The Candice Malcolm Show - The Establishment is pulling out all the stops to end the freedom convoy

00:00:00.000 The Freedom Convoy has more momentum than ever, as Canadians across the country showed up to

00:00:04.880 support the truckers, to support the Freedom Convoy. And in response, the establishment is

00:00:10.080 flailing. They are doing everything they can to stop these protests and discredit the protesters.

00:00:15.180 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is the Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:21.160 Hi, everyone. Thank you for tuning into the podcast. So the weekend saw a tremendous outpouring

00:00:26.360 of support for the Freedom Convoy, which was a little bit surprising. I'll be completely honest.

00:00:30.640 What we've seen over the past two weeks is a coordinated attempt by the legacy media,

00:00:35.360 by the Trudeau liberals in Ottawa, by political elites and the establishment all over the country

00:00:40.620 to try to discredit the Freedom Convoy. They want you to believe that the Freedom Convoy is a fringe

00:00:46.960 minority. They want you to believe it is filled with extremists, filled with racists, that it is an

00:00:51.380 angry mob, and that it is something that you don't want to be a part of. It's something that you

00:00:54.680 do not want to support. You don't want to go anywhere near it because it is just filled with

00:00:59.120 rotten, bad people. That is the message that I have heard over and over and over again in many forms

00:01:04.820 from the establishment in this country. And yet, despite that message blaring through the airways

00:01:10.420 on the legacy media and from so many politicians of all stripes in this country, regardless of that

00:01:16.100 coordinated smear campaign, what did we see? We saw more and more Canadians show up to support

00:01:22.580 freedom to say, we've had enough. We don't want more mandates. We don't want more government

00:01:26.360 interferes. We don't like government overreach in this country. We want our country back. We want

00:01:30.780 our freedoms back. We are united and we love our country and we're not letting it go. And it was

00:01:36.120 just so amazing to see that. I'm a person that tries to get my news from as diverse a source as

00:01:41.380 possible. I read almost everything that comes out of the legacy media with regards to politics in this

00:01:46.420 country. Like I said, I'm a news junkie. But more and more throughout the course of this

00:01:50.500 convoy and trying to get my news from a broader source of places, I've gone more to the source.

00:01:57.000 So one of the things I did this morning when I was preparing for the show, when I was reading

00:02:00.060 the news in the morning, is I went over to Instagram. I went directly to the Freedom Convoy

00:02:04.760 page and I just went through their stories and I went through what they were posting, all of their

00:02:08.520 videos, because it is not some kind of, it's not just a centralized campaign of people putting out

00:02:13.420 their own message. What they do is that they post and share the message of anyone who's tagging them.

00:02:17.400 So you really see a diverse group of people across the country who are supporting the convoy for many

00:02:22.980 of their own reasons. You see a lot of people who are from immigrant backgrounds, people who came to

00:02:26.800 Canada because they want freedom, because they left a government that was tyrannical, that had too much

00:02:31.840 overreach. They came to this country for freedom and they want their freedom back. People from all walks

00:02:36.120 of life, lots of working class people, lots of young people, again, lots of people from lots of different

00:02:39.920 backgrounds. And it's just really interesting to see that message, which is so positive, so full of love

00:02:44.920 and unity and pride in Canada, again, versus this really, really negative message that we're seeing

00:02:51.300 being pushed out almost frantically by the legacy media, by journalists who just want you to believe

00:02:56.240 that this is some kind of a racist movement, that everything about it has been sullied, and that if

00:03:01.300 you support the truckers, you're basically with that one guy who's waving a swastika flag. That is the

00:03:07.320 equivalent that the legacy media want you to believe. And I think that more and more Canadians are tuning

00:03:11.480 out to that message. More and more Canadians can see through it. They're on social media, they're on

00:03:15.460 TikTok or Instagram, and they can see the images for themselves that make this look a lot more like

00:03:21.580 a big Canada celebration. Now, I'm not saying that every single person at those rallies is a good

00:03:26.440 person that I would want to invite over to my house for dinner. I'm not saying that I align with

00:03:30.700 them all and agree with them all on all of the issues. But that's not how a country works. That's not how a

00:03:35.020 democracy, especially a pluralistic democracy like Canada, that's not how it works, right? All the people that are

00:03:40.000 there, they're there for one reason, they support freedom, they want their country back. It's as

00:03:44.300 simple as that. And trying to read different motives or trying to smear the whole group with

00:03:48.340 one broad brush is just ignorant. And it's wrong. And I think that's why the legacy media is failing.

00:03:53.080 And the more they fail, the more they sort of cling on wanting to maintain their grasp on power as

00:04:00.260 it's slipping away. It's really amusing to watch and it's all playing out. Now, again, just to contrast the

00:04:05.220 hateful narrative coming from Justin Trudeau and the legacy media with images pouring

00:04:09.860 out from the convoy themselves. I think that again, the more the media malign this group,

00:04:14.000 the more they're encouraged and incentivized to put their own stream out to film themselves to watch

00:04:18.800 to become independent journalists and show Canadians a different side of the story. And so we're seeing

00:04:24.420 images just pouring out of what looked like big celebrations, dance parties, we're seeing people

00:04:30.040 waving the Canadian flag, dancing, we're seeing indigenous drum circles, we are seeing this beautiful

00:04:36.060 image which went viral over in Toronto of a Sikh man being held up dancing, doing the bangra, I think it's

00:04:43.120 called dance and waving a hockey stick with a Canadian flag, how Canadian is that everyone is cheering and

00:04:48.400 celebrating lots and lots of happiness, big crowds all over the country talking about Victoria, Vancouver,

00:04:54.820 Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City, we have a big convoys also on the US border at various

00:05:03.060 places in Coutts, Alberta, they were riding horseback around the convoy. Look, look at that beautiful sight of

00:05:09.680 horseback riders on the prairies. We also saw a big convoy blockade over at the Windsor-Detroit border, which is the

00:05:18.100 I believe is the largest border crossing in the world, the largest international suspension bridge,

00:05:23.060 and a major transportation artery that was temporarily blocked on Monday evening. It is back

00:05:27.540 open as of Tuesday morning. So of all the of all the beautiful and inspiring footage that came out all

00:05:33.120 over the country, just beautiful images of Canadians coming together, opposing their government, opposing

00:05:37.840 government overreach. It was a beautiful sight to see. I think my favorite clip, though, of the from the

00:05:42.360 weekend came from Quebec City. Here's the scene out in Quebec City. Keep in mind that this was the heart

00:05:47.820 and the epicenter of the Quebec separatist movement. Much of the last half century was spent

00:05:53.220 with people in this part of the country being opposed to Canada, not wanting to be part of Canada

00:05:57.640 and rejecting it. Instead, choosing to embrace French Quebec nationalism and independence. Well,

00:06:03.820 that was not the scene over the weekend. Here they were in Quebec City, waving the maple leaf alongside

00:06:08.580 the fleur-de-lis. But I saw a lot of Canadian maple leaves in there. And here they are singing our

00:06:13.460 national anthem, singing of Canada and French. What a beautiful sight.

00:06:17.820 It's interesting. I've seen a lot of people commenting about

00:06:47.760 how Justin Trudeau is finally solving some of the thorniest issues in Canadian political life.

00:06:53.220 He is finally uniting French Canadians and English Canadians, finally uniting Quebecois

00:06:58.360 with the rest of Canada. Unfortunately for Trudeau, he is uniting them all against him. They all

00:07:02.860 oppose him. They want their Canada back. They want their freedom back. And it is really interesting

00:07:07.560 to see this sort of new political alignment that is going on. Well, in response, Justin Trudeau,

00:07:14.080 his friends in the legacy media, but also establishment politicians of all stripes,

00:07:18.640 from all backgrounds, and at all levels of government. We saw Doug Ford coming out saying

00:07:22.880 that this is an occupation. Doug Ford is a conservative premier of Ontario, completely

00:07:27.240 shameful, turning his back on these protesters and on the blue-collar working class of very people who got

00:07:32.460 Doug Ford elected. He seems to be forgetting where he came from and buying into the legacy media

00:07:38.180 smears against these protesters. He's throwing them under the bus. We saw the municipal government

00:07:44.560 in Ottawa basically just flat out calling us an occupation, saying that they're going to do

00:07:49.220 everything they can. The police really stepping into overdrive, ramping up their pressure, ramping up

00:07:54.520 their presence in Ottawa to try to intimidate and remove these truckers from Ottawa. And going after

00:08:00.480 the money supply, that is the lifeline of any kind of a protest or any kind of a group. They need money

00:08:05.520 in order to continue their protest. They raised $10 million from people who believed in their cause

00:08:11.120 and supported it. Well, the government went after the funding, went after the money. That was a big

00:08:16.260 story over the weekend that their GoFundMe account was suspended. So this all started on Wednesday when

00:08:21.760 GoFundMe decided to freeze the Trucker Convoy fund. It had reached $10 million. They decided to freeze it

00:08:28.640 and they were doing an investigation into how the money was being spent. Well, the next day,

00:08:33.680 GoFundMe was summoned to appear before Parliament. So a committee of MPs voted to bring representatives

00:08:39.720 of GoFundMe to Parliament as soon as possible to answer questions about the crowdfunding company's

00:08:45.500 ability to screen out hate campaigns. So the assumption here is that the Trucker Convoy is some

00:08:51.240 kind of a hate campaign and that we need to get to the bottom of it. So corporate officials from

00:08:56.380 GoFundMe met with local police in Ottawa on Wednesday. They decided to freeze that $10 million

00:09:01.120 in support of the truckers. It's not currently accepting any further donations or distributing

00:09:06.340 any of the funds. The company said in a statement on its website that it was reviewing whether the

00:09:10.880 fundraising complies with its terms of service. The terms say GoFundMe will shut down campaigns

00:09:16.440 that promote hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terror, or intolerance of any

00:09:22.380 kind. Of course, the situation is that that is what's happening with the Trucker Convoy. So once

00:09:27.040 again, they're just trying to smear them. That was all on Wednesday. And by Friday, they really stepped

00:09:31.300 it up. Ottawa police vowed to surge and contain the convoy and referred to the Trucker Convoy as

00:09:37.900 an occupation. Well, once that happened, GoFundMe decided to pull the plug completely. They released

00:09:44.620 this statement on Friday evening. GoFundMe supports peaceful protests, and we believe

00:09:48.940 that was the intention of the Freedom Convoy when it was created. We now have evidence from law

00:09:54.940 enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation with

00:09:59.720 police reports of violence and other unlawful activity. Goes on to say, to ensure GoFundMe

00:10:04.760 remains a trusted platform, we will work with local authorities to ensure we have a detailed,

00:10:09.460 factual understanding of the events taking place on the ground following a review of relevant facts

00:10:13.700 multiple discussions with local law enforcements and city officials. The fundraiser is now in

00:10:18.300 violation of our Terms and Services Term 8, which provides the promotion of violence and harassment

00:10:23.660 and has been removed from the platform. Organizers provided a clear distribution plan for the initial

00:10:29.060 $1 million that was released earlier this week, and confirmed funds would be used only for

00:10:34.240 participants who travel to Ottawa to participate in a peaceful protest. Given how the situation has

00:10:39.060 evolved, no further funds will be directly distributed to the Freedom Convoy organizers. We will

00:10:43.640 work with organizers to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities verified by

00:10:50.380 GoFundMe. So they're just stealing the money. They're commandeering this fund. They're saying we've

00:10:54.720 talked to local politicians and local police officers in Ottawa who are all drumming the same politicized

00:10:59.720 narrative as Justin Trudeau to try to smear these people. At this time on Friday, there were not reports

00:11:04.680 of violence. I know that there's since been some violence because the police have moved in to try to

00:11:08.780 remove the convoy. Some people are sort of fighting back. There have been arrests at this point. But go

00:11:13.400 back to last Friday, and it just wasn't a violent protest. It wasn't. But the police were saying it

00:11:17.800 was, and the politicians and the city councillors were saying it were. And so GoFundMe is taking a

00:11:23.560 politicized account of the events on the ground and using that to steal, basically, to say that this

00:11:28.920 money is no longer yours. We're taking it back. We're giving it to charities that we verify. And so

00:11:33.320 that caused even more outrage to the point where GoFundMe announced that it was just refunding, that it

00:11:38.720 was just straight refunding anyone who had given money to GoFundMe because that whole weird thing

00:11:44.220 about established charities, like we're going to take the money that you raise for the truckers and

00:11:49.040 give it to other groups. People were not happy about that. But generally speaking, just the idea that

00:11:53.740 GoFundMe, a third source crowdsourcing fund, that people who wanted to give money to the

00:11:57.980 truckers, know that GoFundMe is not a trusted vehicle to give your money to. I would be surprised

00:12:03.220 if any conservative group ever used GoFundMe again after seeing this. Jordan Peterson rightly said,

00:12:09.080 the theft of GoFundMe donations to the truckers was the single worst act of political corruption I

00:12:13.720 have ever witnessed in Canada. That is a severe tweet, but it I think echoes the severity of what

00:12:19.260 is going on. $10 million taken away from a cause because elites and the establishment don't like the

00:12:25.240 cause. Ron DeSantis, who is the governor down in Florida, said it is fraud for GoFundMe to

00:12:30.460 commandeer $9 million in donations sent to support truckers and give it to causes of their own

00:12:35.900 choosing. I will work with Florida's attorney general to investigate these deceptive practices.

00:12:40.380 These donors should be given a refund. Likewise, Ted Cruz, who is the Republican senator down in Texas,

00:12:45.920 has demanded that the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. launch a full investigation into GoFundMe

00:12:51.020 after the for-profit crowdfunding company deplatformed the Freedom Convoy's multi-million

00:12:56.140 dollar campaign. It's sort of interesting that it takes U.S. politicians who care about freedom

00:13:01.880 and care about the neutrality of tech companies that had to step in here. We didn't hear this

00:13:06.360 from conservative politicians. We didn't hear it from conservative premiers to say that this stuff

00:13:11.000 should be happening in Canada. I'm glad that there are Republicans in the U.S. who are paying

00:13:15.160 attention because perhaps we will get to the bottom of this. Justin Trudeau and the liberals are used to

00:13:19.680 basically playing rough shop and doing whatever they want in Canada and getting away with it. We

00:13:23.840 saw that with the We Charity scandal. We saw that with SNC. We've seen it so many times. But the fact

00:13:28.780 that they are using these big tech companies, which are U.S. based, to try to interfere with a peaceful

00:13:33.380 democratic protest in Canada, well, interestingly, that also makes it relevant in U.S. jurisdictions.

00:13:38.300 So perhaps his outside look investigating into what is happening in Canada is just what we need

00:13:42.700 in order to shine further light on what looks like something that's pretty nefarious and pretty

00:13:47.840 corrupt. Elon Musk, who has been sharing his opinions very frequently about the trekker convoy

00:13:53.160 and not shy to show his support, he shared this very apt, very accurate meme. It shows on the left,

00:13:59.500 it says amateur thieves, and it shows those Los Angeles train robberies. They're stealing Amazon

00:14:04.440 packages. Millions and millions of Amazon packages were stolen from trains from the large, large homeless

00:14:10.000 population in Los Angeles, and they just discarded and left their garbage everywhere because that's what

00:14:14.700 they do. He called them amateur thieves, and he juxtaposed that with GoFundMe, who he called

00:14:19.640 professional thieves. So there is some good news to come out of all of this, which is that the

00:14:24.060 truckers are not discouraged. A lot of people did get their money back, and they created a new fundraising

00:14:28.760 campaign over at a site called Give, Send, Go, which is a Christian conservative alternative to

00:14:33.700 GoFundMe. And as of this recording, they have raised 6.1 million U.S. dollars for the convoy. So not

00:14:41.240 exactly discouraged. I'm sure that they will raise more than they ever did on GoFundMe, in part because

00:14:45.780 of that backlash from tech overreach, colluding with government, using politicized statements to

00:14:50.740 base their account, and pulling the plug on that. Really, really despicable. And again, just to echo

00:14:56.520 what Jordan Peterson said, the theft of GoFundMe donations to the truckers was the single worst act

00:15:01.600 of political corruption I have ever witnessed in Canada. I think I echo that. And a final bit of good

00:15:07.400 news coming out of the weekend. Carleton MP for the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Polyev,

00:15:12.900 who is incredibly popular. He has a huge social media following. He is very savvy and a good

00:15:17.500 communicator. He announced that he will be running for leader of the party. He wants to be prime

00:15:22.480 minister. He released a video, and here is what that looked like.

00:15:25.400 See, here's the problem. Trudeau thinks he's your boss. He's got it backwards. You are the boss.

00:15:32.880 That's why I'm running for prime minister, to put you back in charge of your life.

00:15:37.400 Together, we will make Canadians the freest people on earth. Freedom to raise your kids

00:15:43.260 with your values. Freedom to make your own health and vaccine choices. Freedom to speak

00:15:49.080 without fear. And freedom to worship God in your own way. Using COVID as a political opportunity,

00:15:56.620 the Trudeau government has attacked small businesses, truckers, and other hard-working Canadians.

00:16:03.620 Our destination is a Canada where the government is servant, not master.

00:16:09.760 Polyev is such a contrast to Aaron O'Toole. He is so many things that O'Toole was not. He is

00:16:14.500 passionate. He's full of conviction. He's incredibly articulate. He knows exactly where he stands.

00:16:18.980 He is a fighter. He is willing to confront the legacy media for their smears and for their lies.

00:16:24.120 He's willing to confront the prime minister, as he did with the WE committee, calling him out,

00:16:29.060 saying exactly what so many Canadians want to hear, and seeing him fight back. I think that is exactly

00:16:34.040 what the Conservative Party needs right now. They need a politician that is young, energetic,

00:16:39.240 and full of conviction. And I think it's a good path for the Conservative Party. Of course,

00:16:43.180 not everyone in the party wants to go down that path. We saw as Aaron O'Toole sort of on his way out,

00:16:47.960 kind of blowing up the party, saying that there's two paths here. There's two ways that the

00:16:51.660 Conservative Party can go. It can go the sort of red Tory establishment way, where we are welcomed

00:16:56.780 into polite society by all the fancy people, and we have this sort of positive, progressive vision

00:17:03.160 for the country. Or the other side is this sort of like angry, hateful mob, and trying to basically

00:17:08.580 strawman the base of the Conservative Party. Well, Aaron O'Toole is not alone in that thinking.

00:17:13.900 There's plenty of MPs who echo that. We saw Michael Chong, who is a Conservative MP for Wellington

00:17:19.240 Halton Hills in Ontario, saying this, he says, the blockades in Ontario and at the border must end.

00:17:25.900 Another MP, this one from Quebec for the Conservative Party, said, I spent the week

00:17:29.980 undergoing the siege of Ottawa. If the motivation of the truckers could be understood, the current

00:17:34.600 situation is quite different. I ask that we clear the streets and that we stop the occupation

00:17:38.680 controlled by radicals and anarchist groups. And likewise, Greg McLean, who is the Conservative MP

00:17:44.420 in Calgary Centre, said, I support law and order. These illegal blockades must end now. I did not

00:17:49.480 intend to minimize the gravity of the situation by comparing aspects of it to a winter carnival.

00:17:54.160 This is a very serious manner. The government of Canada must show leadership and provide clear

00:17:57.660 path moving forward. So there are plenty of MPs who don't support the convoy. And it's all fine.

00:18:02.240 It's okay to criticize the convoy, criticize the protesters for their tactics or some of their

00:18:07.200 beliefs. But at the end of the day, there is a bigger picture here. There is a broader issue of

00:18:12.160 importance, which is the freedom that we have in this country. The fact that we are seeing a blue

00:18:16.680 collar working class uprising here, demanding our freedoms back. And you have Conservatives on the

00:18:21.740 side of Justin Trudeau and the overzealous people over at GoFundMe and the Ottawa police who are trying

00:18:27.620 their best to basically treat this protest like an insurgency. The fact that you have establishment

00:18:32.460 Conservatives coming out on their side is not a good look for the party. It's not a good look for

00:18:36.980 Canada. They should be on the side of ending the mandates, ending the restrictions, getting our life back to

00:18:41.360 normal, getting the economy back up and running, getting people back in jobs and supporting a free

00:18:46.640 economy and a free country in Canada. And so the fact that some of them are jumping on on board with

00:18:52.200 Justin Trudeau is just sort of sad to see. Look, the Canadian people continue to unite around the cause

00:18:58.260 of freedom for all Canadians. The increasingly deranged and out of touch media and political class

00:19:03.800 continue to flail and cry wolf as they see their power slipping away. The thing that strikes me the most

00:19:08.880 about these protests, about these blue collar working class uprising is how sort of non-ideological or

00:19:15.000 pan-ideological they are. There are people from all different backgrounds, people who should

00:19:20.100 typically support Justin Trudeau. I'm talking about young people, people of different backgrounds,

00:19:24.560 but they're not. They feel united by the cause of the convoy. Canada no longer feels divided by

00:19:30.420 East versus West, by French versus English, Quebec versus West, by left versus right. We're experiencing

00:19:36.380 something of a political realignment in Canada. It feels right now much more like the establishment

00:19:41.860 versus the people. And the good news is that the people are winning. I'm Candice Malcolm,

00:19:46.320 and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - February 08, 2022

The Establishment is pulling out all the stops to end the freedom convoy

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