Sheila and Keean take a look back at Rebel's best political stories
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, my friend and colleague Kian Bextie and I take a look back at the crazy, crazy year that was 2019. We discuss our favourite stories, the most fun to do, and the stories that could only be told by us here at Rebel News.
Transcript
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Hello Rebels, Happy New Year and a very Merry Christmas.
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I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my Wednesday
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However, you can watch it whenever you feel like or listen to it whenever you feel like
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Tonight my guest is my friend and my colleague, Kian Bexty.
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Kian Bextie and I take a look back at the year that was at Rebel News.
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I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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It has been some kind of crazy, crazy year, has it not, friends?
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Alberta, well, we liberated ourselves from the NDP in a landslide victory
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And Eastern Canada, primarily Toronto and Montreal, have re-elected
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gropey, black-faced, two-faced, fancy-sock laughing-stock
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Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for all of us.
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And so, of course, the West, well, they want out.
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Along the way in this crazy, crazy year here at Rebel News,
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we did some really great journalism that nobody else was doing
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and we did it on both sides of the longest undefended border in the world.
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And so tonight, I've invited my friend, my colleague, Kian Bextie on the show
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so that we may take a look back at some of our favorite stories from this past year
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and some of the stories that could only be told by us here at Rebel News.
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So joining me now is my friend and colleague, Kian Bextie,
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and we're going to do a little retrospective on the year that was.
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I want to talk a little bit about some of our favorite stories,
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some of the stories that were the most fun to do,
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And I think you're a perfect encapsulation of that
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because we joke we're going to release the Kian on a story.
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You just get on a plane and you show up wherever the news is happening
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I'll tell you mine and then you can tell me yours.
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Mine was the ability to fly to Iraq to tell the story
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I mean we as everybody who donated to our crowdfunding efforts
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It was, you know, that was a project that's a couple years old
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and to see the changes that we've made in the lives of Christians in Iraq,
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One of the most profound moments, I guess, of my entire life
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My favorite story of 2019 was probably the United We Roll convoy,
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that whole saga that went from Alberta to Ottawa.
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But I was remembering what you were telling me about your Iraq trip,
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about how you were bombing around these planes with the priest,
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listening to hymns, basically, that you sing in your own church.
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Like I think that that's like, it's pretty hard to top something like that,
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like a moment like that where you realize that these Christians out in Iraq
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are fighting, you know, this fight that you can relate to on a religious level,
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but we can't really, just like when I was in Hong Kong,
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we couldn't really, in Canada, it's hard to explain to Canadians
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But my favorite story, probably United We Roll,
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For me, I think that was one of your greatest stories
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and that you were there to tell the other side of the story
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They just want work for their friends and for their communities.
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And they were being absolutely axe murdered in the mainstream media.
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that you were there to tell the other side of the story,
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Yeah, I mean, the mainstream media wasn't sharing this part of the story
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that, you know, as we were driving across the Trans-Canada Highway,
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there were hundreds of people lined up in just kilometer stretches.
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You know, as we'd get to towns, it would turn into a bit of a parade.
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there would still be people spattered at the end of driveways.
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There was this one mother in a bathrobe holding her baby
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And she was just there with a little sign in her child cheering us on.
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They just wanted to know that there was these, you know,
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Maybe they were going to arrest him when they got there.
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When really they were just oil and gas workers out of work,
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And it was interesting because a lot of the opposition to United We Roll
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came from within the official pro-oil sands movement.
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came from people who couldn't organize things the way that they could.
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What was the most fun story for you to do in 2019?
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There was a, there's this, here's, here's the background.
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We, I was coming back from a Donald Trump rally.
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I was coming back from a Donald Trump rally in Florida
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and the closest airport that we could get to was Atlanta.
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So I was driving from the Florida panhandle to Atlanta.
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And in the middle of the night, as I'm trying to get to my flight at 6 a.m.,
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And the bush in Alabama is about 40 feet tall on both sides of the road.
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And then all of a sudden there's a clearing with two lights sort of hovering on the clearing.
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And it's this like Black Hawk helicopter just hovering in this clearing.
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And then there's a few others that went overhead.
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And then I hear news reports that the FBI raided a terrorist compound in Alabama.
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And to get to Georgia from the Florida panhandle,
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And it was the same terrorist that was, that had a compound in New Mexico.
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So after I landed from Atlanta, I ended up packing my stuff again
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and went right back to Atlanta to go to this road
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that I just happened to be driving on at like 2 a.m.
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and they explained to me which gravel road to go down.
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with this new drone, never flown one in my life.
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But we wanted to record everything that was there
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because the compound in New Mexico was bulldozed by the FBI.
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and were picking up bullets in the sand and manuscripts.
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And it was just so confusing why the FBI would bulldoze something
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they would have known that there was another compound in Alabama,
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you know, sooner than six months down the road.
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the tires that they have set up for the kids to jump through.
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And I drove the drone right along the school bus to peer inside
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because, you know, you don't get to fly a drone
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Yeah, especially a small-town boy from Vulcan, Alberta,
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flying a drone to examine a terrorist facility in the United States.
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For me, I guess my most fun stories actually involve you.
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When I get recognized by the left, they normally attack.
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So I stood back and did it like wildlife photography.
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I didn't want to interrupt them in their natural habitat.
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And we got some really great footage from that, you know,
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One of my favorite videos, I think, ever that you've done
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the next word out of their mouth was that Greta's my hero
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When you broke their hearts and showed them the car,
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And, you know, it shouldn't be fun to deflate their dreams,
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but it was great to bring those kids to reality.
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because Greta Thunberg is the biggest climate hypocrite
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You know, climate contraband everywhere from her car.
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And today she just tweeted two pictures of her dogs.
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and she wants you to throw out all your plastic.
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She just, she'll tell you that you got to get rid
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of all of your pets, all of your climate contraband.
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But when it comes to her, she'll ride in first class
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across the sea, but not tell you about the people
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because that goes against her narrative, right?
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but I think what you mentioned at the start of this video
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was, you know, what was the most important thing
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maybe that was probably the most important thing
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Because nobody, up until the time that I interviewed her,
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My next question for you would have been the story
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We can't touch, Greta's a child soldier for the left.
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We can't attack her because she's a child soldier,
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when you went to Edmonton and found her parents
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you asked her questions until it became apparent
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stuck the knife in her adult handlers, so to speak.
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if I were to say what was, you know, of your work,
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that necessitate, like shows why we're necessary,
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but I'm racking my brain through all the stories
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that we've done now, now that we bring this up.
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And there's stuff that we covered in the United States
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that the mainstream media wasn't even covering.
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That was one of my first, like, explosive stories.
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my handlers tell me that it's okay to condemn them
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from interviewing the most high-profile congresswoman