The Ben Mulroney Show - Kristy Noem, Michelle Rempel Garner and Carmi Levy

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

GUEST:  Michelle Rempel Garner  / MP Alberta riding of Calgary Nose Hill  GUEST:  Carmi  Levy/Tech Journalist If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. All right, I'm going to let you know a little secret. Every now and then, my producer, my intrepid producer, Mike Droulet and I, have competing ideas as to what to start the show with. Today was not one of those days because this story is so shocking, so odd, so out of left field that even though it involves a former member of Donald Trump's cabinet, who you may or may not know, it is so salacious and possibly so fraught with national security implications that it absolutely had to be the first story we talk about today. I'm talking about Christy Noem.

Christy Noam, if you don't know who she is, I believe she was the former. governor of North Dakota, and now she found herself as the head of the Department of Homeland Security. Well, through a number of reasons, she ended up being shown the door. She's now a special envoy. She had a very, very bad showing in front of a congressional hearing. And that was enough for Donald Trump to say thanks. Thank you for your service. And now go play over there in the corner.

but it has now been reported by the Daily Mail that her husband Byron Gnome was leading a double life and according to their investigation he was allegedly online cross-dressing wearing giant fake breasts pink hot pants chatting with fetish models and the photos are online for anybody to see.

Now to be clear I'm a little bit of a libertarian when it comes to you know, what you do behind closed doors. I'm sort of a Pierre Trudeau libertarian. I have no business in your bedroom, is what I'm saying. And you should be able to do what you want to do. But there is a particular brand of Republican that tends to be holier than thou. And Christenome, I think it's safe to say, was in that camp.

You know, you've got to live your life this way. And if you don't, you're going to hell. And the story just keeps getting a weirder. and weirder. There were some models who told the paper that he was into a kink called bimboification, which is basically a fantasy about turning into a

Barbie doll-style woman with exaggerated features. And look, like whatever floats your boat, floats your boat. However, here's the issue. The issue is that national security experts are saying, look, if the daily mail can find this out,

then there's no way Iran, China, Russia that are experts in what's called compromat, you know, finding compromising information on somebody and using that to squeeze a public official to get what you want out of them. I mean, it's not a far leap. In fact, it's a safe assumption. It's a safe bet that the daily mail knows, Vladimir Putin knows. And so that you could wonder whether, you know, that's what happened in Congress. That might have just been a pretext to get rid of Christine Ome because of this, because they found out about the husband and about how embarrassing

it would be. And in order to get her out of any sort of decision-making org chart that would see her becoming knowledgeable about issues of national security, which could then fall in the hands of Russia or China or Iran, they decided to just move her out. It's a messy story. It's part tabloid, part national security headache. It's blown up fast. And if there's any more information that comes of it, of course we will share it.

But I want to stress, I'm telling you this story because of the national security part. Not because I care what people do in their bedroom. That is entirely up to them. Although, according to Christy Noam, she knew nothing about this. The entire family was caught flat-footed. That's her official story. And she's sticking with it. All right.

This is a story now that it takes a little bit of a personal. angle for me because, you know, you may like what I do and you may not. And if you don't like what I do, then you may be one of these terrible toxic human beings who thinks that you're scoring some sort of points on me by saying your dad would be so ashamed of you for the things you say. I get that every day. And like I said, I've got the hide of a rhino. Nothing you can say hurts my feelings.

and I know my dad better than you. And I know, I know my dad would love this version of my career. He would get a kick out of it. He would love it. He would love it. Even the stuff I did on the show that he didn't like, he would listen and we would talk about it. And it's a regret of mine that it came so late in his life that he never got to see it. And so it's through that lens that I, with great sadness, tell you about the passing of Steve.

Louis. And for those of you who don't know who Stephen Lewis was, he was the leader of the Ontario, NDP. But I think more importantly to more people, he was the UN ambassador for Canada under my father. My dad in 1984 appointed him as our ambassador to the UN. And a lot of people, for a lot of people that was a head scratcher, why would a conservative appoint a socialist? And they did not agree on anything when it came to domestic issues. But when it came to international issues and Canada's position internationally, they found common cause. And together, they fought apartheid. My dad also very much liked that Stephen Lewis had a depth of knowledge on African affairs and he knew that a lot of the fights that Canada wanted to be in would be on that

continent. And together they successfully pushed the Commonwealth and indeed the UN to impose sanctions against the South African apartheid regime. And I remember speaking with Mr. Lewis many times after my dad was out of politics. And it was so wonderful to hear him speak of his time with my father with warmth. And it's a reminder to everybody that people from either side of the political spectrum can come together to do great things. It is possible. It is possible.

It has been done. and it will be done again in the future. But I bring him up because he passed today at the age of 88. And you're thinking, Lewis, Lewis, why do I know that name? He is the father of Avi Lewis, the new leader of the federal NDP. And it just struck me in I hope a beautiful way, because I don't know of their relationship. but I just hope that his father, that Avi's father, was able to see what his son had done. And his politics are not my politics.

But they are each other's politics. And I want to live in a world where Avi Lewis got, that Stephen Lewis saw his son open up this new chapter in his life in a way that my dad didn't get to see mine. Because I know how much my dad would have loved it. And even if it was for just two short days, I'm sure that Stephen Lewis, who I'm sure loved his son unconditionally, probably got a real kick out of seeing his son ascend

to the leadership of the NDP. So that's the personal, I think, heart around the story that I want to tell you. However, Avi Lewis is doubling down on his socialist agenda. Let's hear his perspective. on Canada Post when he sat down with Vashi Capilos. We have shoved Canada Post so far into the market mindset that every few months we have a national conversation about

why isn't Canada Post making money? Vasi does the ambulance service make money? Do the police services make money? We're talking about a fundamental public service and we are so soaked in the market mindset that we expect the post office to make money. It's a public service. It's not for making money.

It's for delivering mail to Canadian. as part of a fundamental public activity. And that's the mindset change that we need to make public corporations work. In the Second World War, the Minister of Everything, C.D. Howe created 18 new crown corporations and Canada played an unbelievable role in fighting fascism in Europe.

We need a mission moment like that in Canada, and I think we can have one. I don't think we're asking for Canada Post to make money, but do you think maybe it could not burn through $5 billion a year? It just announced that we were getting rid of door-to-door mail. That's going to save them $400 million a year. Now you've got to do the rest.

And with respect, Mr. Lewis, if you are saying that it is a fundamental public service, explain to me how you square public grocery stores, internet, and phone options. Construction companies are those public services, too? I would love to know your definition of what a public service is so that we can have this conversation moving forward. Something tells me your definition of what constitutes a public service is a heck of a lot broader than mine. All right, when we come back, we're going to sit down with one of the most effective parliamentarians that I've seen in a generation. A Michelle Ripple Garner, the MP for Alberta, Calgary-Nose Hill, joins us in studio. Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney show.

I get very excited when I get people in studio. I feel it's like Christmas Day. Everyone's normally on Zoom or on phone calls, and I miss that human connection. I'm sitting opposite somebody who has been acquitting herself with great honor as a fierce and I think a wonderful communicator, a clear-eyed conservative. Michelle Rompel Garner, she's the MP for the Alberta Riding of Calgary Nose Hill. And you're the shadow minister for immigration. I am. That's a big file.

It's a bit of a dumpster fire these days, boss. We'll talk about that in a minute. Tell me what brings you to town? Day full of meetings. I'm speaking at a, I spoke at a big manufacturing conference this morning. And of course, Toronto is the center of the universe, right? Of course, yes. I have to pay homage.

Well, listen, I had so much fun when I went to Calgary last summer in the lead up to the convention. That's a city, that's like an ascendant city. It really is. And I'm so proud of Calgary. We've got such a great cultural scene. I just went to a fantastic restaurant. on Saturday night, you know, I think there's a lot of hope and optimism. And that's true some big setbacks in the economy.

So it's such a wild and free city. And it's a city where people take risks. So it's cool to be from there. Yeah, yeah. Well, before we get into all the stuff, it occurs to me like I'm in a bubble, right? I follow politics. I've lived in politics. I've been politics adjacent for a very long time.

Most people are living their lives and they're trying to pay their bills and take their kids to karate and that sort of thing. And so they might, they know your name and they know your voice when they hear it, but they don't know who you are. Tell me how, tell me why you got into politics. It actually started late in my high school years, many, many years ago now in Winnipeg. And I had the incumbent MP come to my high school, I think it was. And I just remember thinking like, I think I can do better than that. And, you know, I also think that when people in Canada get involved in politics, it's very easy to see that one person, you actually can make a difference in Canada. You can help elect people, you can help shape public policy

outcomes at a local riding level or more. And it became, I moved to Calgary from Winnipeg in 2004. And, you know, the conservative community in Calgary really became a, like, became a home. Like, just a lot of good people when you share value. and can learn from. And so I didn't think I would run as early as I did. I was 31. So very young. I kind of thought it would be something maybe more at this stage in my life.

But what an incredible just responsibility and honor to be able to do this job. And what makes you present yourself election after election? Insanity? No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No, it's, you know, it's after doing this, for a hot minute, you really get to know the people in your community. You see them over and over again through the years.

And you want to do right by them. Yeah. Right? And so it is a bit of a, anytime you have, there's lots of good moments in politics when you can affect change. You see big wins. But in those, you know, moments where you're like, oh, man, you do go back to those conversations you have with people,

the people who see you at the pub on the weekend or in the grocery store. And they, you know, they're like, thanks for fighting for us. Yeah. And I would like to think that that's anybody who gets involved in politics. There, of any political stripe, what keeps them going. I think the good ones. That's the common feature. You've been on both sides of the aisle, and I have to assume there's a certain amount of

satisfaction that comes from, you know, being part of the group that is in charge. But where is the satisfaction on being on the other side? It's a great question. There's a sort of myth in politics when you're elected that the center, your power comes from either having a government appointment or from the center of your party. But the power that you have when you're in Parliament comes from the people who elect you.

And actually everybody who sits in parliament who doesn't have a government appointment has essentially the same amount of power, right? It's a question of what you do with it. And being in opposition, it's a tremendous... Sure, you're not tabling government legislation, you know, as you would if you were in cabinet.

But, I mean, I've affected public policy change from the opposition benches. You know, I think about going back 10 years ago, the UCD genocide, some of the changes that we made to refugee policy, private members bills that I've tabled over the years that have become law or have impacted government law. And, you know, a good cabinet minister understands that your opposition critic can actually help you carve space out for better public policy. So if you're in government and there's something you see needs to be done, but your cabinet colleagues are like, I don't know about that. You can actually work with the opposition to try to affect change. I'm not necessarily saying that's happening right now. But the point I'm trying to make is that it doesn't matter where you sit in the House of Commons.

You have the same amount of power. It's vested in you by the people who you represent. And you have to do right by it, right? And just use it. So you were entrusted with being the shadow minister, the person watching the minister of immigration. Oh, yes. That's a big file. And it's fraught with emotion.

And, you know, I've screamed into this camera right here many times about how angry I am that somebody who believes, somebody who is the product of immigration in Canada. My mom would not have come here. We're not for the Canada welcoming her and her family. And my dad, you know, my dad's family came over in one of the successive ways. waves of Irish immigration. Right. And that responsible immigration is what built this country. And I got really upset that the previous guy screwed it up so much that you have a

person like me saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got to slow this thing down. Yeah. And I feel bad doing it because I'm here and I'm enjoying this place and everybody wants to come here. But that's where we're at. So it's a very, it's a very hot button file. and you've got a lot on your plate. You've got the immigration system,

the temporary foreign worker program. You've got, you know, and it feels to me generally, we'll get into the various pockets of it, it feels generally to me like we've got, one of our biggest problems is we don't follow through on making sure we have what it takes to,

we're going to invite all these people in, but we're just, we're not going to know where they went, right? We don't have an oversight and accountability. It feels to me like those are big issues. Well, you're hitting at the core of it, right? When the immigration system is working, the numbers of people that are coming into the country

are directly aligned with our, with Canada's economic, our capacity for our economic and social fabric to integrate them. And it's pretty easy to measure that. It's things like, do we have enough houses? What does labor market actually need? What about the health care system and social programs? So these are, but what we've seen over the last, last decade is that conversation of saying like, well, you can't bring in, for example,

over a million foreign students on work permits in a two-year period in a country of 40 million people and not have consequences related to housing or to health care or to jobs. And what that does is then people start looking, and this is really dangerous in a pluralism like Canada, people start looking at people around them. as opposed to the government policy that failed everybody. And so it's my job, and I think the right way to approach this file, is to point the finger at the government for their failures. And not to blame people that want to come to the country to build a better life.

But I mean, like the liberals have really failed on that front. And to your point, I think the immigration file by this government, I think they've had eight ministers. Nine? They've kind of treated it like the armpit of cabinet, as opposed to saying this is one of the most fundamentally important public policy files, let's do this right. So yeah, it's a bit of a pain in the butt.

Well, yeah, because you... To watch them do this every day. But if you don't, and it's a good thing, like I said, you're such an effective communicator because in the hands of somebody who can't express themselves as well as you can, it'd be very easy to fall into a trap and be made out. to be xenophobic or anti-immigrant or, you know, you name it, I'm sure somebody would lob that accusation at you. And so when we come back from the break, I want to go through each one of these points, you know, the immigration system, the dysfunction of it all. And perhaps how,

and also talking about this government, why they're so unwilling to break from the failures of the past and do something different. It seems like they're always defending something they shouldn't be defending. So we'll talk about that next when we come back. Don't go anywhere. I am in conversation with Michelle Remple Garner right here on the Ben Mulroney show. Very excited to continue my conversation with Michelle Remple Garner. She is the shadow critic, the conservative shadow critic for the immigration file. And thank you so much for sticking around. Thanks for having me. Okay. So during the break, we were talking about, you know, issues of oversight in these, in a lot of areas of immigration. You know, if you could drill down and focus on what you

think is the biggest problem. The biggest problem. And if you could fix it right now with a wave of a wand, and it could do the most benefit to the system, where is the biggest problem in the vast, vast world of immigration in Canada? It's a lack of political will to enforce the law that's been on the books for decades. Like, for example, so the laws are good. The law, for the most part, there needs to be some tweaking. And we've, you know, conservatives, we've put forward very constructive proposals to do that over the last, several months. But for example, Canadian law says that if you are non-citizen

and you are convicted of a serious crime, you don't get to stay. And instead, we've seen the judiciary sort of pervert that principle, really. And so we put forward a private member's bill to say, nope, judiciary can't do that. And I think that it's just a lack of political will on the part of the liberals to say, if the immigration system is going to function, then the spirit of those, laws need to be upheld. Yeah. And that's what I don't get. No one can really properly explain it to me.

You know, when people were saying, why can't the liberal caucus get rid of Justin Trudeau at the tail end? He said, well, because he brought them from third place to first place and he doesn't owe anybody anything. And I said, all right, fine. And they don't have a mechanism by which they can get rid of them. I said, I get that fine. But now do Mark Carney for me because

they were going to get wiped out and he brought them back to relevance and to government. So he doesn't owe anybody anything either. So when I hear that he has to keep his left flank happy, I don't get that. His left flank would be on the unemployment line where it not for him.

So to me, if he wanted to show that he was breaking from the 10 years that preceded him, he could. Yeah, you're right. And you say he doesn't, some people are saying he doesn't owe anything to anybody. Well, he owes it to the Canadian public to keep the promises

that he made during the campaign. You know, you and I were talking about that during the break. There's a lot of broken promises or shifting goalposts. Yeah, yeah, it's not only broken promises. It's just, you know, oh, we'll get to it. You know, we said it'd be done by now, but here are all the reasons why I haven't. You know, a key one, particularly pertinent going into, you know, Easter weekend. A lot of families aren't going to be able to buy, for example, chocolates this year.

He said, you know, Mark Carney said, well, measure me by the cost of groceries at the grocery store. Okay, measuring. It's not great. And so, like, it's been a year, and we haven't seen a lot of action on some of these key issues. I think the election, you know, I know you've talked about it a lot. We've talked about it. You were at this confluence of scenarios where you had, you know, a change in tone from the American administration of putting it mildly. You had the collapse of the NDP. But that doesn't change. the fact the core issue for most Canadians, you see it in public opinion polling,

is affordability, it's cost of living, it's concerns about the economy, it's concerns about crime. And I do think that, you know, any time after election, you know this, people are going to give the person that won, the benefit of the doubt, and some time to deliver it.

Well, it's been a year, right? And I do think that very quickly he is going to have to start delivering on these big issues that aren't getting any better. In fact, they're getting worse. Yeah. I think one of the reasons your file is so important is because the people were inviting in will become Canadian citizens.

And therefore, they will be woven into the fabric of this country. And the fabric that we are weaving is frayed. It is not, it is not, it is not tightly woven anymore. And I looked at the stage, when Uvi Lewis became the leader of the NDP and the only flag I saw was a big giant Palestinian flag. Yeah. And that doesn't happen by accident. Yeah. And when, if you support the Palestinian state, more power to you.

But I want to see a Canadian flag waving when a leader who wants to be prime minister is ascends to the leadership of his party. Call me crazy. That might be a hot take. Be nice. It shouldn't be. It would be nice. You know, I think this is so relevant because we're now at the end of a decade of post-national policy.

and sort of said a different way. You had Justin Trudeau saying there is no cohesive national identity. There's no mainstream. And they operationalize that with public policy that erased a lot of our national symbols, undermined some of our democratic foundational principles. Like, you know, we're talking about the judiciary,

some of the decisions that they've been making, bail laws, catch-and-release bail issues. I digress. The point is, is that if, you're not, If you don't have a national identity that is rooted in respect for rule of law, the principles of Canadian identity, then what is there to integrate into? Right. And I think that that is where, like, you still, you know, you have the minister of, there's now

a minister of national identity that can't say what Canadian national identity is. You have the prime minister, like Mark Carney when he was on the campaign trail, he was asked, well, what does it mean to be Canadian? and he says, well, not American. I do think that there are some more foundational issues when you talk about our country fraying that we can't shy away from. Because everything from how the government operates,

what it spends, or how our immigration policy needs to tie back into that concept. We have to be a united people around some of those principles. And it is the role of the prime minister to get into that. So a lot of work for him to do, like he can't just look at Canada as like a transaction on Brookfield's balance. sheet. It's different than that, right? You have to inspire a people, a nation, and just not

not getting that vibe yet. Well, yeah, let's wait until Canada Day and see whether it's going to be a celebration or a funeral like it was under Justin Trudeau. You were one of the voices that was doggedly assailing the Trudeau liberals to try to get them to, you and Melissa Lansman trying to get them to name the IRC, a terrorist organization, finally happened, afterwards. it seemed like way too long. Okay, so now they're that. Now we know they're in our country. I don't think it's unfair to assume that they might have had something to do with the uptick in anti-Semitism,

especially in the city of Toronto. What would you like to see happen to those we identify as members of the IRGC? They're in Canada. They have to leave. And how do we go about finding them and enforcing that? Great, great point. So, you know, from an immigration perspective, when there's a designated terrorist entity that is listed, There is law that states, like the circumstances under which they would be identified and removed.

The problem with that law is there's a kind of, without getting to the technicalities of it, there's a bit of a loophole right now. And we've put forward some suggestions to the government on how to close that so that people who have had senior roles within that murderous regime aren't allowed to stay in our country and that, you know, especially members of the diaspora community here in Canada, feel safe. That's number one. Number two, we need better screening processes. We put out a press release this morning.

There's a system by which people who make asylum claims in Canada from certain countries, they're just sort of rubber-stamped. They're not given in-person interviews or thorough enough vetting. We have to make sure that people who are part of murderous regimes that have been listed as terrorist entities in the country don't fall through the cracks and aren't allowed to stay in the country and enjoy the benefits of our freedom. Yeah. And back in the day, that was the case. And if we ever did find them, I don't think there are any living Nazis left, I think, except for the one that was invited to the House of Commons. But back in the day, when we found them, when we found them, we did something about it. And I don't know that we have those checks and balances. Like, we love making a big announcement about how many people were letting in, except we do nothing to make sure that the people coming in are who they say they are. And we do nothing to make sure that they, I say nothing. I'm sure we do some things, but not enough. We don't do. enough to make sure that the people who are coming here are who they say they are. And then if we

find out that they did lie, I don't know that we have the fail safes and the mechanisms and the protocols to do what it takes to efficiently and effectively and optimally get rid of them. That entire capacity has to be augmented. You're absolutely right. But it also goes back to levels too, right? We shouldn't be setting targets to bring in too many people that we can't do those things. Right? So when I have immigration officials sitting, in front of our committee or the minister. And it's like, wow, we don't have enough resources. It's like, well, maybe, maybe we're bringing too many people in too fast. And to me, like, that's just such a basic principle. And it actually, when you tell people

what's happening in the system, you talk about being in a bubble, most people are just like, I can't believe this is happening. Right? Last question I have for you, because it's a lot, and we're going to go a little long here, is that I want to ask your take on the fact that Prime Minister Carney told a closed- fundraiser last night that Michael Maugh, floor crosser Michael Ma, represents, quote, liberal values. And this is given his, I mean, the roller coaster that we've been on with this man for the past little while. I wonder what your thoughts are. He said, like Michael Maugh said some pretty objectionable things at committee last week. Yeah, that was bad. It was really bad. And it was

a look on his face. He looked really smug like he had just, this is a gotcha moment. Really problematic, really objectionable. And I don't know. I think Mark has some answering to do, if that's what he said at that fundraiser last night in that regard. The fact is, like, here's the thing. There should be consequences for issues like that,

not, you know, a massive fundraiser and, you know, plot it's from the Prime Minister of Canada. I hadn't heard that. That's really gross. Yeah. Well, thank you very much for being here. Thanks for in studio. In studio.

So cool. Yes, very rare that I have people in studio. Yeah. Tell your friends. Let them know that Ben Mulmanee doesn't bite. Michelle, thank you very much for being here. Enjoy your time in Toronto. And I'll see in Ottawa next time I'm there. Okay, don't go anywhere.

When we come back, I'm going to geek out with Carmi Levy about Artemis II. And yeah, I'm not going to apologize for that. Let's go to the stars. If you know anything about me, you know that I have my eyes peeled and pinned exactly on the launch pad of the Artemis 2. You know, if you weren't born before 1972, if you're born after 19272, if you're born after 1912, You have never seen humans reach for the stars. And it looks like it's all signs point to a go tomorrow, although the sun may have something to say about that. So to discuss that.

And many more tech stories are our good friend, Carmi Levy. Carmie, welcome. Hello, Ben. So good to be with you. I mean, listen, there's normally, there's lots of stuff that can go wrong. And, you know, when you're launching humans into space as opposed to a satellite, you've got to be extra careful. and now it turns out a solar flare could be the undoing of yet

another Artemis II launch. Yeah, this is crazy. It's an X1.4 solar flare. So really high on kind of the list or the severity of them. And basically what this can do is it can affect satellites, puts a lot of radiation into the space environment,

could pose a direct danger to the astronauts themselves as they leave orbit and move into that trans lunar region between Earth and the Moon. They're not protected by the Van Allen radiation belts there. So it's a much more, let's call it exposed part of space. And so they have to watch not only regular weather to get into orbit, but space weather beyond that. So that's certainly a concern as well.

And they're kind of waiting to see how that solar flare plays out as all that material moves closer to Earth and interacts with our atmosphere. I don't think I could be more excited about a launch. Oh, my God. I'm so, listen, I mean, I remember as a kid, You know, I was one of those kids who watched the launch of the challenger. They rolled the TV in. We watched it. It sadly, what happened happened.

And then they just rolled the TV out. And there was, you know, we were living in a different time. We just went on with our day. But that is not dampened my excitement. I got super excited when I watched the launch of the Starliner. Great launch. Not so much great anything else after that. Which sort of leads me into the next story because the Starliner was saved by Elon Musk.

and, you know, he and his team, every time I fire up X, I think it's just done on purpose where the first tweets I ever see are Elon Musk's. And I guess he, as the owner of, as the owner of the platform, you see what he's thinking all the time.

And for him, it's all about the velocity at which they are launching these Falcon X rockets. And yesterday, they launched two in one day and landed them safely. I think he,

in the payload for both of them was 29 Starlink satellites. I mean, so the velocity at which they are, they are launching these things. Are they trying to send a signal, do you think? I think they are. I think they're, you know, they already are. Last year they were responsible for 80% of all of the mass

that was lifted into Earth orbit. So they're bigger than all the other orbitals rocket companies combined. And I think they're sending a signal, but basically they're still keeping their foot on the gas. And last year's pace, they're going to increase it even more. of their launches are for Starlink satellites,

which allows them to deliver more service to more areas, higher speed, greater capacity. And they're essentially saying, look, just when you think you can catch up with us, we're going to accelerate and put you even further into our rearview. Elon Musk has a really, and look, I'm not the biggest fan of Elon Musk demand, but certainly the roadmap of SpaceX,

difficult to argue that it is not transformational, because it really is. And they seem to be just, you know, they're constantly accelerating their program, just when you think that they've reached sort of a peak, they find some other way to reach a next gear. And look, I know this wasn't part of our roadmap to talk about, but Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin,

you know, the company that sent Katie Perry up and so she came back an astronaut. It feels like they might have misjudged what they should be doing with the technology they were building. Have they pivoted at all to be a little more serious about spacefaring? I think they have, and they've had a successful maiden launch of their new glen rocket. It's a heavy lift rocket, kind of in the class. It's just below where the Falcon Heavy is in terms of total payload to orbit.

And no sooner had they had their first successful launch, they actually announced an upgrade. They're going to have two versions of the New Glenn rocket, one which is even more powerful than the Falcon Heavy and frankly approaches in some cases what Starship is aiming for. So it took them a lot longer to develop New Glenn than they would have hoped. They've been working on this for over a decade. And part of the reason is it wasn't just a rocket. They actually built the engines themselves. The B.E4 engine is what powers New Glenn. And so they have an entirely new architecture based on the data from that first flight.

It's a phenomenal piece of engineering. And if anyone kind of has a chance of catching up to SpaceX or at least keeping them in sight so they can sort of compete for some payloads, it is most definitely blue. origin and that in that initial flight of New Glend certainly showed they have the chops to play in this space you know if the problem is is SpaceX is moving so quickly it's impossible to be a one-to-one competition anytime soon but if anyone can carve out a niche and and do so without the baggage that SpaceX now has because of its leadership it is blue origin and that's the company that I'm watching certainly not United Launch Alliance which is that sort of consortium of both Boeing and Lockheed that kind of came together and they were the dominant player before SpaceX came along. They can barely get their Vulcan off the ground every time it launches. Those solid rocket boosters have some kind of failure. Right now, it seems to be narrowing down to a two-horse race between SpaceX and Blue Origin,

and that's the one we're going to be watching. All right. Well, in the battle between the judge and the driving defendant, a lot of us saw this on social media, a very, very interesting story. I want to play a little bit of the audio. there was a woman who was in Michigan. She showed up for her court hearing on Zoom late, and she said she wasn't driving,

but the judge took a good look at the screen, and he had some choice words for her. Let's listen to a little bit of it. Am I crazy, or does it not look like you're driving that car? I'm not driving the car. I'm a passenger in the car, sir. What side of the car are you on? I'm on the left-hand side.

How would you be on the left-hand side? if you're a passenger in the front seat. Am I missing something? Left hand side. I'm sorry. I've been sitting in a room. I didn't know. Yeah, the seatbelt's coming off of the driver's side.

You know, you're lying to me, right? No, I'm not, sir. So what do you make of this? Is this the, I mean, this is, it's not the future of how we meet. It is the, it's the present. And people seem to get in trouble all the time. Yeah, I mean, you know, Zoom became what it is, thanks to the pandemic. as soon as we all headed home, that was the app that we used to stay connected to our colleagues and our clients and all that.

So it really has become a fixture. We can also use Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, whatever it is, but video conferencing is normal. And increasingly, we do it from wherever we happen to be because you can just run the app on your phone. I mean, this woman's mistake, her name is Kimberly Carroll. Her mistake was trying to lie to a judge. You can lie to your boss, you can lie to your partner, you can lie to your friends, whatever it is. If you try to lie to a judge in a case where you are literally on the receiving end of, like, she was already in court because she hadn't paid a settlement. And the hearing was to determine whether she would in fact pay it or not.

So she's already like trying to dig herself out of a whole legally. And now she adds distracted driving with a video conferencing app onto that list. And of course, the judge just ruled against her anyway because, you know, obviously he had no patience for it. So what I find funny, though, is even when the judge asked her if she was using the technical, She said, no, she lied to him. And then when he told her, show me, you know, show me who's driving because she said someone else was driving. He pulled the car over and jumped out. I know.

He said, we could see it. We could see the whole thing. She didn't even keep the phone close to her. Carmen Levy, thank you very much. Appreciate it, Dan. Hello there. Thursdays on Global. I'm Madeline Matlock.

She's the lawyer with a legendary name. Don't underestimate Miss Matlock. This woman is. Sharp. You know it, baby. The one you can trust, even if she has to bend the rules. Things aren't always as black and white as they seem. To crack a case. This is how I get things done.

Emmy-winning actress Kathy Bates is Matlock. All new Thursdays at 9 Eastern on Global. Stream on Stack TV.