RFK Jr. The Defender - Truck Convoy Leader Tom Marazzo

The Canadian Truckers' Convoy was an idealistic, peaceful protest against the Trudeau government, and yet it was vilified by the mainstream media as a neo-Nazi protest. In this episode, retired Lt. Col. Tom Arazzo talks about what he thinks happened to the event, and why it was so badly handled by the media, and what it meant for the rest of the world. He also talks about the role of the truckers' convoy and how it was used as a propaganda tool by the government to delegitimize a peaceful protest that was actually about peace and love and justice and democracy, and how the Canadian government responded to it in a way that made it seem like it was part of a far-left, far-right, neo-Nazis' plot to bring down the government. He also explains how the media handled the event and its aftermath, and the tactics that were used to smear the event as a racist, anti-Canadian protest, and explains why the media should have been so quick to point the finger at anyone who was involved. at the trucker's convoy and not at anyone else. And he talks about how to deal with the fallout from the Prime Minister's reaction to it. This episode was produced by the Toronto Star and the media coverage of it, and his thoughts on the events leading up to it and the aftermath. and the impact it had on the world and the reaction the government's response to it and how Canada's government did to it, as well as they could have done anything they could to make the event a success. in the first place in order to make it a reality or not at all the more so at all of what happened in the world including the way they wanted it to be remembered a day after the event for the world to remember it the day it was . and what they could do to make history . of it of the day of that day what it really meant why it really was how it really meant it , and what it really looked like and why they looked like . in fact so much , and how they meant . And not just in the eyes of the whole world and their impact on the world in Canada their impact

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, welcome back and I'm really happy to have as my guest today Tom Arazzo, who is a retired Canadian military officer.

00:00:09.000 He was commissioned as a combat engineer officer.

00:00:15.000 He was until recently a teacher at a Georgian college in Ontario.

00:00:23.000 And he is one of the organizers and logistical consultants and spokespeople for the Canadian Truckers Convoy.

00:00:32.000 And I wanted to talk to you today about doing kind of a post-mortem on the convoy and what you think it meant because it had a tremendous impact obviously all over the world.

00:00:44.000 I think one of the outstanding features of The event was the reaction, this very, very troubling reaction by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Canadian government and parliament to the convoy.

00:01:02.000 It was clearly a peaceful demonstration.

00:01:07.000 This was the principal theme of it.

00:01:10.000 It was an organizing event.

00:01:12.000 Feature of the convoy from the beginning, that it was about peace and love and justice and democracy, and yet it was successfully, as it turns out, tarred in the press.

00:01:27.000 I orchestrated propaganda effort as kind of a A violent, prone demonstration that was threatening to bring down the Canadian government.

00:01:40.000 I want to say something to you, Tom.

00:01:42.000 Two years ago when I went to Berlin and spoke to the first great protest against the mandates, I opened up my talk by saying tomorrow in the press they're going to say this was a group of Nazis.

00:01:57.000 And if you looked out on that crowd, it looked like Woodstock.

00:02:01.000 It was a Huge, huge picture of Mahatma Gandhi behind me on the stage.

00:02:08.000 The embassy of the event was a black Ghanian from Africa.

00:02:14.000 There were religious leaders and Green Party leaders and labor leaders.

00:02:20.000 And it was a diverse crowd with every color in the rainbow and religious affiliation.

00:02:28.000 And there were people from every nation in Europe.

00:02:34.000 I'm obviously declaimed in the global press and the German press as a kind of a neo-Nazi conspiracy.

00:02:41.000 And in fact, I'm involved in a lawsuit still with the Daily Kos, which is a liberal blog in our country.

00:02:51.000 It is associated, by the way, with the intelligence agencies.

00:02:56.000 And the Daily Ghost said that I was in Berlin cavorting with Nazis.

00:03:03.000 That's a quote from...

00:03:04.000 They knew it was not true.

00:03:06.000 They knew it was propaganda.

00:03:08.000 And, you know, I have a very, very heavy load in our country in proving defamation because I have to prove actual malice, meaning I have to prove they knew it was a lie at the time they wrote it, and they wrote it Yes.

00:03:24.000 I am in that litigation now, but this is a strategy and it is a propaganda strategy that has been part of the government response from the beginning that anybody The questions of government policies has to be marginalized, vilified, denounced, and destroyed, and discredited as a right-wing racist Nazi.

00:03:51.000 And that's what they did to you.

00:03:52.000 I actually saw...

00:03:54.000 A video of a guy walking through the only, you know, it was all these beautiful Canadian flags and people laughing and dancing and kids drinking hot chocolate and playing on bouncy castles.

00:04:08.000 People giving truckers, giving food to the homeless, putting up garbage bags every 40 or 50 feet so that they wouldn't create a mess.

00:04:19.000 It was one guy walking through the edge of the ground carrying a Confederate flag.

00:04:25.000 And it was amazing how the truckers reacted to them by driving them out and telling them, you know, all of them spontaneously and individually saying, that's what this is about.

00:04:40.000 A crowd who was wearing a baklava for his face.

00:04:44.000 So his face was hidden.

00:04:46.000 And, you know, one has to suspect that he was a deliberate agent provocateur who didn't want his identity with people.

00:04:55.000 Because he was trying to discredit the entire event by shelling out with that.

00:05:01.000 And it was really wonderful.

00:05:02.000 Wonderful how the drugs react.

00:05:04.000 But it must have been very discouraging to you to have this very idealistic event discredited in a very, very organized way.

00:05:15.000 Yes.

00:05:16.000 And we were always on the lookout for what we believe to be provocateurs.

00:05:22.000 Because we suspected there would be many, many groups out there that would try to pull this kind of a stunt.

00:05:30.000 You know, when you have thousands and thousands of people all attending a major event like that, but one person misbehaves, the entire story becomes about that one person and everybody gets painted with that same brush.

00:05:45.000 And we were very, very, very aware of that.

00:05:48.000 And, you know, sometimes it was a great risk to us because of some of the supporters, but sometimes we...

00:05:55.000 We had to balance between, do we censor people ourselves or do we allow people to express themselves?

00:06:02.000 In the middle of trying to be vigilant that there wouldn't be provocateurs within the crowd, because we knew that there would be.

00:06:10.000 So it was always a risk to us.

00:06:13.000 And, you know, it did happen.

00:06:14.000 And that's exactly what the mainstream media attacked.

00:06:18.000 And, you know, I made a joke about Justin Trudeau the first time I did any media stuff, and they twisted my words completely and went after me And so we knew that we were going to be up against these types of narrative rewriting scenarios.

00:06:37.000 And so we did a really good job, I think, of blocking the mainstream media from having access to us directly.

00:06:45.000 We capitalized very well, I think, on the social media or alternate media.

00:06:52.000 And we were very effective at freezing them out.

00:06:54.000 So it drove them crazy.

00:06:56.000 They had to invent their own stories.

00:06:58.000 And they would take clips from stuff they got off of social media and then twist everybody's words.

00:07:04.000 So we expected it, but it was very difficult to counter.

00:07:09.000 And what has been the reaction...

00:07:15.000 Really, all of Canada is, you know, the most liberal nation, probably outside of Scandinavia, in terms of, you know, the values of tolerance and kindness and justice and a functional democracy.

00:07:32.000 But, you know, in the United States and in Canada, there's a lot of people Mm-hmm.

00:08:03.000 But it's really people who have shut off their capacity for critical thought and are categorizing any kind of opposition as right-wing.

00:08:18.000 Do you think there was any penetration of that group or did it just harden their position?

00:08:28.000 From my perspective, I think the critical mistake that the Government of Canada made is They use the banks.

00:08:37.000 They deputize the banks against the Canadian people without any form of due process.

00:08:43.000 And even the most, I would say, hardened supporters of the COVID-19 mandates, you know, those people that are, you know, calling for heads to roll if you don't get the vaccine.

00:08:53.000 They want to shut you out of society.

00:08:55.000 And, you know, why aren't you wearing two masks?

00:08:58.000 That kind of thinking.

00:08:59.000 And it's unfortunate because...

00:09:02.000 You know, there is a large population in this country that fully support everything that comes out of the mainstream media in this country.

00:09:08.000 But when the banks started to attack people's bank accounts and their credit scores and close their credit cards off, you know, when they attack people's means to provide for their families, that really struck a nerve with a lot of Canadians.

00:09:24.000 And we're seeing more and more people wake up to the fact that you're incredibly vulnerable to having the wrong think in Canada.

00:09:34.000 And what was particularly disturbing is the deputy prime minister here, Chrystia Freeland.

00:09:40.000 She was bragging and almost giddy at a press conference she did when she was talking about the fact that after the emergency act is over, they really have no intention of letting go of this Fintrack system.

00:09:53.000 How, you know, even though the emergency will end, they're going to hold on to these powers to attack your banking.

00:10:01.000 And what's even further disturbing to this is how there was a viral video that went around talking about the Canadian Banking Association in a one-stop shop digital ID. And so we've just seen sort of evidence of a social credit score tied to law enforcement and tied to your finances and your assets.

00:10:22.000 So when you...

00:10:23.000 Basically, and I just want you to finish what you're saying.

00:10:27.000 Sure.

00:10:30.000 I first want to take a step back so that people who don't know what happened, you can outline what happened.

00:10:41.000 Because we've been saying from the beginning of the pandemic, I've been saying and getting a deep platform for it, You know, this move towards digitalized currency is about controlling conduct and controlling behavior and destroying dissent.

00:10:58.000 Once we've shifted to digitalized currency, it will give the big bank accounts and the government.

00:11:03.000 Every transaction will become visible to them.

00:11:06.000 And also, they have the power now to shut off your bank account.

00:11:11.000 And people have ridiculed me for that.

00:11:13.000 And I think for the first time we saw it happen in Canada, Yes.

00:11:21.000 It's being punished by shutting down people's credit cards and bank accounts.

00:11:26.000 The same they do in China with programmable currency.

00:11:30.000 Yes.

00:11:31.000 And people said, that could never happen here.

00:11:33.000 But then we saw the most democratic government on the earth.

00:11:37.000 Yeah.

00:11:38.000 Just talk about the details of what they did.

00:11:41.000 I mean, first of all, they shut down the GoFundMe and they just steal $10 million.

00:11:47.000 Why did that disappear or what?

00:11:49.000 Well, they convinced GoFundMe that all of those donations from Canadians, Canadians, Americans, Europeans, they convinced GoFundMe that those were proceeds of a crime.

00:12:01.000 And so GoFundMe acted and they seized that money.

00:12:05.000 And then, of course, the media backlash was insane.

00:12:09.000 And the last time I read, there's four U.S. governors that are asking their attorney generals to investigate that.

00:12:16.000 The actions of GoFundMe.

00:12:17.000 And so we switched over to a different platform, US-based, which is called GiveSendGo.

00:12:23.000 And so the premier and his attorney general actually, in a courtroom without any representation by any of us, Through our lawyers or the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, we found out about it in the news that the Ontario Attorney General had seized that money.

00:12:41.000 And so it's still being frozen right now by the Ontario Premier, not even Justin Trudeau.

00:12:47.000 This happened at the provincial level.

00:12:49.000 And so that money is all tied up right now.

00:12:52.000 And we can't touch it.

00:12:53.000 It's now considered a proceed of crime in this province.

00:12:59.000 And these are things that happen without any due process.

00:13:02.000 We had no legal representation whatsoever in that courtroom when it happened.

00:13:07.000 Like I said, we found out in the media.

00:13:09.000 And so even when the Emergency Act came into effect three weeks later...

00:13:14.000 Cut you off again.

00:13:16.000 Sorry.

00:13:16.000 Because there also were other retaliatory moves, right?

00:13:21.000 Yes.

00:13:22.000 They were going after individuals' bank accounts.

00:13:25.000 Yes, yes.

00:13:26.000 Explain that.

00:13:27.000 Yeah.

00:13:28.000 And so actually that started to happen.

00:13:30.000 Well, there were some of the bank accounts that were frozen from the attorney general under this investigation.

00:13:37.000 Again, ex parte.

00:13:38.000 But then when we fast forward, when the emergency act actually happened, there was a list of 42 of us.

00:13:45.000 And my name appeared on it.

00:13:46.000 And the RCMP created a list of 42 individuals involved in the convoy in one way or another that were known to police.

00:13:55.000 I was known to police because the first moment I arrived, I gave the police my name because I was put into an interview.

00:14:03.000 Not really an interview, but a meeting with Ottawa police and a bunch of truckers.

00:14:07.000 But when the emergency act came, all of my bank accounts were frozen.

00:14:11.000 My credit card was turned off.

00:14:14.000 My spouse's credit rating was attacked and it dropped 109 points.

00:14:18.000 And, you know, the credit card that I used to pay for my child's medication didn't work.

00:14:24.000 And because it's on file with the pharmacy and I couldn't even get, you know, heart medication for my child.

00:14:31.000 And so this was all done without any warrants for my arrest, any charges.

00:14:36.000 I wasn't prosecuted.

00:14:38.000 This was because I had the wrong thoughts.

00:14:41.000 That's why my accounts were frozen.

00:14:44.000 At no time did I or any of the people involved in this convoy break any laws other than municipal bylaws in the way that we parked the trucks.

00:14:55.000 That was the crime that we committed.

00:14:57.000 And if you really dig deep into the Emergency Act, there's three provisions in that act that allowed them to take action.

00:15:04.000 But none of those applied to what we were doing in Ottawa.

00:15:08.000 And those things are disruption to international trade, which we didn't do in Ottawa because there's no border.

00:15:15.000 There's interrupting critical infrastructure, which there was not any critical infrastructure.

00:15:21.000 And in fact, we kept safety lanes open on all the roads we were parked on.

00:15:26.000 For emergency services.

00:15:27.000 And then finally, if they believed you had an intent to commit violence, and the only people that committed the violence were the police themselves.

00:15:35.000 So it didn't apply to us in Ottawa.

00:15:38.000 You know, and you can make the argue that the bridge that connects Windsor to Detroit, when they blocked that, maybe, you know, that was blocking international trade and critical infrastructure.

00:15:48.000 So the Emergency Act, by the standard that was set, applied to them.

00:15:52.000 But it didn't apply to us in Ottawa.

00:15:55.000 But we took the most vicious beating.

00:15:57.000 And we also had all of our bank accounts frozen.

00:16:01.000 Now, eventually they did return.

00:16:04.000 My bank is the Bank of Montreal, or BMO. And, you know, I will be leaving that bank, but the problem is, where do you go?

00:16:12.000 We only have five chartered banks in this country and then a bunch of credit unions.

00:16:16.000 So where do I go next?

00:16:17.000 And I think the beneficiaries of the conduct of the big banks, the beneficiaries, is going to be the credit unions.

00:16:24.000 But, you know, there was no due process.

00:16:29.000 It's extraordinary.

00:16:30.000 It's really extraordinary that the government can steal your money.

00:16:35.000 Yes.

00:16:35.000 Punish you for criticizing government policies without any due process, without going to court, without charging you for a crime.

00:16:44.000 It's something out of the mid-ages.

00:16:47.000 It's exactly the kind of thing that King George was doing.

00:16:51.000 And even he didn't do this kind of thing.

00:16:54.000 That prompted us to have a revolution in this country.

00:16:58.000 Yeah.

00:16:59.000 But have there been any consequences for the banks in terms of the public perception?

00:17:04.000 I mean, I would think that the big business interests and the large depositors would now be very, very frightened and insecure about Canadian banking.

00:17:16.000 Well, we did see indications that some of the big five charter banks, they were starting to feel like they were going to have a run on their banks because it upset Canadians so much, they started pulling out money from their ATMs and closing accounts.

00:17:31.000 So they got very nervous.

00:17:33.000 And it's very interesting to us because we made a very important observation.

00:17:39.000 The Parliament passed the, you know, after debate, the Parliament passed the use of the Emergency Act for Justin Trudeau with the help of NDP, which is typical behavior.

00:17:52.000 Like, he has a minority government, but with the NDP, he really does have a majority.

00:17:56.000 They prop up everything that he wants, and they behave like a Liberal Party.

00:18:00.000 And so we saw that happen, but then the Senate started to debate, and they looked like they were going to vote.

00:18:05.000 And then he stopped, he revoked the Emergency Act.

00:18:08.000 We all thought that was very interesting, but we realized that it was the banks.

00:18:14.000 And I don't have any evidence to support this, but it makes sense to me that when the banks started to see a run on their deposits, they more than likely called up the government and said, hey, you know what, you should really knock that off.

00:18:28.000 Because it was a big surprise to everybody that he actually revoked the Emergency Act without the Senate completing their debate or their vote on whether to extend it.

00:18:38.000 So, you know, it's very interesting.

00:18:40.000 It revealed some interesting things for us, coupled that with mainstream media.

00:18:46.000 So we made some really interesting observations about that particular incident.

00:18:51.000 And I think they'll be important to maybe some future steps that we take as, I like to say, decentralized grassroots movements around this country.

00:19:01.000 We're in a situation where people can see for themselves what's really going on.

00:19:05.000 They don't have to be told.

00:19:07.000 There's no one single leadership to this movement.

00:19:10.000 This is Canadians who've had enough, and they're taking matters into their own actions. 0.94

00:19:14.000 I don't have the power or the influence to start telling people to close their bank accounts with BMO. People just made their own observations, realized that they were in a very vulnerable position, and they take their own actions.

00:19:27.000 You don't have to tell people that.

00:19:30.000 Which is kind of contrary to what the behavior we've seen over the last two years with regards to masks and, you know, vaccinations.

00:19:39.000 Nobody in this country that I know have got the vaccination because they wanted to be safe.

00:19:43.000 They wanted to be inoculated from unemployment.

00:19:46.000 And that's why they took the vaccination.

00:19:48.000 They wanted to travel.

00:19:49.000 They didn't do it because they felt that COVID was a risk to their life.

00:19:53.000 They were doing it because they believed that life would go back to normal.

00:19:59.000 But in the last two years, Canadians are much more less free than they were prior to COVID-19.

00:20:06.000 And I think the government of Canada has repeatedly proven that.

00:20:09.000 And same with the provinces.

00:20:11.000 Well, you know, once the government takes power in the history of mankind, it doesn't have to relinquish power without a demand, without a confrontation.

00:20:25.000 I think a lot of people in our country were just frightened and said, well, we're not going to do these things.

00:20:32.000 But if you take a long view, it's very, very dangerous to give the government.

00:20:38.000 You know, we were contacted at CHD Children's Health Invest.

00:20:42.000 I was contacted by a bank in this country called the Cambridge Bank in McLean, Virginia.

00:20:50.000 Put us in touch with them in touch with the candidate truckers because it's a privately owned bank and they said they supported the truckers and it's run by a former United States congressman.

00:21:06.000 It's a family owned bank.

00:21:08.000 Great.

00:21:12.000 They would never freeze people's accounts for political reasons or on orders of the government.

00:21:19.000 I think there may be a place for institutions like that in the future that people have faith in.

00:21:27.000 When it comes to money, people don't want the bank telling them that they can't get their money if they vote wrong or if they say the wrong thing.

00:21:35.000 Yes, and we're seeing evidence of that.

00:21:38.000 For us, it's a little bit difficult, too, because in Canada, we don't have a lot of options.

00:21:43.000 You know, the one thing that people have to understand with the Emergency Act is, and I discussed this with Keith Wilson, one of my lawyers that's defending me now against this $306 million lawsuit because of the horns.

00:21:57.000 Because of the what?

00:21:59.000 The horns.

00:21:59.000 So there's a class action lawsuit that was started with an Ottawa citizen.

00:22:04.000 And she originally sued for roughly the same amount of money that was generated from the GoFundMe. 0.55

00:22:11.000 And they met in court.

00:22:14.000 Miraculously, she got a court date.

00:22:16.000 I don't know how she got it overnight.

00:22:17.000 And wanted basically the horns to stop.

00:22:21.000 And the judge ruled in favor of stopping the horns.

00:22:24.000 And we actually abided by that for the most part.

00:22:27.000 I mean, we couldn't control every single truck horn.

00:22:29.000 Out there.

00:22:30.000 Or somebody driving by and showing their support by honking.

00:22:33.000 But this lawsuit has now grown into a tort case.

00:22:37.000 Where they have named several of the organizers of the truck convoy.

00:22:43.000 They've now named me, Danny Beaufort, and a couple of other individuals through their organizations.

00:22:49.000 And the lawsuit has now grown to $306 million.

00:22:53.000 And the irony of this is that I don't own a truck and I don't even own a horn.

00:22:57.000 So why my name is on there, this is all tort law.

00:23:00.000 And, you know, I have full confidence in my lawyers.

00:23:05.000 You know, I'm not overly concerned about it, but it's really, it's almost like it's an effort to just waste our time and our energy and not focus on what's really happening out there.

00:23:16.000 So that's kind of frustrating in its own right.

00:23:18.000 But, you know, in terms of what options the Canadians have, where do we safely park our money?

00:23:24.000 We're looking.

00:23:25.000 We're looking everywhere.

00:23:26.000 And the issue with the banks, though, is that when they got that order from the federal government, that list of 42 names, they were legally obligated to go and seize those accounts.

00:23:37.000 If not, they would have been committing an offense.

00:23:40.000 However, I think they have enough capital and legal means to have challenged it in court.

00:23:48.000 Right away and challenged the federal government on this type of behavior.

00:23:53.000 I don't think they did the moral thing by any stretch.

00:23:56.000 I think they just, without thinking, did whatever they were told and they tested the waters to see how it would go.

00:24:01.000 And now it's backfired on the banks and people are starting to close their bank accounts in this country, which is a good thing, but potentially it could be a disastrous thing for the Canadian economy.

00:24:14.000 You know, what is the political fallout?

00:24:16.000 Was Justin damaged by this?

00:24:19.000 Is the Liberal Party damaged?

00:24:22.000 Is the NDP damaged?

00:24:24.000 What kind of political fallout do you see in Canada?

00:24:28.000 I see a lot of political turmoil.

00:24:32.000 And, you know, one of the big challenges that we've had in the last two years is that the Conservative Party in this country for the last two years have behaved nothing like the Conservative Party or their heritage.

00:24:45.000 They have not behaved like Conservatives.

00:24:47.000 They have just gotten in line right behind all of the COVID mandates.

00:24:50.000 No questions asked, no debate.

00:24:52.000 They've just done it.

00:24:53.000 But recently they got rid of their leader, Aaron O'Toole.

00:24:57.000 And they have an interim leader right now.

00:24:59.000 And so the Conservatives, I think, because they lost in September to Justin Trudeau.

00:25:04.000 What's happened now is the Conservatives still haven't chosen a formal leader.

00:25:09.000 They have an interim leader right now.

00:25:11.000 So they have to go through a leadership race.

00:25:13.000 It's an election called today.

00:25:15.000 My belief is as long as the Conservatives behave like Conservatives, the Conservatives would win in a landslide.

00:25:22.000 And you would see the Liberals get completely decimated.

00:25:25.000 And I think the NDP would lose the vast majority of their, they only have about 25 seats, I believe.

00:25:31.000 So you would see a complete upheaval.

00:25:33.000 The challenge there is, who becomes the official opposition?

00:25:37.000 So if the Conservatives become, or the government, who's going to be the opposition?

00:25:43.000 There's not an election at the federal level scheduled.

00:25:46.000 We have a different system where an election could be called any day in this country.

00:25:50.000 It's not like in America where there's a four-year election cycle for the federal government or for the president anyway.

00:25:57.000 But, like, he could call an election any time.

00:26:00.000 Do you think that most Canadians oppose the emergency powers?

00:26:05.000 You know, I... That's a really tough question because I'm not a big social media person.

00:26:12.000 I don't have a large presence on there.

00:26:14.000 I really don't have a metric to be able to answer that.

00:26:17.000 Everybody in my circle, everybody that I personally know that is awake to the insanity that we have all experienced in the last two years, they are fully against the Emergency Act.

00:26:31.000 But there's no really good way to quantify that.

00:26:34.000 And that's very tricky because if, let's say, we called for a national referendum on COVID mandates today, you really have a hard time telling which way people would lean.

00:26:45.000 You know, it's a big risk if you were to do a national referendum on COVID mandates because you could lose.

00:26:53.000 You could literally lose.

00:26:55.000 In summary, in terms of the fallout of the event, Is it net positive or net negative?

00:27:03.000 And how would you characterize or describe it?

00:27:07.000 I would say it's net positive.

00:27:09.000 We didn't leave Ottawa with Justin Trudeau ending the federal mandates, which is why we were there.

00:27:16.000 We didn't achieve that objective.

00:27:18.000 However, Canada, Ontario, the provinces in the world We're given a voice.

00:27:25.000 We're given an opportunity by the truckers.

00:27:28.000 Even me, I think the truckers that I'm able to sit here on a call and have this interview with you.

00:27:34.000 And for, you know, almost two years, I didn't have a voice.

00:27:38.000 The truckers gave me that voice.

00:27:40.000 And what I'm seeing overwhelmingly, you know, people said to me many, many times in Ottawa, it's the first time in two years I've been proud to be a Canadian again.

00:27:48.000 And so more and more and more people are waking up.

00:27:51.000 And I've had a lot of people say to me, hey, you know, my 80-year-old grandmother, who was a supporter of all these mandates, saw what you guys did, and she's actually reconsidered it and changed her position completely.

00:28:04.000 So there are thousands of Canadians, and I get these messages every day, thousands of Canadians that have woken up to this finally being not about safety, but about government control and power grabs.

00:28:17.000 So people really are starting to wake up to that absolute truth.

00:28:21.000 And they're waking up to it all around the world.

00:28:24.000 And what I'm really happy to see is that Australia, Australia is the only Commonwealth country in the world that doesn't have a charter of rights and freedoms, which is why their government has been so brutal with their law enforcement and military against its own people.

00:28:40.000 And so they have been, I think, inspired by the Canadian truckers and same with France, same with New Zealand.

00:28:47.000 Look at the convoy on its way to D.C. right now, right?

00:28:51.000 The truckers gave everybody a voice and an opportunity to feel like they were not alone and that they could start speaking out and speaking freely about how they feel.

00:29:01.000 And the fact that the government of Canada now wants to censor you or criminalize your thinking, you know, that is waking even more people up that were fully in the past.

00:29:12.000 So I would say it's an overwhelming positive.

00:29:15.000 How did the truckers inherit the male of leadership in this movement?

00:29:20.000 I mean, I think 95 or 96% of them were fully vaccinated.

00:29:26.000 Yeah.

00:29:27.000 They were the ones to finally revolt.

00:29:32.000 Well, you know, that's a great question.

00:29:34.000 And we've often asked, like, how is it that the truckers were able to do it?

00:29:38.000 And if you really consider the small number, like we had hundreds of trucks, but it's very, very small in comparison to the overall number of trucks in Canada and the trucks that go back and forth between the US-Canada border.

00:29:54.000 But when they can take their big giant truck and physically park it, literally at the footsteps of Justin Trudeau, it's hard to ignore.

00:30:03.000 You can't just close your curtains and pretend like you don't hear the horns or see the big trucks or recognize that the city of Ottawa has all of these people there, you know, which is different than a protest on foot.

00:30:16.000 Because a protest on foot in the wintertime, people are going to protest and then they're going to go home at the end of the day.

00:30:22.000 The truckers were there, and they stayed.

00:30:24.000 And they had every intention of staying for weeks on end.

00:30:28.000 So without the big giant metal objects with wheels, they wouldn't have been able to accomplish what they did.

00:30:34.000 I think the trip wire for the truckers was the vaccine passport that they need back and forth from the U.S. to Canada.

00:30:44.000 What would have happened if Justin Trudeau had said to the truckers, come to Ottawa, Let's meet.

00:30:52.000 Let's talk about it.

00:30:54.000 Do you think that would have diffused protest?

00:30:57.000 I think so.

00:30:58.000 I absolutely believe so.

00:31:00.000 But he had no interest in that.

00:31:02.000 And that was, you know, I personally, in some of the media stuff that I did, I personally, I almost begged for him to just come and talk to us and sit at a table.

00:31:11.000 And we thought that he would be receptive to that because he was...

00:31:15.000 He sent a delegation to talk to the protesters in the pipeline out west.

00:31:20.000 He was encouraging or, you know, admonishing the Indian government for not talking to the farmers in India who were protesting for over a year.

00:31:29.000 So we had a lot of evidence to suggest that he would actually sit in and talk because publicly many times he stated, go and talk to people.

00:31:40.000 But he didn't.

00:31:40.000 He outright refused to come and talk to us.

00:31:43.000 And instead, he went into hiding, but didn't send a delegation, didn't send his deputy prime minister, didn't send any representative of the Liberal government.

00:31:52.000 Instead, he just closed his curtains, went into hiding, and pretended like we weren't there.

00:31:58.000 Because we started off as a fringe minority with unacceptable views, and three weeks later, he was invoking the Emergencies Act.

00:32:08.000 Against a bunch of bouncy castles.

00:32:10.000 So we believed he would talk, but he outright refused.

00:32:14.000 How can our listeners support you?

00:32:17.000 Right now, I think patience will be a virtue to support us.

00:32:22.000 But just to continue following on social media, there will be more information coming out in the future.

00:32:29.000 But right now, Tamara Litch is still... 1.00

00:32:31.000 We believe she's a political prisoner right now.

00:32:34.000 And so she hasn't been released from jail.

00:32:37.000 Explain how she is.

00:32:39.000 So Tamara Lynch is one of the original organizers of the Freedom Convoy, you know, the trucker convoy that arrived in Ottawa.

00:32:49.000 And her, with Chris Barber, started the whole movement and were the original organizers of the truck convoy.

00:32:58.000 And unfortunately, on the Thursday before the police attacked, she was arrested and denied bail on charges of mischief and conspiracy to commit mischief.

00:33:10.000 And so she is now still being held in custody and she has a bail hearing with a different judge and we're expecting that she'll be released.

00:33:22.000 Okay.

00:33:23.000 So I just want to tell you, Evangeline Lilly set this up and she said, hey, have you heard of Robert Kennedy Jr.?

00:33:32.000 I said, yeah, because I've had his father and his uncle's photo up on my wall for about 25 years.

00:33:40.000 So yes, I've heard of him.

00:33:42.000 Anyways, a big thrill for me to get a chance to talk to you today.

00:33:46.000 Well, you too, Tom.

00:33:47.000 The honor is mine and Thank you for your courage and your leadership.

00:33:54.000 And how can our listeners follow you or support you on social media?

00:34:00.000 I'm on Twitter under Tom Marazzo, and I'm also on LinkedIn and Instagram, but I'm not a huge social media presence because I kind of felt like what you've experienced, I would just be banned or censored by social media for my unacceptable views.

00:34:21.000 Is there any website or is there any place that people can go to to support the truckers?

00:34:27.000 Yes, the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, their website, and I believe they're crowdfunding for legal defenses for the truckers.

RFK Jr. The Defender - March 04, 2022

Truck Convoy Leader Tom Marazzo

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