EZRA LEVANT ｜ INTERVIEW： Andrew Lawton's new book on the Trucker Rebellion
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Summary
Our dear friend Andrew Lawton is back with a new book, The Freedom Convoy, the inside story of three weeks that shook the world. And we re going to go through it from a street level, not sneering at it from on high like the CBC.
Transcript
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Hello, my Rebels. Very special show today. Our dear friend Andrew Lawton is back.
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He has written a new book called The Freedom Convoy, the inside story of three weeks that
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shook the world. I really do think they shook the world. And Andrew Lawton was one of the good guys
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covering it honestly from street level, not sneering at it from on high like the CBC.
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We're going to go through it. We're going to spend some quality time with Andrew,
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and I hope it'll convince you to buy the book. For those of you who don't know,
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we have a video version of this podcast. It's the main way we do things here at Rebel News' video.
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And to subscribe to it, you have to go to Rebel News Plus. Click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month.
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Not only do you get the nightly Ezra LeVant show in full blazing color, but we have four other weekly
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shows. So that's 36 episodes a month for just eight bucks a month. I think it's a bargain,
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actually. We're probably very underpriced. And more importantly, we need that money because we
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do not take a dollar from Trudeau. And it shows. You tell me, do you think Andrew Lawton and his
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book about the truckers would ever be featured on the CBC? You know the answer to that. So that's
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why we have to stay independent so we can be free. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com and click
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Tonight, a feature interview with our friend Andrew Lawton, who's got a new book out
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on the Trucker Rebellion. It's July 1st, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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Well, it's Canada Day, and what an interesting time it is. You know, I remember growing up,
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and so many of the national symbols were so closely fused to the Liberal Party's partisan
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symbols that always irked me. The color of the flag, red. The color of the Liberal Party flag,
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red. They were branding everything. It was an obvious tactic, and it was a very smart one. They
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were trying to own love of country, own patriotism. The Charter of Rights was theirs. It was Pierre
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Trudeau's, and in a lot of ways, that's noble. They, you know, they were doing it for votes, but
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if they really were in love with Canada, that's a wonderful thing. I think the apogee of that was
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after the near miss of the separatist referendum in 1995. Seriously, within one percent, half a percent,
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Quebec barely voted against separation. Jean Chrétien was spooked by that and spent hundreds of millions
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of dollars labeling everything he could with a Canadian flag and the word Canada, and I think
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that was the height of liberal patriotism, even though it may not quite have been real. It was a
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political tool. Like I say, it was fused. They basically said, if you love Canada, that means you're
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a liberal. If you're upset with Canada, that means you're not just a conservative, you're anti-Canadian.
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What's so interesting about the last six months is that the symbols of Canada, that for so long were
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associated with the Liberal Party, have been effectively and authentically appropriated by
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Trudeau's critics. I think I told you that when I went down to the trucker convoy in late January,
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I couldn't believe I would see people spontaneously breaking out in the national anthem on the street,
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like just a couple of guys walking down the street with the Canadian flag, and they would break out
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in, you know, Canada. I've never seen that in my entire life, and though I acknowledge that much of
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the Canadian patriotism in 1995 during the separatist referendum and thereafter was very genuine,
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of course it was, there was an awful lot of orchestrated, manufactured,
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astroturf nationalism and patriotism then. What was so different about the truckers
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was that they genuinely meant it, no one was coordinating them, no one was funding them,
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and then when they looked for some manifesto, something that symbolized who they were,
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it was Canada. They couldn't believe they were living in a Canada where you were essentially locked
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in your house under house arrest. In Quebec, where there were so many trucker protesters from,
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there was actually a curfew from 10 p.m. till 5 a.m. every day. True North, strong and free. Well,
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where did the freedom go? The Charter of Rights that Trudeau Sr. talked about, where was it now?
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It was fascinating to me how the truckers chose patriotic symbols as their flag, and it's incredible to me
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how the Liberal Party and its allies have, in response, not sought to retake those symbols.
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No, we are the party of the Charter of Rights. No, we are the true Canadians, but rather,
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they've abandoned those symbols. As we've shown you, our friend David Menzies, who went to
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Ottawa in anticipation of Canada Day, they've literally fenced off Parliament Hill.
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So, you can't celebrate Canada Day. No one else can, but ha-ha, the truckers can't. We won that
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one. If you're too unruly, if you shout, oh, Canada, that's a thousand dollar fine, according
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to Ottawa Bylaw Services. So, instead of trying to retake Canadianism from the truckers, they've
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turned against it. I never in my life would have thought anything about it, and it's with that
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little preamble that I would like to introduce to you, my friend and our guest, for a feature-length
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interview today. Of course, I'm talking about Andrew Lawton. He has a new book out called The
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Freedom Convoy, the inside story of three weeks that shook the world, and indeed, it did. Joining
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us now via Skype is Andrew Lawton. Andrew, good to see you again, my friend, and congratulations on
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the new book. Thank you. Great to be with you, as always, Ezra. I appreciate it. Well, I appreciate
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you taking the time, and folks, by the way, we'll have a link under this video where you can order
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the book directly. Now, the book has done very well, even before it was officially on sale. I think
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it was one of the top best-selling books in Canada, am I right? Yeah, we got up to number two. We were
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behind the Justin Trudeau picture book, so at least I was in good company, but I was very fortunate and
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very grateful, and I think it speaks to just how many people were really keen to have accurate and
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honest journalism about this pivotal chapter in Canada, which, as we know, was so hard to come by.
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The only way you could was through independent media. Yeah, you're so right. I could feel it in
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the moment. I could feel the enormous advantage of everyone on the convoy having a cell phone,
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everyone on the convoy Facebooking and tweeting and TikToking, and it was so large in number and so
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grassroots that it overwhelmed temporarily the power of the legacy media who were snide and snippy and
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condescending to it. But that was in January and February. Andrew, I think what we've seen since then
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is a revisionist history where the legacy media, the government media have tried to regain lost ground
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and rewrite the history and say, no, it wasn't peaceful. They were insurrectionists, and no,
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it wasn't ordinary people of all backgrounds. It was racist, sexist, homophobe, white nationalists
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or something. So that's why I think your book is so important. We have we and I mean, we people who
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are sympathetic and honest about what the truckers were. It's up to us. It's up to you to write the
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history. Because otherwise, it's going to be undone by the CBC and the Toronto Star.
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I would agree with that. And there was a moment and I actually referenced it in the book where I
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talk about this impromptu speech you gave on the back of a flatbed truck that very first weekend.
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And you looked at all the people out in the freezing cold on Wellington Street with their
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phones up. And you said you're doing journalism. You're the journalist. And I'm paraphrasing your
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comments. But there was something that I found fascinating covering this on the ground for True
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North, because that was how this book started. It was actually from me being there covering this and
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seeing this significant divide between the coverage of this in the mainstream media and what I was
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seeing on the ground. And in the several days that I spent at the convoy then and also when I went
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back later, I found that my audience watching online, what they liked the most wasn't even all that
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difficult to do. They wanted me to just walk around with my phone and stream live video because it was
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so difficult to come by a pure, unadulterated, unfiltered sense of what was happening. And that
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was, I think, the great shame on this. And the book does take aim specifically at how Canadian
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mainstream media coverage really misrepresented or failed to understand the convoy.
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Yeah, you're so right. People were so alive and alert to the misrepresentations and the twisting of
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the truth. They just, those raw live streams of footage were so valuable to them because it didn't even
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matter what your chatter or commentary was. They could see with their own eyes and ears in a live,
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unedited, raw format what was going on. That was some of our most popular stuff, too. We had a few
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journalists walking around with different battery packs. It was very cold, but they would do two,
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three hours, Viva Frye from Montreal. He would do four hours of just walking and you could tune in
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and then come back and then tune in later. And that was superior to the billion dollar
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broadcasters of CBC, CTV and Global News. Just a guy in his cell phone. Go ahead.
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Yeah, it was interesting because some of them were covering this from their offices on Spark Street
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or Wellington Street looking down. Others went out into the mix, but it was interesting. The
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mainstream media would travel in these teams of four where there'd be the reporter, a camera person,
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a producer and a bodyguard, a security guard, just so they could go out. And again, there were a lot
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of people that were heckling and shouting rude things to the journalists. And I condemned that when it
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happened and I condemned it in the book because even if you don't like these people, all you're
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doing is feeding into the misrepresentation because then all that they have to show on TV is pictures of
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you guys hurling obscenities at them. But it also spoke to the feeling that they needed security to
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go out into the midst where Rupa Subramania, for example, who's joined the team at True North,
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she's a shorter, petite woman of color that just walked around pretty much every day talking to people
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and didn't encounter any of these issues. I walked around. I'm a big guy, sure. But
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I walked around alone and didn't encounter any issues. I know your reporter Alexa Lavoie went
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around and, as I understand, didn't get assaulted by anyone except by police at the very end of it.
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I was going to say, the only violence, there was not a single trucker was charged with violence.
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The only violence they had was a hoax. They tried to pin some apartment arson on the truckers. It
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turned out to be a hoax. The only violence that weekend was done by police. The only violence to
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journalists was done by police. And as you point out, shooting our dear friend Alexa in the leg at
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point blank range, not an accident, an act of violence. I want to disagree with you on one thing
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where you say, and I take your point about those journalists are going to have the final cut on their
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video. So if you're swearing at them, that's what they're going to show. That is newsworthy.
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And I'm not sure if swearing is the most effective way, but heckling, I support. And the reason I say
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that is for two years, we had all been shut up and shut down. Parliament was basically canceled,
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and then they did some of it by video. There were no town hall meetings. There was no way to feed back
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to the government or to the media. We just had to lie back and passively take it for two years.
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And those truckers were the first time anyone said, you know what, we're going to have a say now.
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And no, we're not going to stay six feet separated. And it was the first, you had two years of pent up
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desire to talk back to power, to speak truth to power. And I take your point, you're not going to,
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it's not pragmatic to swear at a CBC reporter because they'll just get their back up and show
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you swearing. But I support being able to heckle back at journalists who heckle the people. So maybe,
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I think you and I are probably in general agreement on that from a pragmatic point of view. But I
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understand why people were mad at the CBC liars. And I think when, you know, these journalists went out
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with security guards, I think that was their own projection. No one was violent. No one was
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threatening to be violent. That was the journalists trying to feel like, like victims. Anyhow, don't
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mind me. I just felt like weighing in. I want to get back to your book. The book is called The Freedom
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Convoy, The Inside Story of Three Weeks That Shook the World. Now, when I first read your subtitle
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that shook the world, I sort of thought, that's a big thing to say. But I thought, no, no, no.
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This was the most news coverage that Canada has received around the world, probably since that
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1995 near miss of the referendum. I can't think of a time when the world's eyes were as riveted on
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Canada. Our own journalists not only did countless American media hits, but in the UK, Australia,
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Germany, the whole world was fascinated. And it wasn't just for a day. It was for weeks. I think
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the truckers did shake the world, or at least the West. We saw echo trucker convoys in Australia and
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the United States and the UK. I think it really did inspire the world. What do you have to say about
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that? Very much so. And it's interesting. The subtitle is probably the, because for the longest
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time, the book was only available for pre-order. So all people could do was literally judge a book by
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its cover. And the trolls latched onto the subtitle more than anything else, because they shook the world,
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whatever. And I really do mean that, because for starters, the idea of Canada-style protest,
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that was a term I had never heard before January, February of this year. And if you look, and I did a
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little bit of an audit when I was writing the book, that term was appearing in news coverage around the
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world, the Associated Press, Reuters, Canada-style protests, because people were doing convoys to
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Canberra in Australia, to Brussels in Belgium, to Wellington, New Zealand, to Washington, D.C.,
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quite a large one in the U.S. So the idea that people in other countries, who, by the way,
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oftentimes had had larger anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine mandate movements and protests than
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Canada did, they were looking to Canada and saying, you know what? These truckers are onto
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something. We're going to do it. Just look at the standing ovation former President Donald Trump
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received at CPAC in Florida, when he talked about the truckers taking a stand, and just everyone,
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Americans walking up. I mean, for the longest time, when I went to CPAC a decade ago, and you're a
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Canadian, you're kind of treated as this weird little outsider, this novelty there. They don't
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know anything about Canada or Canadian news. But in this case, they were looking and saying, yeah,
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these Canadians have got it figured out. And also, I will say, foreign media coverage oftentimes did a
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better job than Canadian media. And I'm talking about Fox News in the U.S., GB News in the United
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Kingdom, some Australian outlets as well, that were doing a better job. Even the New York Times,
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to its credit, reported accurately at the end of the convoy that police were arresting people at
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gunpoint. And all of the Canadian media pounced on them and said, how dare they? That's wrong. You
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can't say that. You shouldn't say it. And it was true. It was completely true. You know, I'm so glad
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you mentioned that. And I take it that's in your book. I mean, the New York Times is, for a liberal,
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that is the highest heights of newspaperology. It's the biggest, it's the richest, it's the
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strongest, it's the most opinion leading. And so, and I forget the name of the New York Times
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journalist, but if I'm not mistaken, she was a former war correspondent. Like, she was not some junior kid.
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She was a very seasoned journalist. I mean, the New York Times, you can disagree with their
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editorial slant. I do. But they hire the best people, you know, they hire the best liberal
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journalists, but they are the best. And so, I think it was Canadian liberal journalists were sort of
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excited. Wow, the New York Times is coming to Canada. They normally ignore us. Wow, we're in the
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big times. Oh, but you're not with our narrative that these truckers are evil and violent. And you're
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right. That New York Times are reported that cops had their guns drawn. And I just remember
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Canadian media party type after media party type saying, you must apologize, you must retract.
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Would be nice if you came up here and reported she was on the streets.
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It's not just a picture. They had a picture of it. And it was the it was the epitome of that old
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Chico Marx. Who are you going to believe me or your own eyes? And it wasn't just that she was right
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and they were wrong. I mean, just by the way, you can make mistakes or you can miss something.
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But the fact that as a collective, all these Canadian journalists thought we must correct
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the New York Times, it's our moral duty to take them to task on behalf of whom? On behalf of Justin
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Trudeau, on behalf of the police, like you could they revealed themselves that they were on a team
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and and they couldn't stand it if there was a dissenting voice.
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Tell me more about the book. Go ahead. You were saying.
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Yeah. And I just think this is the big point here is that the media coverage of this was simply
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fraught with all of this political jockeying where some of the Canadian intelligentsia didn't like the
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message that that coverage sent, that the police crackdown was heavy handed. They didn't like having
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to face and confront the reality of what people who supported the truckers were saying, which is
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that why are they bringing guns to a bouncy castle fight? Yeah. You know, and even what we talked about
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earlier, our own Alexa Lavoie being shot in the leg. If any other journalist in the country was shot
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by police for peacefully covering a news event, that that would have been huge news. That would have
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been something the Canadian Association of Journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression,
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Penn Canada, Amnesty International, Canadian Civil Liberties Association. That would have been
00:19:00.300
something that would have revved them up. I didn't see any coverage outside of the independent media of
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Alexa being shot. That I mean, that that is how adamant the media is on Team Trudeau.
00:19:14.000
Yes. And a lot of the journalism advocacy groups, the civil liberties groups were silent on this. And to be
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fair, I mean, the civil liberties groups in Canada were generally strong on the Emergencies Act.
00:19:25.420
But the press freedom groups, I didn't see reporters without borders coming to my defense
00:19:29.800
when I was pepper sprayed. Right. Or Alexis when she was hit with a tear gas canister. And in fact,
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a lot of them parroted what police said, which is, no, we didn't use tear gas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:19:40.140
Well, listen, I want to get into the book. Tell us what some of the chat. I don't want to give it all
00:19:44.680
away. And like I say, the book's available on the Amazon link under this video. I encourage people to get
00:19:49.780
it. Get it because I'm sure I haven't read it yet, Andrew, but I'm sure it's a great book. I know
00:19:53.640
you're a great journalist. But even if you weren't, quite frankly, I think it behooves
00:19:59.120
conservatives to buy a book, buy a conservative writer. We have to support conservative books.
00:20:05.420
Now, if you're talking Andrew Lawton, you're talking about one of the best journalists out
00:20:08.500
there anyway. So it's going to be it's it's a good read. I just know that before even cracking the
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spine. But there's so many books out there pumped out that just are repeaters of the soft left message.
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We have to support a non revisionist history of what happened, because if we don't, all of the
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amazing, authentic grassroots organic gains of that month will be lost. So anyway, get us into the book.
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Tell us some of the chapters. What are the kind of things you covered in the book? You have the table
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contents contents in front of you. Take us through the chapter headings. So, OK, let me. Well, actually,
00:20:47.700
I'll pull it up as I as I'm speaking. It's funny. I didn't know if I would need to do the homework
00:20:51.140
here, but OK, no, I'm not. Well, I buy myself time to do that. I just thought, like, tell me some
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of the themes you don't have to be. I mean, I am curious, but tell me some of the themes and the some
00:21:02.780
of the subjects you cover. So I will say that the story was naturally a story of three acts. You had how
00:21:09.720
the convoy came to be and got to Ottawa. What happened in those critical three weeks when the
00:21:14.960
convoy was stationed in downtown Ottawa. And then you had those pivotal few days at the end when
00:21:20.280
Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, the police came in and did the crackdown. And then
00:21:24.760
this protest was disbanded. And this was obviously me writing this afterwards. But knowing that the
00:21:31.980
story was in some ways still evolving and it was very challenging in some ways because I have,
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you know, gotten to chapter 13 or whatever, and some news story would come up that affected
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something that was, you know, in chapter nine, for an example. So you'd have to go back and at a
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certain point, and you know this as the author of many fantastic books, at a certain point,
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you have to hit send and you have to publish it. So it's not meant to be the real time living tree
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of all the news that's happened since. But what it is, is a book that traces the origins of the
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convoy goes behind the scenes. And when I say behind the scenes, I don't just mean a recap
00:22:04.680
of what happened on day one, day two, day three, but actually does some journalism to understand
00:22:11.020
how this thing came to be. How was it fueled? Where did the money come from? How was it spent?
00:22:16.480
Where did the food come from? A lot of people didn't realize that they had this network of
00:22:20.900
command centers in downtown Ottawa hotels, and they were running catering out of them. They were
00:22:25.960
running an IT department. They were running security. They had medics. They had a dispatch system. I mean,
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a lot of these details that really, I think, spoke to the level of sophistication that wasn't really
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visible at the street level. So the book talks about the behind the scenes. It talks about some
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of the jockeying for, not power, but the jockeying to be the official leader and the official organizer
00:22:49.160
that took place between a lot of the organizers and spokespeople, and the way that the media would
00:22:55.640
take certain people and say, this is the spokesperson, but the convoy people would
00:23:00.300
look up to others. And that was something we saw right through to the end. And I would also say
00:23:06.000
there's a great chapter, and this was published as an excerpt at The Line, which is an independent
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media outlet in Canada, that looks at the behind the scenes of the negotiations, the back channel
00:23:16.380
negotiations between convoy organizers and the city of Ottawa, which were actually beginning to bear
00:23:23.120
fruit just before the Emergencies Act came into play. And I think people will look at that and
00:23:27.980
look at the timing and say, okay, maybe there was, maybe the Emergencies Act came at that moment for
00:23:33.040
a reason. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? You know, you, you raised some good points because
00:23:37.560
we know that 10 million was raised very quickly through GoFundMe, but under direct pressure from
00:23:44.540
liberal politicians, they canceled it. And then another, I don't know, around 10 million was raised through
00:23:51.200
a rival crowd funder called Give, Send, Go. But that was- In a fraction of the time.
00:23:56.380
Yeah. But that was sort of frozen out. So I don't even know how much money actually got to the truckers.
00:24:03.660
It's my sense, and you correct me if I'm wrong, that really very little money flowed to the truckers.
00:24:11.160
And it was mainly self-financed. It was thousands of ordinary people saying, I'll pay for my own gas.
00:24:17.840
I'll pay for my own food. I'm doing this because I believe in it, not because I need,
00:24:22.220
you know, a thousand bucks to do it. So I think a lot of money was raised, but it never actually
00:24:27.820
made it to the truckers because of the government. But the, it's amazing that the truckers continued
00:24:33.760
as long as they did showing just how authentic it was. So you're right to some extent, but where I
00:24:39.840
would challenge it is that one of the big themes that we saw in the convoy is that anytime the state
00:24:44.960
tried to turn off the tap on something, there was a deluge from somewhere else. So when the
00:24:50.960
government said, we're going to seize your fuel, everyone showed up to Ottawa with jerry cans full
00:24:56.060
of diesel. Oh, that was great. That was great. When the government froze the money, people started
00:25:01.300
showing up with cash and boatloads of cash. And crypto. Yeah. Yeah. People were coming up and
00:25:07.280
shoving hundred dollar bills into truckers' hands. They were shoving $10 if that was what they could
00:25:12.280
afford. And it's impossible because it was cash to really get an up-to-date accounting of how much
00:25:17.180
money went through. But it was hundreds of thousands of dollars at least of cash that was donated when
00:25:24.240
all other avenues were frozen out. So a lot of people did dip into their own pockets and there
00:25:29.000
were also private e-transfers that were sent to people. And some of those, of course, we know ended up
00:25:35.160
with accounts that got frozen. But the $10 million in a lot of ways was not where the convoy's power
00:25:42.600
was coming from. And I think the government really thought that there was a head of the snake they
00:25:47.100
could cut off. Oh, yeah. And that wasn't the case. Well, that's very encouraging. And it's funny
00:25:50.860
because, of course, cash, you know, can't be tracked, can't be traced. And we hear about central
00:25:57.160
bank digital currencies that could be tracked and traced and frankly could be turned off from a central
00:26:03.740
switch. So, you know, it's a it's a reminder of the power of cash. If you're trying to do something
00:26:09.180
subversive or dissident, you'll never beat cash or even crypto is less. I mean, crypto is easier to
00:26:17.000
transfer, I guess. You know, coming back to who's who in the in the leadership, I always again, I mean,
00:26:24.220
we had someone embedded. We had a reporter embedded in the convoy. Mocha Bazirgin went across Canada and
00:26:29.800
Celine Glass, same thing. And, you know, they would get memos or notes or recordings. But I think I
00:26:37.740
don't know if there was anyone who was the boss of the whole thing. Tamara Leach was more like a
00:26:44.440
mother figure or an inspiring figure and a motivator. She was a very early and I'm not taking anything
00:26:53.920
away from her as a leader. But as you say, not everyone was following and then there were different
00:27:00.140
rival, you know, trucker whisperers. Give us a little bit of who's who in the zoo there. I really
00:27:07.780
like Tamara and it pains me to see how she's being bullied by police in the courts. But there were some
00:27:15.060
people involved who I thought were entryists, maybe even feds like I think of Pat King, who was so
00:27:23.300
abusive in his comments and so reckless. I couldn't help but think that's a narc. That's someone who is
00:27:30.960
here to discredit because every national security and police organization and left wing group in the
00:27:37.720
country said this is the opposition. This is the enemy. Obviously, they want to infiltrate, obviously.
00:27:44.340
And this isn't just speculation on my part. We had two people at the at the Coutts trucker blockade
00:27:50.100
in Alberta. We had two reporters there and there were police informants in the room, we later learned.
00:28:00.360
So, of course, CSIS and the RCMP and police forces had people in the organization. Tell me what you know
00:28:09.760
about who was actually leading things as much as they were led.
00:28:14.420
So, I think that you're right. And Tamara Leach was certainly the fundraiser and she was the
00:28:19.020
spiritual leader and she was very prominent. I mean, Benjamin Dichter as well. And so far as the
00:28:23.940
official Freedom Convoy Board of Directors, the nonprofit that was set up to handle the money,
00:28:30.280
he was the spokesperson designated for that. And you had other people like Chris Barber, who was actually a
00:28:35.280
cross-border trucker himself and one of the two that really came up with this idea. And you had
00:28:40.220
all of these people. And I think that they all played a role. And one of the interesting things
00:28:44.280
that I uncovered is that to a lot of the people on the ground, though, in fact, I'd say to almost all
00:28:49.900
of the people on the ground, they were not in a hierarchy. They were not part of an organization.
00:28:54.960
They were part of a movement. They showed up because they liked what was happening. They saw it on
00:28:59.980
TikTok, on Rebel, on True North, on Instagram, and they wanted to be a part of it. They
00:29:03.940
weren't there because anyone told them. They weren't there because there was money in it for
00:29:07.920
them. They were just there. And I mean, there was an interesting story in the book where at one point
00:29:14.680
Tamara Leach and Keith Wilson, the Convoy's lawyer, and some of the other organizers had arranged and
00:29:20.940
agreed with police that they were going to get trucks to move off of Rideau and Sussex, which is
00:29:25.820
this normally high traffic intersection just east of downtown. And they had agreed with police,
00:29:31.040
we're going to clear that out for you so that we can concentrate on Wellington Street.
00:29:35.940
And there was this one night where people went down, Tamara Leach, Keith Wilson, they went down
00:29:41.420
to the intersection. They got the truckers on board. The trucker said, OK, we're OK to move on to
00:29:46.140
Wellington Street. And police brought in a front end loader to move the concrete barricades that they
00:29:52.120
had blocking Wellington so that trucks could get on Wellington. Well, the people there protesting,
00:29:58.700
part of the convoy saw this machine and thought police are trying to move in. Police are trying
00:30:04.720
to move in and empty the street. So protesters, about a thousand of them, surrounded the front
00:30:09.200
end loader and started singing, Oh, Canada. And then they started tweeting about it and more people
00:30:15.520
came. And before you know it, they had to abort this operation because no one could control the
00:30:21.080
momentum that these people had when they felt that the convoy needed their defense. And that's the,
00:30:26.780
I think the great magic of this is that Tamara Leach was a leader, was an organizer. Keith Wilson was a
00:30:31.800
lawyer, but ultimately they couldn't tell anyone to do anything. And they were aware of that.
00:30:36.280
Isn't that interesting? Well, I admire Tamara Leach. I don't know her well, but anyone who was jailed
00:30:41.420
as she was a few days ago, because she appeared in a selfie photo is still, I will say just until
00:30:48.460
until July 5th behind bars for another bail hearing. Yeah. And I'm somewhat familiar with her bail
00:30:54.980
conditions. She's not to communicate with certain other people. She's in a selfie, not communicating
00:31:00.960
at a gala dinner for herself. I was at that dinner. It was basically a nonstop stream of people who
00:31:05.700
wanted a photo with her. So smile, click, smile, click. So she happens to be in a photo with someone
00:31:12.280
else. Police in Ottawa issue a national nationwide warrant for her arrest. She's arrested, put in shackles,
00:31:21.320
flown to Ottawa for that, for being in a selfie. I believe she's a political prisoner. I admire her
00:31:29.180
for that. You mentioned a couple of names, including Benjamin Dichter. I have to tell you, it irked me
00:31:35.060
that he decamped for Florida and hasn't come back since. It almost feels like he's worried about being
00:31:42.420
arrested like the other leaders were. I don't know. I didn't like the look of that. Do you have any,
00:31:45.760
what does your book say about him? So I spoke to as many people as I could. And some of them,
00:31:52.140
as you're aware of, I wasn't able to because of bail conditions. I did interview Ben in the book. And
00:31:57.240
I believe what he had said is that it was the lawyers that had advised him to get out because
00:32:01.880
they didn't want all of the people that were in a position to speak for the convoy to be arrested.
00:32:06.300
And that was the fear there. And, you know, I haven't heard anything that is distrustful to him
00:32:12.100
from the other organizers I spoke to in the book. Although I think people were, when it happened,
00:32:16.500
a little bit raw about this, when they saw it to Merrill Leach and Chris Barber ending up in
00:32:20.940
handcuffs and him not being there. But other people weren't arrested either. I mean, Tom Marazzo,
00:32:26.460
again, someone that's very well regarded by the other organizers, former army captain,
00:32:31.160
he was not arrested himself. So I almost wonder, and again, this is pure speculation on my part.
00:32:37.240
And I understand people raising questions about who might have been an informant and that.
00:32:42.020
But I also think it's a great tactic if you are police to sow that distrust among people and to
00:32:48.880
really say, we're going to leave this one alone. We're going to leave this one alone because it
00:32:52.180
really does start to make people point fingers at each other. Well, I know a little bit more about
00:32:56.760
Pat King, who bizarrely remains in jail. And I don't think he should be in jail, but I do know that he
00:33:04.020
is. I mean, he's, I think he's disreputable and I'm glad that the truckers distanced themselves from
00:33:10.860
him not too far into things. Let's pull back. No, and if I may jump in there and I'm sorry to cut
00:33:18.460
you off, Ezra, the Pat King thing was fascinating because I agree with you. I think what's happening
00:33:23.080
is an injustice, but I also point out that I don't have any time for him. I don't actually think he
00:33:29.420
adds anything to the discourse. So I don't defend him because I think there's value in what he says.
00:33:33.740
I defend him because I think everyone is entitled to due process. But this idea of organizers
00:33:39.320
distancing themselves from him did not come late. It came early, early, early. Certainly he was
00:33:45.460
involved at the ground level and he used his platform to promote the convoy. You can't separate
00:33:50.240
him from the convoy story, but I really did delve into it. And a big part of the book early on is
00:33:56.240
what role did he have? And he was there. He was a booster. He was a promoter, but he was never an
00:34:02.240
organizer. Right. I think that's true. You know, you have a guy like Pat King, you have a few
00:34:09.520
wilder protesters and you give the hate media exactly what they want. The Justin Lings, the CBCs,
00:34:18.480
you give them the caricature that they want. And I guess that's what you were talking about at the
00:34:24.000
beginning of our conversation. Don't swear at a reporter because then they will use you as an emblem
00:34:29.000
of the larger protest, which was very friendly, family friendly. But it was clear to me that most
00:34:36.360
journalism being done about the truckers was bad faith journalism and not just journalism. You have
00:34:41.420
this whole fake industry of, you know, hate finders. Oh, they're full of hate. They're insurrectionists.
00:34:51.800
They're a criminal threat. We have to get our spies on this. These aren't just protesters. These
00:34:59.840
are people who want to overthrow the government. And look, they even typed up some manifesto about
00:35:07.280
a new government. They wanted the governor general to get involved. These people came within an inch
00:35:12.600
of a revolution. I mean, it sounds so absurd, but I think you have dozens, probably hundreds
00:35:20.440
of people in the Canadian establishment, whether they're professors or think tankers or security
00:35:27.400
analysts or certainly reporters who are all not saying, oh, it's a protest. We know what those are
00:35:34.300
like. There's protests in Ottawa every week. We love protests when it's on our side, like Black Lives
00:35:40.320
Matter, like environmentalism, but a grassroots, mixed race, different walks of life trucker convoy.
00:35:49.400
We can't just call that a regular protest. We have to call it something far more malign. We have
00:35:54.260
to do what the CBC did, say it was organized by Vladimir Putin. I mean, so there's being against
00:36:01.080
something and criticizing something, but then there's also this extreme game played by the
00:36:06.420
establishment to say, no, no, this wasn't just a protest. This came within an inch of toppling our
00:36:12.040
country. Of course we needed to invoke the Emergencies Act. This was like our January 6th storming in the
00:36:17.560
Capitol building. We came within an inch of that, people, an inch. That to me is the real threat that
00:36:25.260
was revealed by the truckers. This group of Canadian establishment deep staters who would literally
00:36:37.220
Yes, and there's a line in the book, I can't remember, but I remember that people have been
00:36:42.080
tweeting about it from the last couple of days where I said something along the lines of,
00:36:46.140
you know, the one big contribution to freedom that the convoy brought us was revealing how far
00:36:52.420
the state will go to crack down on those who seek freedom and those who strive for freedom. And that
00:36:57.740
was, I think, in terms of legacy, one of the significant parts of it. But to go back to the
00:37:02.880
point you were making there, Ezra, there was no denying the media love to look at the one-offs and
00:37:07.800
extrapolate to the whole. So one guy has a Confederate flag and almost certainly an
00:37:13.480
instigator, just given the video you see of how people reacted and what he did and
00:37:18.260
hiding his face, almost certainly an instigator. But that becomes the protest. Some guy waving a
00:37:23.220
swastika flag somewhere, that becomes the convoy. And if we're going to play the game of plucking out
00:37:28.400
the individuals, why not pluck out the Indigenous woman who said they don't like vaccine mandates
00:37:34.720
because Indigenous people know what it's like to have the government force unhealthy medical
00:37:39.300
treatments on them. And she can just never trust government mandated medicine. What about the
00:37:43.820
the Indigenous or the person of colour that she identified as a black Indigenous person of colour,
00:37:49.280
a woman who's fully vaccinated and completely pro-choice on abortion and on vaccine mandates and
00:37:54.380
says, my body, my choice means my body, my choice. What about the trucker that fell in love with a
00:37:59.640
protester? What about the young families that got together for the first time because they've been
00:38:04.540
living under two years of restrictions? All of these people were real people I met for whom
00:38:10.080
the convoy meant something very significant. It was very meaningful for them and it was very
00:38:14.920
liberating for them. And those stories were lost. It's only the stories of the Haiti, Haiti,
00:38:20.320
white supremacist hate mongers who, by the way, really didn't exist. Certainly not in the numbers
00:38:25.380
the media was saying. They were the ones you'd see in the coverage. Yeah. You know, there's certain
00:38:30.080
things that were so stunning. You're right about that. There's certain things that were so stunning
00:38:35.100
about that time that they were stunning in itself. But equally stunning is how they were
00:38:41.220
so gently criticized, if at all, by the media, by other institutions that are normally on guard. And I
00:38:48.360
I'll just list one, which is the Emergencies Act orders
00:38:52.840
to the banks and to the insurance companies to seize and freeze funds of anyone without any due
00:39:01.480
process, literally just whoever the police named. And insurance too. It actually applied to American
00:39:10.060
banks doing business in Canada and American insurance companies. So if you were an American
00:39:14.940
trucker with an American insurance company, but you drove into Canada and you were part of the
00:39:19.660
protest, you as an insurance company were ordered under law to cancel his trucker insurance.
00:39:29.740
If you were an American bank, I mean, there's plenty of American banks in Canada that are regulated and
00:39:36.220
they were specifically listed on it. So this was an outrageous thing for Canadian banks, but it actually
00:39:40.680
reached into the U.S. I don't think any American banks actually followed the rule, by the
00:39:44.920
way. I think every American bank said we're stuck here because if we freeze our customers because
00:39:51.880
they're a trucker without due process, we're going to get in an enormous amount of trouble with our
00:39:56.340
banking regulator, with our Congress, with our Constitution. We'll be sued till the end of time
00:40:00.160
under the First Amendment here in America. But yeah, the liability waiver in Canada didn't protect
00:40:06.320
American banks against liability in their country. Yeah. And so imagine you're, you know, Citibank or
00:40:12.360
Wells Fargo or whatever. There are a lot of American banks that do business in Canada.
00:40:16.820
And imagine you've got some little Banana Republic tyrant now saying, hand over these truckers and
00:40:22.320
their money. But you also have live in a rule of law country like America. No, I don't think any
00:40:27.780
American banks actually obeyed the Emergencies Act. I don't think any American insurance company,
00:40:33.320
insurance companies did. So credit to them for waiting out the tyrant. But
00:40:38.220
put aside that American little anecdote. To seize and freeze bank accounts is such a shocking thing.
00:40:50.180
I am certain that billions of dollars left the country from people saying, oh, my God,
00:40:55.680
we've seen this movie before, whether it's Venezuela or Russia, we're just going to move our money out
00:41:01.700
to the States. I think there was a bit of a run on the banks. That's how ordinary people reacted.
00:41:07.180
But where was the Chamber of Commerce? Where was some bankers? You know, there's a lot of bank
00:41:15.620
consumer watchdogs. Where were the editorials against this? I think, where was the opposition?
00:41:26.260
I think that it was so muted. No judge spoke out against it. No law professors or very few.
00:41:34.100
The media in general was those truckers deserve it. They're a menace. Go harder. I mean, maybe I'm
00:41:42.180
maybe I'm missing some really powerful establishment objectors to this. But it wasn't just atrocious in
00:41:48.760
itself. It's the reaction to it that was atrocious. The general reaction from Canadian establishment
00:41:55.860
society was good. Finally, we're cracking down on those truckers. What do you think?
00:42:03.420
I would agree to some extent, although I do think there was a bit of a pivot because all of a sudden
00:42:09.100
it to a lot of people was no longer just about the truckers. Remember, there was a chill there,
00:42:15.720
which was the intent. I mean, in the end, the government only froze the accounts of a couple
00:42:19.380
hundred people. I say only. I think one was too many. But there were people that didn't know if
00:42:24.940
the account was going to be frozen if they donated $10 to the GoFundMe campaign or $10 to the Give,
00:42:31.720
Send, Go. You had people. I mean, True North is supported by donors. And I had people emailing me
00:42:36.320
saying, I'm scared that I can't donate to True North because my account is going to get frozen.
00:42:41.220
So it sent this chill across the country, which was, I think, exactly the point. The government
00:42:47.720
wanted to tell people, no, no, no, we're in control, not you guys, and we're coming after you.
00:42:53.380
And there was that press conference given by the Ottawa police acting chief where he said,
00:42:57.560
you know, once this convoy is done, we're still going to come after you. We're going to review the
00:43:00.960
footage. And if we see you were involved, we're coming after you. We're putting financial sanctions.
00:43:05.200
We'll lay charges. And it just became punitive. And I think ordinary Canadians, forget about the
00:43:10.400
establishment types, ordinary Canadians were seeing that and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:43:15.420
Yeah. And even a lot of people who were not fans of the convoy or had soured on the convoy the longer
00:43:20.480
it went on, were not at all fans of or supportive in the least of the Emergencies Act and the measures
00:43:27.300
that were brought in. So I think there were people that just, they wanted anything. They hated the
00:43:31.640
convoy. They wanted the government to pull out all the stops, go in, crack skulls. But there's a
00:43:36.360
a silent majority, I think, that understood the government was going too far.
00:43:40.460
Yeah. You know, it's amazing. All the things that people accused Donald Trump of being a dictator,
00:43:47.800
a censor, a thin-skinned bully, a violator of civil liberties. He actually didn't do those things.
00:43:57.040
Trudeau did those things. And I think it was the, I mean, the lockdowns were already the worst
00:44:05.840
civil liberties fiasco in Canadian history. But that Emergencies Act was so particularly and acutely
00:44:14.440
outrageous. I think that was one of the darkest moments in Canadian freedom history. The book is
00:44:21.960
called The Freedom Convoy. The author is Andrew Lawton. The subtitle, I love it. The inside story
00:44:26.200
of three weeks that shook the world. I think it's true. Andrew, congratulations on this book. Folks,
00:44:31.660
I encourage you to buy it. What an interesting history of an interesting historical moment. The
00:44:37.480
link to the book is under this video. Or you can just go to Amazon. Congratulations. I understand
00:44:43.160
you had an audiobook coming out, too, for folks who love to listen to a book while they drive or while
00:44:49.760
they're doing other things. Is that right? Yes, we have an audiobook coming out. Hopefully,
00:44:54.000
that'll be in the next few weeks. And obviously, the paperback edition's out now. So I would
00:44:58.620
appreciate it if you'd buy one for yourself. And buy one for someone in your life that is against
00:45:03.500
the convoy but actually hasn't been exposed to the truth. And I think you'll both find things in
00:45:07.940
there you can learn from. Right. Well, you know what? Congratulations to you. And I'm pleased that
00:45:13.560
you got it out so quickly. I think, I mean, I think it actually may be the first trucker book. Is that
00:45:19.120
right? Yeah, it is. And I mean, the month of April was a bit rough. I didn't see much of my wife,
00:45:24.620
which, to be honest, I think she might have actually appreciated. But we'll go there in
00:45:28.240
another episode. But we got it out. And I think as well, it's not just a recap. There is a lot of
00:45:33.960
new information in there, which I think was important to telling this story. But I expect
00:45:37.960
there will be more to come. And you know what? I welcome it. Well, you know what? I want to say,
00:45:42.520
I mean, I love Rebel News. It's something I helped create. And I feel a tremendous paternity to it.
00:45:48.480
And I love our work. And by the way, covering the truckers was our finest hour, if I may say.
00:45:55.020
It was like we were preparing for that moment our whole lives. We had 400 million views and
00:46:00.200
impressions in the month of February, which is as much as we normally get in an entire year.
00:46:05.120
That was our time to shine. But I must note the other independent journalists who were there in force
00:46:12.620
also. You, you mentioned Rupa, Rupert Superman, who's now with True North as well.
00:46:24.800
You know, there is some people I had never heard of that were there streaming it on their YouTube
00:46:30.740
channel. It was tremendous. I met more independent journalists there than I have in the last five
00:46:35.000
years. Yeah. You know what? Sorry, I just I'm blanking out because there are there are a half dozen.
00:46:39.600
And it was everyone's time to shine. I mentioned Viva Friday. David Freiheit is his real name,
00:46:45.520
who just live streamed for four hours. He's a lawyer by training. So he was very
00:46:52.760
the fact that we had 400 million views, and I bet you you had a ton.
00:46:58.440
And all these other independent journalists combined,
00:47:00.540
I dare say that amongst us, we had as much viewership as the mainstream media because people
00:47:08.340
simply didn't trust them and they weren't doing the real work. So that was not just something we did
00:47:14.440
in the moment, but all of us had been practicing and training and perfecting how we do it and learning
00:47:19.040
how to live stream. And so I think that was a great moment for independent journalism. And I think that
00:47:25.740
your book is as authoritative. I haven't read it yet, but we've been talking about it. Your book
00:47:31.500
is as authoritative as anything to come out of it. In fact, I dare say if if later this year we see
00:47:37.760
some book from some CBC hitman hired to smear it, I think that your book will do better than the BS
00:47:44.200
book from the CBC. It'll be more trustworthy and it is a greater and more accurate record of what went
00:47:49.800
on because the CBC, although they surrounded that parliament hill in their offices, they refused to
00:47:56.520
go down and out into the street and dirty themselves with the regular people. And and that that couldn't
00:48:04.760
have been clearer. So many groups have abased themselves in the last two years. Politicians,
00:48:09.520
of course, opposition politicians, of course. But I think the media has perhaps lost more credibility
00:48:15.740
than anyone. Andrew, congratulations on the book. Thanks for spending Canada Day with us
00:48:20.540
and good luck. And I hope you hit number one. Thank you, Ezra. Happy Dominion Day to you and
00:48:26.520
your audience, too. Right on. There you have it. One of our favorite guys, Andrew Lawton. The book,
00:48:30.800
one more time, is called The Freedom Convoy, The Inside Story of Three Weeks That Shook the World.
00:48:35.800
Do you agree with me that it's important to support conservative authors when they publish books that
00:48:41.520
run counter to the mainstream narrative? Do you agree with me on that? If you do,
00:48:45.740
then please click the link under this video and support Andrew. And I always find it emotionally
00:48:51.620
satisfying when a book goes to number one on the Amazon list, because, of course, it shows that it's
00:48:57.100
not that you're not alone. So if you click that link, I think that'll you know, I don't know how
00:49:03.320
many people have to buy a book to nudge it up there, but maybe you'll be one of them. Well, listen,
00:49:08.420
thanks for spending your holiday with us today. Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at
00:49:13.280
Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.