Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ INTERVIEW： Andrew Lawton's new book on the Trucker Rebellion

00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. Very special show today. Our dear friend Andrew Lawton is back.

00:00:04.300 He has written a new book called The Freedom Convoy, the inside story of three weeks that

00:00:09.120 shook the world. I really do think they shook the world. And Andrew Lawton was one of the good guys

00:00:13.360 covering it honestly from street level, not sneering at it from on high like the CBC.

00:00:20.200 We're going to go through it. We're going to spend some quality time with Andrew,

00:00:23.720 and I hope it'll convince you to buy the book. For those of you who don't know,

00:00:28.520 we have a video version of this podcast. It's the main way we do things here at Rebel News' video.

00:00:34.580 And to subscribe to it, you have to go to Rebel News Plus. Click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month.

00:00:40.120 Not only do you get the nightly Ezra LeVant show in full blazing color, but we have four other weekly

00:00:46.480 shows. So that's 36 episodes a month for just eight bucks a month. I think it's a bargain,

00:00:52.680 actually. We're probably very underpriced. And more importantly, we need that money because we

00:00:57.920 do not take a dollar from Trudeau. And it shows. You tell me, do you think Andrew Lawton and his

00:01:03.020 book about the truckers would ever be featured on the CBC? You know the answer to that. So that's

00:01:08.100 why we have to stay independent so we can be free. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com and click

00:01:12.840 subscribe. Here's today's podcast.

00:01:28.940 Tonight, a feature interview with our friend Andrew Lawton, who's got a new book out

00:01:34.180 on the Trucker Rebellion. It's July 1st, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:42.880 Well, it's Canada Day, and what an interesting time it is. You know, I remember growing up,

00:01:59.480 and so many of the national symbols were so closely fused to the Liberal Party's partisan

00:02:06.540 symbols that always irked me. The color of the flag, red. The color of the Liberal Party flag,

00:02:13.360 red. They were branding everything. It was an obvious tactic, and it was a very smart one. They

00:02:19.320 were trying to own love of country, own patriotism. The Charter of Rights was theirs. It was Pierre

00:02:26.620 Trudeau's, and in a lot of ways, that's noble. They, you know, they were doing it for votes, but

00:02:32.320 if they really were in love with Canada, that's a wonderful thing. I think the apogee of that was

00:02:39.380 after the near miss of the separatist referendum in 1995. Seriously, within one percent, half a percent,

00:02:47.600 Quebec barely voted against separation. Jean Chrétien was spooked by that and spent hundreds of millions

00:02:54.800 of dollars labeling everything he could with a Canadian flag and the word Canada, and I think

00:03:00.480 that was the height of liberal patriotism, even though it may not quite have been real. It was a

00:03:05.860 political tool. Like I say, it was fused. They basically said, if you love Canada, that means you're

00:03:12.600 a liberal. If you're upset with Canada, that means you're not just a conservative, you're anti-Canadian.

00:03:17.700 What's so interesting about the last six months is that the symbols of Canada, that for so long were

00:03:25.880 associated with the Liberal Party, have been effectively and authentically appropriated by

00:03:33.660 Trudeau's critics. I think I told you that when I went down to the trucker convoy in late January,

00:03:40.140 I couldn't believe I would see people spontaneously breaking out in the national anthem on the street,

00:03:47.720 like just a couple of guys walking down the street with the Canadian flag, and they would break out

00:03:51.980 in, you know, Canada. I've never seen that in my entire life, and though I acknowledge that much of

00:03:56.680 the Canadian patriotism in 1995 during the separatist referendum and thereafter was very genuine,

00:04:02.320 of course it was, there was an awful lot of orchestrated, manufactured,

00:04:06.420 astroturf nationalism and patriotism then. What was so different about the truckers 0.84

00:04:14.520 was that they genuinely meant it, no one was coordinating them, no one was funding them,

00:04:20.200 and then when they looked for some manifesto, something that symbolized who they were,

00:04:28.200 it was Canada. They couldn't believe they were living in a Canada where you were essentially locked

00:04:33.760 in your house under house arrest. In Quebec, where there were so many trucker protesters from,

00:04:37.800 there was actually a curfew from 10 p.m. till 5 a.m. every day. True North, strong and free. Well,

00:04:43.740 where did the freedom go? The Charter of Rights that Trudeau Sr. talked about, where was it now?

00:04:47.720 It was fascinating to me how the truckers chose patriotic symbols as their flag, and it's incredible to me

00:04:56.540 how the Liberal Party and its allies have, in response, not sought to retake those symbols.

00:05:03.680 No, we are the party of the Charter of Rights. No, we are the true Canadians, but rather,

00:05:08.000 they've abandoned those symbols. As we've shown you, our friend David Menzies, who went to

00:05:13.760 Ottawa in anticipation of Canada Day, they've literally fenced off Parliament Hill.

00:05:19.040 So, you can't celebrate Canada Day. No one else can, but ha-ha, the truckers can't. We won that

00:05:26.600 one. If you're too unruly, if you shout, oh, Canada, that's a thousand dollar fine, according

00:05:32.860 to Ottawa Bylaw Services. So, instead of trying to retake Canadianism from the truckers, they've 0.94

00:05:40.280 turned against it. I never in my life would have thought anything about it, and it's with that

00:05:45.120 little preamble that I would like to introduce to you, my friend and our guest, for a feature-length

00:05:49.660 interview today. Of course, I'm talking about Andrew Lawton. He has a new book out called The

00:05:54.360 Freedom Convoy, the inside story of three weeks that shook the world, and indeed, it did. Joining

00:06:01.200 us now via Skype is Andrew Lawton. Andrew, good to see you again, my friend, and congratulations on

00:06:06.260 the new book. Thank you. Great to be with you, as always, Ezra. I appreciate it. Well, I appreciate

00:06:12.160 you taking the time, and folks, by the way, we'll have a link under this video where you can order

00:06:17.040 the book directly. Now, the book has done very well, even before it was officially on sale. I think

00:06:22.340 it was one of the top best-selling books in Canada, am I right? Yeah, we got up to number two. We were

00:06:29.420 behind the Justin Trudeau picture book, so at least I was in good company, but I was very fortunate and

00:06:34.820 very grateful, and I think it speaks to just how many people were really keen to have accurate and

00:06:40.980 honest journalism about this pivotal chapter in Canada, which, as we know, was so hard to come by.

00:06:46.480 The only way you could was through independent media. Yeah, you're so right. I could feel it in

00:06:53.200 the moment. I could feel the enormous advantage of everyone on the convoy having a cell phone,

00:06:59.300 everyone on the convoy Facebooking and tweeting and TikToking, and it was so large in number and so

00:07:06.560 grassroots that it overwhelmed temporarily the power of the legacy media who were snide and snippy and

00:07:14.880 condescending to it. But that was in January and February. Andrew, I think what we've seen since then

00:07:20.980 is a revisionist history where the legacy media, the government media have tried to regain lost ground

00:07:31.020 and rewrite the history and say, no, it wasn't peaceful. They were insurrectionists, and no,

00:07:37.720 it wasn't ordinary people of all backgrounds. It was racist, sexist, homophobe, white nationalists 0.99

00:07:45.160 or something. So that's why I think your book is so important. We have we and I mean, we people who

00:07:51.480 are sympathetic and honest about what the truckers were. It's up to us. It's up to you to write the

00:07:58.080 history. Because otherwise, it's going to be undone by the CBC and the Toronto Star.

00:08:04.220 I would agree with that. And there was a moment and I actually referenced it in the book where I

00:08:09.480 talk about this impromptu speech you gave on the back of a flatbed truck that very first weekend.

00:08:15.200 And you looked at all the people out in the freezing cold on Wellington Street with their

00:08:19.240 phones up. And you said you're doing journalism. You're the journalist. And I'm paraphrasing your

00:08:23.420 comments. But there was something that I found fascinating covering this on the ground for True

00:08:28.480 North, because that was how this book started. It was actually from me being there covering this and

00:08:33.280 seeing this significant divide between the coverage of this in the mainstream media and what I was

00:08:39.880 seeing on the ground. And in the several days that I spent at the convoy then and also when I went

00:08:45.620 back later, I found that my audience watching online, what they liked the most wasn't even all that

00:08:51.600 difficult to do. They wanted me to just walk around with my phone and stream live video because it was

00:08:57.600 so difficult to come by a pure, unadulterated, unfiltered sense of what was happening. And that

00:09:04.340 was, I think, the great shame on this. And the book does take aim specifically at how Canadian 0.88

00:09:09.360 mainstream media coverage really misrepresented or failed to understand the convoy.

00:09:14.740 Yeah, you're so right. People were so alive and alert to the misrepresentations and the twisting of

00:09:23.260 the truth. They just, those raw live streams of footage were so valuable to them because it didn't even

00:09:31.600 matter what your chatter or commentary was. They could see with their own eyes and ears in a live,

00:09:36.960 unedited, raw format what was going on. That was some of our most popular stuff, too. We had a few

00:09:41.880 journalists walking around with different battery packs. It was very cold, but they would do two,

00:09:47.560 three hours, Viva Frye from Montreal. He would do four hours of just walking and you could tune in

00:09:53.900 and then come back and then tune in later. And that was superior to the billion dollar

00:10:00.600 broadcasters of CBC, CTV and Global News. Just a guy in his cell phone. Go ahead.

00:10:06.760 Yeah, it was interesting because some of them were covering this from their offices on Spark Street

00:10:12.260 or Wellington Street looking down. Others went out into the mix, but it was interesting. The

00:10:17.120 mainstream media would travel in these teams of four where there'd be the reporter, a camera person,

00:10:23.040 a producer and a bodyguard, a security guard, just so they could go out. And again, there were a lot

00:10:28.660 of people that were heckling and shouting rude things to the journalists. And I condemned that when it

00:10:34.040 happened and I condemned it in the book because even if you don't like these people, all you're

00:10:38.300 doing is feeding into the misrepresentation because then all that they have to show on TV is pictures of

00:10:44.020 you guys hurling obscenities at them. But it also spoke to the feeling that they needed security to

00:10:50.180 go out into the midst where Rupa Subramania, for example, who's joined the team at True North,

00:10:55.340 she's a shorter, petite woman of color that just walked around pretty much every day talking to people 1.00

00:11:00.900 and didn't encounter any of these issues. I walked around. I'm a big guy, sure. But

00:11:04.920 I walked around alone and didn't encounter any issues. I know your reporter Alexa Lavoie went

00:11:10.320 around and, as I understand, didn't get assaulted by anyone except by police at the very end of it.

00:11:15.440 I was going to say, the only violence, there was not a single trucker was charged with violence.

00:11:23.400 The only violence they had was a hoax. They tried to pin some apartment arson on the truckers. It

00:11:29.400 turned out to be a hoax. The only violence that weekend was done by police. The only violence to

00:11:36.080 journalists was done by police. And as you point out, shooting our dear friend Alexa in the leg at

00:11:41.320 point blank range, not an accident, an act of violence. I want to disagree with you on one thing

00:11:47.960 where you say, and I take your point about those journalists are going to have the final cut on their

00:11:54.740 video. So if you're swearing at them, that's what they're going to show. That is newsworthy. 0.92

00:11:59.780 And I'm not sure if swearing is the most effective way, but heckling, I support. And the reason I say

00:12:05.580 that is for two years, we had all been shut up and shut down. Parliament was basically canceled,

00:12:14.280 and then they did some of it by video. There were no town hall meetings. There was no way to feed back

00:12:20.020 to the government or to the media. We just had to lie back and passively take it for two years.

00:12:26.480 And those truckers were the first time anyone said, you know what, we're going to have a say now.

00:12:32.040 And no, we're not going to stay six feet separated. And it was the first, you had two years of pent up

00:12:39.280 desire to talk back to power, to speak truth to power. And I take your point, you're not going to,

00:12:44.760 it's not pragmatic to swear at a CBC reporter because they'll just get their back up and show

00:12:50.320 you swearing. But I support being able to heckle back at journalists who heckle the people. So maybe,

00:12:59.220 I think you and I are probably in general agreement on that from a pragmatic point of view. But I

00:13:04.580 understand why people were mad at the CBC liars. And I think when, you know, these journalists went out

00:13:10.760 with security guards, I think that was their own projection. No one was violent. No one was

00:13:16.840 threatening to be violent. That was the journalists trying to feel like, like victims. Anyhow, don't

00:13:21.300 mind me. I just felt like weighing in. I want to get back to your book. The book is called The Freedom

00:13:24.720 Convoy, The Inside Story of Three Weeks That Shook the World. Now, when I first read your subtitle

00:13:29.500 that shook the world, I sort of thought, that's a big thing to say. But I thought, no, no, no.

00:13:34.380 This was the most news coverage that Canada has received around the world, probably since that

00:13:41.740 1995 near miss of the referendum. I can't think of a time when the world's eyes were as riveted on

00:13:49.300 Canada. Our own journalists not only did countless American media hits, but in the UK, Australia,

00:13:55.940 Germany, the whole world was fascinated. And it wasn't just for a day. It was for weeks. I think

00:14:02.440 the truckers did shake the world, or at least the West. We saw echo trucker convoys in Australia and

00:14:09.220 the United States and the UK. I think it really did inspire the world. What do you have to say about

00:14:14.740 that? Very much so. And it's interesting. The subtitle is probably the, because for the longest

00:14:20.100 time, the book was only available for pre-order. So all people could do was literally judge a book by

00:14:25.100 its cover. And the trolls latched onto the subtitle more than anything else, because they shook the world,

00:14:30.620 whatever. And I really do mean that, because for starters, the idea of Canada-style protest,

00:14:37.660 that was a term I had never heard before January, February of this year. And if you look, and I did a

00:14:43.000 little bit of an audit when I was writing the book, that term was appearing in news coverage around the

00:14:47.700 world, the Associated Press, Reuters, Canada-style protests, because people were doing convoys to

00:14:53.660 Canberra in Australia, to Brussels in Belgium, to Wellington, New Zealand, to Washington, D.C.,

00:14:59.780 quite a large one in the U.S. So the idea that people in other countries, who, by the way,

00:15:06.160 oftentimes had had larger anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine mandate movements and protests than

00:15:12.740 Canada did, they were looking to Canada and saying, you know what? These truckers are onto

00:15:17.980 something. We're going to do it. Just look at the standing ovation former President Donald Trump

00:15:22.360 received at CPAC in Florida, when he talked about the truckers taking a stand, and just everyone,

00:15:28.260 Americans walking up. I mean, for the longest time, when I went to CPAC a decade ago, and you're a 1.00

00:15:33.460 Canadian, you're kind of treated as this weird little outsider, this novelty there. They don't

00:15:38.320 know anything about Canada or Canadian news. But in this case, they were looking and saying, yeah,

00:15:42.980 these Canadians have got it figured out. And also, I will say, foreign media coverage oftentimes did a

00:15:50.040 better job than Canadian media. And I'm talking about Fox News in the U.S., GB News in the United

00:15:56.700 Kingdom, some Australian outlets as well, that were doing a better job. Even the New York Times,

00:16:03.280 to its credit, reported accurately at the end of the convoy that police were arresting people at

00:16:10.140 gunpoint. And all of the Canadian media pounced on them and said, how dare they? That's wrong. You

00:16:14.980 can't say that. You shouldn't say it. And it was true. It was completely true. You know, I'm so glad

00:16:19.520 you mentioned that. And I take it that's in your book. I mean, the New York Times is, for a liberal,

00:16:24.740 that is the highest heights of newspaperology. It's the biggest, it's the richest, it's the

00:16:29.380 strongest, it's the most opinion leading. And so, and I forget the name of the New York Times

00:16:34.960 journalist, but if I'm not mistaken, she was a former war correspondent. Like, she was not some junior kid.

00:16:39.880 She was a very seasoned journalist. I mean, the New York Times, you can disagree with their

00:16:44.340 editorial slant. I do. But they hire the best people, you know, they hire the best liberal

00:16:50.760 journalists, but they are the best. And so, I think it was Canadian liberal journalists were sort of

00:16:56.920 excited. Wow, the New York Times is coming to Canada. They normally ignore us. Wow, we're in the

00:17:01.800 big times. Oh, but you're not with our narrative that these truckers are evil and violent. And you're

00:17:09.280 right. That New York Times are reported that cops had their guns drawn. And I just remember

00:17:15.420 Canadian media party type after media party type saying, you must apologize, you must retract.

00:17:21.660 Would be nice if you came up here and reported she was on the streets.

00:17:25.840 It's not just a picture. They had a picture of it. And it was the it was the epitome of that old

00:17:30.460 Chico Marx. Who are you going to believe me or your own eyes? And it wasn't just that she was right 0.91

00:17:35.920 and they were wrong. I mean, just by the way, you can make mistakes or you can miss something.

00:17:41.120 But the fact that as a collective, all these Canadian journalists thought we must correct

00:17:47.620 the New York Times, it's our moral duty to take them to task on behalf of whom? On behalf of Justin

00:17:55.200 Trudeau, on behalf of the police, like you could they revealed themselves that they were on a team

00:18:00.100 and and they couldn't stand it if there was a dissenting voice.

00:18:06.000 Tell me more about the book. Go ahead. You were saying.

00:18:09.380 Yeah. And I just think this is the big point here is that the media coverage of this was simply

00:18:15.280 fraught with all of this political jockeying where some of the Canadian intelligentsia didn't like the

00:18:21.160 message that that coverage sent, that the police crackdown was heavy handed. They didn't like having

00:18:26.380 to face and confront the reality of what people who supported the truckers were saying, which is

00:18:31.700 that why are they bringing guns to a bouncy castle fight? Yeah. You know, and even what we talked about

00:18:37.540 earlier, our own Alexa Lavoie being shot in the leg. If any other journalist in the country was shot

00:18:43.840 by police for peacefully covering a news event, that that would have been huge news. That would have

00:18:52.620 been something the Canadian Association of Journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression,

00:18:55.940 Penn Canada, Amnesty International, Canadian Civil Liberties Association. That would have been

00:19:00.300 something that would have revved them up. I didn't see any coverage outside of the independent media of

00:19:05.760 Alexa being shot. That I mean, that that is how adamant the media is on Team Trudeau.

00:19:14.000 Yes. And a lot of the journalism advocacy groups, the civil liberties groups were silent on this. And to be

00:19:20.860 fair, I mean, the civil liberties groups in Canada were generally strong on the Emergencies Act.

00:19:25.420 But the press freedom groups, I didn't see reporters without borders coming to my defense

00:19:29.800 when I was pepper sprayed. Right. Or Alexis when she was hit with a tear gas canister. And in fact,

00:19:34.880 a lot of them parroted what police said, which is, no, we didn't use tear gas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:19:40.140 Well, listen, I want to get into the book. Tell us what some of the chat. I don't want to give it all

00:19:44.680 away. And like I say, the book's available on the Amazon link under this video. I encourage people to get

00:19:49.780 it. Get it because I'm sure I haven't read it yet, Andrew, but I'm sure it's a great book. I know

00:19:53.640 you're a great journalist. But even if you weren't, quite frankly, I think it behooves

00:19:59.120 conservatives to buy a book, buy a conservative writer. We have to support conservative books.

00:20:05.420 Now, if you're talking Andrew Lawton, you're talking about one of the best journalists out

00:20:08.500 there anyway. So it's going to be it's it's a good read. I just know that before even cracking the

00:20:13.240 spine. But there's so many books out there pumped out that just are repeaters of the soft left message.

00:20:22.800 We have to support a non revisionist history of what happened, because if we don't, all of the

00:20:30.640 amazing, authentic grassroots organic gains of that month will be lost. So anyway, get us into the book.

00:20:37.600 Tell us some of the chapters. What are the kind of things you covered in the book? You have the table

00:20:41.720 contents contents in front of you. Take us through the chapter headings. So, OK, let me. Well, actually,

00:20:47.700 I'll pull it up as I as I'm speaking. It's funny. I didn't know if I would need to do the homework

00:20:51.140 here, but OK, no, I'm not. Well, I buy myself time to do that. I just thought, like, tell me some

00:20:57.900 of the themes you don't have to be. I mean, I am curious, but tell me some of the themes and the some

00:21:02.780 of the subjects you cover. So I will say that the story was naturally a story of three acts. You had how

00:21:09.720 the convoy came to be and got to Ottawa. What happened in those critical three weeks when the

00:21:14.960 convoy was stationed in downtown Ottawa. And then you had those pivotal few days at the end when

00:21:20.280 Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, the police came in and did the crackdown. And then

00:21:24.760 this protest was disbanded. And this was obviously me writing this afterwards. But knowing that the

00:21:31.980 story was in some ways still evolving and it was very challenging in some ways because I have,

00:21:36.340 you know, gotten to chapter 13 or whatever, and some news story would come up that affected

00:21:40.380 something that was, you know, in chapter nine, for an example. So you'd have to go back and at a

00:21:45.300 certain point, and you know this as the author of many fantastic books, at a certain point,

00:21:49.160 you have to hit send and you have to publish it. So it's not meant to be the real time living tree

00:21:54.500 of all the news that's happened since. But what it is, is a book that traces the origins of the

00:21:59.960 convoy goes behind the scenes. And when I say behind the scenes, I don't just mean a recap

00:22:04.680 of what happened on day one, day two, day three, but actually does some journalism to understand

00:22:11.020 how this thing came to be. How was it fueled? Where did the money come from? How was it spent?

00:22:16.480 Where did the food come from? A lot of people didn't realize that they had this network of

00:22:20.900 command centers in downtown Ottawa hotels, and they were running catering out of them. They were

00:22:25.960 running an IT department. They were running security. They had medics. They had a dispatch system. I mean,

00:22:31.440 a lot of these details that really, I think, spoke to the level of sophistication that wasn't really

00:22:38.240 visible at the street level. So the book talks about the behind the scenes. It talks about some

00:22:43.160 of the jockeying for, not power, but the jockeying to be the official leader and the official organizer

00:22:49.160 that took place between a lot of the organizers and spokespeople, and the way that the media would

00:22:55.640 take certain people and say, this is the spokesperson, but the convoy people would

00:23:00.300 look up to others. And that was something we saw right through to the end. And I would also say

00:23:06.000 there's a great chapter, and this was published as an excerpt at The Line, which is an independent

00:23:10.700 media outlet in Canada, that looks at the behind the scenes of the negotiations, the back channel

00:23:16.380 negotiations between convoy organizers and the city of Ottawa, which were actually beginning to bear

00:23:23.120 fruit just before the Emergencies Act came into play. And I think people will look at that and

00:23:27.980 look at the timing and say, okay, maybe there was, maybe the Emergencies Act came at that moment for

00:23:33.040 a reason. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? You know, you, you raised some good points because

00:23:37.560 we know that 10 million was raised very quickly through GoFundMe, but under direct pressure from

00:23:44.540 liberal politicians, they canceled it. And then another, I don't know, around 10 million was raised through

00:23:51.200 a rival crowd funder called Give, Send, Go. But that was- In a fraction of the time.

00:23:56.380 Yeah. But that was sort of frozen out. So I don't even know how much money actually got to the truckers.

00:24:03.660 It's my sense, and you correct me if I'm wrong, that really very little money flowed to the truckers.

00:24:11.160 And it was mainly self-financed. It was thousands of ordinary people saying, I'll pay for my own gas.

00:24:17.840 I'll pay for my own food. I'm doing this because I believe in it, not because I need,

00:24:22.220 you know, a thousand bucks to do it. So I think a lot of money was raised, but it never actually

00:24:27.820 made it to the truckers because of the government. But the, it's amazing that the truckers continued

00:24:33.760 as long as they did showing just how authentic it was. So you're right to some extent, but where I

00:24:39.840 would challenge it is that one of the big themes that we saw in the convoy is that anytime the state

00:24:44.960 tried to turn off the tap on something, there was a deluge from somewhere else. So when the

00:24:50.960 government said, we're going to seize your fuel, everyone showed up to Ottawa with jerry cans full

00:24:56.060 of diesel. Oh, that was great. That was great. When the government froze the money, people started

00:25:01.300 showing up with cash and boatloads of cash. And crypto. Yeah. Yeah. People were coming up and

00:25:07.280 shoving hundred dollar bills into truckers' hands. They were shoving $10 if that was what they could

00:25:12.280 afford. And it's impossible because it was cash to really get an up-to-date accounting of how much

00:25:17.180 money went through. But it was hundreds of thousands of dollars at least of cash that was donated when

00:25:24.240 all other avenues were frozen out. So a lot of people did dip into their own pockets and there

00:25:29.000 were also private e-transfers that were sent to people. And some of those, of course, we know ended up

00:25:35.160 with accounts that got frozen. But the $10 million in a lot of ways was not where the convoy's power

00:25:42.600 was coming from. And I think the government really thought that there was a head of the snake they

00:25:47.100 could cut off. Oh, yeah. And that wasn't the case. Well, that's very encouraging. And it's funny

00:25:50.860 because, of course, cash, you know, can't be tracked, can't be traced. And we hear about central

00:25:57.160 bank digital currencies that could be tracked and traced and frankly could be turned off from a central

00:26:03.740 switch. So, you know, it's a it's a reminder of the power of cash. If you're trying to do something

00:26:09.180 subversive or dissident, you'll never beat cash or even crypto is less. I mean, crypto is easier to

00:26:17.000 transfer, I guess. You know, coming back to who's who in the in the leadership, I always again, I mean,

00:26:24.220 we had someone embedded. We had a reporter embedded in the convoy. Mocha Bazirgin went across Canada and

00:26:29.800 Celine Glass, same thing. And, you know, they would get memos or notes or recordings. But I think I

00:26:37.740 don't know if there was anyone who was the boss of the whole thing. Tamara Leach was more like a 1.00

00:26:44.440 mother figure or an inspiring figure and a motivator. She was a very early and I'm not taking anything

00:26:53.920 away from her as a leader. But as you say, not everyone was following and then there were different

00:27:00.140 rival, you know, trucker whisperers. Give us a little bit of who's who in the zoo there. I really

00:27:07.780 like Tamara and it pains me to see how she's being bullied by police in the courts. But there were some 0.95

00:27:15.060 people involved who I thought were entryists, maybe even feds like I think of Pat King, who was so

00:27:23.300 abusive in his comments and so reckless. I couldn't help but think that's a narc. That's someone who is

00:27:30.960 here to discredit because every national security and police organization and left wing group in the

00:27:37.720 country said this is the opposition. This is the enemy. Obviously, they want to infiltrate, obviously.

00:27:44.340 And this isn't just speculation on my part. We had two people at the at the Coutts trucker blockade

00:27:50.100 in Alberta. We had two reporters there and there were police informants in the room, we later learned.

00:28:00.360 So, of course, CSIS and the RCMP and police forces had people in the organization. Tell me what you know

00:28:09.760 about who was actually leading things as much as they were led.

00:28:14.420 So, I think that you're right. And Tamara Leach was certainly the fundraiser and she was the

00:28:19.020 spiritual leader and she was very prominent. I mean, Benjamin Dichter as well. And so far as the

00:28:23.940 official Freedom Convoy Board of Directors, the nonprofit that was set up to handle the money,

00:28:30.280 he was the spokesperson designated for that. And you had other people like Chris Barber, who was actually a

00:28:35.280 cross-border trucker himself and one of the two that really came up with this idea. And you had

00:28:40.220 all of these people. And I think that they all played a role. And one of the interesting things

00:28:44.280 that I uncovered is that to a lot of the people on the ground, though, in fact, I'd say to almost all

00:28:49.900 of the people on the ground, they were not in a hierarchy. They were not part of an organization.

00:28:54.960 They were part of a movement. They showed up because they liked what was happening. They saw it on

00:28:59.980 TikTok, on Rebel, on True North, on Instagram, and they wanted to be a part of it. They

00:29:03.940 weren't there because anyone told them. They weren't there because there was money in it for

00:29:07.920 them. They were just there. And I mean, there was an interesting story in the book where at one point

00:29:14.680 Tamara Leach and Keith Wilson, the Convoy's lawyer, and some of the other organizers had arranged and

00:29:20.940 agreed with police that they were going to get trucks to move off of Rideau and Sussex, which is

00:29:25.820 this normally high traffic intersection just east of downtown. And they had agreed with police,

00:29:31.040 we're going to clear that out for you so that we can concentrate on Wellington Street.

00:29:35.940 And there was this one night where people went down, Tamara Leach, Keith Wilson, they went down

00:29:41.420 to the intersection. They got the truckers on board. The trucker said, OK, we're OK to move on to

00:29:46.140 Wellington Street. And police brought in a front end loader to move the concrete barricades that they

00:29:52.120 had blocking Wellington so that trucks could get on Wellington. Well, the people there protesting,

00:29:58.700 part of the convoy saw this machine and thought police are trying to move in. Police are trying

00:30:04.720 to move in and empty the street. So protesters, about a thousand of them, surrounded the front

00:30:09.200 end loader and started singing, Oh, Canada. And then they started tweeting about it and more people

00:30:15.520 came. And before you know it, they had to abort this operation because no one could control the

00:30:21.080 momentum that these people had when they felt that the convoy needed their defense. And that's the,

00:30:26.780 I think the great magic of this is that Tamara Leach was a leader, was an organizer. Keith Wilson was a

00:30:31.800 lawyer, but ultimately they couldn't tell anyone to do anything. And they were aware of that.

00:30:36.280 Isn't that interesting? Well, I admire Tamara Leach. I don't know her well, but anyone who was jailed

00:30:41.420 as she was a few days ago, because she appeared in a selfie photo is still, I will say just until

00:30:48.460 until July 5th behind bars for another bail hearing. Yeah. And I'm somewhat familiar with her bail

00:30:54.980 conditions. She's not to communicate with certain other people. She's in a selfie, not communicating

00:31:00.960 at a gala dinner for herself. I was at that dinner. It was basically a nonstop stream of people who

00:31:05.700 wanted a photo with her. So smile, click, smile, click. So she happens to be in a photo with someone

00:31:12.280 else. Police in Ottawa issue a national nationwide warrant for her arrest. She's arrested, put in shackles,

00:31:21.320 flown to Ottawa for that, for being in a selfie. I believe she's a political prisoner. I admire her

00:31:29.180 for that. You mentioned a couple of names, including Benjamin Dichter. I have to tell you, it irked me

00:31:35.060 that he decamped for Florida and hasn't come back since. It almost feels like he's worried about being

00:31:42.420 arrested like the other leaders were. I don't know. I didn't like the look of that. Do you have any,

00:31:45.760 what does your book say about him? So I spoke to as many people as I could. And some of them,

00:31:52.140 as you're aware of, I wasn't able to because of bail conditions. I did interview Ben in the book. And

00:31:57.240 I believe what he had said is that it was the lawyers that had advised him to get out because

00:32:01.880 they didn't want all of the people that were in a position to speak for the convoy to be arrested.

00:32:06.300 And that was the fear there. And, you know, I haven't heard anything that is distrustful to him

00:32:12.100 from the other organizers I spoke to in the book. Although I think people were, when it happened,

00:32:16.500 a little bit raw about this, when they saw it to Merrill Leach and Chris Barber ending up in

00:32:20.940 handcuffs and him not being there. But other people weren't arrested either. I mean, Tom Marazzo,

00:32:26.460 again, someone that's very well regarded by the other organizers, former army captain,

00:32:31.160 he was not arrested himself. So I almost wonder, and again, this is pure speculation on my part.

00:32:37.240 And I understand people raising questions about who might have been an informant and that.

00:32:42.020 But I also think it's a great tactic if you are police to sow that distrust among people and to

00:32:48.880 really say, we're going to leave this one alone. We're going to leave this one alone because it

00:32:52.180 really does start to make people point fingers at each other. Well, I know a little bit more about

00:32:56.760 Pat King, who bizarrely remains in jail. And I don't think he should be in jail, but I do know that he

00:33:04.020 is. I mean, he's, I think he's disreputable and I'm glad that the truckers distanced themselves from

00:33:10.860 him not too far into things. Let's pull back. No, and if I may jump in there and I'm sorry to cut

00:33:18.460 you off, Ezra, the Pat King thing was fascinating because I agree with you. I think what's happening

00:33:23.080 is an injustice, but I also point out that I don't have any time for him. I don't actually think he

00:33:29.420 adds anything to the discourse. So I don't defend him because I think there's value in what he says.

00:33:33.740 I defend him because I think everyone is entitled to due process. But this idea of organizers

00:33:39.320 distancing themselves from him did not come late. It came early, early, early. Certainly he was

00:33:45.460 involved at the ground level and he used his platform to promote the convoy. You can't separate

00:33:50.240 him from the convoy story, but I really did delve into it. And a big part of the book early on is

00:33:56.240 what role did he have? And he was there. He was a booster. He was a promoter, but he was never an

00:34:02.240 organizer. Right. I think that's true. You know, you have a guy like Pat King, you have a few

00:34:09.520 wilder protesters and you give the hate media exactly what they want. The Justin Lings, the CBCs,

00:34:18.480 you give them the caricature that they want. And I guess that's what you were talking about at the

00:34:24.000 beginning of our conversation. Don't swear at a reporter because then they will use you as an emblem

00:34:29.000 of the larger protest, which was very friendly, family friendly. But it was clear to me that most

00:34:36.360 journalism being done about the truckers was bad faith journalism and not just journalism. You have

00:34:41.420 this whole fake industry of, you know, hate finders. Oh, they're full of hate. They're insurrectionists.

00:34:51.800 They're a criminal threat. We have to get our spies on this. These aren't just protesters. These

00:34:59.840 are people who want to overthrow the government. And look, they even typed up some manifesto about

00:35:07.280 a new government. They wanted the governor general to get involved. These people came within an inch

00:35:12.600 of a revolution. I mean, it sounds so absurd, but I think you have dozens, probably hundreds

00:35:20.440 of people in the Canadian establishment, whether they're professors or think tankers or security

00:35:27.400 analysts or certainly reporters who are all not saying, oh, it's a protest. We know what those are

00:35:34.300 like. There's protests in Ottawa every week. We love protests when it's on our side, like Black Lives 0.96

00:35:40.320 Matter, like environmentalism, but a grassroots, mixed race, different walks of life trucker convoy.

00:35:49.400 We can't just call that a regular protest. We have to call it something far more malign. We have

00:35:54.260 to do what the CBC did, say it was organized by Vladimir Putin. I mean, so there's being against

00:36:01.080 something and criticizing something, but then there's also this extreme game played by the

00:36:06.420 establishment to say, no, no, this wasn't just a protest. This came within an inch of toppling our

00:36:12.040 country. Of course we needed to invoke the Emergencies Act. This was like our January 6th storming in the

00:36:17.560 Capitol building. We came within an inch of that, people, an inch. That to me is the real threat that

00:36:25.260 was revealed by the truckers. This group of Canadian establishment deep staters who would literally 0.86

00:36:33.020 outlaw dissent if they could.

00:36:37.220 Yes, and there's a line in the book, I can't remember, but I remember that people have been

00:36:42.080 tweeting about it from the last couple of days where I said something along the lines of,

00:36:46.140 you know, the one big contribution to freedom that the convoy brought us was revealing how far

00:36:52.420 the state will go to crack down on those who seek freedom and those who strive for freedom. And that

00:36:57.740 was, I think, in terms of legacy, one of the significant parts of it. But to go back to the

00:37:02.880 point you were making there, Ezra, there was no denying the media love to look at the one-offs and

00:37:07.800 extrapolate to the whole. So one guy has a Confederate flag and almost certainly an

00:37:13.480 instigator, just given the video you see of how people reacted and what he did and

00:37:18.260 hiding his face, almost certainly an instigator. But that becomes the protest. Some guy waving a

00:37:23.220 swastika flag somewhere, that becomes the convoy. And if we're going to play the game of plucking out 0.99

00:37:28.400 the individuals, why not pluck out the Indigenous woman who said they don't like vaccine mandates 1.00

00:37:34.720 because Indigenous people know what it's like to have the government force unhealthy medical

00:37:39.300 treatments on them. And she can just never trust government mandated medicine. What about the

00:37:43.820 the Indigenous or the person of colour that she identified as a black Indigenous person of colour,

00:37:49.280 a woman who's fully vaccinated and completely pro-choice on abortion and on vaccine mandates and

00:37:54.380 says, my body, my choice means my body, my choice. What about the trucker that fell in love with a 0.58

00:37:59.640 protester? What about the young families that got together for the first time because they've been

00:38:04.540 living under two years of restrictions? All of these people were real people I met for whom

00:38:10.080 the convoy meant something very significant. It was very meaningful for them and it was very

00:38:14.920 liberating for them. And those stories were lost. It's only the stories of the Haiti, Haiti,

00:38:20.320 white supremacist hate mongers who, by the way, really didn't exist. Certainly not in the numbers

00:38:25.380 the media was saying. They were the ones you'd see in the coverage. Yeah. You know, there's certain

00:38:30.080 things that were so stunning. You're right about that. There's certain things that were so stunning

00:38:35.100 about that time that they were stunning in itself. But equally stunning is how they were

00:38:41.220 so gently criticized, if at all, by the media, by other institutions that are normally on guard. And I

00:38:48.360 I'll just list one, which is the Emergencies Act orders

00:38:52.840 to the banks and to the insurance companies to seize and freeze funds of anyone without any due

00:39:01.480 process, literally just whoever the police named. And insurance too. It actually applied to American

00:39:10.060 banks doing business in Canada and American insurance companies. So if you were an American

00:39:14.940 trucker with an American insurance company, but you drove into Canada and you were part of the

00:39:19.660 protest, you as an insurance company were ordered under law to cancel his trucker insurance.

00:39:29.740 If you were an American bank, I mean, there's plenty of American banks in Canada that are regulated and

00:39:36.220 they were specifically listed on it. So this was an outrageous thing for Canadian banks, but it actually

00:39:40.680 reached into the U.S. I don't think any American banks actually followed the rule, by the

00:39:44.920 way. I think every American bank said we're stuck here because if we freeze our customers because

00:39:51.880 they're a trucker without due process, we're going to get in an enormous amount of trouble with our

00:39:56.340 banking regulator, with our Congress, with our Constitution. We'll be sued till the end of time

00:40:00.160 under the First Amendment here in America. But yeah, the liability waiver in Canada didn't protect

00:40:06.320 American banks against liability in their country. Yeah. And so imagine you're, you know, Citibank or

00:40:12.360 Wells Fargo or whatever. There are a lot of American banks that do business in Canada.

00:40:16.820 And imagine you've got some little Banana Republic tyrant now saying, hand over these truckers and 1.00

00:40:22.320 their money. But you also have live in a rule of law country like America. No, I don't think any

00:40:27.780 American banks actually obeyed the Emergencies Act. I don't think any American insurance company,

00:40:33.320 insurance companies did. So credit to them for waiting out the tyrant. But

00:40:38.220 put aside that American little anecdote. To seize and freeze bank accounts is such a shocking thing.

00:40:50.180 I am certain that billions of dollars left the country from people saying, oh, my God,

00:40:55.680 we've seen this movie before, whether it's Venezuela or Russia, we're just going to move our money out

00:41:01.700 to the States. I think there was a bit of a run on the banks. That's how ordinary people reacted.

00:41:07.180 But where was the Chamber of Commerce? Where was some bankers? You know, there's a lot of bank

00:41:15.620 consumer watchdogs. Where were the editorials against this? I think, where was the opposition?

00:41:26.260 I think that it was so muted. No judge spoke out against it. No law professors or very few.

00:41:34.100 The media in general was those truckers deserve it. They're a menace. Go harder. I mean, maybe I'm 0.79

00:41:42.180 maybe I'm missing some really powerful establishment objectors to this. But it wasn't just atrocious in

00:41:48.760 itself. It's the reaction to it that was atrocious. The general reaction from Canadian establishment

00:41:55.860 society was good. Finally, we're cracking down on those truckers. What do you think?

00:42:03.420 I would agree to some extent, although I do think there was a bit of a pivot because all of a sudden

00:42:09.100 it to a lot of people was no longer just about the truckers. Remember, there was a chill there,

00:42:15.720 which was the intent. I mean, in the end, the government only froze the accounts of a couple

00:42:19.380 hundred people. I say only. I think one was too many. But there were people that didn't know if

00:42:24.940 the account was going to be frozen if they donated $10 to the GoFundMe campaign or $10 to the Give,

00:42:31.720 Send, Go. You had people. I mean, True North is supported by donors. And I had people emailing me

00:42:36.320 saying, I'm scared that I can't donate to True North because my account is going to get frozen.

00:42:41.220 So it sent this chill across the country, which was, I think, exactly the point. The government

00:42:47.720 wanted to tell people, no, no, no, we're in control, not you guys, and we're coming after you.

00:42:53.380 And there was that press conference given by the Ottawa police acting chief where he said,

00:42:57.560 you know, once this convoy is done, we're still going to come after you. We're going to review the

00:43:00.960 footage. And if we see you were involved, we're coming after you. We're putting financial sanctions.

00:43:05.200 We'll lay charges. And it just became punitive. And I think ordinary Canadians, forget about the

00:43:10.400 establishment types, ordinary Canadians were seeing that and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:43:15.420 Yeah. And even a lot of people who were not fans of the convoy or had soured on the convoy the longer

00:43:20.480 it went on, were not at all fans of or supportive in the least of the Emergencies Act and the measures

00:43:27.300 that were brought in. So I think there were people that just, they wanted anything. They hated the

00:43:31.640 convoy. They wanted the government to pull out all the stops, go in, crack skulls. But there's a

00:43:36.360 a silent majority, I think, that understood the government was going too far.

00:43:40.460 Yeah. You know, it's amazing. All the things that people accused Donald Trump of being a dictator,

00:43:47.800 a censor, a thin-skinned bully, a violator of civil liberties. He actually didn't do those things.

00:43:57.040 Trudeau did those things. And I think it was the, I mean, the lockdowns were already the worst

00:44:05.840 civil liberties fiasco in Canadian history. But that Emergencies Act was so particularly and acutely

00:44:14.440 outrageous. I think that was one of the darkest moments in Canadian freedom history. The book is

00:44:21.960 called The Freedom Convoy. The author is Andrew Lawton. The subtitle, I love it. The inside story

00:44:26.200 of three weeks that shook the world. I think it's true. Andrew, congratulations on this book. Folks,

00:44:31.660 I encourage you to buy it. What an interesting history of an interesting historical moment. The

00:44:37.480 link to the book is under this video. Or you can just go to Amazon. Congratulations. I understand

00:44:43.160 you had an audiobook coming out, too, for folks who love to listen to a book while they drive or while

00:44:49.760 they're doing other things. Is that right? Yes, we have an audiobook coming out. Hopefully,

00:44:54.000 that'll be in the next few weeks. And obviously, the paperback edition's out now. So I would

00:44:58.620 appreciate it if you'd buy one for yourself. And buy one for someone in your life that is against

00:45:03.500 the convoy but actually hasn't been exposed to the truth. And I think you'll both find things in

00:45:07.940 there you can learn from. Right. Well, you know what? Congratulations to you. And I'm pleased that

00:45:13.560 you got it out so quickly. I think, I mean, I think it actually may be the first trucker book. Is that

00:45:19.120 right? Yeah, it is. And I mean, the month of April was a bit rough. I didn't see much of my wife,

00:45:24.620 which, to be honest, I think she might have actually appreciated. But we'll go there in

00:45:28.240 another episode. But we got it out. And I think as well, it's not just a recap. There is a lot of

00:45:33.960 new information in there, which I think was important to telling this story. But I expect

00:45:37.960 there will be more to come. And you know what? I welcome it. Well, you know what? I want to say,

00:45:42.520 I mean, I love Rebel News. It's something I helped create. And I feel a tremendous paternity to it.

00:45:48.480 And I love our work. And by the way, covering the truckers was our finest hour, if I may say.

00:45:55.020 It was like we were preparing for that moment our whole lives. We had 400 million views and

00:46:00.200 impressions in the month of February, which is as much as we normally get in an entire year.

00:46:05.120 That was our time to shine. But I must note the other independent journalists who were there in force

00:46:12.620 also. You, you mentioned Rupa, Rupert Superman, who's now with True North as well.

00:46:21.240 I'm almost running out of names.

00:46:24.800 You know, there is some people I had never heard of that were there streaming it on their YouTube

00:46:30.740 channel. It was tremendous. I met more independent journalists there than I have in the last five

00:46:35.000 years. Yeah. You know what? Sorry, I just I'm blanking out because there are there are a half dozen.

00:46:39.600 And it was everyone's time to shine. I mentioned Viva Friday. David Freiheit is his real name,

00:46:45.520 who just live streamed for four hours. He's a lawyer by training. So he was very

00:46:50.020 thoughtful about what was happening. So

00:46:52.760 the fact that we had 400 million views, and I bet you you had a ton.

00:46:58.440 And all these other independent journalists combined,

00:47:00.540 I dare say that amongst us, we had as much viewership as the mainstream media because people

00:47:08.340 simply didn't trust them and they weren't doing the real work. So that was not just something we did

00:47:14.440 in the moment, but all of us had been practicing and training and perfecting how we do it and learning

00:47:19.040 how to live stream. And so I think that was a great moment for independent journalism. And I think that

00:47:25.740 your book is as authoritative. I haven't read it yet, but we've been talking about it. Your book

00:47:31.500 is as authoritative as anything to come out of it. In fact, I dare say if if later this year we see

00:47:37.760 some book from some CBC hitman hired to smear it, I think that your book will do better than the BS

00:47:44.200 book from the CBC. It'll be more trustworthy and it is a greater and more accurate record of what went

00:47:49.800 on because the CBC, although they surrounded that parliament hill in their offices, they refused to

00:47:56.520 go down and out into the street and dirty themselves with the regular people. And and that that couldn't

00:48:04.760 have been clearer. So many groups have abased themselves in the last two years. Politicians,

00:48:09.520 of course, opposition politicians, of course. But I think the media has perhaps lost more credibility

00:48:15.740 than anyone. Andrew, congratulations on the book. Thanks for spending Canada Day with us

00:48:20.540 and good luck. And I hope you hit number one. Thank you, Ezra. Happy Dominion Day to you and

00:48:26.520 your audience, too. Right on. There you have it. One of our favorite guys, Andrew Lawton. The book,

00:48:30.800 one more time, is called The Freedom Convoy, The Inside Story of Three Weeks That Shook the World.

00:48:35.800 Do you agree with me that it's important to support conservative authors when they publish books that

00:48:41.520 run counter to the mainstream narrative? Do you agree with me on that? If you do,

00:48:45.740 then please click the link under this video and support Andrew. And I always find it emotionally

00:48:51.620 satisfying when a book goes to number one on the Amazon list, because, of course, it shows that it's

00:48:57.100 not that you're not alone. So if you click that link, I think that'll you know, I don't know how

00:49:03.320 many people have to buy a book to nudge it up there, but maybe you'll be one of them. Well, listen,

00:49:08.420 thanks for spending your holiday with us today. Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at

00:49:13.280 Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - July 02, 2022

EZRA LEVANT ｜ INTERVIEW： Andrew Lawton's new book on the Trucker Rebellion

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