From a Fight the Fines story to a Rebel reporter： Get to know Tamara Ugolini
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
160.47638
Summary
Tamara Ugolini joins me on The Gun Show this week to talk about what it's like being a Rebel and how she got her start at Rebel News. She talks about how she went from being a mom on the internet to becoming a full-time journalist, and what it was like to work for Ezra Levant.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show
00:00:04.780
aptly called The Gun Show. Tonight my guest is one of our newest Rebels, Tamara Ugolini,
00:00:10.420
and I thought I would take this opportunity on the show for all of us, including myself,
00:00:15.780
to get to know her a little better. Now if you like listening to the show then I promise you're
00:00:19.840
going to love watching it, but in order to watch you need to be a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
00:00:24.860
That's what we call our long-form TV-style shows here on Rebel News. Subscribers get access to
00:00:31.020
my show as well as Ezra's nightly, Ezra Levant's show, and David Menzies' fun Friday night show,
00:00:36.580
Rebel Roundup. It's only eight bucks a month to subscribe and just for my podcast listeners you
00:00:41.220
can save an extra 10% on a new Rebel News Plus subscription by using the coupon code PODCAST
00:00:45.840
when you subscribe. Just go to rebelnews.com slash subscribe to become a member and please
00:01:10.720
Let's get to know one of our newest Rebels a little better this week.
00:01:14.180
My guest tonight is Tamara Ugolini, I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gun Show.
00:01:22.980
We've got new Rebels joining the team. Drea Humphrey is absolutely ripping it up in British
00:01:42.080
Columbia, telling the other side of the story, and doing tough, dangerous journalism like visiting
00:01:47.940
homeless encampments and, well, coming within 50 feet of Jonathan Yaniv and his out-of-control
00:01:54.800
mother. And we've got Lisa Song Sutton in Las Vegas, who is doing some great work on issues that
00:02:03.020
our Rebel viewers care about, like gun rights issues and what the COVID-19 lockdown has done
00:02:09.240
to small businesses and the entertainment industry, specifically on the Las Vegas Strip.
00:02:14.460
And we've got Tamara Ugolini also. She's a mom from Coburg, who is one of our Fight the Fines
00:02:20.520
cases. And she was such a fighter that the boss thought, why not have her work for us?
00:02:28.240
Now, I think it's safe to say that Tamara does not like the coronavirus restrictions on all of
00:02:33.840
our lives. So, just like I did with Drea Humphrey a few weeks ago, I thought I would use my own show
00:02:40.440
to have Tamara on to talk about, well, first off, what it's like to be a Rebel. Because my story at
00:02:46.460
Rebel News, it's pretty similar to Tamara's. I was just a regular mom out there on the internet,
00:02:51.660
making trouble, until all of a sudden, I was a journalist at Rebel News. And just a point of
00:02:57.480
clarification, you're going to hear Tamara use words like pro-choice in our interview. But she
00:03:04.400
doesn't mean pro-choice in the abortion sense. She means pro-choice as in choosing to take a Chinese
00:03:12.280
made vaccine for the coronavirus or not, as opposed to being forced to take it by the government.
00:03:19.820
So friends, here's the interview I recorded with our new Rebel, Tamara Ugolini, Monday evening.
00:03:34.400
Joining me now from her home in Cobourg, Ontario, is one of the newest Rebels. Quickly becoming a fan
00:03:49.080
favorite, though, Tamara Ugolini. Tamara, thanks for joining me. I wanted to have you on the show
00:03:54.260
because I think people would like to know you a little better. They know your work, and they know
00:04:00.460
sort of some of the stuff that you care about through your work and the things that you focus
00:04:05.360
on. But I wanted to take this chance to introduce you to our viewers in, I guess, a little longer
00:04:13.120
format. What was it like getting, I guess it was a phone call, maybe an email from Ezra Levant saying,
00:04:23.080
hey, you want to come work for us? Because I got one of those myself, and it was weird.
00:04:27.400
Yeah, well, very unexpected, right off the bat. It was an email, and then I thought, well, it's probably
00:04:33.940
better suited to be a phone call. So I just kind of sat on it for a little bit, about an hour or so. I
00:04:41.140
immediately called my husband, my sister, my dad, my fan base that's here at home, and just in my mind
00:04:51.100
tried to wrap my head around what that might entail or look like for me as a predominantly stay-at-home
00:04:57.180
mom. So yeah, then when Ezra and I chatted, I mean, he seemed very accommodating and understanding
00:05:04.320
that I had some other priorities at this time, but also very, what's the word, sort of intrigued by
00:05:17.940
Yeah, I guess our stories are kind of similar, just normal moms out there giving her, raising a
00:05:26.820
little hell on the internet, and then plucked from obscurity. Now, what has been, I guess, one of the
00:05:35.180
things about working for Rebel News that has kind of surprised you, I guess?
00:05:40.540
Uh, gee, I guess mostly the meetings. The two times a day being, like, dedicated, I appreciate
00:05:49.680
that they're very timely, and everyone's very to the point, but just trying to kind of work my
00:05:55.920
schedule around those two time slots has been one of the most, that's probably the most difficult
00:06:02.560
thing. I don't know about surprising necessarily. Um, surprising would probably be just how virtual
00:06:08.560
we can all be and be connected without having to actually leave your house or your sort of locale.
00:06:15.440
So that's been really nice, uh, and a bit of a surprise because I thought for sure there would have
00:06:20.200
to be some more travel, and I'm sure there will be going, moving forward, but just in order to stay
00:06:26.720
connected on the daily, that it's so virtual, um, has, has been a surprise, but nice.
00:06:32.800
Yeah, uh, at Rebel News, we've been working remotely before it was cool, and that technology
00:06:38.160
was always there, and it's one of those things that we have really been kind of early adopters of,
00:06:43.560
while, like, the big behemoth of the CBC is just figuring out how to use Skype. We've been doing it
00:06:48.880
for years to do our interviews. We're doing it now. Um, what's, like, what has been one of the
00:06:56.180
major adjustments for you? You say you're already getting recognized, aren't you?
00:07:00.980
Yeah, well, at our, at the local gathering here in Coburg, uh, there was a gentleman there who said,
00:07:07.100
hey, you're famous, and I thought, well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but, uh, he did recognize me,
00:07:13.580
uh, one of the, when we were in Ottawa on Saturday, someone recognized me on the street,
00:07:19.160
um, and then one of the people who I interviewed, uh, seemed to be quite thrilled. He was a big Rebel
00:07:25.560
News supporter, and, uh, was familiar with some of the videos I'd already been putting out, so he
00:07:30.720
knew my name, called me right over, um, pretty much welcomed me as his new friend, so it's been,
00:07:38.380
yeah, it's been interesting, but something I kind of expected would happen, just maybe not so soon.
00:07:43.700
Um, um, I wanted to ask you, um, you are kind of new to political activism, I guess, um,
00:07:55.940
and correct me if that's wrong, but what sort of spurred you into this? For me, it was, like,
00:08:04.920
all of a sudden, Alberta spiraling into debt, frankly, under the progressive conservatives at
00:08:10.100
the time, and I thought, this is not the Alberta of Ralph Klein, and I sort of became politically
00:08:14.420
active online because of that, but what was that thing that made you say, well, uh, I guess it's
00:08:23.260
going to be me who's going to step up and say something. Yeah, I mean, I could go back, uh,
00:08:29.680
about a decade ago when I first became pregnant with my eldest, um, and I started to research a lot
00:08:35.860
of things related to health and wellness, and I started to find that what we were being told by
00:08:40.760
some of our government agencies, like Health Canada, wasn't actually as accurate as what I was finding
00:08:47.260
alternatively, and so, I mean, my whole lifestyle did a complete 180 at that time. I was, 10 years ago,
00:08:53.520
a completely different person, so it's kind of just been an incremental change over the course of
00:08:59.360
developing as a mom and, uh, you know, taking, taking knowledge into my own hands and sort of
00:09:06.940
trying to decipher where, what the truth may be in certain matters, and then, of course, during
00:09:12.360
this COVID shutdown, I mean, I've been an advocate for pro-choice and pro-informed consent. I, I guess
00:09:19.220
that could go back about a decade, um, but when we started to see these, these lockdowns happening
00:09:23.920
and taking away the general public's freedom of choice, like arbitrarily shutting down businesses
00:09:31.220
and small businesses and telling people that they couldn't visit with their elderly, with their
00:09:36.160
families, I mean, that right away just took away so much choice for the general public, and that was
00:09:42.220
a big concern of mine, especially as, you know, in the beginning, you don't know what, what we're
00:09:47.280
dealing with. We were all, okay, yeah, let's shut things down. Let's see what's going on. Are we going
00:09:53.360
to see people dropping like flies in the streets, like the 1918 Spanish flu, which that was actually
00:09:59.420
a pandemic, and then as a couple weeks went on, and we weren't seeing those things, you weren't hearing
00:10:04.260
those numbers, I started to say, well, what's going on here, and why aren't people being allowed to
00:10:10.440
decipher and discern and make those decisions for themselves, so it just sort of spiraled into this
00:10:17.340
advocacy and activism work with a, then a small crowd, and we've just sort of grown from there,
00:10:23.360
Now, you've ended up arrested because of your advocacy work, and that was before you came to
00:10:34.360
us, but that's one of the reasons we found you. How, what's that like? Like, just, like, one day
00:10:41.760
you're just giving her out there saying, I believe, I'm pro-choice in that, I believe in, you have,
00:10:48.820
you know, the right to choose how you live your life. I just want to be clear, because pro-choice
00:10:53.940
generally has a different connotation, but, and then you end up, like, in handcuffs. What's that
00:11:01.000
like? That's crazy. I mean, it was pretty traumatic. I do have the whole thing recorded, and admittedly,
00:11:07.500
I haven't been able to go back and watch it, because it was a traumatic event, but I'm also not one that
00:11:13.700
just sort of backs down to, to someone who is exercising authority in a way that, to me,
00:11:20.580
is not lawful. So I was respectful. I was peaceful. I mean, at the end of the day, I was walking a beach
00:11:27.300
shoreline. Like, I'm not a seasoned, hardened criminal, and that's while we are letting actual
00:11:34.780
convicted criminals out of prison. I am being then taken in handcuffs, mom of three, four with my bonus
00:11:44.560
son, in handcuffs, and held in a jail cell. Like, this wasn't just some little, oh, you know, as they
00:11:52.280
did with my dad on the beach, oh, we'll arrest you, and then we're going to un-arrest you. No, I remained
00:11:57.340
in custody for almost two hours. At the end of the day, again, walking a beach shoreline.
00:12:04.600
Yeah, and you make an excellent point that hundreds of people awaiting trial or people who probably
00:12:14.260
shouldn't qualify for bail and yet are, are being released from Ontario's prison system. Some of them
00:12:21.280
are getting early release, so they're convicted and they're getting early release. They're being
00:12:25.980
shuffled out the door for their safety, and you're a mom of four, and you're being thrown in the
00:12:32.640
slammer. Like, the priorities during this pandemic are so bizarre, and you're not the first mom. I had
00:12:39.660
an interview for one of our Fight the Fines cases with a young mom who had been handcuffed and then
00:12:47.080
searched under her clothing and stuffed in a cop car because she let her daughter go in a park
00:12:54.480
and go on the swing set all alone. There was nobody else in the park. That's, that's the new
00:13:00.500
normal they want us to live in, that this is okay, that cops are doing this, and, and we're all
00:13:05.400
disappointed to put a mask on and shut up about it. It's so crazy. And the funny thing was, is none of
00:13:11.800
the police, which I think there was three, three police cruisers that ended up responding to the call
00:13:17.320
of myself and a 16-year-old, my 60-year-old friend, and none of them had masks or gloves on. So
00:13:24.540
again, the hypocrisy of the new normal is just insane. And like, I interviewed Randy Hillier on
00:13:31.600
Friday, you know, he says, they'll only get away with these impositions as long as the people comply.
00:13:37.860
So when enough of us start to say enough's enough here, this isn't making sense,
00:13:41.700
that's when we can see some tangible changes happen. I think. Yeah, that interview with Randy
00:13:47.660
Hillier was great, because I think he's got it figured right out. He's got like, even well-meaning
00:13:54.060
conservative governments, and I'm, I'm not sure whether that applies to Ontario or not at this
00:14:01.020
point. But, but even like well-meaning governments, conservative governments, strongly conservative
00:14:06.920
governments, like the one out here in Alberta, they don't want to admit that they got this wrong.
00:14:12.000
They don't want to admit that they got these catastrophic, like as Randy puts it, apocalyptic
00:14:16.440
predictions, dead wrong. And now what do they do? Because it's one, it's one thing to do it.
00:14:23.960
And it's another thing to have done it and for all of it to be for nothing. And so now they foster this
00:14:31.100
culture of fear with people just to keep it going instead of admitting they were just wrong.
00:14:37.400
Well, and how do you then become accountable for people literally devastating people's lives? And I
00:14:44.040
mean, potentially killing so many elderly, like who takes responsibility for that? So it's, it's a very
00:14:51.860
sticky situation for the government. And I mean, it's just crazy that we can't say enough's enough and
00:15:00.260
rein it back in, but people are so terrified. People, Randy even said, I don't know if we caught
00:15:04.880
it in the interview. Um, but he said he has constituents that probably will never leave their
00:15:09.920
house again. Yeah. Yeah. Because they think there's this deadly bug floating around out there to kill
00:15:15.940
them and their grandchildren or their grandparents. Uh, it's, it's, you, you make a great point when you
00:15:22.360
say, okay, well, if the government admits that they're wrong, then the government is then
00:15:27.360
responsible for all the devastation that follows from this. Um, now you went to Ottawa to cover
00:15:35.420
a massive protest, thousands of people on Parliament Hill. Um, not a lot of mainstream media
00:15:42.920
involved. And that's weird because normally if three BLM, uh, members are gathered together in
00:15:48.560
protest, there's like three satellite trucks from CBC there. Uh, not a lot of mainstream media
00:15:54.460
coverage of what went on in Parliament Hill, but you were there. Tell me some of the highlights.
00:16:00.280
Well, so first of all, I did hear that the CBC was there at the very, I guess the very beginning,
00:16:04.900
there was some, um, discrepancy of what time the event actually started. So I imagine they came before
00:16:10.200
it was really in full swing. Um, so that's where maybe their report that it was a couple hundred
00:16:16.940
people in attendance was because no one was really there yet. Uh, but, but the day, I mean,
00:16:22.640
it was amazing. The weather, I think that if the weather was just that little bit better,
00:16:27.140
there would have been an influx even more so of people. Uh, I would say probably about half of
00:16:35.100
those in attendance were from Quebec. So that did make interviewing a little bit difficult.
00:16:40.020
I had a lot of people who, you know, there was a language barrier. Unfortunately, I don't speak French
00:16:44.800
and obviously some of them, uh, don't speak English. So that was, that was, I don't want to say too bad,
00:16:51.760
but just an unfortunate part of trying to get feedback from people is that a lot of the people
00:16:55.860
with great signage and with a lot of the passion didn't unfortunately speak English. Um, but
00:17:01.320
otherwise like the speeches were from what I could hear in between being, you know, on the ground
00:17:06.720
were well orchestrated. Um, they had some live bands. I mean, the energy in general was great. I never
00:17:14.420
feared for my life or that I was going to be attacked. Um, so that was reissue.
00:17:21.760
And that was really nice. And then of course, finding, uh, the pastor and his congregation
00:17:25.860
from Alamer, that was really nice too, to see more of those, you know, these different pockets
00:17:32.100
of different people coming together for a united front. Yeah. I think your coverage captured that
00:17:40.300
there are the people who are like the, like the Quebecers who are like, uh, we don't like Canada
00:17:45.640
telling us what to do. I can relate. Um, yes. The pastor who wants religious freedom and to be
00:17:53.460
again, left alone. And then there are people who really see this as creeping tyranny and it's not
00:18:00.220
so creepy anymore. It's right out there in the light of day. And so I think that really came across
00:18:05.220
in your coverage. Um, I know that, um, Maxine Bernier was there. Did you see any other politicians,
00:18:12.760
conservative politicians, did they show up? No, not a trace. He was the only politician from what
00:18:18.660
I saw and from what I heard speaking to others that showed up. And that was the same, uh, as Canada
00:18:24.960
day, July 1st, I was in Ottawa then as well, not, not reporting, but as a, as a, um, attendee and,
00:18:32.880
uh, same Maxine was the only one from any political party that was present and speaking to people.
00:18:38.380
You know, I, that's a shame. I think that's really the conservative party dropping the ball
00:18:43.260
because I would suggest that by and large, those people are, or would consider themselves pretty
00:18:47.780
mainstream conservatives. And if you need Quebec to win the country, which I'm not sure that you do,
00:18:53.300
but if that's the political strategy of the conservative party of Canada, why aren't you there
00:18:58.000
at an event full of Quebec conservatives? It's just, it's like they want to lose again.
00:19:03.360
I don't know. Exactly. Yeah. Um, the other thing just on that note is I always wonder too,
00:19:08.320
you know, at the beginning, uh, Doug Ford was seen or was heard calling the people that gather
00:19:13.660
in, at the Queens Park protest, a bunch of yahoos. And it's like, well, if you're there in the, uh,
00:19:19.540
the, uh, what's the word I'm looking for, the parliamentary building, uh, then why don't you just
00:19:25.840
come out and address those people? I mean, what's, why wouldn't you want to engage in some dialogue
00:19:31.280
and maybe get some feedback or hear their concerns and, and see if they're valid before,
00:19:36.800
you know, you resort to bullying and name calling. Yeah, that's a great point. And I think David has
00:19:43.800
been so great at explaining the concerns of Yahoo nation. They call themselves now they completely
00:19:50.840
embrace it. Yeah. Um, and, and, uh, I would suggest until Doug Ford started calling them names
00:19:59.400
and belittling them, they were probably Doug Ford voters, um, many, many of them. Um, and we're
00:20:06.780
looking for something different when they voted for Doug Ford. And unfortunately they're getting
00:20:11.040
a lot more of the same from him. And it's very disappointing because I genuinely like him and
00:20:16.880
I was hopeful, um, that Canada's most populous province would have someone who would do something
00:20:23.840
different than the liberals have always done there. Yes, that's right. Um, now I know that it's, um,
00:20:31.860
it's after work for you. Work never ends for me. Yeah. It's 24 seven here. Work never ends for Sheila,
00:20:39.600
but, um, I wanted to, uh, ask you because we do get a lot of freedom, um, about the topics that we can
00:20:48.800
cover here at rebel news. I mean, we basically, if it matters to us, uh, we assume that it matters
00:20:55.240
to a conservative viewer out there. And, uh, so we can talk about these sorts of things. What are some
00:21:01.380
of the issues that you want to use your new platform at rebel news to focus on? Well, definitely going
00:21:07.920
back to that, uh, informed consent and pro-choice across the board. Uh, one of my main, the, the main
00:21:16.440
sort of topics I got into for advocacy was, uh, vaccination and the freedom to make those medical
00:21:25.600
choices. And then of course the parental rights to make those informed choices for your children.
00:21:30.260
Um, so that was, that's something that's been pretty heavily on my radar again, going back about
00:21:35.600
a decade. Um, but more recently with the changes that the liberals brought about to the immunization
00:21:42.400
of school pupils act, uh, and sort of some of the verbiage that's now included in this,
00:21:47.920
this legally binding affidavit, the parents are to sign if they would like their children to be exempt
00:21:53.460
from vaccines. And so just, just around, uh, like I, I keep going back to the, the informed consent
00:22:02.840
and that's true informed consent. And, and I think we're seeing a lot of, um, the,
00:22:08.560
the data and the stats being really skewed by the government during this COVID-19 pandemic and sort
00:22:14.780
of pushing what Randy Hillier even term term coined in our interview, the case-demic. And so it's,
00:22:21.200
it's learning how to go back and actually look at what's really being put out behind the scenes
00:22:26.700
and deciphering for yourself and saying, you know what, these actually, this X, Y, Z doesn't connect
00:22:32.180
here. These dots aren't connecting. And so, um, how do we get more accurate data and stats from our
00:22:39.240
government and from the governing agencies? And how do we give parents and people in general that
00:22:46.200
choice without these potentially incriminating legally binding affidavits? That's very concerning
00:22:52.680
for me. And again, that was the liberals that changed that. I think it was in 2017, they changed
00:22:57.280
the ISPA. Uh, so, so that's where I started a lot of the more advocacy style work and that was on behalf
00:23:04.640
of my child. It's interesting because even if we do get the so-called accurate data from the government
00:23:14.420
with regard to the COVID numbers, they can just come out six months later, six months into two weeks to
00:23:22.600
flatten the curve and say, Oh, by the way, we got it, uh, 94 to 96% wrong, which is what the CDC just
00:23:31.020
did. I was just going to say the CDC, what 6% of people actually died of COVID-19. The 94 other
00:23:37.160
percent of people had comorbidities that were probably what killed them. And, you know, COVID was
00:23:43.620
just an aspect of that. Um, and I think the important thing to note as well, uh, is that freedom of
00:23:49.260
information request that there was a woman, I think it was in Brampton that she did, um, that
00:23:54.060
they, Health Canada hasn't actually isolated the SARS-CoV-2 virus on its own. So it's always been
00:24:01.660
studied or tested, uh, with some sort of protein attached to it. The actual virus itself hasn't
00:24:08.300
been isolated and this isn't common knowledge. I mean, people don't know that they think they
00:24:13.520
trust what the media puts out that, Oh, it's been isolated and we can develop a vaccine now.
00:24:18.160
And actually, well, you know, it hasn't, and we can go back to the Health Canada freedom
00:24:23.720
of information request and, and find that out. I mean, the information's there, it's readily
00:24:27.500
available. You just need to know where to look. And it's sad that in my opinion, it's sad that our
00:24:32.760
governing agencies and our elected officials and our, our mainstream media isn't putting that out
00:24:38.220
there for people to know. Yeah. It, the mainstream media is not asking the questions because they
00:24:44.880
wouldn't want Justin Trudeau's liberals to be wrong. And that's with regard to everything,
00:24:50.040
every, everything that's happening right now. Uh, how many people are actually the hand that feeds
00:24:55.180
you. Thank you. Exactly. Okay. Well, Tamara, it is, we're 22 minutes into the interview and this is
00:25:04.900
your evening with your beautiful family. So I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I hope
00:25:09.940
people got a chance to learn a little bit more about you and the kind of person that you are.
00:25:15.040
And, um, we'll have you back on the show again, very soon.
00:25:28.100
Like with Dre Humphrey and like with Lisa Song Sutton, I'm very excited to see what Tamara does next. I
00:25:33.640
think we are all going to be very busy here at Rebel News because there's absolutely no shortage
00:25:39.560
of government impositions on our lives for us to cover during this pandemic that has no end in sight,
00:25:48.120
no matter how flat that curve gets. The rules are dumb and the government right now is even dumber.
00:25:54.380
And a lot of people are lockdown skeptics and more lockdown skeptics are being created every single day.
00:26:02.040
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see everybody back
00:26:07.140
here in the same time, in the same place next week. And remember, don't let the government tell