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

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

John Bolton - May 22, 2026

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

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