00:00:00.200Legacy media journalists have spent the last two weeks doing the Liberals' dirty work by smearing the truckers.
00:00:05.700Well, it seems like so many of those journalists have bought into their own rhetoric and they're about to snap.
00:00:10.800It's Fake News Friday. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:18.740Everyone, thank you so much for joining the program. It's Fake News Friday.
00:00:22.100Every Friday here on The Candice Malcolm Show, we go through the worst examples of fake news in Canada,
00:00:27.220the lies and the misinformation peddled by the legacy media, the way that they smear working people and push their liberal elite worldview.
00:00:35.680They do the dirty work of the Liberal Party, pushing whatever the latest spin is from Justin Trudeau, echoing it, repeating it, doing everything they could.
00:00:43.320And we saw this playing up last week. We saw how Justin Trudeau didn't ever want to take the trucker convoy seriously.
00:00:49.440He wrote it off and dismissed it as being a small fringe minority. Well, that wasn't true. Of course it wasn't true.
00:00:54.540We saw a huge upswell of support, a groundswell of people all over the country.
00:01:00.220I mean, all you had to do is look at some of those scenes from the freeway where it was overpass after overpass after overpass,
00:01:05.940people lying on the sides of freeways to cheer on the truckers.
00:01:08.940You could tell that Justin Trudeau was wrong.
00:02:02.160And so he can give us some real insight as to, you know, the way that the media is covering this protest versus what it's like on the ground.
00:02:09.280So Harrison, thank you for joining the podcast today.
00:02:13.060So let's just start off by, can you set the scene?
00:02:17.620What is it like at the Freedom Convoy protest right now?
00:02:21.960Yeah, so I arrived on Wednesday and obviously the major protest was over the weekend.
00:02:27.840And that's where we saw the footage of incredible crowds and this great patriotic moment that is going to live on in the history books of this country.
00:02:36.560But none of the trucks had left pretty much, pretty much none of the trucks had left Ottawa this week.
00:02:43.180And when I arrived, I would say there's probably over 100 trucks still parked along Wellington Street and along some of the side streets.
00:02:50.440And it's really just the happiest atmosphere I've been a part of for many years.
00:02:56.380People are dancing and singing and everyone is just really, really happy.
00:03:01.400Everyone's talking with one another and sharing food and sharing gas and electricity for the trucks.
00:03:09.240And so, as I said in one of my reports on Wednesday, I've never seen anything like it.
00:03:16.480But even the smaller gatherings that have been taking place outside Parliament this week, they've still been incredible.
00:03:24.680And the energy on the ground is really something to behold.
00:03:28.300I encourage everyone who can to come out and experience this while everyone is still here because it's something that's truly historic.
00:03:38.240What do you think about – so one of the things that started to trend in Ottawa this week was the term occupation.
00:03:44.200They're saying that Ottawa is occupied, that this is some kind of invasion and an occupation.
00:03:48.880And we also heard the police basically say that they couldn't handle it and people were urging them to let the military take over.
00:03:55.460So, I mean, I could go through a bunch of examples.
00:03:58.540The Toronto Star described it this way.
00:04:01.020Six days into the occupation of Ottawa streets by the so-called freedom, convoy freedoms and scare quotes there,
00:04:08.200counter-protesters have began a movement of their own protesting the truckers, the response from the city and the Ottawa police.
00:04:14.680CBC has a similar thing where they call it the occupation.
00:04:17.980Just from your perspective, Harrison, does it feel like the city is being occupied?
00:04:22.700Usually that's a term that we reserve for like a foreign occupation like of another country.
00:04:28.840You know, for instance, people might say that Russia is looking to occupy Ukraine.
00:04:33.500It's sort of jarring and weird to hear about Canadian citizens occupying their own capital that by definition belongs to the people of the country.
00:04:43.860Well, Candice, if this was an occupation, it's one of the weakest occupations I've ever seen because police are interacting with the crowd, smiling.
00:04:54.040I was talking with some of the protesters today on Wellington Street about how they've been interacting with the police.
00:05:01.160And they say that the police are superstars there.
00:05:03.880Every single one of them gets a wave, gets a cheer.
00:05:08.500And in fact, some of the some of the police who are off duty, these protesters told me that they come up and and interact with them and they all say they support what's going on.
00:05:16.120So, you know, this is not an occupation.
00:05:19.360The city of Ottawa is not under siege, as the liberal legacy media might want to paint it as.
00:05:24.560It's it's clear, Candice, that they're so desperate to paint this as some sort of occupation.
00:05:30.380They haven't given up on the January 6th narrative, as we talked about in last last episode, last Fake News Friday episode.
00:05:38.040They are they are just so, so stuck on this narrative that it must be negative.
00:06:48.240They don't even have anything to do exactly.
00:06:51.680Well, another one of the words that I keep see thrown around is that these are blockades.
00:06:56.960And so this raises a whole question of, you know, what we've seen in this country over the last several years is the increase in popularity of blockades on the left,
00:07:06.060on the left side of the political spectrum who don't want pipelines.
00:07:09.600They don't want oil getting to market.
00:07:12.780And they pretend to speak for the First Nations community, which they definitely do not.
00:07:16.880But it was about two years ago in January of 2020, pre-COVID, that we saw huge blockades where they were blocking railways or blocking freeways.
00:07:28.320They were driving our supply chain to a halt.
00:08:20.820And so this is Pierre Polyev, who is hopefully going to become the leader of the Conservative Party or at least be one of the frontrunners.
00:08:27.320Because he's very, very well-spoken and passionate about Conservative issues.
00:08:31.580And so the tweet is from a Power and Politics episode that came out in February 2020.
00:10:15.040The protesters here in Ottawa are fighting for everyone's freedom.
00:10:18.060They're doing this so that everyone, no matter who you are, no matter what your vaccination status is, no matter what your political stripe is, they're doing this so that you can live a life that is free.
00:10:28.980You have free passage across the country.
00:11:30.100Making the analogy, I guess, that the people at the protest, Harrison, are far right, which is quite a stretch and really reckless, I think, for a high-profile liberal to say.
00:11:46.980I just kind of took her words and changed them a little bit to reflect, I think, a better reality.
00:11:52.160I said, a liberal government that smears the working class as far right is bad for the country and terrible for democracy.
00:11:57.720Well, McKenna hit back again, claiming that she was a true defender of the working class or something.
00:12:05.840She says, I stand for the working class, including those in Ottawa who can't get to work because it's currently being occupied by folks who want to deny residents their freedom to go to work, to sleep, to buy groceries, and to access critical services.
00:12:17.860So, first of all, I question whether the bureaucrats who work in Ottawa are accurately described as working class, because I would describe them as middle class or upper middle class.
00:12:27.240But that's a little bit beside the point.
00:12:29.500McKenna ended up blocking me because she just really hated that I asked her this question or pointed this out.
00:12:34.460But the idea that folks who live in Ottawa can't, they don't have their freedom to work, to sleep, to buy groceries, or to access critical services.
00:12:44.440I'm wondering if you can comment on that accusation, speak to it.
00:13:04.460So, critical resources or access to critical resources, like you said, Candice, if that's the hospital, there are plenty of routes around Ottawa.
00:13:13.340It's just on Wellington Street is where you can't drive through.
00:13:17.120So, as you said, there's a lot of different options for people to get there.
00:13:20.140Grocery stores and all that, those are open.
00:13:22.520Small businesses are open because this is an incredible business opportunity.
00:13:26.560It's not that often that this many people from around the country come together in Ottawa.