The legacy media desperately wants the trucker convoy to be Canada’s January 6th
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Summary
The legacy media want nothing more than the Freedom Convoy to become Canada's January 6th. Is it possible that the truckers are actually a bunch of racist, sexist, angry, and extremist extremists? Find out if so in this week's Fake News Friday.
Transcript
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The legacy media want nothing more than the trucker convoy to become
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Canada's January 6th. It's Fake News Friday, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
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Hi everyone, thank you so much for joining the podcast. And so we have seen something so
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predictable in the media this week. We have been hit over the head with this. The media are going
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into overtime, they're going into overdrive, trying to misrepresent this freedom convoy,
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doing everything they can to, you guessed it, painted as racist, sexist, angry, and extremist,
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even though we can see with our own eyes that it's not. We can see the freedom convoy putting out
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their positive messages, their inspiring messages, watching those Canadians line the freeways despite
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all the elements. It is freezing, it is full of snow, it is icy, it is windy. No one wants to be on the
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side of a freeway. But instead, we see families, we see people come out, people from all walks of life,
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waving the beautiful maple-y flag. I mean, there's nothing better than seeing that and seeing those
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truckers go by. It is so inspiring, so uplifting, so positive, so counter to the message that the
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legacy media is trying to portray. And we're going to go through some of those examples. And joining me
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is True North producer and journalist Harrison Faulkner. Harrison, thank you so much for joining us today.
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Thanks for having me, Candice. And after watching this convoy roll through Canada and grow and unify
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the country and reading some of these horrible, horrible takes by the legacy media. I've been
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looking forward to this show all week, so let's get into it. Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's just
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such a contrast because anyone paying attention knows that this convoy is positive. It's really
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just filled with happiness and hope about the future of our country. And again, to juxtapose that
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with some of these that we're going to go through is just laughable. So here we go, global news. This one
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we saw coming from the first moment I heard about the freedom convoy. We saw this with United We
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Roll Harrison, where, you know, anytime you have sort of working class people, you look, the honest
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thing that happens is people go online, and sometimes they write stupid things, they blow off steam,
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they write negative things. And what the media does is they'll try to find like one example of that,
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and then paint the entire movement in a negative light. And so we see this here, this global news story,
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far right groups hope that the trucker protests will become Canada's January 6. So according to the
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very professional journalists over at Global News, Canadian far right and white nationalist groups
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see the so called freedom convoy as an opportunity, with some hoping the protests will become Canada's
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version of last year's January 6. Just my quick take here, Harrison, is that January 6 was a disaster
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for everyone. I don't think that there's a single person who thinks that it was good. Okay,
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the very, very small fringe number of lunatics who, you know, promoted it and had some weird idea that
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they were somehow going to stop Joe Biden from becoming president. Those people were
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delusional. And they failed, right? They failed at anything that they tried. They didn't stop
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anything. Instead, they became sort of a laughingstock of the country and a punching bag that
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the media and the Democrats and the left could use to try to paint the entire conservative movement
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as French. So it was a failure for the few French people who did it. It was a major failure for
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conservatives because it was embarrassing and it was just stupid. And for the media and the country,
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I mean, it gives them this opportunity. But I can't imagine anyone in the world saying,
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wow, January 6, how inspiring. Let's try to do that in Canada. And then the examples that they use in
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this piece are so far flung. It's like they don't really name any. Okay, I'll just say first off,
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I don't know that there's a big movement in Canada of the far right and the white nationalists. I don't
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know any. I've never met any. I think maybe there's a couple guys online, but I don't know them.
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And if they exist, obviously nobody likes that. Nobody supports that. Nobody wants anything to
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do with that, especially on the conservative right side of the political spectrum. They don't really
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exist, but the media love to fixate on them and pretend that they're this big deal. So right off
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the top, it says Canadian far right and white nationalist groups, plural, as if there's just
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like this whole ecosystem of far right white nationalist groups. And then, of course, the story
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fails to name any of these groups. They just have a bunch of anonymous quotes online of just people,
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again, kind of like sitting behind their computer, writing stupid things anonymously because they're
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not tied to anything. So we have no evidence in this piece. It's just really just a huge drive-by
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smear to try to intimidate people to stay away from the freedom convoy, to not think this is a
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righteous movement and basically just to scare people away from it. What's your thoughts, Harrison?
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Well, I mean, as you said, Candice, we could see this coming from miles away that the legacy media
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were going to roll out these articles and try and paint this protest, this great, peaceful,
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unifying protest as something that it isn't. You know, at the beginning of the article,
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one thing that jumped out to me was that the writers described the protest as hundreds of
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truckers. Now, I think the, uh, the journalists at global news should look at some of the footage
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and break out the abacus and go back to counting because I think they'd quickly realize this is not
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hundreds. This is thousands and it's going to be, it's going to be huge. It keeps growing. And on
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Saturday, they're going to realize that, uh, their number was quite well off now.
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Well, well, just, just, just to jump in on that, Harrison, I read that, that the convoy was 70
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kilometers at one point that it, that it potentially set a Guinness book of world record, right? So we're
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talking about thousands, if not tens of thousands, if not, you know, 50,000, uh, trucks. And, and of course,
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it's such a good point that you make the media try to just say, Oh, a couple hundred, not, not a big
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deal. Yeah. Like it's just some sort of small group of, uh, a group of rogue truckers on their
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way to Ottawa for, for a weekend. I don't, I don't think so. Uh, and you know, as you said,
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Candace, this article quotes anonymous and unattributed statements from supporters of the
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convoy, labeling them only as users and supporters on social media, never giving us a name, never giving
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us an actual quote or a source or a hyperlink. They're just unattributed statements. And here's
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another thing that I really just, I really can't fathom about this article. They, they only quote
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the organizers of the rally, the organizers who distance themselves, of course, from the most
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radical statements made about this ones that are apparently unattributed and unsourced. They only
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quote the organizers 14 paragraphs into the story, knowing full well, the majority of readers will
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never get that far into the article. And all they will come away from thinking of all they will
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come away from the article is, is thinking that this, this protest is some sort of January 6th,
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Ottawa edition. Now, if this isn't carrying water for the liberal government, I don't know what is
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Candace. Well, that's, that's what they do best Harrison. And I just want to point, look, I think
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it's really stupid to go online and write things like no one should ever go online anonymously and
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incite violence or say anything about violence that's wrong. And we have a problem in our country with
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the discourse right now. There's a lot of anger out there. I've seen it compounding over the course
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of the pandemic where people are getting angrier and angrier. I, I, I mentioned this before, but
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I deleted all of my social media apps off my phone. I did it over Christmas. Some of them I brought back
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because I'm trying to get back in the swing of things, but I, I personally don't even like social
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media anymore because it's just such a negative, hostile space. And, and you, you kind of don't really
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gain as much as you used to. I used to think it was fun to go on there. The problem with
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really nasty rhetoric though, is not exclusively a problem of the right. In fact, you could see it
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just the same on both sides. And so there was a great piece over at TNC, our colleague,
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Cosman Georgia, who went into the, they created this anti, uh, this anti trucker convoy hashtag
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called the flu trucks clan. I guess I play on the KKK. I, I told you, I thought it was amusing
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because they call it the flu. And usually people on the left get mad if you equate COVID to the flu,
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but I digress. So anyway, Cosman went through this hashtag, found how many bots were pushing out
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things, how many retweets there were, but he also noted the really despicable language that Canadians
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are using against each other. And so, you know, there, there, there was, there was threats of
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violence from the left coming towards the truckers. There were words like Vernum, plague, rats, dirty,
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white trash. You know, these are the kind of dehumanizing, abhorrent statements that we weren't
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against when we saw them in history, when we saw them in used by totalitarian governments of the
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20th century. And so we see them here on the left and yet funny, funny Harrison, how the media pays
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no attention to the fringe left. They pay no attention to the angry, violent rhetoric online
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coming from the left. Instead, they focus all of their attention on one or two crazy comments that
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they found online and try to use it to attribute and discredit an entire movement. I don't think it's
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working. I think it's failing. I think Canadians are seeing through it, but still just so pathetic
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and so transparent to see them put it out there like this. Yeah. And what more can you say? The
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prime minister on Wednesday said that these truckers were a small fringe minority and they hold
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unacceptable views. So the rhetoric coming from the radical left is being, is being emphasized by the
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leader of the country. So until such time as these legacy media, uh, journalists call it out,
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then all we know is that this is a one, this is a one way street. Those on the right, those who are
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a part of a unifying, peaceful protest are going to always be demonized. And as you said, Candace,
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the rhetoric on both sides is, is really concerning, but it needs to be called out just as much as the
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rhetoric on the left needs to be called out just as much as it's called it on the right.
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Well, and that's so true. And a great MP Pierre Polyev made this point walking into the house
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of commons. Of course, one of these journalists is parroting the same thing. Oh, aren't you worried
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about the, the extreme rhetoric? And he, he basically just put, put this journalist in their
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place saying, Hey, how come you are never digging up this rhetoric coming from left-wing people and
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trying to use it to smear the whole side? Oh, right. Because that's not what we do in Canada.
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You know, don't try to take some fringe comment and apply it to the whole group. Well, good,
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good for Pierre for saying that there are so many examples this week, Harrison, of these kinds of
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stories. We just saw them over and over and over again. The media are pumping these out as if they're
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being paid to do it. Oh, maybe they are. Uh, here's CTV saying so many angry people, experts say online
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conversation around trucker convoy veering into dangerous territory. So I don't know how this is a
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news story. It's basically an op-ed, um, where they found some experts who share their exact same
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opinions to basically just say the same thing. This is dangerous. They're in dangerous
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territory. These people are extreme. These people are fringe. And you know, this is why we shouldn't
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take this movement seriously. What, what did you think of this piece here, Harrison? Well, CTV has
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fallen so far. It's, it's kind of sad to watch really. Since when are journalists from these
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radical left-wing outlets like anti-racist Canada and anti-hate Canada considered experts at anything?
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You know, at least sometimes the CBC or Globe and Mail will actually quote a national security expert
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or a professor, but I guess now we're just going to take the, the opinion of a, of a writer,
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a no-name writer at that from anti-racist Canada to give us their opinion on, on this trucker convoy.
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You know, this is below scraping the bottom of the barrel. This is activist journalism
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with malicious intent to demonize and destroy what is a truly unifying movement. So this is just
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obviously designed to scare people away from the convoy, to make people stay home and avoid
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criticizing the government. You know, as Western countries and our allies are dropping
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their COVID restrictions, Canada seems to be ramping up the rhetoric, tightening the restrictions.
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And obviously the press is just doing the dirty work for them. And it's just, it's disappointing
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to see. And you'd like to see more from some of these, some of these outlets like CTV, but I guess
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that's what we should come to expect. Yeah, you're so right. Sometimes people counter like any criticism
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of the CBC saying, Oh, we, you know, we have one public and one private kind of suggesting that
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maybe the private sector one is like more reasonable or, you know, more because they have like a money
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incentive, they're going to deliver something that's more palatable to Canadians. Then you see stuff like
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this and it's like what the anti-hate network is a fringe like website, basically like no one reads
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it. No one pays attention to it. They sit in their basements, you know, dreaming up like fever dreams
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about the conservatives trying to paint them as extremists. No one even pays attention to them.
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And yet somehow they're given credibility in this story. Now, this is the worst one that I've seen
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Harrison because it's just so insulting and so beyond the pale. This is from Parliament Today,
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which you probably never heard of. It's basically a newsletter, but it's one of those things that's
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done by a journalist and read by journalists. And it really promotes a sort of insular group think
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that we see in the legacy media. So this is, this is what the report said, potentially a big
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problem for anyone who's donated. Okay. So this outlet has a quote of the day. The quote of the
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day comes from a national security expert. You probably never heard of someone called Jessica
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Davis, who warns that anyone who has donated to the GoFundMe page, the GoFundMe campaign,
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I think it's raised almost $5 million at this point. Tens of thousands of people have reached
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into their pockets. God bless them and given it to these truckers just to make it a little easier
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for the truckers, allowing them to pay for their fuel, pay for their windshield wiper fluid,
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pay for them to have some food and a comfortable place to stay along the way. And, and what this
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so-called national security expert is saying that if you have donated, you should be careful
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because it could go against the criminal code for funding terrorism. Yes, terrorism. They are
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equating blue collar workers who are protesting peacefully against government overreach by exercising
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their God given rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association,
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and freedom to peacefully protest. And they are saying that they are terrorists. This is,
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this is so beyond the pale. So absurd. It's like we are living in a bizarro world. This is such a farce.
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And yet with a straight face here, she says that you may be found guilty under the criminal code
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as directly or indirectly providing financial services intended for those who are carrying out
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a terrorist activity or to benefit such a group. What an absolute insult. We've gone so far as a country
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where we have these college educated elites, these government bureaucrats sitting at home,
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working from home in their pajamas, comfortably making a living, not struggling at all, and sitting
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there calling the frontline workers, the people who are so essential to our supply chain, the people who
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are delivering, who are putting their own lives at risk, going on icy freeways, going out there in the
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midst of a pandemic, putting everything at risk to make sure that everybody gets their food,
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that we get their supplies to make sure our society runs as it should and our economy keeps moving.
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And here, these elitist losers are sitting there looking down their nose and calling blue-collar
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workers terrorists. This is one of the absolute worst things I've ever seen in my entire life
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Yeah. I mean, if you ever needed an example of what sheer panic looks like from the establishment,
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this is what it is. Vocal support is one thing. But when the grassroots put their money where
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their mouth is and they get behind something financially, and it's been so successful,
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I just checked, Candace, that GoFundMe has over $6 million donated. So this is clearly posing a
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serious threat to the establishment here, and they're trying to pull out all the stops they can
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to get people to stop donating money. We could spend hours talking about how dangerous this rhetoric
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is, about how really unbelievable it is for journalists and experts to say these sorts of
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things. But all you can really do is laugh because the movement is far beyond just one national security
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expert criticizing it. They can't stop this. People are fully behind it, and they're unified behind it.
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Now, I would love to know where these experts were when we had protesters blockading our railways and
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blocking critical infrastructure because of pipeline protests. Did anyone call out the fact that those
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who funded those protests could be also found guilty under the criminal code for financing domestic
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terrorism? Like I said before, it's a one-way street for those on the right. And the legacy media
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is just so focused on doing their best to get Canadians to stop donating. Here's a message to
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Canadians. Stay the course and see through these blatant attempts to slow you down because everyone
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here who's a part of this protest is making a difference. This story has made it across around the world,
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and it's really, as I say, it's unified the country together on a very positive note. And I just think,
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as you said, this is just disgusting, and it's totally, totally dangerous.
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Well, and you're so right about the gaslighting element, Harrison, because we have, they're basically
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preemptively spinning for violence. They're trying to say, this will probably be violent, this is going
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to be violent. And something that's completely peaceful, completely justified, completely harmonious,
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and like you say, unifying the country. They're trying to paint that as something nefarious.
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Meanwhile, what have we seen over the last two years? We've seen looting and rioting at Black
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Lives Matter protests. And what do the media say? They say, no, this is peaceful. This is nothing
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to see here. These fiery protests are mostly peaceful, right? We saw the Cancel Canada Day movement,
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where they were violently destroying public property, including the property that belongs to all of
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us, like Queen Victoria statues, Queen Elizabeth statues, John A. McDonald statues. They're
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destroying our country's infrastructure and the democratic symbols that we have. Nothing to see
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here, hardly any coverage. Instead, we have people like Gerald Butts saying that it's justified. It
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is justified to burn down churches and sacred places of worship. So we see legitimate violence on
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the left, Harrison, and the media hand wave and say nothing to see here, say it's legitimate and say
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it's fine. And then on the counter, we have peaceful people doing something amazing. And the media is
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doing the exact opposite. This is gaslighting to the extreme. And I think that the good news about
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all of this, and maybe we can end this show on a bit of a good news note, Harrison, is that Canadians
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are seeing through this. The legacy media is not having the impact that they want. They're not
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successfully scaring people away from this movement. The movement is growing. People can see for
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themselves. They can see on social media. They don't need to go through the intermediaries in the
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legacy media. The legacy media has lost its power. Justin Trudeau has lost his power because he can sit
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there and say that these people are unjustified, but it's not true. We all know that. We all know
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that the vaccine mandates are unjustified because vaccines do not stop the spread of COVID. And that
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was the original point. We all know that's true at this point. So Justin Trudeau has lost his
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credibility. The legacy media have lost their credibility. They are irrelevant at this point.
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And instead, we see these truckers, these hardworking men and women who, again, sacrifice
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themselves and do so much for our country. They are the moral leaders of our country right now. They're
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the people who everyone is uniting behind, raising, like you said, over $6 million. It's so
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incredible. And it's just so great to see. And that is why True North is going to continue to do
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wall-to-wall coverage all weekend. Don't miss it, folks. Tune in, tnc.news. Follow us on social
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media. We will be here every step of the way. And we're just so happy, so proud to see Canadians
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finally doing what we should have done two years ago. It's so inspiring to see. And I couldn't be
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happier. So Harrison, thank you so much for joining the show and helping us make sense to this crazy,
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crazy world. Of course. And to the truckers, keep on rolling. And to Canadians showing their
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support, make sure you show your support peacefully and bring out the crowds. Because as you said,
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Candice, this is really a great news story and a great thing for us to see.
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Absolutely. All right. Thank you so much. This is Harrison Faulkner. It's Fake News Friday. I'm
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Candice Moncombe, and this is The Candice Moncombe Show.