John Bolton - May 26, 2026


Wilson⧸Kenney Showdown In Calgary - Is It Hope vs Fear？


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

183.93748

Word count

1,891

Sentence count

146

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

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, 3.40 a.m. It is Tuesday, May the 26th. Thank
00:00:08.580 you so much for being here. I do appreciate it. I get the feeling that in a few years,
00:00:16.860 about 10 times as many people will claim they were at the great debate between Keith Wilson
00:00:21.860 and former Premier Jason Kenney than were actually there. I happened to be in the room
00:00:26.580 last night. I can assure you of that. And I was glad to be there. It was a full house. It was
00:00:32.060 sold out. I'd like to thank the person that got me the ticket. I missed out on tickets too,
00:00:37.420 but I managed to get in the room and I was glad it was there.
00:00:42.640 It was a respectful discussion between the former premier and Keith Wilson. There were no cheap
00:00:48.800 shots, which I really appreciated. Were there any knockout punches? No. Everybody waits for
00:00:55.120 the knockout punch, but very seldom. It happens. I did a video just prior to the debate last night
00:00:59.820 talking about that. The crowd got into it a little bit, didn't applaud a lot or hoot and
00:01:05.840 holler very much because that would eat into the time of the debater. So I thought that was a good
00:01:10.880 thing, but there were a lot of oohs and ahs and, you know, face palming. And I did that a few times
00:01:17.680 when Jason Kenney was talking. So I thought this morning, how am I going to analyze and review the
00:01:23.280 debate I saw last night and I thought, you know, I don't have to do that. I did it sitting in the
00:01:27.960 seats at the theater right after the debate. And here are my thoughts. Hi, it's John and welcome
00:01:33.860 back to the Grand Theater downtown Calgary. The big debate is over between Keith Wilson
00:01:38.860 and former Premier Jason Kenney. Now I want to start out by saying that this was a Keith Wilson
00:01:44.080 room tonight. By far the people here were on his side. Was there an out and out winner here? I mean,
00:01:51.660 I'm biased. Keith was the winner. I agree with what he had to say. And the reason I say that is
00:01:58.320 not simply because I want Alberta independence, it's because the answer I'm looking for to this
00:02:03.800 question has still not come. And Jason Kenney didn't answer it tonight. Give me one good reason
00:02:09.360 why Alberta should stay in Canada. He didn't do that in this one hour debate, not once. And what
00:02:17.140 he brought us was a lot of fear. He's trying to sell fear. If you leave, you'll lose your passport.
00:02:24.960 If you leave, they'll shut down your pipelines. If you leave, you'll be landlocked. If you leave,
00:02:31.620 Edmonton and Calgary will vote to leave Alberta. This is, and thousands upon thousands of people
00:02:37.060 will leave the province. This is what he had to say. Meanwhile, Keith was talking about the hope
00:02:42.220 for the future. And that's what I believe in. You know, the people in the independence movement
00:02:47.820 aren't afraid of what's coming. There's a saying, fortune favors the brave. We're not afraid of
00:02:54.600 what's coming in the future. We're afraid of what's coming from the East. We're afraid of 0.96
00:02:58.560 what's coming from Ottawa. And the other thing that Jason Kenney did a lot was try to pull on
00:03:03.500 people's heartstrings. He went over all the things that have been accomplished in Canada
00:03:07.700 in years past. But as we know what's going on here, the Canada that these people remember is
00:03:15.400 not the Canada of today. This is what we're telling people who use patriotism as their one
00:03:21.140 and only reason for Alberta to stay in Canada. Now, this video will come up in a couple of days.
00:03:27.100 You'll be able to watch it. I enjoyed it. It was a little bit short. And in this debate situation
00:03:32.720 we had here, there wasn't always an opportunity to rebut what the other person was saying. There
00:03:38.580 were lots of compliments for each other, of course, very respectful. But overall, I think
00:03:43.200 Keith did a better job because he was very positive about what he had to say, while Jason
00:03:48.580 Kenney was being very negative and trying to spread fear about what happens with Alberta
00:03:54.040 independence. That's just my take. After the debate, I asked a lot of people what they thought,
00:03:59.020 and they had the same take that I did but what did Keith Wilson think? I had a chance to talk to
00:04:05.660 him right after the debate. I asked him how he did and how Jason Kenney did as well. I'm here with
00:04:12.500 Keith Wilson just moments after after the debate here at the Grand Theatre in downtown Calgary and
00:04:17.740 Keith just overall your thoughts on the debate how you did tonight and how Jason Kenney did perhaps.
00:04:23.060 Well others will decide how I did but my my view is John that I was surprised that former Premier
00:04:28.700 kenny because uh he didn't bring anything and what i mean by that he didn't bring a plan he
00:04:33.740 acknowledged the unfairness of equalization he acknowledged how ottawa holds alberta back and
00:04:39.980 holds our economy back how it's increasing the cost of living for our children and creating
00:04:44.460 an affordability crisis acknowledged all of those things but he had no plan for how those concerns
00:04:52.060 could be resolved and addressed by staying in canada and the only thing he did have was fear
00:04:57.580 he kept bringing up fear fear of this fear of that and he was appealing to emotion and i was
00:05:04.300 disappointed that he didn't offer any alternative it's clear to me given the information i provided
00:05:11.740 to the audience that the logical and legal pathway for alberta having control of our
00:05:17.420 future and building a prosperous future for our children is to support independence former premier
00:05:22.220 Kenny did use emotion and it's very powerful. Nostalgia, right? The wonderful Canada of the
00:05:30.660 past and people, it's just so wonderful. You get a warm and fuzzy feeling. The people on the
00:05:36.560 independent side don't see that anymore. We don't believe that Canada exists anymore. The other side
00:05:40.940 still hasn't caught on. And of course, the emotion of fear, which is a great way to motivate people.
00:05:46.920 I don't know whether other people are seeing this, but I see a parallel to what happened in
00:05:52.720 the election last year, how the liberals played people like fiddles by scaring them about Donald
00:05:59.200 Trump. And this fear tactic is going to be used moving forward. The fear of the unknown,
00:06:05.820 the fear of the future. We need to be prepared for that. We need to learn how to use emotion
00:06:11.200 on our side. It was discussed a lot at this event after the debate, which I went to. The path to
00:06:18.080 Alberta nationhood, which was terrific. You know, I've often said that liberals think emotionally
00:06:23.200 and conservatives think logically. That's how the liberals got in. The logic in us said,
00:06:28.940 why are you voting for these people? The reason we've got all this trouble is because of 10 years
00:06:33.240 of the Liberal Party, while the other side were motivated by fear. How do we tap into emotion on
00:06:40.660 our side. It was discussed a lot at that after debate party last night. The landlocked thing,
00:06:49.380 Kenny brought that up. And one of the best lines of the night, I wasn't able to type them all down.
00:06:54.080 I'm not really good at typing with my thumb. So there were a number of them. Keith had some good
00:06:57.000 ones. Keith went after the landlocked thing by saying the following, we're landlocked by Ottawa,
00:07:02.700 policy landlocked and it it takes you to the overarching idea that i have that it's the
00:07:10.360 establishment versus the little guy alberta's the little guy we're the underdog versus the
00:07:15.960 establishment jason kenney is the establishment pure poly of the establishment nehead nenshi the
00:07:23.320 establishment jay danielle smith the establishment it's us against them people like rooting for the
00:07:30.900 underdog. And maybe we should play up on that a little bit as well. Keith said that Trump has
00:07:35.440 approved more pipelines than Carney, although Kenny brought up Trump as well. Again, the fear
00:07:39.640 factor came into that. And Kenny brought up the indigenous a lot. He was totally wrong about what
00:07:45.340 he said, how the indigenous would block this. He also brought up the fact, it may have been
00:07:49.940 mentioned here already, that Calgary and Edmonton will vote to separate from Alberta, which isn't
00:07:56.300 really possible either. It was a great discussion last night. I enjoyed it very much. I actually went
00:08:01.560 up and I shook Jason Kenney's hand. I got this picture taken with him right here. I went up,
00:08:08.140 shook his hand, and I said, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you doing this.
00:08:13.180 And then I said to him, I am vehemently opposed to what you believe in, but thanks again. And
00:08:19.320 our conversation ended after that. Now, I did have an opportunity to meet somebody last night
00:08:25.360 that just thrilled me. I had not crossed paths with this woman. She had been at events I couldn't
00:08:30.900 attend, and I wanted to meet her. And I walked out of the debate last night onto First Street
00:08:35.400 Southwest, and I looked across the street, and I yelled, Tamara. And it was Tamara Leach. She was
00:08:43.000 there with Rebel News last night with her husband, who I met as well. It was very nice to meet him
00:08:47.600 as well. But I had a nice talk with Tamara last night. How such a diminutive woman can have such
00:08:56.080 heart, such strength, such soul, such conviction, it astounds me. She's not very tall. As you can
00:09:04.520 see in this picture right here, I tower over her, but she's such a nice person. And I asked her,
00:09:11.280 everything you've been through, was it worth it? And she didn't hesitate. It was worth every
00:09:15.960 minute of it. And she's still going through things now. So it was nice to meet her. I got her card.
00:09:20.520 I will have her on the channel. I want to talk to her about her past and what she's gone through.
00:09:25.640 It's been talked about so much, but I think I have some different questions for her. But I want to
00:09:30.260 talk to her about the Alberta independence movement because we had a long discussion
00:09:33.940 leaving the debate, going over to the after debate party they had. And she's got some great insight
00:09:39.120 on that. Wonderful night. It was really great. Make sure you watch the video. I think you'll
00:09:43.840 enjoy it very much. I think you'll enjoy the debate. The Aristotle Foundation put this on
00:09:48.160 last night. I think Mark Mielke did a great job. He was a great moderator. So, Mr. Mielke,
00:09:53.320 well done last night. I enjoyed your interaction with Mr. Kenney and with Mr. Wilson as well.
00:09:59.860 But the debate is worth it. Will it change any minds? I don't know. But a lot of minds have to
00:10:05.720 be changed between now and October 19th when we have the referendum. Thanks for watching. If you
00:10:10.380 If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up,
00:10:12.280 subscribe to the channel, ring the bell for notifications.
00:10:14.940 I'll see you in the next one.