Aid on the environment and declared war on the industry, chief industry of your part of the country, Saskatchewan and Alberta. And it's a terrible thing. It's impoverishing the country. It's promoting and even justifying anti-federalist and separatist thoughts. And it is all to no purpose. You know, if Canada was belching factories from Halifax to Victoria, It wouldn't materially affect the temperature of the world or the condition of the world's air, the quality of the air outside Canada.

And our record in the environment is quite good. And we have to stop being ashamed of our resources. It's the key to the future of this country, as it has been the key to the past of this country. So I think he's not been a good prime minister, but he is rather a nice man, I would say that. Well, that's not what I would say, but I'm not I'm not, I'm just saying personally. I mean, politically, I can't. Look, I, I recommended him over Harper for reasons.

I mean, I thought Harper was not a bad prime minister, but I thought Harper had to go for various reasons. But I don't think he's been a good prime minister, but people who transpose policy disagreement with Justin into outright hatred of him on the theory that he's a terrible person. I don't think that's fair. I don't think he is a bad person. Well, before I let you out of here, you know, because I can go back and forth to the young Justin Trudeau all day long. That's, that's, uh, hey, Justin isn't as interesting as you think, you know, I wouldn't go all day long on Justin.

Well, that's, well, that's fair. I have a few thoughts. I'll leave it for a different time. You're coming to Eminton, uh, Wednesday, uh, January 24th. You're going to be at Rogers Place on stage with Rex Murphy and this guy named Tucker Carlson. We're not sure about Rex. I think there's a, I hope, I hope he'll be there. But he's had some health problems lately. So I think that there's a slight question there. Okay. I hope, obviously, I hope he comes.

Yeah, well, I think for all of us, A, we hope then he gets well. And then, too, we hope to see him on stage at Rogers Place with you and Tucker Carlson. You know, there's a whole bunch of buzz going on right now because obviously, you know, this Tucker Carlson guy, you know, he's kind of a big deal. You got, you got Premier Daniel Smith going to be in attendance. You got this guy named Jordan Peterson going to be in attendance. And he got a whole bunch of others that are going to be in attendance as well. With Tucker Carlson coming up to Canada, maybe at this point in time, sitting in our country's position, everything going on,

why do you think it's important to be on stage and be the one to ask a few questions of Tucker? Why do you think that's important? Maybe not just Canadian. Certainly Western Canadians are very excited about this. Yeah, look, I have to tell you, I haven't seen much of him since he left Fox. I don't mean physically physical. I've never met him. But I used to watch him quite often on Fox, but I haven't since he's set up on his own.

I gather he's got a huge number of viewers. And I am going to have to study up a bit in what he's been saying. saying recently, but I think the answer is he has expressed a number of opinions about Canada, more than most commentators do, that I think we may want to agree with in some part and challenge in some part. Obviously, some of the things that he singled out about the lockdown were absurd, but there was no absence of absurdities and injustices in his own country. And I thought some of his comments were a little unbecoming a citizen of the United States, which is not a perfectly functioning democracy itself, as you know. And I think we'll, so I think we'll get an, should get

an interesting interchange there of how, how one side of the border views the other reciprocally a little bit, you know. And but on the other hand, I think there's also an, an overarching community of view to a large extent about how misgoverned both countries are in some ways and you know

sort of comparing notes in an amicable and I hope humorous way about what we can do about it and then you get responses to particular issues he's been I believe relatively supportive of Trump

and I when I've been out in your part of the country, I find Trump's much better thought of in Alberta than he is elsewhere in the country, in my experience. So I think we may get some comments on not just Donald Trump himself, but the range of issues and other personalities caught up in the American election, which is now getting into full campaign. And so, you know, I think, you know, it should be good, But I mean, if Tucker starts in about how Canada is no longer a free country and so on, I think we want to tell them that there are some annoying things going on here, but it's not quite as bad as he thinks it is. And it is not necessarily something that lies in the mouth of an American to chastise us for lapses in democratic ideals, you know, when they're trying to imprison the leader of the opposition. I mean, at least Justin isn't trying to do that.

this is going to be a fun exchange. You know, when I, when I sit here and I hear you discussing your thoughts on Tucker, I'm like, this should be an interesting exchange at Rogers Place, folks. And, you know, I should point out that there are tickets still available. And one of the reasons I got put in touch with Conrad was to help promote him coming here. And so I should be remiss if I didn't say, hey, go head over to Ticketmaster and buy a couple of tickets. There are, it says right now that what's the word. It says it's selling out fast, whatever.

I'm sure that's a ticket master thing, but it is Wednesday. Going like hotcakes. Yeah, that's right. You're going to have Tucker and, of course, Conrad on stage. The fact, Conrad already is like, well, I'm not going to sit here and just sing his praises. That should be interesting. That should be an interesting exchange, in my opinion. Just for your thought, you know, I just pull it up quick on a different window.

He just had Tony Robbins on. And right now that episode's sitting at 2 million views just for, just for, you know, your brain. And, you know, he's really steered into some uncomfortable topics. And, you know, it ranges, I would say 2 millions on the low side when he had Donald Trump on. What was it? It was like 11 million views in the first like hour. It was an insane amount.

Donald was, he can pull crowds like no but like no public figure in the world right now. in the advanced world. I mean, Henry Kissinger recently deceased his memorial service. I'm going directly from Edmond into his memorial service. But he used to say his family came to the United States in 1938 and he said that in all his time, the only other person besides Trump who could get only other president or candidate for president who could get people to stand in the snow, in falling snow, in tens of thousands for hours waiting for him to speak was Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He said Eisenhower could draw fairly well and Reagan can draw fairly well, but not like Trump. Well, there's something about Trump. Is there not? Like it just, no, look, he, he is you tell me one other person, Conrad, that got on when, you know, when you see all the stuff happening with censorship, everything else, gets asked by reporters, certain questions and just calls them all for it. Now, I'm not condoning everything Trump did. But in saying that, he called out some things that the common person went. It's about freaking time. Well, look, even my dear friend Peggy Nune, who doesn't like Trump,

went to a rally of his in 2016, had Miniola Long Island. And she said, it was unbelievable. He struck a chord every sentence. He understands the frustration of the lower middle class. and the working man. And then my theory is that he does that because his father was a builder and all his holidays as a young man, as a teenager. Donald worked on these building sites and he got to know these people and he knows how they think. That's one of the reasons he got so interested in sports, you know, because these guys are all great sports fans. And it's not a pose. You know,

it's he actually identifies with these people and they detect that he identifies with them. And in that sense, in that one sense, he's like Roosevelt. He's a rich man, but the people have no money like him because they see that he cares about them. Now, in no other respect is Donald like FDR. I mean, FDR made no pretense to being an average person. He had an elegant Ivy League and wealthy upper Hudson Valley accent. I mean, Donald's got an outer borough accent. He's an educated man, but he has an outer borough accent.

and he's, you know, he's got a sort of archie bunker mannerism, you know. And FDR was a very mellifluous man with a cigarette holder and so on. But they both had the genius of communicating to the average person that they cared about them. And it wasn't a pretense in either case. Well, I appreciate you hopping on. I could probably sit and talk to you for another hour. I actually better be moving along. I'm sorry.

No, I kept you past and I apologize. We just, uh, the final thoughts on Tucker and then, and then of course Donald Trump comes back up. So I appreciate you hopping on, Conrad. I'll let you out of here. I'm, I hope I'll see you in Alberta this week. Oh, I'm going to make sure I come introduce myself for sure. I look forward to seeing you guys on stage. Okay.

Awesome. Thanks, Conrad for hopping on and all the best on in the coming year. And safe travels here, O, to the greatest province in our country. So I look forward to seeing you. terribly wronged by the system. And I repeat that until I'm blue in the face down here. You have your friends in the east. Hopefully,

hopefully it isn't minus 40 when you come. Hopefully it's the sunshine in the day Conrad rolls in. Either way, folks, if you want to get tickets to Tucker Carlson, Conrad Black, and hopefully Rex Murphy on stage at Rogers Place, go to Ticketmaster. And I look forward to seeing that conversation happen live in person. I'm excited for that. And I look forward to shaking your hands, sir, that night as well.

Thanks, Conrad. Thank you, Sean.