Juno News - The media isn’t finished smearing Canada’s truckers

00:00:00.080 Bad takes on Ukraine, the legacy media continue to lie about the freedom convoy,

00:00:04.280 and the anti-social yob guy thinks that conservatives are extreme.

00:00:08.440 It's Fake News Friday, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is the Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:15.280 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in.

00:00:17.840 So we haven't really had a chance to get into the situation in Ukraine yet on the show.

00:00:22.120 Maybe we'll do that next week.

00:00:23.800 It looks pretty scary over there.

00:00:25.300 The situation is pretty tense with Russia and Putin invading Ukraine.

00:00:29.000 Boots are on the ground, there's explosions, there's bombing, lots and lots of scary scenes,

00:00:32.920 lots of refugees fleeing, lots of fighters getting ready to engage in a conventional warfare,

00:00:37.660 which we haven't seen in quite some time.

00:00:39.800 Now, we're not going to focus in on the serious part of Ukraine.

00:00:42.700 We're going to focus in on what you kind of have come to expect, right?

00:00:46.220 So over the past few years during COVID, we have seen every single journalist in the world

00:00:50.800 basically become an expert in public health, in epidemiology, and in COVID.

00:00:55.700 Well, today and this week, what we saw is a lot of those experts on public health

00:01:00.660 take off their public health expert hat and put on their foreign affairs expert hat

00:01:07.200 and give us their sort of worst takes on Ukraine, and it is kind of amusing.

00:01:12.600 So joining me for Fake News Friday today is True North producer Harrison Falconer.

00:01:16.820 Harrison's a journalist here at True North.

00:01:19.200 Harrison, first of all, welcome to the show.

00:01:21.260 Second of all, why don't you walk us through some of the worst tweets that we've seen so far

00:01:24.220 on Ukraine?

00:01:25.520 Yeah, so just as you said, Candace, we've pulled some of these foreign policy expert 0.98

00:01:31.240 tweets, and they are too, as you expect, they are just absolutely ridiculous.

00:01:35.820 So yeah, we're going to go through a couple of them. 0.77

00:01:37.540 This first one comes from Cenk Uygur, who's notorious for his bad takes.

00:01:41.300 He's the head of the Young Turks, which is this left-wing progressive YouTube news channel.

00:01:48.440 And he basically says that the right-wing doesn't love Putin just because he's an authoritarian,

00:01:54.080 tyrannical leader. 0.64

00:01:55.200 They love him because he's a white authoritarian leader. 0.97

00:01:58.380 Race has become more important than even nationality. 0.97

00:02:01.080 They've turned on democracy, and now even America, in favor of a white warlord. 0.90

00:02:05.700 So of course, as you can see, Candace, they are already preparing for this to be a racial 0.99

00:02:10.400 war and has nothing to do with Ukraine and Russia, really.

00:02:15.380 It just comes down to skin color.

00:02:17.900 Well, it's so absurd, Harrison.

00:02:19.920 First of all, I follow a lot of Republicans, and most of them are condemning Putin pretty

00:02:23.940 hard right now.

00:02:25.200 Second to Cenk Uygur's position here, does he realize that Ukrainians are also white?

00:02:31.200 The whole idea that people are rallying behind Putin because he's white sort of ignores the

00:02:35.000 broader picture here, that this is a European war where both sides happen to have the same

00:02:39.620 skin color.

00:02:40.320 Anyway, I'll give it back to you.

00:02:41.400 Well, I mean, that's the nature of these tweets we've pulled, and you can just see exactly

00:02:47.560 where this is going to be heading.

00:02:49.440 Janelle Forsythe, who is a comms specialist for non-profits and progressive causes, she 0.57

00:02:56.080 writes,

00:02:56.440 This isn't discussed much, but Putin very much benefits from white privilege. 0.78

00:03:01.580 I just can't see a scenario in which a black or brown man running Russia will be allowed 1.00

00:03:05.940 to invade Ukraine with no devastating consequences. 1.00

00:03:09.460 White supremacy will destroy us. 0.75

00:03:11.060 So one thing quickly, I agree with Janelle Forsythe that I can't really see a black or brown 0.99

00:03:16.020 man running Russia as well.

00:03:17.280 But also, if you were to look at Africa, for example, where warlords run those countries

00:03:22.960 all the time, there is constant fighting and taking over of countries there all the time. 0.96

00:03:28.560 It's a little ridiculous.

00:03:30.920 And I think that, you know, this is, again, like I said, this is just what should be expected 0.93

00:03:34.720 from some of these progressives on Twitter.

00:03:38.120 Well, not just that, Harrison, but it's like people who don't follow foreign affairs, people

00:03:41.440 who have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to international relations, they're

00:03:43.780 not observers of international conflict.

00:03:45.960 But suddenly, when the news cycle switches to Ukraine, they're the expert, trust them,

00:03:50.880 and they're going to have some really insightful takes, as we can see here.

00:03:54.280 Well, and Candace, this next one is quite funny, and it leads to the point about how these

00:03:58.340 public health experts who are now engaging in foreign policy, they haven't totally forgotten

00:04:03.000 about public health.

00:04:03.700 So this one is from Dana Houle, who is a U.S. leftist activist, and she writes,

00:04:09.040 a lot of people in Ukraine crowding together inside, only 35% of Ukrainians have been vaccinated,

00:04:15.140 less than two have been boosted.

00:04:17.040 So again, the Ukrainians should be concerned about COVID. 0.98

00:04:21.440 They should be concerned about their vaccination status, not too much about what's happening

00:04:25.640 in Ukraine.

00:04:26.960 Just an unbelievable take.

00:04:30.240 Yeah, forget about the bombs crashing down.

00:04:33.440 Forget about the gunfire, the real threat, the real concern for everyone is still COVID.

00:04:38.000 Don't forget that.

00:04:38.980 Yeah, maybe we should be sending them N95 masks instead of rifles to really protect them.

00:04:44.520 And then this last one, which was horribly ratioed, from Stephen King, a fiction author.

00:04:51.380 You've probably heard of him.

00:04:52.820 He wrote, on February 22nd, just about a day before Putin decided to invade Ukraine, he wrote,

00:04:58.940 Mr. Putin has made a serious miscalculation.

00:05:01.620 He forgot he's no longer dealing with Mr. Trump.

00:05:03.880 So immediately people jumped on this as a, just a, one of the, probably one of the worst

00:05:08.420 takes, uh, of this entire situation, basically saying that, oh, right.

00:05:14.080 If, if Trump was still the president, Ukraine would have already been gone apparently.

00:05:18.720 But let's just remember under Donald Trump, Putin didn't invade Ukraine under Donald Trump.

00:05:25.100 China didn't invade Taiwan, uh, all of the, all of the issues that we are seeing really

00:05:31.480 popping off now under Biden weren't occurring.

00:05:34.580 Um, he basically went in and destroyed ISIS immediately.

00:05:38.320 And then from that point on every other leader, authoritarian leader around the world recognized

00:05:44.500 that Donald Trump was serious.

00:05:46.880 He would have stopped them and they didn't do anything.

00:05:49.180 So I'm not really sure where this, where this, uh, take is coming from, but, um, I mean,

00:05:53.960 this, this is coming from a fictional author.

00:05:55.920 Let's just remember that.

00:05:57.160 Well, it's, it's kind of just like Trump derangement.

00:05:59.480 Like everything must've been worse if, if Trump was, uh, in office for forgetting the reality,

00:06:03.700 right, the, the truth of the matter is that Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia under George

00:06:07.980 R. Bush when George R. Bush was president.

00:06:09.660 He invaded Crimea in Ukraine when Barack Obama was president.

00:06:13.480 He invaded nobody when Trump was president.

00:06:15.460 So say what you will about Trump.

00:06:16.820 Putin didn't invade another sovereign country under Trump.

00:06:19.780 Uh, here we have Joe Biden and we see, uh, Putin invading Ukraine.

00:06:24.300 So, so, so, so, so real life history and the facts are completely counter to a lot of this

00:06:30.140 Trump derangement stuff.

00:06:31.080 Um, no wonder the tweet was ratioed and for people who don't know ratio, it just means

00:06:35.200 that a whole bunch more people comment, uh, and, and, and, and sort of tell you that you're

00:06:39.760 wrong, uh, versus very few people who like your tweet and, and, and share it with your

00:06:44.100 audience.

00:06:44.320 So yes, uh, let's, let's stick to your fiction writing, um, Mr. King.

00:06:49.180 Well, uh, aside from, uh, aside from Ukraine and, and all the consternation and, and the hot 0.99

00:06:54.080 takes over there, uh, the media is still doing their best to try to demonize the freedom

00:06:59.200 convoy, continuing to do Justin Trudeau's dirty work.

00:07:01.060 Look, Harrison, I think that Justin Trudeau benefited greatly from the quick change in

00:07:05.860 the news cycle this week, right?

00:07:06.980 So he had the emergency act, he used it, he quickly got rid of it without really a lot

00:07:11.420 of explanation, without really being held to account in the way that you would expect

00:07:14.860 a Canadian democratic leader to be held into account.

00:07:17.620 Uh, a few hours after he announced that the emergency act was over, we got news that Putin

00:07:22.020 was going ahead and invading Ukraine.

00:07:24.060 We saw bombs, we saw, uh, troops, we saw, we saw the, the, the surge.

00:07:28.020 And so because of that, everybody focused, everyone's focus immediately shifted to Ukraine.

00:07:32.820 And again, Trudeau benefited from that because it helps him avoid the scrutiny of using the,

00:07:38.100 the worst power grab in Canadian history.

00:07:40.320 And so I, I hope that, that there will, uh, that the conservative opposition, that courts,

00:07:45.120 that judges, that lawyers will continue to, uh, expose Trudeau to unearth the, uh, information,

00:07:51.300 to, to help the people whose lives have been destroyed from having their bank accounts frozen.

00:07:55.440 I hope, I hope there's accountability.

00:07:56.740 I hope that we continue to get to the bottom of that, uh, Trudeau has benefited.

00:08:00.600 Um, however, the media continue to do what the media does, which is lie and spread propaganda

00:08:05.180 in favor of Justin Trudeau, trying to continue to smear the convoy.

00:08:08.880 Um, even though my guess is that most people who read the legacy media already have a negative

00:08:13.020 view of the convoy, regardless, they're continuing to do that dirty work. 0.70

00:08:16.260 So there's a story over in global and a couple of interesting points that I want to make

00:08:20.180 about this, this story, uh, Harrison.

00:08:21.940 So the headline says as freedom convoy leaves Ottawa residents continue to look over their

00:08:27.740 shoulders.

00:08:28.260 So this idea that, that the people in Ottawa are so forever triggered, um, from having

00:08:32.900 a group of working class people protest in their city for three weeks, uh, that they're

00:08:36.140 going to have like PTSD, um, forever because of this.

00:08:39.660 And, and, and the idea that they're going to have to look over their shoulders just in

00:08:42.320 case there's a trucker or a working class person in their, in their community.

00:08:46.020 Uh, so I'll read a little bit from this because it's quite amusing.

00:08:49.460 It says the blaring of truck horns, the sound of parties going into the wee hours of the

00:08:53.820 night, a city under occupation was Jamie Sadgrove's reality for three weeks.

00:08:59.020 Let me just make a quick point.

00:09:00.380 Um, I lived in Ottawa, it's a sleepy little town, um, normal cities in the world.

00:09:04.100 I've also lived in downtown Toronto, spent time in some of the biggest cities in the world.

00:09:07.500 Normal big cities have a bustling feel to them, right?

00:09:10.700 The idea of horns honking in the middle of the night, people partying the wee hours, that's

00:09:15.100 just sort of normal city life for most people, for, for people in Ottawa, it was like unbelievably

00:09:19.260 jarring to the point where they refer to the people who are in their city as occupiers.

00:09:23.180 And it was an occupation, a foreign occupation, sort of like what we're seeing in Kiev right

00:09:26.820 now.

00:09:26.980 It's, it's just so silly, uh, to take a step back and, and to view it under this lens,

00:09:31.100 but I'll continue reading.

00:09:33.220 It says, but as the so-called freedom convoy, freedom convoy in scare quotes, I've seen this

00:09:38.020 in another global piece, uh, Harrison, I think this must be their editorial position that

00:09:41.660 every time they call, they refer to the freedom protest, they call it the so-called freedom

00:09:45.900 convoy, freedom convoy in scare quotes, so that you don't actually believe that they are

00:09:49.300 fighting for freedom.

00:09:50.060 Um, that's just a scare quote.

00:09:51.380 So they put in.

00:09:51.980 So anyway, the freedom convoy vanished from downtown Sadgrove is starting to see the spirit

00:09:57.180 of a resilient city trickle back into the streets.

00:10:00.420 Everyone seems to be in a better mood.

00:10:01.980 I picked up on that in the streets as well.

00:10:03.980 People smiling at each other saying hi more often than I think they did before the convoy.

00:10:07.980 And more people are wearing their masks outside now too.

00:10:11.220 Hooray! 0.97

00:10:12.220 Congratulations.

00:10:13.220 All those horrible working class people are gone and we're back to our sensible bureaucrat 1.00

00:10:17.740 government town where we're so cautious that we even wear masks outside even though it's

00:10:21.500 clearly unnecessary.

00:10:22.500 Um, so, so congratulations, Ottawa. 0.91

00:10:24.700 You're back to, um, being a completely uptight, um, ridiculous, uh, city that where people 0.90

00:10:30.820 wear masks outside.

00:10:32.260 Uh, another, another person that they interviewed for this story, uh, individual named Amanda Knox who 0.85

00:10:37.700 lives in Kanata, Ontario.

00:10:38.940 Okay.

00:10:39.940 For folks not familiar with Ottawa, Kanata is not in Ottawa.

00:10:43.580 Kanata is a suburb that is 45 minutes away from downtown Ottawa, 45 minutes away from where

00:10:48.380 the convoy was.

00:10:49.380 So keep that in mind as we read this account from Miss Knox here.

00:10:52.940 She says, Monday was one of the few normal days they've had all year.

00:10:58.060 Knox said that she would sleep a little better knowing the convoy had departed from the downtown

00:11:01.820 corps, 45 minutes away, adding that all members of her family felt a little more at ease.

00:11:06.460 It's good to have that quiet return to the city said Knox from her quiet suburb, 45 minutes

00:11:11.900 away from Ottawa.

00:11:13.140 So I guess they're scraping the bottom of the barrel to put together this article, uh, Harrison,

00:11:17.540 where they couldn't find anyone in Ottawa to comment on it.

00:11:19.620 So they went to someone who lived in a suburb 45 minutes away.

00:11:22.780 You spent a bit of time in Ottawa during the convoy.

00:11:25.140 Uh, how, how, how do you, how do you read a piece like this?

00:11:28.580 Well, two things.

00:11:29.780 So, uh, on Amanda Knox's account of the, of the, of the noise, I stayed in two different

00:11:35.780 hotels on the second weekend when the trucks were still there.

00:11:39.700 The police hadn't cracked down violently on the protesters.

00:11:42.140 So everything was basically the way it was the first weekend.

00:11:46.260 The first hotel I stayed at was quite close to downtown.

00:11:48.460 So I could hear some of the horns only when I woke up because they stopped, they stopped

00:11:51.900 blaring their horns at night.

00:11:53.740 But the second hotel I stayed at was 10 minutes away from downtown, but it was still in Ottawa.

00:11:58.900 Uh, I didn't hear anything actually.

00:12:00.340 I couldn't hear the downtown.

00:12:02.500 I couldn't hear, um, the trucks.

00:12:04.940 So, uh, I, it's pretty hard to believe that in Kanata it was, Kanata was reverberating with

00:12:10.240 the sound of truck horns.

00:12:11.360 I doubt that, uh, but on the, on the first, uh, the first account from Jamie Sadgrove.

00:12:16.820 So he says that people are now smiling and waving at each other and saying hi.

00:12:21.840 When I was there, I had never been a part of a group where more people were smiling, more

00:12:26.520 people were happy to be there and more people were waving, hugging, talking to people.

00:12:31.240 It was actually, it was actually, um, one of the most refreshing things to be a part

00:12:35.760 of, to see that, that kind of sense of community come together.

00:12:38.840 I live in downtown Toronto.

00:12:40.000 It is one of the most dull cities around. 0.98

00:12:43.680 Everyone is miserable. 0.96

00:12:44.680 Everyone is, has their head in their phone. 0.75

00:12:47.080 No one is saying anything to anybody.

00:12:48.680 Um, so I, I, I just, I just find it to be ridiculous, obviously that they're, they're

00:12:53.120 going, it's like, they're going to such great lengths to spin this.

00:12:55.680 Um, but again, it's global news.

00:12:57.680 So.

00:12:58.680 That's such a good point, Harrison.

00:12:59.680 I, I heard that from so many people who were there.

00:13:01.480 I unfortunately didn't make it down into Ottawa for these convoys, but I was following it very

00:13:05.000 closely.

00:13:06.000 I was watching a lot of reporters, including our own who were down there.

00:13:09.080 And one of the things that so many people commented on was the festival carnival, like

00:13:13.200 atmosphere and how friendly everyone was, even, even people who weren't necessarily in

00:13:17.440 support at all.

00:13:18.440 I remember reading a, a blog by Matt Gurney, who was sort of saying that these people weren't,

00:13:22.360 weren't his people.

00:13:23.360 I didn't like them, but he still said that one of the things that was so notable to him

00:13:26.240 was the eye contact and how people were smiling and friendly.

00:13:29.760 And it was like, unlike anything he had, he had seen before.

00:13:32.640 And to me, that's sort of like the difference between a small town and a city.

00:13:36.600 When you're in a city, everyone keeps their head down, they keep to themselves.

00:13:39.560 Whereas when you're in a small town, people are friendly.

00:13:41.720 People say hi to each other, walk down the street, even if you don't know each other.

00:13:44.160 And that's just one of those major cultural divides.

00:13:46.340 And it's like, it's like when all of these working class people came to Ottawa, they brought 0.99

00:13:49.960 a little bit of their small town community to the city.

00:13:53.040 And it was, it was nice.

00:13:53.960 I'm sure it was refreshing.

00:13:55.360 So interesting point that you picked up on there.

00:13:57.560 Well, that wasn't the only example of the media just really obsessing over the convoy

00:14:02.560 and trying to paint it in the worst possible light.

00:14:05.400 One of the things that I noticed throughout the convoy was that the media tried to really

00:14:10.060 fixate on a small handful of people in the convoy.

00:14:13.060 So basically what they did was they sifted through the convoy.

00:14:15.980 They found the most egregious people possible. 0.84

00:14:18.400 They picked out the biggest lunatics, the craziest people who were making the conspiracy theories, 0.91

00:14:22.760 who were talking about how they wanted to overthrow the government, or who were making 0.99

00:14:27.040 legitimately racist comments.

00:14:28.900 And then they would hold these people up, the legacy media would hold these people up

00:14:31.940 as if they were somehow the leaders of the convoy or that their views represented everybody

00:14:35.920 at the convoy, treating the convoy like a political party.

00:14:38.600 The thing that the media fundamentally misunderstand or perhaps they deliberately misinterpret because

00:14:43.320 it makes the truckers look worse is that the truckers are not a political party.

00:14:46.920 It never was, right?

00:14:47.840 It was a completely organic grassroots movement.

00:14:50.200 There was word that a couple of truckers were going to do a slow roll from Vancouver.

00:14:53.940 All of a sudden there was convoys all over the country and they were putting together

00:14:56.940 sort of loosely organized, not a political organization, a protest movement, a group of

00:15:01.940 people who were all coming together because they shared one view, which is that the government

00:15:05.700 had overstepped, that their powers were being abused.

00:15:09.040 They wanted their lives back, right?

00:15:10.840 And so despite the true nature of the protest, which was that it was totally decentralized

00:15:16.160 and organic, the media treated it like it was a top-down organized event where there

00:15:21.900 was like a couple of brain trusts that were planning the whole thing.

00:15:26.240 And so among that structure that the media invented, they found an individual called

00:15:30.400 Pat King.

00:15:31.240 Now, I pointed this out on Twitter.

00:15:33.240 I'll make the point again.

00:15:34.240 I follow a lot of people in the convoy.

00:15:36.240 I follow it very closely.

00:15:37.240 I follow a lot of conservatives.

00:15:38.460 I have a lot of truckers in my feed constantly and I'm reading what they're saying and I'm

00:15:41.540 hearing how they're communicating and I'm watching them.

00:15:44.500 And I never heard anybody talk about this individual Pat King.

00:15:47.500 I didn't hear anybody saying, go check out his videos.

00:15:50.500 Let's show him support.

00:15:51.500 I heard a lot of people talking about BJ Dichter.

00:15:53.500 I heard a lot of people talking about Tamara Lich.

00:15:55.500 I heard people talking about lots of other people who were involved.

00:15:59.500 I didn't hear anyone talk about Pat King other than a small handful of journalists in

00:16:04.500 the parliamentary press gallery, people in the legacy media who held him up and called

00:16:08.500 him a leader.

00:16:09.500 They called him a leader and they pretended that his views represented the views of everyone.

00:16:12.500 Now, I will just say I find Pat King to be repulsive.

00:16:15.500 I find his views to be awful. 1.00

00:16:16.500 He seems to be a despicable, racist person. 0.99

00:16:20.500 He's I've seen clips of him making egregious statements. 0.99

00:16:23.500 I completely disagree with everything he's saying.

00:16:25.500 And I believe that people in the convoy felt the same way that as soon as they got to know

00:16:29.500 this guy, they said, you need to stay away from us because you're poisonous and we don't

00:16:32.500 agree with you. 0.95

00:16:33.500 Go away.

00:16:34.500 Regardless, the media love to hold him up and call him a leader.

00:16:37.500 So we saw that again this week because he apparently was arrested and he was in court.

00:16:41.500 Worth noting that the lawyers that were representing a bunch of the other trucker convoy leaders

00:16:45.500 refuse to represent this guy because he's not part of their group at all.

00:16:48.500 So this guy's on his own in court.

00:16:50.500 Here's David Akin of Global News saying, it's been a long eight hours for Pat King in court.

00:16:55.500 He's not able to speak.

00:16:56.500 He's the center of attention, but he's not in the way he's accustomed to.

00:16:59.500 As lawyers argue his fate, he slumped forward, elbows on knees, head in his hands.

00:17:03.500 Like, as if like people care.

00:17:05.500 Like, I don't understand.

00:17:06.500 Like they think he's his public figure when everyone in the trucker convoys tried to distance

00:17:10.500 himself from him.

00:17:11.500 Likewise, the CBC had a story calling him the convoy leader.

00:17:14.500 So it says convoy leader Pat King to hear bail decision Friday as one puts a 50k in support.

00:17:20.500 And they quote, of course, the Canadian anti-hate network, which should be called the anti-hate

00:17:24.500 hoax network because they have become infamous for pushing hate hoaxes.

00:17:29.500 Regardless, it says we've turned we've tuned in for Pat King's bail hearing this morning.

00:17:34.500 So you don't have to.

00:17:35.500 And we'll be providing updates accordingly.

00:17:38.500 Harrison, what's your take on this individual Pat King?

00:17:41.500 And why do you think the media are so obsessed with him?

00:17:43.500 Well, I think it's I think it's it's important to note, Candace, that as you said, this was a decentralized

00:17:49.500 operation and there were a couple of different groups with some followings that were.

00:17:54.500 Kind of taking the lead on the organizing of the truck movement itself.

00:17:58.500 One of those groups had listed Pat King amongst a list of many other people who had some had

00:18:05.500 a truck and had some had some responsibility for per province.

00:18:09.500 So the media immediately picked that up and they listed him as a as a Alberta captain.

00:18:14.500 So the media picked that up and said that he was the he was the leader of this entire operation,

00:18:18.500 knowing that that wasn't the case.

00:18:20.500 Now, I had the opportunity to join a press conference held by the organizers, including Tamara Lich, Ben Dictor,

00:18:28.500 some of the other organizers, including Keith Wilson, their lawyer.

00:18:31.500 So in that press conference, they explicitly stated that Pat King was not an organizer of the event.

00:18:37.500 He was not a part of their official the official organization that had that that were the leaders of this group.

00:18:43.500 But that didn't matter for the media because it was an easy target for them.

00:18:46.500 He was an easy figure to latch on to because he had these he had these posts that he put put up on social media that live on, of course,

00:18:55.500 and the media were able to take those and use it to smear the entire group.

00:18:59.500 So I think it's important to note that even when the organizers of the event distance themselves clearly from this individual,

00:19:07.500 that doesn't matter to the media.

00:19:09.500 They're not going to take that as as any legitimate word.

00:19:12.500 They're just going to believe what they want to believe and push what they want to push.

00:19:15.500 So it's disappointing that this individual has has tarnished this group.

00:19:20.500 And that was clear that the organizers of this event knew that was going to happen, knew this person was going to be a target for the media.

00:19:27.500 And they tried their best, but they weren't able to defeat the narrative being peddled by the legacy media on this one.

00:19:33.500 Well, they just insist on the fact that this guy's leader, even though everyone says obviously he's not. 0.74

00:19:38.500 I think it's a good lesson for conservatives, however, because, look, there are people out there who have horrible views, who are despicable racist.

00:19:47.500 And it's important to police your own and to make sure that these people aren't able to latch on to your movement,

00:19:52.500 aren't able to ride your coattails in order to promote their own, you know, despicable worldview.

00:19:58.500 And it's so important to loudly and clearly condemn people like that who wave Confederate flags and who talk about race in that way,

00:20:07.500 that that that that those people are just simply not welcome.

00:20:09.500 And if you start talking about that stuff, you're going to get removed and and basically just excommunicated by the community.

00:20:15.500 I like to see conservatives do that more strongly.

00:20:17.500 And of course, when it comes to the media, they're just the worst of the worst actors, such bad faith,

00:20:22.500 pretending again that somehow this individual speaks for everyone is just so such bad faith and exactly what we've come to expect from the legacy media.

00:20:31.500 Harrison, well, there's one more story I want to pick up on, but this came out last Friday and we didn't cover it on Fake News Friday.

00:20:36.500 But look, Andrew Coyne, who is a columnist over at the Globe and Mail, he's sort of he's an individual who goes on CBC and talks.

00:20:45.500 He's sort of the quintessential Canadian Laurentian elite.

00:20:49.500 Actually, he became infamous during this protest because he referred to the truckers as a group of antisocial yobs.

00:20:56.500 Let's play that clip. We haven't played that clip on the show before.

00:20:58.500 So this is Andrew Coyne, just so you get an idea who we're going to be talking about next year.

00:21:02.500 In many cases, they're not even truckers at all.

00:21:04.500 They're basically a bunch of of, you know, antisocial yobs with delusions of grandeur, a persecution complex and too much time on their hands.

00:21:14.500 So a group of antisocial yobs with delusions of grandeur and a persecution complex. 1.00

00:21:19.500 That's what he thinks about working class Canadians.

00:21:22.500 Well, on the day that Justin Trudeau enacted the Emergency Act, the day that he he unleashed it and the police were storming Ottawa and militarized the city and were moving in to remove the peaceful unarmed protest.

00:21:35.500 Andrew Coyne is a political affairs columnist.

00:21:37.500 You know, you'd think at a moment like that, you know, watching the police move in on a group of peaceful protesters,

00:21:43.500 watching the prime minister use an unprecedented power grab in the Emergencies Act, never been used before, hearing news of bank accounts being frozen, watching police brutality.

00:21:51.500 You would think at that moment a political affairs columnist would choose to write a column on the actor that's leading this whole thing, the person who's causing the chaos, which was Justin Trudeau.

00:22:01.500 Talking about why he enacted the Emergency Act, talking about, you know, the his position as leader of the party, the Liberal Party leading the country, how he mishandled it.

00:22:10.500 You know, there's so many things you would expect a political affairs column columnist to focus in on when it comes to the person leading the action.

00:22:17.500 Instead, you know, Andrew Coyne shifted his focus and decided to write a column demonizing conservatives.

00:22:23.500 So he wrote a column that came out on February 18th saying, how did conservatives become so attracted to extremism?

00:22:30.500 So I'm going to read a little bit here, Harrison, I'll let you react.

00:22:33.500 So he writes this, conservatives who are once considered part of the mainstream.

00:22:38.500 So first of all, he's saying the conservatives aren't mainstream anymore.

00:22:41.500 Okay, buddy.

00:22:42.500 Conservatives who were once part of the mainstream are spiraling down the same arc traced by Mr. Maxime Bernier, leader of the PPC party and others, for three weeks with the country's capital held hostage.

00:22:53.500 The party's former leader, Andrew Scheer, his interim leader, Candace Bergen, and his probable future leader, Pierre Polyev, have all openly sided with the hostage takers.

00:23:02.500 Their rhetoric indistinguishable from Maxime Bernier.

00:23:06.500 Okay, what do you think about that, Harrison?

00:23:09.500 Well, there's quite a lot to get into.

00:23:11.500 I mean, the hostage takers, as Andrew Coyne calls them, who are armed with bouncy castles and hot tubs and food, really must have scared Andrew quite a lot.

00:23:21.500 Now, here's the thing that I really don't understand.

00:23:25.500 The conservatives, the mainstream conservatives who he calls not mainstream, like Pierre Polyev and Andrew Scheer and Candace Bergen,

00:23:34.500 all they were doing was taking a very measured defense of Canadians peaceful right to protest because they have the ability to see past the politics.

00:23:42.500 They know full well that once the emergencies act has been invoked on a peaceful protest like this, there's very little stopping it from being invoked on other people's right to protest.

00:23:52.500 And unlike Andrew Coyne, these conservative leaders were taking a very measured response.

00:23:58.500 They weren't they weren't freaking out.

00:24:00.500 They weren't, you know, writing crazy posts on Twitter.

00:24:03.500 All they were doing was basically saying we defend the right for truckers to have their right to protest as we do for everyone else in this country to do that.

00:24:11.500 So I just think it's it's it's it's quite quite dangerous to see the shift happening where even the ability for mainstream politicians to defend the rights of working class people defend their right to protest.

00:24:25.500 That is seen as extreme. That's a that's a bad direction we're heading in if that's where the so-called elite are are now siding.

00:24:32.500 Well, it's just like, you know, the perspective of a progressive who doesn't think that the conservative party should exist, doesn't think the conservatives should have a political platform and thinks that the political conservative party should basically be a party of like red Tories who have sensible progressive values and maybe care a little bit more about balanced budgets or something like that.

00:24:51.500 That's sort of where he's coming from. And this idea that, like, how dare these conservative politicians want to listen to the truckers like like for I was watching.

00:25:01.500 I was watching the conservatives. I think that they were very measured. I don't think that they defended the truckers in as much as I would have liked to see them do.

00:25:08.500 I don't think that they that they that they truly represented them. However, what they were saying was very moderate, very moderate, saying these people have a right to protest.

00:25:16.500 We should hear them out. That's basically they condemned illegal blockades and they sided with law and order, you know, compare that to Maxime Bernier, who was much more, you know, colorful in his language, much more likely to

00:25:30.500 you know, use hyperbole in describing what Justin Trudeau was doing. I didn't see any of that from those conservative politicians.

00:25:35.500 So Andrew Coyne is just wrong on the facts on that one. Let's continue here. Oh, because he takes a shot at journalists like you and I, Harrison, here at True North.

00:25:42.500 So interesting. Now, let's let's talk about what Andrew Coyne thinks about the media.

00:25:46.500 So he says, right wing opinion, formerly fragmented, now presents itself of something of a continuum running all the way from Rebel News through True North to the Sun newspaper chain and, alas, the National Post.

00:25:57.500 People you'd have thought would be able to spot a grift a mile away instead have been enthralled by it as if the half witted bros in the convoy really were fighting for freedom and not providing cover for their anarcho racist leaders.

00:26:09.500 So Andrew Coyne falls into the same trap as David Akin and other journalists pretending that this was, again, a top down, the top down movement where the leaders of the convoy, they weren't actually working class people fighting for their freedom, Harrison.

00:26:23.500 They were actually anarcho racists who were what trying to overthrow the government, I guess.

00:26:28.500 And apparently the whole thing was a grift from day one.

00:26:31.500 And people like you and I should have been smart enough to see through what he calls the half witted bros in the convoys, as if calling them antisocial jobs wasn't bad enough.

00:26:39.500 Now he's calling them half witted bros.

00:26:41.500 So, again, this is Andrew Coyne, who is a very privileged elite, who sees himself as being very, very insightful and intelligent, looking down his nose and scoffing at the intelligence of the truckers.

00:26:54.500 That's that's that's that's that's great. That's very that's very good for class relations in Canada.

00:26:59.500 And he's just bitter about the idea that there's this sort of new continuum of right wing conservative media.

00:27:05.500 So he much prefers that the rebel be like isolated and far, far away removed from the conservative party.

00:27:12.500 Whereas now he sees this continuum. I'm flattered by this, that he says, look, there's the rebel, then there's true north.

00:27:18.500 You know, the rebels is does its own thing and it's not for everyone. It's its own is its own flavor here at true north.

00:27:24.500 We're a little different. We have our own flavor.

00:27:26.500 And then same with over to the Sun newspapers and post media. Those two are kind of blurring together.

00:27:32.500 Yeah, I think I think that's fair to say that there's sort of different types of conservative news outlets.

00:27:37.500 We all have our own flavor and we're all influenced again by our own worldview and our own editorial position.

00:27:43.500 Post media takes money from the Trudeau government. We do not. And and so, you know, what he's really angry about, Harrison, is something that I'm really proud of.

00:27:52.500 The fact that independent media like the rebel, Ezra Levant, head of the rebel, posted a couple of days ago that his channel has had over 100 million views in the last month.

00:28:01.500 So many people are going to rebel. They've had a lot of journalists and reporters on the ground filming and covering things that legacy media were just unable to cover.

00:28:09.500 Here at true north, we've had similarly very, very good numbers, not quite that high, but still, I'd wager that more people are reading true north than than a lot of those post media newspapers.

00:28:18.500 And it's great that people are getting their news from other sources and that if you are conservative, you don't have to be stuck with the National Post, which, again, is a big corporation that takes money from the Trudeau government and isn't always necessarily going to take the side of conservatism, especially when it's more of a populist or a Western Canadian movement.

00:28:39.500 And so the thing that Andrew Quinn is most upset about, to me, is a great sign for the conservative movement that we have more outlets, more voices, more opinions being expressed.

00:28:49.500 What's your take on that?

00:28:51.500 Well, I think one thing to note is that at true north, we don't call Canadians, uh, half witted bros and anti-social yobs.

00:28:59.500 Most Canadian, most of those Canadians, we don't call Canadians that read our work that, and we don't call Canadians that don't read our work that we actually take it.

00:29:07.500 We have, we have, we have a sense of respect for Canadians exercising their rights, um, to protest.

00:29:13.500 And clearly this is, this is really upsetting Andrew Coyne.

00:29:16.500 Um, and no wonder, I mean, luckily I, at my role, I have the ability to see the, the data, the backend, the numbers on our site.

00:29:22.500 And it's no surprise that our growth is catching the attention of these people who work for sinking ship legacy media outlets.

00:29:30.500 It is a threat to their, to their dominant, uh, control over the media.

00:29:36.500 We are on the map now.

00:29:37.500 Um, we have seen incredible growth since this convoy began.

00:29:41.500 And it's because Canadians are desperate for real coverage that isn't going to demonize them at every turn.

00:29:47.500 Uh, and I think that that's just, that's just the way this is all heading.

00:29:51.500 Um, Globe and Mail, the National Post, um, and some of these post media newspapers aren't appealing to Canadians

00:29:58.500 because they've taken this really nasty position on, on everyday Canadians who just want to, who just want to have their right to protest,

00:30:07.500 have their voice heard, and do it in a, in frankly, a fun way with bouncy castles and hot tubs.

00:30:12.500 These are not half-witted, uh, anti-social yobs.

00:30:15.500 And Andrew Coyne, if you've looked at any of his coverage, every time he does a CBC hit, he's doing it from his house.

00:30:21.500 So clearly he's cooped up in his house, not talking to any of these people who he, who he seems to think are, are half-wits.

00:30:28.500 Um, and, and, and is just, and is just firing shots from his basement at these Canadians.

00:30:34.500 It is, uh, it's just disappointing to see, but, um, clearly this, this whole convoy has really, really broken Andrew Coyne's spirit.

00:30:42.500 Totally. I want to read one more part of it because it's so interesting.

00:30:45.500 So, uh, yeah, again, you have this elitist Laurentian elite guy sitting from his home.

00:30:49.500 He appears in the Globe and Mail and on the CBC, and he's, he's, he's raging against what he calls a phony class war.

00:30:55.500 So he says, there's also a whiff of a class war in the air, a phony class war, but there you are.

00:31:00.500 Conservative commentators have persuaded themselves or at any rate would like to persuade others of the blockade participants

00:31:05.500 because some of them brought trucks are genuine representatives of truckers as a group or better yet the working class.

00:31:11.500 It's not remotely true.

00:31:12.500 90% of the working class are fully vaccinated at work, but it fits the populist conservative ambition of hiving off working class voters from the left,

00:31:19.500 whom they accuse of being more concerned with racial and sexual identity politics than traditional working class issues.

00:31:25.500 A lot to unpack there.

00:31:26.500 First of all, that the idea that if you're fully vaccinated, that you're not part of the trucker convoy is a lie.

00:31:31.500 It's, it's wrong.

00:31:32.500 It's, it's wrong. It's objectively wrong.

00:31:34.500 If you spent any time as you did Harrison going and interviewing these truckers or as I did watching a lot, a lot of interviews,

00:31:39.500 coming through a lot of footage, you will learn that a lot of the truckers were in fact fully vaccinated.

00:31:43.500 The reason that they were there is because they want their freedoms back.

00:31:46.500 They don't want to live in a two tiered society.

00:31:48.500 They don't like the mandates.

00:31:49.500 They don't like the idea that people are being fired from their jobs.

00:31:51.500 It was a point of principle.

00:31:53.500 Okay. So, so the idea that just because someone is vaccinated, therefore they can't be part of the convoy in the movement is just false.

00:31:59.500 It's false.

00:32:00.500 It's wrong. If you paid attention to what people are actually saying, he would understand that.

00:32:03.500 And I understand as well, look, I'm fully vaccinated and I vehemently oppose vaccine mandates.

00:32:08.500 I think it is terrible for society and bad for the future of our country.

00:32:11.500 So, so it's not a contradiction.

00:32:13.500 And just by simply saying that someone's vaccinated, therefore they're not part of this group is wrong on the surface.

00:32:18.500 The broader point that he's making here that it's a phony class war.

00:32:21.500 Look, the idea that a bunch of people who work in the real world, who don't have the luxury to sit on zoom all day, to work from their home, to be, you know, hived off from society because they can live in this virtual world.

00:32:33.500 The people who actually have to get up every morning, get dressed, go out and, you know, face the world, COVID or not, regardless of the weather.

00:32:41.500 These are the people who have had enough.

00:32:43.500 And very, very much is a class distinction.

00:32:45.500 And it is so obvious that it's not just conservative commentators who are making this point.

00:32:49.500 I write a piece about it in the New York Times yesterday.

00:32:52.500 The exact same thing.

00:32:53.500 So many people are observing that this is a class distinction.

00:32:56.500 In fact, Andrew Quinn wrote this piece last week.

00:32:58.500 Later in the week, he was on CBC sort of admitting that it actually was a class distinction.

00:33:02.500 So maybe he's come around on this point.

00:33:04.500 But here, just the points that he's making are so wrong.

00:33:07.500 So, so out of touch.

00:33:09.500 And to me, again, just shows this sort of like bitter angriness that he has that he's sort of losing.

00:33:14.500 He's losing his grip of power because people are no longer looking to him as sort of the intellectual thought leader for conservatives.

00:33:25.500 That's not who he is anymore.

00:33:26.500 And he's so out of touch with the grassroots base of the conservative party that the conservatives, they don't look to him.

00:33:32.500 They don't care what he has to say.

00:33:33.500 He's in a position of power, but he's losing that power.

00:33:36.500 And he's angry that that power is slipping away.

00:33:39.500 Yeah, the guy who says that this isn't a class war is the same guy calling working class Canadians halfwits and antisocial jobs.

00:33:48.500 I mean, how much how much more how much clearer can it get the the person from the CBC and Globe and Mail basically attacking all of these people and looking down on them is saying, oh, this is not a class war.

00:34:00.500 This is not a class divide.

00:34:01.500 Well, clearly it is.

00:34:03.500 And and Andrew wouldn't know that because he hadn't spent any time talking with any of these people.

00:34:07.500 I wonder if he's even talked to a trucker in maybe in his whole life, because this kind of opinion is from the same kind of person that wouldn't be wouldn't even know a trucker if if they walked if they walked past him on the street.

00:34:21.500 Oh, that's a good point. And to the earlier point that somehow this is a continuum from Rebel to True North to Sun Papers all the way to National Post.

00:34:30.500 One of the people one of the journalists who has been the strongest proponent and advocate for the working class and the truckers has been Rex Murphy, who writes for the National Post.

00:34:39.500 He's probably the most prominent writer for the National Post.

00:34:42.500 And it's because he grew up in a working class environment and he still goes out of his way to try to interact with the working class and people like truckers.

00:34:50.500 So there's there's quite a distinction that you can see between a person who loves her country and cares about getting to know them and wants to hear from different people from different classes.

00:34:58.500 Rex Murphy and someone who's very isolated, very insular, very snobby and sort of telling everybody else what to think.

00:35:05.500 And that is Andrew Coyne. Well, it's no surprise, Harrison, that this came out. Polls show that trust in the media and the government are at an all time low.

00:35:13.500 So in 2022 so far, only 35 percent of Canadians say they trusted traditional media. It's down from 38 percent last year.

00:35:20.500 My guess is that it has plummeted even more over the past weeks, seeing the way that the media has turned into essentially propagandists for the Trudeau government, repeating their lies that this was an occupation,

00:35:31.500 that these protesters are extremists and Nazis and racist. And to so many people, it's just clear as day what the media is doing and how out of touch and untrustworthy they are.

00:35:42.500 Well, Harrison, thank you so much for joining Fake News Friday. It's always fun to have you on the show. Thank you.

00:35:47.500 Yeah, it's great to be on, Candace. Thank you.

00:35:50.500 All right. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - February 25, 2022

The media isn’t finished smearing Canada’s truckers

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