Juno News - The Candice Malcolm Show： The media fawns over a fringe conspiracy theorist

00:00:00.720 Canadian journalists embarrassingly fawn over a fringe conspiracy theorists.

00:00:06.200 The media runs with its own made-up narrative about why the Conservatives lost the last

00:00:10.800 election.

00:00:11.800 And CTV finally, finally wants to show a different side of the Conservative Party.

00:00:18.040 I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:29.720 Hi everyone.

00:00:30.720 Welcome to the program Due to Popular Demand.

00:00:33.200 We're going to be coming to you twice a week now.

00:00:35.520 We're going to do a mid-week episode as well as a typical Friday podcast.

00:00:40.280 And we're going to expand a little bit more beyond just media criticism.

00:00:44.040 We're going to look into some of the day-to-day issues in the country and examine some of the

00:00:48.440 broader issues behind being a Conservative in Canada.

00:00:52.840 So we're excited about the changes.

00:00:54.900 Thank you so much for joining us.

00:00:55.900 Let's jump right into the news today.

00:00:58.140 So Green Party leader Elizabeth May is finally resigning.

00:01:01.700 She's been party leader for 13 years, since 2006, and she really doesn't have a lot to

00:01:08.460 show for it.

00:01:09.460 Her party has sort of been stuck in the irrelevant fringe stage.

00:01:14.160 This was supposed to be the big year.

00:01:16.160 And even with all the talk about climate change, climate emergency, we had Greta Thunberg making 0.97

00:01:22.920 a cross-Canada tour, basically doing a pitch for fringe green parties like that that Elizabeth

00:01:28.960 May runs.

00:01:30.280 She was still unable to break through electorally, so she's rightfully stepping down.

00:01:34.240 Now, the mainstream media are trying to paint her into some kind of a rock star, life-changing

00:01:40.480 politician, someone who led a serious conversation in public life.

00:01:46.040 Here we have the Huffington Post showing Elizabeth May's five most iconic moments as Green Party

00:01:53.200 leader.

00:01:54.400 City News over there is saying that Elizabeth May has a lot to be proud of.

00:01:58.040 Well, True North has a little bit of a different institutional memory when it comes to Elizabeth

00:02:03.280 May.

00:02:04.280 She's basically just a fringe conspiracy theorist. 1.00

00:02:07.000 She's had a lot of very crazy views that she puts out there.

00:02:10.760 She's pretty media savvy, pretty good at inserting herself into the story, and, you know, that's 0.98

00:02:15.720 why so many media people love her, why journalists love her, because she made it easy for them, 0.90

00:02:20.360 and of course also because she occupies a fringe far-left position, which is where a lot of journalists

00:02:26.160 in this country also occupy in terms of their worldview and their thinking.

00:02:30.040 So True North has compiled a different list, not the five most iconic memories of Elizabeth

00:02:35.800 May, but more than five instances of her just being a pure fringe lunatic. 1.00

00:02:41.620 So let's see.

00:02:44.100 Let's start off.

00:02:45.100 Elizabeth May said she's waging a war on Wi-Fi. 0.99

00:02:47.840 She said that wireless internet is related to the disappearance of pollinating insects.

00:02:53.320 She's tweeted about chemtrails.

00:02:55.520 She compared Stephen Harper's climate change position to quote appeasement of the Nazis unquote.

00:03:03.260 She once presented a 9-11 conspiracy theory petition in the House of Commons.

00:03:09.420 She falsely claimed that Canadian grocery stores import eggs from China on a routine basis,

00:03:15.900 which is untrue.

00:03:16.900 Right now, do you know, we actually have grocery stores in Canada that are importing eggs from

00:03:21.520 China on a routine basis.

00:03:23.520 All of the garlic in major grocery store change in Canada comes from China.

00:03:28.260 This one was particularly annoying to me or just kind of gross.

00:03:33.220 She got into a spat with Jason Kenney, now premier of Alberta, back when Jason Kenney was a minister

00:03:39.560 of immigration.

00:03:40.960 Kenney was working with some people on a monument that they unveiled for the victims of communism.

00:03:47.660 As you know, communism is a deadliest ideology in world history.

00:03:51.960 It led to the death of hundreds of millions of people.

00:03:55.700 And so, you know, they were building up a monument and Elizabeth May decides to make light of it. 0.99

00:04:01.700 So she tweets, no mention of a monument for the victims of capitalism.

00:04:06.700 Oh, zing.

00:04:08.700 Well, Jason Kenney rightly responded, perhaps that's because no one was shot in the back

00:04:13.440 while risking their lives to flee eastward over the Iron Curtain.

00:04:17.520 Or perhaps it's because free societies don't murder tens of millions in gulags and planned

00:04:23.000 famines, et cetera.

00:04:24.440 So, you know, for Elizabeth May to make light about something as gruesome as the millions

00:04:30.380 and millions of victims who were murdered by communist regimes is pretty gross.

00:04:34.640 And to compare it to capitalism, which is essentially just free markets and human liberty, you know,

00:04:39.940 those are sort of night and day now.

00:04:42.200 Obviously there's people who have suffered in the world despite capitalism.

00:04:46.400 Capitalism doesn't just, you know, create like a silver bullet to create a good life for

00:04:53.340 people.

00:04:54.340 There's been people who have suffered under capitalism too, but not anywhere to the same

00:04:57.220 extent.

00:04:58.220 And essentially what capitalism is, is just freedom.

00:05:01.780 And so to say that somehow to equate communist regimes with freedom and Canadian freedom is

00:05:07.640 just really sickening, but that's the kind of person that Elizabeth May is. 0.99

00:05:13.320 She once claimed that the United States recruited Osama Bin Laden in order to create Al-Qaeda.

00:05:19.820 As you recall, she was very intoxicated at a parliamentary press gallery dinner.

00:05:26.300 And while very drunk, this is what she had to say.

00:05:28.820 Let's play the clip.

00:05:29.820 Do you guys remember the season?

00:05:32.820 Welcome back.

00:05:33.820 Who knew Khadr?

00:05:34.820 With spelled K-H-A-D-R.

00:05:36.820 Welcome back, Omer Khadr.

00:05:39.820 It matters to say it.

00:05:41.820 Welcome back, Omer Khadr.

00:05:43.820 You're home.

00:05:44.820 So, you know, sure, she was sort of joking around, but then she kind of gets into it

00:05:49.320 that she believes that Omer Khadr is this sort of upstanding young man, despite the fact

00:05:53.400 that he was a terrorist as part of Al-Qaeda and admitted to killing an American soldier.

00:05:58.580 So, you know, Elizabeth May, not exactly a person that you want to really be celebrating.

00:06:05.500 And again, this just shows the severe left-wing bias of the mainstream media.

00:06:09.820 There was a fringe right-wing candidate that had similar conspiracy views, that had a long

00:06:15.500 history of just saying outright crazy things, you know, making light of the murder of millions

00:06:21.640 of people, making light and making conspiracies about terrorists who kill Canadian and American

00:06:27.320 citizens.

00:06:28.320 I don't think that that person would be given such a rosy send-off if they were to retire.

00:06:33.540 So again, the extreme bias, and not just the fact that Elizabeth May was a crazy person.

00:06:38.580 She was objectively bad at her job, despite, you know, the huge momentum that the Green 0.99

00:06:42.580 Party could have had.

00:06:44.420 She wasn't able to capitalize on it.

00:06:46.620 She wasn't able to actually, you know, gain some segment of support enough to elect some

00:06:53.160 MPs.

00:06:54.160 I always personally would have liked to see the Green Party take on more of a free market

00:06:57.900 bend and sort of be another party, not necessarily just another left-wing fringe party, but a party

00:07:03.340 that promoted free market ideas where conservatives could park their vote if they were just unhappy

00:07:09.800 with the direction of the current Conservative Party.

00:07:12.900 But instead, you know, the Greens toil off in obscurity because they stick with that hard

00:07:17.900 left agenda.

00:07:18.900 Really, there's not a lot of difference between them, the NDP, and the Liberals.

00:07:22.580 There's a lot, a lot to offer over there.

00:07:24.900 OK, let's move on.

00:07:26.100 I want to talk a little bit.

00:07:27.300 This is one of my pet peeves, and it happens after every election.

00:07:29.580 I remember vividly it happening after the 2015 election.

00:07:33.360 The mainstream media decided that the reason that Stephen Harper lost was because the Conservatives

00:07:38.440 were Islamophobic.

00:07:39.720 They decided that you could boil the entire campaign down to a few moments, the awkward

00:07:45.540 press conference where they announced the barbaric cultural practices hotline, and a couple

00:07:51.280 other instances like that.

00:07:53.420 And the media is just like a simplistic idea.

00:07:55.820 This is why the Conservatives lost, because of this one policy.

00:07:59.080 And then they kind of like declare it as fact, and then move forward as if that, you know,

00:08:04.180 the Conservatives now have to go back and do soul searching about why they hate Muslims

00:08:07.980 or why they're so Islamophobic.

00:08:09.480 Well, they're doing it again with this election.

00:08:13.040 So throughout the entire campaign, the media fixated and were obsessed with the idea that

00:08:18.160 Andrew Scheer is personally pro-life.

00:08:20.820 And that 13 years ago, he made comments that opposed same-sex marriage.

00:08:25.640 So they jumped on these two facts, and they repeated them throughout the campaign over

00:08:30.020 and over and over again.

00:08:30.740 They ran stories.

00:08:31.740 They did investigations.

00:08:32.740 They did everything they could to keep those two stories top of mind.

00:08:36.940 Now, anyone who watches the campaign, and as most Conservatives know, Andrew Scheer didn't

00:08:41.580 proactively volunteer this information.

00:08:44.660 He wasn't the one that was leading with this stuff.

00:08:47.040 That wasn't part of his campaign, wasn't part of his platform, it wasn't part of what

00:08:50.560 the Conservative Party of Canada were presenting to Canadians, presenting to the electorate.

00:08:55.600 It was just the mainstream media's own fixation.

00:08:58.540 And so, because the media fixated on it so much, they determined that that was the reason

00:09:03.940 that Andrew Scheer lost.

00:09:05.020 That Andrew Scheer actually lost the election, not because they ran a bad campaign in Quebec,

00:09:09.700 not because they failed to do the right kind of outreach in the GTA, or they failed to come

00:09:14.940 up with a meaningful platform and policies that they could really capture the imagination

00:09:19.780 of Canadians.

00:09:20.780 So, the mainstream media decided that it was because of the stories that the mainstream

00:09:25.180 media themselves invented and pushed on Canadians throughout the entire campaign.

00:09:29.860 And so, now we're doing this shtick.

00:09:31.620 Here you see it.

00:09:33.740 Let's go through them.

00:09:34.740 CTV.

00:09:35.740 Scheer's position on same-sex marriage could be fatal, Conservative insiders say.

00:09:40.720 This is a favorite trick of the mainstream media, is that they always find an expert or

00:09:44.960 an insider to just say what that journalist believes.

00:09:48.700 So this is presented as news, not opinion.

00:09:51.540 This isn't the opinion of the journalist that's writing the story.

00:09:54.180 It is news, because instead of them having their own quote that Scheer's position on same-sex

00:09:59.780 marriage could be fatal, they just find some insider, usually anonymous, some anonymous insider,

00:10:05.700 to say exactly what they think, and that's the headline.

00:10:07.700 So, Scheer's position could be fatal, says CTV.

00:10:11.280 CBC.

00:10:12.280 Scheer's messaging on abortion costs him votes on both sides of the debate, says Observers.

00:10:16.940 Oh, that's a new one.

00:10:18.320 So, you know, add Observers to the list of experts and insiders.

00:10:23.720 Global News says Scheer's TVR French debate performance was a death blow for Tories in

00:10:30.780 Quebec, says a former candidate.

00:10:33.100 And here's another one.

00:10:33.980 Find a guy that lost his seat and then get him to agree with the mainstream media and the

00:10:38.820 narrative and that's why they lost.

00:10:40.340 So this article goes on to say that it was Scheer's inability to defend himself on these social

00:10:47.540 issues that became obvious to Quebec voters during the debate and that's why he lost.

00:10:52.980 And similarly, here is the Hill Times, which is kind of the insider newspaper in Ottawa for

00:11:00.740 sort of people working in Ottawa in the government, knives out to dump conservative leader.

00:11:06.140 But Scheer's team should reach out to supporters urgently to survive April leadership review,

00:11:12.540 says conservatives.

00:11:14.340 So the similar kind of theme that they're all getting at, which is basically that the

00:11:19.280 reason that Scheer lost is because of this whole commotion made by the mainstream media

00:11:25.540 over Andrew Scheer's views.

00:11:27.440 That's not what he wanted to run the election on.

00:11:29.720 Those are not the issues that he wanted to be talking about.

00:11:31.600 In fact, these are issues that are well in the past, in the background.

00:11:36.160 You know, these issues were debated in Canada decades ago and now, for whatever reason, the

00:11:42.420 media wants to talk about them again.

00:11:44.980 No one else really does, including a lot of conservatives that you'll find now talking

00:11:49.120 to the media saying, yeah, the conservatives must have screwed up because we shouldn't have

00:11:53.580 been running the election on these controversial issues.

00:11:56.240 Well, I don't think anyone wanted to other than the media.

00:11:58.720 So the media, again, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:12:01.980 They talk about an issue and then that issue they blame for the fall of the conservatives

00:12:06.920 and then they talk about it again.

00:12:08.900 So that's how mainstream media narratives work in a nutshell.

00:12:12.780 And, you know, it's kind of disappointing because I think that if Canadians just stopped

00:12:17.460 tuning into the media in the same way that I think many do in the United States and

00:12:21.740 just completely ignore it, these issues wouldn't be the ones dictating the election as they

00:12:26.920 seem to be now.

00:12:27.920 A lot of times it's because conservatives kind of agree reluctantly at the end.

00:12:32.340 And so you see a whole bunch of conservatives now on TV just saying, yeah, we really shouldn't

00:12:36.620 have been talking about those issues and we need a more modern conservative to take us

00:12:41.200 into the next election.

00:12:42.960 Again, just a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:12:46.680 And I said this in an interview with my colleague Andrew Lawton.

00:12:49.780 And I think that Andrew Scheer really needs to fight back.

00:12:52.700 If he wants to maintain his leadership of the conservative party, if he wants to do another

00:12:56.160 shot in an election, he has to learn how to fight back against the mainstream media.

00:13:00.660 He has to call them out on their nonsense.

00:13:02.840 If they're doing an interview and they're being unfair, he needs to look that journalist

00:13:06.300 into the eye and call them out and tell them what they're doing is unfair and point to

00:13:10.340 the fact that they would never do this to the liberal leader.

00:13:12.640 They'd never do this to the NDP leader, that they only do it to conservatives.

00:13:15.260 And you can see that's happening right now.

00:13:18.040 Justin Trudeau lost a huge segment of the vote.

00:13:21.500 He lost over a million votes from the last election.

00:13:23.540 He lost a bunch of seats.

00:13:24.760 He's no longer majority position.

00:13:26.920 No one's talking about ousting him as leader.

00:13:29.580 The NDP were decimated.

00:13:31.440 They lost all their seats but one in Quebec.

00:13:34.660 They're down to just, you know, less than two dozen seats in the House of Commons.

00:13:38.680 No one's calling for Jagmeet Singh to resign.

00:13:41.780 So, again, this is just a total double standard.

00:13:44.720 The conservatives gained seats.

00:13:46.460 The conservatives gained the popular vote.

00:13:48.420 The conservatives gained representation in every region.

00:13:51.720 And yet it's Andrew Scheer that's being called to resign.

00:13:55.540 One final thing I want to talk about.

00:13:57.200 This is a CTV interview.

00:13:58.860 And it's funny how this happens.

00:14:00.260 That now that the election is over, CTV finds a very sympathetic conservative candidate

00:14:06.360 and talks about a whole bunch of things that they never bothered to report during the election.

00:14:12.840 So let's play part of this clip.

00:14:15.000 As a member of the LGBTQ2 community, you defended conservative leader Andrew Scheer

00:14:19.620 for not being direct or forthcoming early in the campaign on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.

00:14:24.600 Some people in your party are blaming Mr. Scheer that they did not win this election.

00:14:29.380 We made progress.

00:14:30.420 We gained in our seat count.

00:14:31.920 And I think we form a national opposition in the sense that we have representation from coast to coast.

00:14:36.720 I've always been a supporter, obviously, of LGBTQ rights.

00:14:40.120 And I will be in the House of Commons.

00:14:41.540 And I think the more parties that have more diversity that can advocate for that,

00:14:45.420 it's part of who I am.

00:14:47.200 And I always will be.

00:14:47.980 And I think when I talk to party members and I talk to new caucus colleagues,

00:14:52.340 I think we need to work on how we make ourselves a modern conservative party.

00:14:56.900 So it's funny that during the election, all we heard was that the conservatives are bigots,

00:15:01.600 the conservatives are homophobic.

00:15:03.400 Andrew Scheer obviously has a problem with same-sex marriage and with gay people.

00:15:08.260 And then suddenly, as soon as the election is over,

00:15:10.760 the media find a conservative MP who was just elected in Ontario

00:15:14.040 who has a very different message and has a very different outlook.

00:15:19.760 You know, it actually makes it seem like the conservatives are pretty well-rounded,

00:15:23.640 pretty representative, pretty much a big tent party

00:15:26.160 that welcome people of all backgrounds and all orientations.

00:15:30.460 And yet we only see this side of the conservative party after the election.

00:15:35.400 And because that conservative MP is willing to talk about the issues that the mainstream media want,

00:15:40.820 to talk about willing to indulge them on this theory that Andrew Scheer made a huge mistake

00:15:46.400 and is secretly a homophobe.

00:15:48.240 Well, doesn't this candidate and this MP's, you know, very presence show the opposite?

00:15:53.800 Why would a person who's part of the LGBT community join a conservative party 1.00

00:15:58.460 and run as a conservative and become a conservative MP

00:16:00.540 if they really were as awful and as horrible as the mainstream media make it out to be?

00:16:05.180 And again, this is just, you know, media bias in a nutshell

00:16:09.420 because obviously the conservatives are not the people who they get painted as in the media.

00:16:15.700 And this is sort of like, you know, the CTV letting its masks slip saying,

00:16:20.160 oh, look, we found this one person who doesn't fit our mold of what an evil, mean, scary conservative is.

00:16:26.860 Well, maybe if you had interviewed folks like this during the campaign,

00:16:30.400 maybe if you had told the other side of the story, people wouldn't have had those impressions in the first place.

00:16:36.480 And again, this is the problem with our media in Canada.

00:16:40.560 So I'm going to leave it there.

00:16:41.800 Thank you so much for joining me and I will be back with another episode on Friday.

00:16:46.420 So until then, bye bye.

Juno News - November 05, 2019

The Candice Malcolm Show： The media fawns over a fringe conspiracy theorist

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript