John Bolton - May 22, 2026


Did Premier Smith Save The Independence Movement？ We Must be United


Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

181.36493

Word count

2,219

Sentence count

118

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel 455 a.m. Friday, May 22nd. I hope you're having
00:00:09.220 a great start to your Friday. No doubt you want the day to end quickly so you can get
00:00:13.280 to the weekend. I have the big blue mug of coffee. Thank you so much for being here.
00:00:18.640 Just before I get into this video, which I hope doesn't go on too long, I sent a text
00:00:23.680 message out to Mitch Sylvester and I'm hoping to talk to Mitch this morning, so watch for
00:00:28.820 that video today. I've sat here for the last 10 to 15 minutes thinking about how to start this
00:00:35.600 video. I'm concerned about something, and it might not be the same thing you're concerned about after
00:00:40.220 hearing Danielle Smith last night, and I've come to a couple of conclusions here. I did an interview
00:00:46.200 with Keith Wilson last night. I'll put a card at the end so you can watch that. It's worth every
00:00:51.160 minute of it, I believe, and I started off that interview by saying, Keith, maybe you can turn
00:00:55.980 some lemons into lemonade here for me. And I think Keith did that. And I had an epiphany when I did
00:01:01.500 that interview with Keith last night as well. I'm going to come to a conclusion about Danielle
00:01:05.580 Smith in just a moment that I think maybe some other people will come up with. I'm going to tell
00:01:09.780 you what that is in just a moment. You, if you are part of the independence movement, wanted to hear
00:01:14.420 Danielle Smith saying, we are going to have a vote on independence, an up or down vote in October,
00:01:20.400 but we didn't get that. We got this. Without reading the whole thing, basically what this
00:01:27.380 gives us an opportunity to do is to vote on having a vote on independence, which would happen
00:01:33.800 maybe around this time next year, give or take a month in either direction. That's what we've been
00:01:38.960 told. A lot of people are mad at Danielle Smith, very mad. They are fuming online with Danielle
00:01:46.100 Smith. They're going to bring her down, folks. She didn't do what we wanted. And I understand 1.00
00:01:52.200 how they feel. But folks, what's the ultimate goal here? The ultimate goal is to win our
00:02:00.920 independence. Did you think this was going to be easy? I didn't. We've had all kinds of roadblocks
00:02:10.720 in the way, but somebody has been removing the roadblocks that have got in the way. More on that
00:02:17.200 in just a moment. What I'm concerned about here is the people that are expending so much energy
00:02:22.440 on going after Danielle Smith. We need to put our energy into winning this thing in October,
00:02:28.340 regardless of what the question is. If you listen to the interview I did with Keith Wilson,
00:02:32.520 he did turn those lemons into lemonade in a way. Now, you know, I like quotes
00:02:39.120 and I'm going to put a quote on the screen for you right now. And then I'm going to get to
00:02:43.740 what we need to do and what's very important right now. And what I plan on doing over the
00:02:52.180 next week or so to try to make sure we're keeping our eyes on the prize. This is a quote. Now,
00:02:58.520 let me explain what happened here. Harvard, 1975, a man shows up to do a speech at Harvard,
00:03:04.360 a man who never even finished high school. Somebody yells from the audience,
00:03:08.460 can you give us a poem? And the man on stage said these two words.
00:03:13.760 He pointed at himself and said, me. And he pointed at the audience and he said, we.
00:03:21.820 meaning we're all in this together now who said this it was Muhammad Ali this is the shortest
00:03:31.040 poem ever written and that's the way we need to think of this me we we need to be unified here
00:03:39.240 we need to focus our energy on winning in October that's been the goal all along what happens after
00:03:46.160 that is fine. But we need to focus on winning on the question that Danielle Smith gave us last
00:03:54.240 night. I asked, well, actually, I didn't ask Keith Wilson. I made this statement to Keith
00:03:59.780 near the end of the interview I did with him last night. And I stand by this. It's very important
00:04:06.880 that we heed these words. I have a request of all the people who are part of this movement
00:04:14.440 in this province and we've got different groups working on different things but we're stronger
00:04:20.480 together than we are apart we need to work together leave the egos at the door for christ
00:04:27.780 sakes let's work together on this and we can win this thing this isn't about who's leading it
00:04:34.340 everybody can have their part here i have a small part just like the people who were out collecting
00:04:39.920 those signatures had their part i always thank them because they were doing so much for this
00:04:44.140 movement. For God's sakes, let's work together. This is very important. I completely agree 100%
00:04:49.820 that we have to do that to win. We have to do that so we can develop a coordinated strategy.
00:04:54.860 We don't have that right now. It's critical. It's critical. Success requires it. And I think we can
00:05:01.180 get there. Let me put it to you this way. All of this righteous rage towards Danielle Smith plays
00:05:07.660 right into the hands of people like Nahed Nenshi who must be loving this. So, we need to focus on
00:05:14.520 being unified and winning with the question, even though it's not exactly what we wanted.
00:05:21.480 Now, in my interview with Keith last night, I took the side of Danielle Smith in this,
00:05:27.140 and I'm coming to a conclusion in just a moment that dawned on me overnight, you may not like it, 0.95
00:05:32.880 But folks, it's probably true. 0.95
00:05:35.540 I asked Keith about what Danielle Smith did, and here was his response.
00:05:40.320 Let me play it from Premier Danielle Smith's side here and maybe defend her a bit.
00:05:45.220 Now, don't throw anything at your screens if you're watching this right now because people are upset.
00:05:49.400 Was this her only play?
00:05:50.940 Because our petitions are held up in court.
00:05:54.580 Lukasik's question, would it have been held up in court?
00:05:58.080 Would there have been court challenges for that?
00:05:59.860 would it would we ever get that question to a ballot on a referendum in the fall was this her
00:06:05.780 only play in this situation so how i gamed it out and i previously gamed this out that's why i was
00:06:12.260 able to react so quickly i hadn't gamed out her question because i didn't see that coming that
00:06:18.180 was really creative i thought what i gamed out was if she announces tonight that on october 19th it's
00:06:25.540 up or down vote in other words you either vote to stay or leave just like brexit was stay leave
00:06:31.860 and then the first nations the few of the chiefs that are acting as political opportunists for
00:06:39.700 ottawa in my view um uh convince another ottawa appointed judge to shut down the provincial
00:06:50.020 referendum then we're completely on ice yeah you know i'm gonna phone you up and say hey let's go
00:06:56.740 on a bike ride to banff man right yeah not that that's a bad idea but you see that we'd be
00:07:01.620 completely shut down yeah this the way she did it and i listened carefully to her words she's right
00:07:08.580 the courts can't touch this one and it keeps the power with the people in the meantime
00:07:13.860 and allows the rest of us to get our act together the courts can't touch this one
00:07:18.500 power to the people. Now, I got a question for you. You know, I can see Corey Morgan coming up
00:07:27.000 with this conclusion as well. He's talked about this when it's happened two times before.
00:07:32.220 This could be the third time. Did Danielle Smith save the independence movement last night?
00:07:39.360 You need to think of it from that perspective, because think of it this way. Prior to the Smith
00:07:45.500 government dropping the signature threshold down to around 177,000 signatures and change. It was
00:07:52.040 600,000. We only got 300,000 signatures, folks. And you'll remember just before Christmas,
00:07:59.120 they passed Bill 14, which allowed us to actually go out and get those signatures. And now,
00:08:05.420 if she had gone ahead with Lukasik's question, chances are it would have been held up in court,
00:08:10.540 maybe for years, and you wouldn't have any question on a ballot in October, but you've got
00:08:17.180 this one. I asked Keith about this, and he came to this conclusion about what Daniel Smith did
00:08:25.580 last night. People are calling for a head right now online. They were talking about this days
00:08:30.040 ago. If she doesn't give us a vote, an up and down vote on independence in October, that
00:08:36.240 they're gonna they're gonna get rid of her um and is that a wise thing to do we get rid of
00:08:41.860 danielle smith we got nenshi and the ndp waiting around the corner i mean there's lots of there's
00:08:46.340 lots of strategy going on here in different ways this can play out and that would end it like
00:08:49.920 that's the thing so yeah and what people have to ask themselves just like you did and i did
00:08:55.020 um okay did she what option did she have given this intervention by the courts yeah and that
00:09:01.240 boxed her in. She was boxed in. And she may have saved the independence movement by giving us this
00:09:07.740 question in the fall. That's the way I see this. Now, what's my goal over the next little while?
00:09:14.600 I want to make sure we're unified here. You know, there's a place in this for Keith Wilson. There's
00:09:19.180 a place in this for Mitch Sylvester. There's a place in this for Jeff Rath. There's a place in
00:09:23.420 this for Chris Scott. There's a place in this for me. There's a place in this for you, me, we,
00:09:29.360 let's be unified. Now, we've been looking for a leader. We can all be leaders here. We're not
00:09:37.440 going to have a singular leader of this movement. A lot of you have been talking about Keith is
00:09:42.640 leading this movement. I don't think he wants that position. I don't want that position. A lot
00:09:47.760 of people don't want that position. But Keith says he's stepping up. We need to support him.
00:09:53.520 We need to support Mitch. We need to support the other groups who are fighting for a common goal,
00:09:58.480 which is independence. I asked Keith about this last night about him. He's cutting back on his
00:10:03.640 work and his law office so he can focus on this. This is a good thing. I'm going to wrap it up
00:10:08.640 here in just a moment. You're stepping up a lot in this, aren't you? You're going to be spending a
00:10:12.880 lot. Yeah. You're going to be spending a lot more time doing this. I am, you know, and I was just
00:10:17.360 on another podcast. You're like, will you lead them? Like there's no campaign. You know, I teased
00:10:22.740 it was Derek Smith I said you're gonna be my campaign manager but let me be clear I'm prepared
00:10:29.660 to do more I'm prepared to be more visual I did my first CTV interview today that their request
00:10:36.420 and there was like some valve opened I'm going to be on CBC twice tomorrow once with the house
00:10:42.080 and another with Rosemary Barton and I'm looking forward to I want them to come at me really hard
00:10:48.500 and try and ask me the hard questions i'm looking forward very much uh to to uh my debate on monday
00:10:55.360 in calgary the public debate with jason kenney and i hope to see you there john i will be i will
00:11:00.880 be thank you and so uh and i want to be on your show a lot more and i want to um as was reported
00:11:08.920 in the national post in that story that donna kennedy glans released last weekend where she
00:11:14.400 spent a lot of time with me over a period of days and really deep deeping into who is Keith Wilson
00:11:19.280 and where do I want to go with this and you know she revealed something which is I've reduced my
00:11:24.660 my caseload my client base by 75 percent and I've done that so I can really dedicate and volunteer
00:11:32.000 my time to help advance independence so I'm very serious about this I appreciate all the kind words
00:11:38.080 of support and encouragement that I've had I'm going to put my shoulder to the wheel man and
00:11:42.100 we're going to move forward and we're going to make this happen. At the risk of sounding like
00:11:45.980 a broken record, we need to unify. We can either focus our attention on winning in October with
00:11:52.800 this question, which isn't ideal, or we can put our energy towards fighting about other things
00:11:58.260 and with each other, which is going to do us no good whatsoever. Let me know what you think in
00:12:03.020 the comments. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel,
00:12:07.160 ring the bell for notifications. I will see you in the next one.
00:12:12.100 You