Juno News - ＂End the mandates, end the passport＂： Freedom convoy spokesperson on what's next

00:00:00.000 Welcome back to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:10.680 Well, as you saw in the first segment there, I spoke to a lot of people when I was in Ottawa for the Freedom Convoy.

00:00:17.160 And if, as it sounds like, this is something that's going to be there for the long haul, I will certainly be back.

00:00:22.440 But one person I wanted to bring into this discussion is Benjamin Dichter,

00:00:26.560 who I've crossed paths with a number of times over the years as an organizer in the Conservative movement

00:00:31.720 and formerly a Conservative Party of Canada candidate as well.

00:00:35.600 And he has been putting a lot of this together. He's been a spokesperson for it.

00:00:39.680 Although, as he said, it's difficult to make this about a single organizer because of how many people are involved.

00:00:46.480 Benjamin Dichter, good to talk to you, sir. Thanks for coming on today.

00:00:49.740 Thank you for having me on, man.

00:00:51.280 So as someone who's organized things before,

00:00:53.840 the big challenge is that you can put all these efforts in place.

00:00:57.100 You never really know what's going to happen until it happens.

00:01:00.660 So when you kind of looked out your window on Saturday, you walked out on the streets.

00:01:04.440 Did you think it would be as big as it was?

00:01:07.780 We had an idea that it would be big before we got there.

00:01:12.420 And that's where the growing pains set in because we initially thought it was going to be small.

00:01:17.140 And then all of a sudden, I don't know, Elon Musk is retweeting us.

00:01:21.420 And then it goes global and Jordan Peterson is all over us.

00:01:24.860 So the momentum that we carried just went parabolic.

00:01:28.740 And that just for any sort of organizational structure, that becomes very difficult to deal with.

00:01:34.800 And then the bottlenecks set in because you've created these backlogs.

00:01:40.300 And that's what we're dealing with right now.

00:01:42.160 Let's talk about the organizational aspect of this because it's a grassroots movement by and large,

00:01:47.480 but there's also been a fair bit of coordination.

00:01:49.940 So how much is just people that are saying,

00:01:52.180 yeah, I support you that are showing up in Ottawa

00:01:54.420 versus stuff that you and the people you are working with are doing and managing along the way?

00:02:01.100 It started with a core team in Alberta.

00:02:03.620 I joined very early.

00:02:05.100 I think the first day after they started, 24 hours or so, maybe 48 hours is when I was called in.

00:02:12.160 And, you know, you just have more people start tacking on.

00:02:16.880 And then the division of labor, we do the best that we can.

00:02:20.860 But unlike a typical organizational structure, everybody's in the office and you can say,

00:02:24.540 okay, let's put this person on the board, that person on the board.

00:02:27.300 Everybody's in a truck.

00:02:28.420 Everybody's mobile.

00:02:30.000 And not always with cell reception.

00:02:31.860 Most of the time, not.

00:02:34.960 So I'm trying to get a hold of Tamara.

00:02:37.340 I can't get a hold of her for two, three hours.

00:02:39.500 I send her a text message.

00:02:40.720 We're in the middle of a conversation.

00:02:41.960 It drops.

00:02:42.960 So that just became a nightmare.

00:02:44.460 And that's why when we got to Ottawa, all of these conversations and, you know,

00:02:48.860 to-do lists that I had and other people, we just had this mess of things.

00:02:53.000 There's 50 people in a room trying to figure out, okay, who's done what, who hasn't done

00:02:58.480 what, where are the trucks?

00:02:59.580 We still don't know how many trucks are there.

00:03:03.020 There's parking lots and farmer's fields full of trucks right now outside of Ottawa that

00:03:09.000 can't get in the city on top of everybody that's in the city.

00:03:12.100 And now we have a convoy of Americans that are on the Montana-Alberta border that it's

00:03:20.020 taking hours and hours to process them.

00:03:22.560 And they're coming here.

00:03:24.560 So let me ask you what you're after here.

00:03:27.460 Because originally, a lot of people were positioning this as being just about the cross-border

00:03:32.140 trucker mandate, which was certainly a very, I think that was a catalytic thing.

00:03:36.980 I think it certainly galvanized this.

00:03:38.520 But you said at a press conference on Sunday that we'll talk about in a moment that you're

00:03:43.380 really seeking the end of all COVID restrictions, federal and provincial.

00:03:46.920 So you want Canada to do the Denmark, the UK, the Ireland thing.

00:03:50.420 Is that a fair characterization?

00:03:52.860 100%.

00:03:53.300 So, you know, our message was end the mandates and the passport.

00:03:56.380 But the idea is that would get us back to life.

00:03:59.420 Because once you do that, then the momentum is just to carry on and go back to life as normal.

00:04:05.200 Take the face diapers off and all of that nonsense.

00:04:09.060 All of that.

00:04:09.420 I mean, people don't have, I think, the will to keep on this way.

00:04:14.000 And once they realize, OK, the government's starting to remove all these restrictions,

00:04:18.640 the rest will fall.

00:04:20.240 Let's talk about the mask thing here.

00:04:21.980 Because I've never been one of these people that has made a point of going into stores without

00:04:26.860 a mask.

00:04:27.360 And my view on this is that my grievance is with the government, not the stores.

00:04:30.840 And I know that there have been over the last two years, individual confrontations of people

00:04:35.520 that won't wear a mask.

00:04:36.620 And whatever the case may be, that has happened.

00:04:39.300 There's value in numbers.

00:04:40.940 Because I mentioned on Twitter, and I think it was like one of my most popular tweets of

00:04:44.080 the weekend, that the mask mandate in Ottawa was basically dead.

00:04:47.580 Because you have people that are going into hotels, to the restaurants that are open to

00:04:51.700 stores, not wearing masks.

00:04:53.480 And businesses have either decided that it's not worth trying to enforce or they don't care.

00:04:57.000 So that's just one example of how a group of people saying we are going to be civilly

00:05:02.540 disobedient, as the term goes, can change things.

00:05:05.480 And I noted, and you shared this with me, there's a story in the National Post this morning.

00:05:09.760 Health officials are hinting at ending COVID restrictions with a caveat, and not because

00:05:14.460 of the truckers.

00:05:15.200 Well, when we see public opinion lining up behind the truckers, and then also a shift in the

00:05:20.640 past week in public opinion for ending restrictions, I don't think you can say this isn't the

00:05:25.060 truckers that had a huge role in this.

00:05:27.000 I agree with your first comment about the mask is interesting.

00:05:32.520 Two weeks ago, I go around without a mask everywhere.

00:05:35.340 I'm polite.

00:05:36.600 And if they ask me to put on a mask, I always have it on me and say, oh, I forgot.

00:05:40.800 Because the more we force people to ask us, the more they'll get tired of asking people

00:05:45.580 and it'll just end.

00:05:47.100 So two weeks ago, I went into my local coffee shop.

00:05:49.740 I start most of my mornings, walked in without a mask as usual.

00:05:53.460 They all know me.

00:05:54.140 Hey, how are you?

00:05:54.840 The owner, whatever.

00:05:56.300 And some woman comes up to me and she says, you're not wearing a mask.

00:06:00.760 And then she saw my face turn as I looked down at her.

00:06:03.860 And she said, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

00:06:06.060 I'm I don't want to wear the mask.

00:06:08.500 How do you do it?

00:06:09.880 I said, just take it off.

00:06:11.340 Take it off.

00:06:11.860 I said, you would be surprised how many times I'm waiting in line in a business or whatever.

00:06:16.880 I don't have a mask.

00:06:18.080 I sit there for a minute, two minutes, and everyone else slowly start taking their masks

00:06:23.520 off.

00:06:24.180 Right.

00:06:24.740 And that's essentially what this convoy is.

00:06:27.960 That's the spirit of this convoy.

00:06:29.540 So what is it that you're thinking is going to happen now?

00:06:34.500 Because as I mentioned earlier on the show, and as you're no doubt aware, Justin Trudeau

00:06:37.900 has not even done the feigned sympathy that I expected of, well, I understand the anger.

00:06:43.300 I thought he would do some patronizing.

00:06:45.000 No, he's just gone right to escalating.

00:06:47.100 Oh, that's exactly what I thought he would do.

00:06:49.640 I actually put a prediction.

00:06:50.940 I put in Twitter two hours before prediction.

00:06:54.300 Prime Minister, Prime Minister, diversity, blackface is going to call everyone a racist,

00:06:59.120 a neo-Nazi, unacceptable, and he's going to double down because that's what extremists

00:07:04.040 do.

00:07:04.700 They have a binary worldview and they have one strategy.

00:07:08.260 And I hear from people in Ottawa who are in the know are in contact with some people

00:07:13.240 in the liberal parties.

00:07:14.020 And I do have some contacts that the problem is Justin Trudeau himself.

00:07:18.820 If he was there, he was the one pushing to agitate the truckers.

00:07:23.940 He wants to see violence, which I thought was shocking.

00:07:27.740 And I was told, yeah, the other people in the party are Justin, that's not what we want

00:07:32.400 to do.

00:07:33.180 Why don't you just go on vacation right now and we'll deal with this strategically?

00:07:38.020 We're going to have a political solution to this.

00:07:40.120 So that gives you the nature of what he feels, which is quite scary.

00:07:46.840 You've said that you have enough fuel, money, food that you could keep this going.

00:07:51.940 Not you, but you as the movement.

00:07:54.120 Keep this going for years.

00:07:55.700 Now, obviously, I hope there's no need to do that.

00:07:58.060 I mean, my hope would be that rather swiftly, a lot of these measures that we've been talking

00:08:02.020 about are gone.

00:08:03.000 But is that the plan, that these trucks will be there for as long as it takes until every

00:08:07.760 last COVID restriction is gone?

00:08:09.880 Yep.

00:08:11.460 Yeah, that's it.

00:08:14.380 Simple answer.

00:08:16.660 I mean, I was trying to illustrate the point that, A, we're not backing down.

00:08:21.340 And B, we do have the ability to do that.

00:08:23.660 We have more than enough money to cover the costs.

00:08:26.140 We have enough, more than enough truckers and trucks that are willing to do it in the

00:08:32.740 long haul.

00:08:33.900 And one of the videos I posted, somebody in the U.S. sent it.

00:08:37.400 I mean, it's amateur stuff for any trucker, but for average people to know, if they just

00:08:42.360 disable the brake chambers, just take their slack adjustment screws out, remove them and

00:08:46.820 put them in their pocket, throw them away, lock it in a safe in their truck, that truck

00:08:50.760 can't be towed.

00:08:52.160 It's not going anywhere.

00:08:53.020 And another video from one of the truckers you just posted this morning, some woman

00:08:58.620 explained to this trucker that when the city was calling the tow trucks in the neighborhood

00:09:06.040 and in neighboring Quebec to say, we want to bring some, we need a, you know, a fleet

00:09:11.300 of tow trucks to come into Ottawa, the response from the tow truck companies were, oh, we all

00:09:16.660 have COVID, sorry.

00:09:19.000 That's great.

00:09:20.760 So there's some solidarity there.

00:09:22.500 It's that, it's that strike breaking mentality of, I don't want to go against the brotherhood

00:09:26.320 now, which is interesting because of how much the media has tried to paint the narrative

00:09:30.960 that this is not representative of the trucking industry.

00:09:33.880 That's been the thing of, oh, these aren't real truckers.

00:09:37.700 Yeah.

00:09:37.840 I love how we define the trucking industry by trucking lobbyists.

00:09:42.880 Trucking lobbyists are not inside a truck.

00:09:45.440 They're usually part of the liberal party, as we see by the donations by the trucking association.

00:09:50.400 So that's just an option to the liberal party.

00:09:53.580 They're getting lambasted online by people within the industry who are very, very livid with

00:10:00.960 that organization.

00:10:01.580 I have a feeling the woman who is running it is not going to be there for very much longer.

00:10:05.960 It's quite an embarrassing organization at this point.

00:10:08.200 Let me ask you, Benjamin, about the mainstream media's most reviled press conference in the

00:10:14.800 history of press conferences.

00:10:16.240 This is Sunday.

00:10:17.340 I was invited, a number of other independent journalists, and some journalists from mainstream

00:10:21.580 publications were invited.

00:10:23.440 There wasn't a time cap.

00:10:24.860 It wasn't one question, one follow-up.

00:10:26.580 It was almost like a round table format of just ask you and your co-organizers, whatever.

00:10:31.660 But you made the decision, which I didn't realize at the time until I got there, that

00:10:36.480 you were only going to invite independent media.

00:10:40.000 And specifically, you said there had been a couple of outlets that you had banned.

00:10:43.300 I think CBC and the Toronto Star.

00:10:45.580 And obviously, this went over very well online with some people and very poorly with other

00:10:50.520 people, mainly the mainstream media reporters that were forced to just get the news from

00:10:54.720 my Twitter feed and Kian Bexte's news stream.

00:10:57.060 But in all seriousness, do you not believe that you should have been speaking to those

00:11:02.040 people and should have been confronting a lot of what you say are the falsehoods head

00:11:06.440 on?

00:11:07.560 Absolutely not, because they're not journalists.

00:11:09.480 They're activists.

00:11:11.600 And why do we need activists that are going to come into the room, take up half the floor

00:11:16.820 space, and shout epithets and smears at us?

00:11:21.020 That's not a conversation.

00:11:22.320 That's not a dialogue.

00:11:23.080 And that doesn't help you and the general public to find out what's truly going on.

00:11:29.060 It's just disruptors.

00:11:30.080 And we didn't need the disruptors.

00:11:31.420 And we could see, I mean, that was one part of it.

00:11:34.320 But we could also see online the very direct fake news stories that were being published

00:11:42.580 by the Toronto Star and CBC News.

00:11:45.960 Just complete falsehoods, you know, of our GoFundMe being frozen because of extremism and

00:11:54.440 radicalization.

00:11:55.340 And then the cartoon that Jordan Peterson retweeted that Toronto Star put, like, that is Maoist

00:12:03.700 level of propaganda.

00:12:05.560 It's disgusting.

00:12:07.140 That has no place.

00:12:08.780 Those sorts of unacceptable opinions have no place in a news conference, if that makes

00:12:15.060 sense.

00:12:16.340 It does.

00:12:17.240 So obviously, this is something that we, as we've talked about, is going to be going

00:12:20.660 on for the long haul.

00:12:21.700 You're there for the long haul as well.

00:12:23.600 What's next?

00:12:24.180 What's it we should be watching out for this week?

00:12:26.680 Well, now is the waiting game.

00:12:28.720 And they're going to learn that trucks, truckers are quite intelligent people.

00:12:33.680 They have street smarts.

00:12:35.160 They're very patient because truckers, I mean, we do spend a lot of time waiting at calls

00:12:40.500 and stuff.

00:12:41.500 So we're just going to play this game of chess and we're going to sit here and wait.

00:12:45.780 And at some point, the government's going to have absolutely no choice but to either deal

00:12:51.180 with us or decide we're going to drop the mandates, that we're going to follow the lead

00:12:57.520 of Denmark, the United Kingdom, and other countries that have announced that they're

00:13:01.800 removing the restrictions, which is what I protect they're going to do.

00:13:04.620 I mean, many politicians, especially our ones in government right now, they do tend to take

00:13:10.340 the easy way.

00:13:11.340 And the easy way for them is just to come up with that.

00:13:14.340 They're trying to figure out the spin for that presser that makes them look good, right?

00:13:17.920 Which is very difficult right now.

00:13:19.120 And the longer they wait, the more difficult it's going to become.

00:13:22.520 So I predict they're going to do an about face and try to claim victory that, well, now

00:13:27.620 we have the softer variants, the Omicron, people aren't dying from it.

00:13:31.280 It's because of our restrictions that we saved all of you.

00:13:34.700 We've heard Canadians.

00:13:36.280 We love Canadians.

00:13:37.460 We're going to drop everything and move on.

00:13:40.820 And they'll try to claim victory.

00:13:42.280 Nobody will believe it.

00:13:43.220 And then they'll move on to the next catastrophe.

00:13:45.820 Well, I hope to be back in Ottawa soon.

00:13:48.060 It was quite a sight to behold.

00:13:50.380 And I'm glad I was able to take part in that inaugural weekend of it.

00:13:53.760 Benjamin Dichter, good to talk to you again.

00:13:55.160 Thanks for coming on today.

00:13:56.480 We are tentatively looking at a second press conference this weekend.

00:13:59.660 So I will inform those of you in the media and of the details.

00:14:03.460 And we'll talk then.

00:14:04.680 Duly noted.

00:14:05.200 Thanks a lot, sir.

00:14:06.180 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:14:08.340 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.nones.

00:14:13.420 To be continued...

00:14:16.740 To be continued...

00:14:18.120 Thank you.

Juno News - February 02, 2022

＂End the mandates, end the passport＂： Freedom convoy spokesperson on what's next

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