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Maxime Bernier is furious after being interviewed by the CBC — and he may have a point

Following an interview with Wendy Mesley, Bernier took to Twitter accusing her of a ‘smear job’ and trying to link him to U.S. billionaires, the Koch brothers

After a CBC interview aired Sunday, Maxime Bernier’s Twitter account launched into an angry rant, accusing host Wendy Mesley of a “smear job.”

The tweets linked to the video, arguing that Mesley fabricated a story “about a libertarian conspiracy funded by US billionaires, and implies with her repeated questions about it that I violate Canadian electoral laws.”

Mesley pushed back on the same platform, saying she never made that claim. Bernier said she implied it via repeated questions.

There’s no question it was a strange interview. But while Bernier, the founder of the People’s Party of Canada, has been making headlines recently for his tweets and statements decrying increasing diversity in Canada, how strong are his connections to the two libertarian American billionaires Charles and David Koch?

First off, who are the Koch brothers?

The Koch brothers are two American oil-and-gas billionaires who have become renowned in the last decade for massive donations to free-market think tanks and right-wing politicians. Just like people on the right describe George Soros as the mastermind of all nefarious activity on the left (for example, type “Justin Trudeau George Soros” into Google), the Kochs are the scary billionaires on the right.

Along with other like-minded rich people, they have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to support sympathetic, usually-Republican politicians.

What do the Kochs have to do with Bernier?

Bernier once worked at the Montreal Economic Institute, one of the nearly 500 think tanks partnered with the Atlas Network, which is heavily funded by the Koch brothers.

In Sunday’s interview, Mesley asked Bernier if he would accept help for his new party from the Koch brothers or the Atlas Network. Bernier explained that Canadian election laws prevent him from accepting money from American billionaires and said he was seeking small donations from “ordinary Canadians that want a change in Canada.”

Later in the interview, Mesley asked Bernier what he would do “if the Koch brothers call you?”

“I don’t know why you are asking that question,” Bernier responded.

Twelve of Mesley’s 17 questions or follow-ups are about the Koch brothers or libertarianism.

So there’s a connection. Does it matter?

It’s hard to make an argument that Bernier’s 13-year-old connection to a think tank that was partly funded by a network of think tanks that is partly funded by the Koch brothers is relevant to the average Canadian.

The preamble to the interview on the CBC website gives a clue as to what Mesley was hinting at, though: “Bernier has linked his political beliefs to libertarianism, an ideology that forms the bedrock of many of the populist governments which have swept into power from the U.S. to Brazil.”

This is an odd sentence. Although it’s fair to say that U.S. President Donald Trump rode to power on a wave of right-wing populism, it’s bizarre to describe libertarianism as the “bedrock” of his government. In fact, the Koch brothers were so appalled by Trump’s populist rise that Charles Koch described a ballot featuring Trump and Hillary Clinton as a choice between “cancer or heart attack.”

full story at https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/maxime-bernier-is-furious-after-being-interviewed-by-the-cbc-and-he-may-have-a-point

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