Juno News - July 17, 2026


Americans FURIOUS over Canadian wildfires


Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

165.48

Word count

2,959

Sentence count

161

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

9

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

A Canadian woman is arrested in New Jersey, and a candidate for governor of Michigan issues a stern warning to Canada to get its forest fires under control, no excuses. Plus, a look at Canada's relationship with the United States.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 A candidate for governor of Michigan has posted a stern warning to Canada to get its forest fires
00:00:12.440 under control. No excuses. Stop the smoke. Republican John James posted this ominous
00:00:20.600 message on X. Final warning to Canada. Manage your forests to prevent these fires. American
00:00:27.740 lungs are paying the price for Canadian inaction year after year. Sovereignty comes with responsibility
00:00:36.400 and the responsibility to prevent a foreseeable disaster from crossing into another country's
00:00:43.020 airspace has not been met. There are over 800 wildfires burning across Canada and the smoke
00:00:50.780 from those fires has drifted over heavily populated areas of both Canada and the United States.
00:00:56.460 Over 100 million people have been exposed to dangerous pollutants.
00:01:01.880 The Canadian government has offered to help a woman arrested by ICE officers in New Jersey.
00:01:08.020 33-year-old Caitlin Tracy is in custody facing multiple charges
00:01:12.240 after allegedly assaulting a teenager over the July 4th weekend.
00:01:17.500 The video appears to show a woman slapping a teenage girl wearing Trump-branded clothing.
00:01:26.460 Foreign Affairs officials released this statement to Juneau News, and I'll get to that in a second.
00:01:32.440 Global Affairs Canada is aware of the arrest of a Canadian citizen arrested in New Jersey.
00:01:38.200 Consular officials are providing consular assistance and are in contact with local authorities.
00:01:45.960 U.S. Homeland Security released its own statement.
00:01:49.800 Caitlin Tracy is a criminal, illegal alien from Canada who was charged with simple assault,
00:01:57.240 neglect of a child, and compounding crime and harassing communication. 0.96
00:02:03.520 She allegedly struck a teenage girl wearing pro-Trump memorabilia on a boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach
00:02:11.880 during the 4th of July weekend.
00:02:15.280 Our guest today is Georgian Burke, communications expert and political strategist.
00:02:19.380 Welcome to the show, Georgian.
00:02:20.900 Thank you, Mark.
00:02:21.740 Nice to see you.
00:02:22.840 We've got a couple of stories that kind of speak to our relationship, Canada's relationship
00:02:27.340 to the United States.
00:02:28.180 You, of course, have U.S. and Canadian citizenship, so I think you're perfectly positioned to
00:02:32.920 talk about this.
00:02:34.260 Why don't we start with John James?
00:02:35.660 This is an individual probably unknown in Canada, but he seems to be one of those rising
00:02:40.900 stars in the Republican Party, a guy who is running for governor. I guess he was a congressman
00:02:47.280 for a while, correct? For one term. And well, he's posted some things online, which are, I have to
00:02:53.800 say, decidedly undiplomatic, at least from my view. This is a stern warning. He says, final warning to
00:03:02.580 Canada. No excuses. Stop the smoke. Manage your forests to prevent these fires. American lungs
00:03:11.520 are paying the price for Canadian inaction year after year. Then he says sovereignty comes
00:03:17.880 with responsibility, and the responsibility to prevent a foreseeable disaster from crossing
00:03:24.140 into another country's airspace has not been met. Now, we know that he's a Trump favorite,
00:03:29.640 right? He was endorsed for governor by Trump, who has, as you know, floated the idea of Canada
00:03:36.040 becoming the 51st state. And here he is talking about Canada's sovereignty and the fact that we
00:03:41.920 are not meeting our responsibility as a sovereign state. What should Canadians make of this?
00:03:46.880 So, first of all, they shouldn't get all wound up with the word sovereignty. He's making the point
00:03:50.420 that since Canada constantly is talking about being a sovereign nation, they should act like one.
00:03:56.200 This is not the first time that the U.S. has been subjected to smoke from Canadian wildfires, some from Quebec, some from Ontario, some from out west.
00:04:06.800 Part of it may be the fact that they have the same bad habits about forest maintenance that they have out in California.
00:04:13.780 That is, they don't clear the underbrush.
00:04:15.380 They don't do those things because there's some kind of wild notion among the people, the enviro-Nazis, as I like to call them, or whatever, enviro-fascists, whatever you want to call them, that they think somehow that clearing the forest of brush is harming the environment.
00:04:34.140 I don't know how that would be.
00:04:35.200 What harms the environment is having these fires out of control and polluting the air.
00:04:39.380 I spoke to someone yesterday who lives in Toronto, and she said she walked out of her door and the sky was yellow in the morning, yellow, and she said you could barely get a breath.
00:04:51.440 That's in Canada, and it's actually going over the border into Michigan and other border states, northern New York state and so forth.
00:04:58.640 And this is preventable if they have the proper forest maintenance activities going on, and I don't think they do.
00:05:05.880 That's what he's talking about.
00:05:07.040 he isn't talking believe me he's not talking about taking over Canada as a 51st state he is not I
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00:06:22.120 better to be safe than sorry. All right. The other matter involving Caitlin Tracy, of course,
00:06:27.260 she's the 33 year old canadian lady who was illegally in the united states now you would
00:06:33.260 think georgianne that if you're going to be in the united states illegally and you know you're
00:06:37.740 not there you know legally then you would be sort of taking a low profile and yet if you look at
00:06:45.660 some of the video of her slapping this girl really video which she took herself by the way
00:06:52.940 she took that video herself yes yeah there it is right there you can see her taking a hard
00:07:00.120 slap at that woman and then walking away i mean what do you make of this situation
00:07:06.740 americans must just be amazed this is getting to your point earlier uh before we even started the
00:07:14.580 interview this is getting all sorts of play on fox news and every other cable station in the in
00:07:20.080 the country. So this belies the notion that Canadians are nice people. She is not helping
00:07:28.340 the image of Canadians in the United States by behavior like this. Actually, when I saw the
00:07:35.240 story, at first I thought it was like a joke. Then I realized when I saw the video of her
00:07:40.440 and that it was actually getting serious that there was commentary coming from U.S. government
00:07:46.420 officials saying that this woman was in the country illegally what she did was she overstayed
00:07:51.060 her visa she it wasn't that she she came over with some kind of a visa a visitor's visa or whatever
00:07:56.080 but she didn't leave she's married to an american um they're both very far left activists uh they
00:08:03.320 hate trump that's clear this is a guy her husband uh was in a video kneeling on the ground in
00:08:09.080 praying position praying that uh trump's family would all die including the children of cancer 0.95
00:08:14.280 so that tells you the mental illness that is running through this couple but she thought it 0.82
00:08:19.280 would be okay to walk up to some teenager wearing trump pro pro trump or pro pro ice i'm not exactly 1.00
00:08:27.580 sure what was on her clothing but whatever it was the woman found it offensive and she thought it 1.00
00:08:32.320 was okay to walk up to her and smack her like not once but a couple of times and dummy take a video 1.00
00:08:38.900 of herself doing it and put it out on social media and she thought that that was just going 0.90
00:08:43.860 to be fine i don't know what kind of mental illness it takes to think like that but clearly
00:08:49.840 there's something not totally working up in her brain um it made last night every single
00:08:56.660 show on fox it was the first story and it was on all other basically cable news channels they
00:09:03.900 We're all talking about it because, as I said, most people think of Canadians in the U.S.
00:09:08.680 They think of Canadians as nice people.
00:09:11.140 And this is not nice.
00:09:13.140 I mean, Americans are going to see, oh, you know, maybe they're not that nice up there, you know,
00:09:19.900 because I think there's a perception on the part of some Americans that Trump is bullying Canada and something like this.
00:09:26.520 And you go, oh, wait a minute.
00:09:28.160 You know, our perception isn't entirely correct.
00:09:32.260 Now, we know Global Affairs Canada is aware of this.
00:09:35.680 They're aware of the arrest.
00:09:37.720 And Juno News was able to reach out to them and find out that, in fact, they've offered some assistance, consular assistance, whatever that means.
00:09:47.580 They are in contact with local authorities, I guess, on the ground over there.
00:09:51.880 So they're aware of it, as they would be in any case of a Canadian being arrested by ICE.
00:09:57.460 It's happened a few times.
00:09:58.760 I think there's been Canadians actually die in custody for one reason or another.
00:10:03.440 I think it was a Florida, I think it may have happened in Florida where a Canadian was arrested and ended up dying.
00:10:11.420 But in this case, where you've got videos circulating of her assaulting Trump-supporting teenagers,
00:10:20.780 I don't think she's going to get a whole lot of sympathy.
00:10:24.280 And Homeland Security issued a statement as well.
00:10:27.300 Caitlin Tracy is a criminal, illegal alien from Canada who is charged with simple assault,
00:10:33.460 neglect of a child, compounding crime, and harassing communication. 0.92
00:10:39.140 And they went on to say she allegedly struck a teenage girl wearing pro-Trump memorabilia.
00:10:44.660 What was the take by, I don't know, I assume that the folks on The Five are watching this,
00:10:49.760 I missed it, but what are the people in the United States saying about this based on what
00:10:54.520 you've heard?
00:10:54.980 So people are, as I said, I think they're shocked that someone would do this, particularly a Canadian who Americans tend to think of as being nice people.
00:11:07.020 But what we're dealing with here is someone who is not, I would say, a typical Canadian.
00:11:13.680 She's a little bit out there, clearly, and she's married to a very radicalized U.S. citizen.
00:11:20.200 I don't know what's going to happen to him.
00:11:22.840 she is going to be kicked out of the U.S. There's no doubt in my mind the only question is will she
00:11:28.340 serve jail time before they kick her out he Canada is going to have to decide if they're willing to
00:11:33.520 take him with her otherwise you know whatever they're married I guess maybe they will take him 0.75
00:11:39.400 and Canada can have the benefit of two lunatics if they want them I mean honestly I won't cry 0.97
00:11:46.780 one drop of tear if they're both kicked out of the country frankly we don't need people like 0.98
00:11:52.600 that um harassing somebody because they don't like the clothes they're wearing like seriously
00:11:57.640 yeah i mean and you're seeing very far left uh leaning democrats in blue states like new york
00:12:05.340 in particular and i don't think this is going to help the democrats i think a lot of mainstream
00:12:11.140 americans you know who are somewhere in the middle many independents even democrats are going to look
00:12:17.060 at this and go, this is not my party anymore. If this represents the Democrat Party now,
00:12:23.020 the Democrat Socialists of America, I want nothing to do with it. Isn't it quite possible
00:12:27.540 that this might push some moderate Democrats over to voting with the Republicans come the midterms?
00:12:36.220 They might. Certainly, they'll feel not connected to their party, which puts them kind of in the
00:12:41.380 independent column. I don't see them joining the Republican Party, but they might vote for a
00:12:46.360 moderate Republican candidate, which by the way, most candidates running for the Republicans are
00:12:50.720 pretty moderate. They're not radical right-wing candidates. And so they might be comfortable
00:12:57.360 doing that. I know yesterday, I believe it was yesterday, there was a vote in Congress
00:13:02.500 about defunding Israel from foreign aid. And basically what it broke down to was the Jew 0.76
00:13:10.440 haters versus the not Jew haters. What was interesting was looking at the vote. The
00:13:14.080 Democrats had over 100 members who voted in favor of that. One Republican, the infamous Thomas
00:13:20.880 Massey, who is bye-bye anyway. He can go vote however he wants now, but he's irrelevant in a
00:13:25.820 couple more months. But that's where that party is heading. They're going to very far left. They're
00:13:33.320 radically opposed to Western values. They have these crazy candidates running. And I don't know, 0.93
00:13:41.920 Well, average people look at them and they're like, I don't know whether it will actually just suppress the vote or cause people to vote Republican.
00:13:49.600 But either way, the Republicans win. If they move over and vote Republican, that's two.
00:13:53.860 They lose one. We get one. If they suppress the vote, it's only one.
00:13:58.360 They lose one. We don't get anything out of it. But but it puts us in a better position to win seats.
00:14:04.100 So if they want to keep up this nonsense. By the way, I didn't hear any Democrats jumping out to support her yesterday.
00:14:10.280 um waiting to see if something happens along that line i can't imagine they'll think it's okay 0.70
00:14:15.580 uh from a public relations perspective probably some of them are applauding her
00:14:19.740 but i haven't heard anybody actually come out and say yeah this is good you should
00:14:23.160 assault young kids wearing you know a t-shirt that says maga or something on it whatever it said
00:14:29.040 um so yeah so this is kind of the uh uh i think the mess that they're in and it's a mess of their
00:14:36.140 own making so ask me if i'm crying no no i'm not was the save act part of that or language related
00:14:43.640 to the save act because i i know that the trump administration is still trying to have that passed
00:14:49.020 and i'm hearing from some jittery democrats you know openly saying wow this is going to hurt us
00:14:56.180 you know sure it is sure it is if if you have to prove that you're a citizen
00:15:00.620 if you have to prove that you live where you say you live
00:15:03.900 you have to have id that your face matches the picture on your id that's going to hurt them
00:15:10.800 because they've been getting away with cheating in elections as long as i've been involved in
00:15:15.240 politics and that was since i was 17 years old i'm not going to do the math and embarrass myself
00:15:19.700 but it's a really long time and they taught me how to cheat in elections so if i wanted to cheat
00:15:25.020 i know exactly how to do it okay crazy so all i'm saying is that that you have um people who
00:15:32.400 win elections this way when they think they have to sometimes they genuinely do win them they're
00:15:36.960 in districts that are strongly democratic and whatever okay we have districts like that are
00:15:41.320 strongly republican but it's the ones where they have you know close races where they will do
00:15:46.000 whatever they have to do to win um and sometimes they'll do more than they have to do which is what
00:15:51.300 raises eyebrows uh you know when it happens you go how is that even possible you know when you see
00:15:56.980 the results. So yeah, they would be hurt by the Save America Act. That's why they're worried about
00:16:02.840 it. What I don't understand is why every single Republican is not getting behind this. And there
00:16:08.380 are a few Democrats of goodwill, but very few these days that should get behind this too and
00:16:13.400 should say American citizens should be the only ones voting. They should be who they say they are.
00:16:18.260 They should live in the district that they're voting in. I don't see why that's a mystery or
00:16:22.880 why that's controversial in any way, shape, or form, unless you're interested in non-citizens
00:16:27.820 who don't live where they're supposed to live and whose ID doesn't match their face. 0.54
00:16:32.100 Well, I think they've been secretly told, look, if only Americans vote in the election,
00:16:38.880 you're probably going to lose. You know, maybe by five points last time, you could forget about
00:16:44.300 it this time. You're going to lose. So shut your mouth about the SAVE Act and do not support it.
00:16:49.420 I think those conversations are being held. I really do.
00:16:52.880 I would not disagree with you at all.
00:16:55.480 I would completely agree a hundred percent.
00:16:57.840 Well, Jan, thank you so much for coming on the show.
00:16:59.420 We appreciate it as always.
00:17:00.780 My pleasure.
00:17:01.380 Great to see you, Mark.
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