John Bolton - February 19, 2026


Floor crossers... The Defectors... with an emphasis on DEFECT


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

184.70929

Word count

1,725

Sentence count

146

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Why would someone cross the aisle and vote for the other party? And why would they think they re safe in a Conservative government? John reflects on the possibility of a Conservative floor crosser and explains why the party should be worried.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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 407 a.m. Thursday, February the 19th, minus 26 in Calgary
00:00:10.380 this morning. And I just had a flashback to my early morning radio announcer days. We used to
00:00:16.320 do time and temp on the radio, time and temp. People get up in the morning, what time is it?
00:00:21.140 What's the temperature outside? It's 407 minus 26 in Calgary today, but I don't want to flashback
00:00:28.620 anymore. I woke up this morning thinking about something. I didn't get to sleep last night like
00:00:33.820 I normally do. I was tossing and turning at around 1030. I woke up shortly after two thinking about
00:00:40.340 Pierpaglia and the Conservative Party. I know it's weird. And what happened yesterday, to be more
00:00:47.400 specific, and the floor crosser, Matt Jenneru. I want to turn lemons into lemonade a little bit here
00:00:54.900 today. We're going to have some fun, all right? I was thinking this morning, why would you do this?
00:01:00.580 Why would you cross the aisle? You're a Conservative, probably, if you're watching right now. Could you
00:01:05.060 easily just switch parties? I couldn't do that. I turned 18 in 1983, and in every election since then,
00:01:15.340 I have voted Conservative, except for one, but I did not vote Liberal or NDP. I spoiled my ballot and
00:01:21.580 voted for a guy named Andy Boyle in the 1993 election who was running for the National Party.
00:01:28.640 I don't even know what they stood for, but that's when the Conservative Party got purged. I think they
00:01:32.940 won two seats in that election. They were pretty much in the wilderness at that point. But every time
00:01:38.580 I voted Conservative. If an election were held today, folks, just to let you know, I would vote Conservative
00:01:42.720 again, because I think things would be a little bit better with the Conservatives, even though I want
00:01:47.820 Alberta Independent. So keep that in mind. I would vote Conservative today. I am a Conservative. I can't
00:01:53.280 vote Liberal, but I couldn't switch parties. Could you do that? No, but these guys have done that, the
00:01:57.560 three that have gone so far. Why would they do that? Well, there's an article yesterday in the National
00:02:03.580 Post, and here it is. Let me bring myself on the screen here. There we go. A National Post spotting a
00:02:10.000 floor crosser after three Conservative defections. Here's how to tell who may be next. Not going to read a lot
00:02:15.820 of this. I don't want to bore you to death. But they go through four different reasons why somebody
00:02:19.800 might do this. But I think they miss the most important one, but there are others as well. So
00:02:25.200 let's just go to this paragraph. It's not that there's anything about Ma. They're talking about
00:02:29.360 Michael Ma in this case, all right, who was one of the crossers, the second one. It's not that there's 0.99
00:02:36.260 anything about Ma as an individual that made him a potential candidate to cross the floor. I think there
00:02:40.980 is. They're missing the number one thing here that all three of these have. I'll get to that in just a
00:02:45.600 moment. It's more that he checks most or all of the key boxes of a potential floor crosser. 0.58
00:02:50.980 Tending to have a lack of deep roots in his party of origin. That's number one. No clear path to
00:02:56.860 playing a key role in governing in the short to medium term. That's number two. A margin of victory
00:03:02.660 of less than five percentage points in the last election. And I pointed that out with Jenneru,
00:03:08.680 who left yesterday, his writing in Edmonton. And at number four, representing an area with an
00:03:14.780 electoral history that suggests it could easily flip to the Liberal Party next election. So I think
00:03:20.280 these things are all valid, but they're missing a number of things. But one in particular. You know
00:03:25.200 what I find fascinating? Let me just show you this. I went online today to get pictures of the three guys
00:03:30.160 that crossed, and I came up with this. Okay, so look here. I got these pictures from
00:03:38.660 ourcommons.ca, and I searched for liberals. They didn't even have the good sense. You can see
00:03:44.640 Corey Hogan down here, who's a liberal. They didn't even have the good sense to remove the file name
00:03:50.000 with Conservative Party in Canada on these things. Talk about adding insult to injury.
00:03:56.060 That's what I found this morning. And I used pictures of these guys for a reason. I'm gonna have
00:04:00.060 some fun with that in just a moment. But why would you do this? Well, first off, they think they're
00:04:07.020 safe. And I think they kind of touched on that in the National Post story. First off, they think that
00:04:11.580 if they went to an election now, as liberals instead of conservatives, they think they can win
00:04:17.260 the riding. So that's the one thing. But the other reason is more dangerous. If you are a conservative,
00:04:23.760 they think they're safe because they believe other people are going to cross the aisle with them and
00:04:28.680 give them a majority as liberals, so they don't have to face their constituents. I think that's another
00:04:35.220 reason why they think there's, you know, they've done this. They may not like their leader. So if
00:04:41.800 you don't like the leader and you're not happy with the party, step aside, let somebody run in
00:04:46.480 your riding who is. Don't switch parties. You don't like the direction of the party. Well, let me ask
00:04:52.700 you this. D'Entremont, Ma, Genereux, the guys that have crossed the aisle, do you like the direction of
00:04:58.620 the Liberal Party? Because up to a minute ago, you didn't. You were a conservative. You were not
00:05:04.380 happy with the way the country is going. Are you all of a sudden happy with the way the country is
00:05:08.780 going? Another reason may be that they're in to enrich themselves. They're doing it for themselves,
00:05:16.780 not for their constituents who put their trust in them, who voted for them. They have, and the number
00:05:22.340 one reason why I think these guys did this is because they have a total lack of character. And
00:05:29.300 that's the thing that the National Post missed. I don't know what these guys do in their real life.
00:05:33.780 They're likely well-educated people, but that doesn't mean you have a good character. They lack
00:05:39.260 integrity. They lack loyalty. They lack perseverance to stick with the party until they can win. They lack
00:05:46.140 courage and they lack accountability because they're not willing to step aside. They're willing to walk
00:05:51.920 across the aisle because they have no character. I think that's the number one thing that these
00:05:57.660 people are lacking and the number one reason why they cross the aisle. They have no character.
00:06:02.660 So how do we deal with this? What do we call these people? If you look here, here's Mario Zalaya.
00:06:10.460 You're seeing a lot of this online right now. Here's Mario Zalaya. Matt Jenner who crosses the floor
00:06:18.060 and joins the Liberal Party. He told us just a few months ago he was going to resign. Matt is a traitor
00:06:23.280 to his party and constituents. What a joke. You know, I'm kind of sensitive to the word traitor.
00:06:29.320 It gets thrown around a lot these days. I'm part of the independence movement. We're all a bunch
00:06:33.860 of traitors. So I'm kind of sensitive to that. So I was thinking more about something like this.
00:06:42.980 The defectors for obvious reason, but focus in on the defect, their character defect. These guys lack
00:06:52.080 character. And I blocked off the left-hand side of the screen here for a reason, okay, which I'll get
00:06:57.520 to in just a moment. And I'll try to turn this into a positive for those of you who are concerned
00:07:02.440 about what happened. I understand your concern. We'll try to turn those lemons into lemonade.
00:07:08.040 We'll try to see the glass half full in just a moment.
00:07:10.520 But if you're running an election against these guys, you need to focus in on their character
00:07:16.340 defect. They can't be trusted. They have betrayed their constituents. Up until a minute ago,
00:07:23.140 they were a conservative and now they're part of the party that's ruining your country.
00:07:27.340 I think they lack courage. I think they're cowards. They didn't want to stick it out on a team
00:07:31.520 that they were on to try to win in the future because they have a character defect.
00:07:38.500 And I think they're tailor-made to be liberals. I put these together this morning. Right? Right?
00:07:51.800 But how do you turn this into a positive?
00:07:56.280 Well, at least you know they're no longer in your party and they couldn't be trusted. So it's good.
00:08:00.620 They're like cockroaches, right? You've shone the light on them and they've scurried to the darkness,
00:08:04.840 which is the liberal party right now. So it's good to know that they're gone. I say that,
00:08:09.760 you know, liberals don't integrate. They infiltrate. You know, a lot of people leave
00:08:13.880 in California to go to Florida and to Texas, which are Republican states, but they go there
00:08:20.600 and vote Democrat, right? They don't integrate. They infiltrate. So, you know, they infiltrated
00:08:25.020 the conservative party. In the United States, they call them rhinos. I guess we call them chinos over
00:08:30.040 here. Conservative in name only, because obviously they weren't true conservatives. As I asked earlier,
00:08:34.840 could you just all of a sudden be a liberal? No, you couldn't do that. How is it possible for them?
00:08:39.340 Well, they have a character defect. They lack character. It's good that they're gone. Now,
00:08:43.340 the only danger is, are there any more? What do the liberals need now? Is it three seats?
00:08:48.540 Are there three more conservatives in the caucus right now, waiting to go across to the safety of
00:08:53.440 the Liberal Party to give them their majority? There was that 12 and a half percent that voted
00:08:58.500 against Polyev at his leadership review back in late January. Are there more waiting to cross?
00:09:05.060 Time will tell, but at least they're gone. And that's a good thing. Let me know what you think.
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