John Bolton： Legacy Media is Dead, You Are The Media Now
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about the importance of bearing witness and why it is so important in our modern world. I also talk about how important it is to be a witness to events that are happening around us, and why we should all bear witness to them.
Transcript
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I don't go to too many events. I don't. As Jason said, I worked in radio for 35 years.
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I used to have to go to everything. And when I moved to Calgary, I didn't have to go to anything,
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and I felt good about that. I go to very few events. I go to just important ones. And this
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is an important one. You know, I've met Jason a couple of times in person. I know him more
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through a camera, and I think we've become kind of friends, which I think is great.
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And I have to say, I was a little bit nervous about doing this speech.
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It was funny, I was listening to Viva Fry, I listened to a bit of what The Fringe said,
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and I think you're going to hear a common thread here today, but Viva was reading my
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mind in a way. I was a bit nervous about doing this. I put off preparing for this speech
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until yesterday. I have plenty of experience with public speaking.
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I'm comfortable doing it, but I wasn't sure that I belonged here.
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I had Jason on the other day on my channel to talk about this event, to explain the reason for it, bearing witness.
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Well, it means to testify to, provide evidence for, or affirm the truth of an event, experience, or fact, often acting as a first-hand observer.
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When I posted my video with Jason, I created a thumbnail of hundreds of people holding up cell phones.
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Can you hold up your cell phone if you've got it handy?
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Now, Viva talked about journalists, and if you look up there under my name, it says Alberta Journalist.
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There is an argument, a criticism made by people who are in the mainstream media
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You know what they say is a journalist. I know. I went to school with them.
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They're high school educated, taught how to edit tape and video.
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They put together a 60-second news story to be played on the radio or television, and that is it.
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Many of you here are more educated than a lot of the people that are giving you the news on CBC and CTV
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and other news organizations that are considered legitimate news organizations.
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Now, I'm not saying that people who don't have, who only have a high school education are not educated.
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And, well, look at me, I'm rather intelligent, right?
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I'm here amongst some people who are far more accomplished and established in the task of bearing witness.
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Stockwell Day, Viva Fry, my friend Derek, unacceptable fringe, Chris Scott, Francis
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Whittleson, others here today. Stockwell Day, former leader of the Canadian Alliance. This man
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has made history, for God's sakes. Worked with Stephen Harper. I think he worked with Ralph
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Klein, if I remember correctly as well. Viva Fry, and if you're going to describe someone who
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I mean, here's a guy who during the convoy had the audacity to do a radical thing and go out to
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talk to people. Bearing witness indeed, and it's something that the mainstream media did not do.
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If they'd only spoken to those people, we wouldn't have got what Jason was talking about earlier,
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if they're a bunch of Nazis, they're fringe, things like that, right?
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so i i think about somebody like francis widdowson who has you know been arrested thrown out of
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places for just speaking the truth i don't know whether you noticed but the other day
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at the liberal convention somebody walked up and told the same lie about kamloops and people being
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buried in the ground 12 million dollars 20 dollars a shovel you can buy a lot of shovels with 12
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million dollars. In fact, I did the numbers on it, 600,000. You could dig up all of Kamloops
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with the amount of money they've spent, but they haven't dug a single hole.
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Now, I am new to this. I'm still growing, and I have a background from the previous world of
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bearing witness, a previous world that is lacking and dying, some and most might say thankfully.
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And I checked in on YouTube. I checked the other day. I got on YouTube on December 16, 2007. I've
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only been active since really November 2024. I'm a retired radio announcer. I
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worked in radio and television for 35 years. My first job back in 1986. I'm
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getting older. I worked in Sarnia at CKJD. Some of you may know the name Sarnia.
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It's been in the news this week. A specific woman walked across the aisle
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and joined the Liberal Party. I worked in Chatham, Ontario. Back then, you know, we
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actually played records on the radio long before the days of the internet and
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digital. Spent 20 years in Eastern Ontario working for CJSS, CFLG, CJUL
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radio and I'm telling you this because I have an interesting perspective on
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bearing witness. I did a job called John Bolton's Cornwall Today on a small
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market radio station but I spoke with Stephen Harper, Dalton McGinty, Jack
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Leighton, Stefan Dion, Elizabeth May, Justin Trudeau, Senator Ken Dryden, astronauts, musicians,
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hundreds of people. I was destined to live here in Alberta. I was born in a place called Petrolia,
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Ontario. Sounds a lot like petroleum, one of the first places they found oil in Canada. People
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there who were born in Petrolia are called hard oilers. I lived in Sarnia, which I call my hometown,
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And as you know, a lot of Alberta oil goes to Sarnia, right?
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And I worked for some Calgary radio stations for a while.
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But it definitely is not the same business that I worked in.
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It was around 2018-2019 when the Liberal government started funding the news media.
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Now, the news directors and management of the places I work for over the years would be disgusted with this.
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They would consider it a threat to editorial independence, an erosion of public trust, a risk of political favoritism.
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they would be disgusted that citizens would be forced to support news
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organizations that may not agree that they may not agree with through their
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tax dollars and other things as well these people and their beliefs like me
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are now gone the news media line up like pigs at a trough for their government
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handouts George Bernard Shaw said the politician that robs Peter to pay Paul
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will always have a friend in Paul. And that's what it's like with the news
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media these days. I also noticed a shift when it came to social issues. The young
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people who had been educated or I guess indoctrinated in school would cover
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stories that aligned with their worldview. Getting a contrary opinion for fairness
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and clarity wasn't even considered. Good journalistic practices like neutrality,
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fairness, objectivity, impartiality, integrity, and credibility has become less important.
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Advancing a narrative is more important these days. Now, I've been a moderator at debates,
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and I always was tougher on the conservatives because everybody knew I was a conservative. I
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wanted to maintain my credibility. That was important to me. News media has lost credibility.
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the people in the news business today groups of people protesting the latest woke cause is more
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important than thousands of people showing up for another thing and i think of something that
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comes to mind and i've heard covet mentioned a number of times here today thousands of people
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would show up each sunday during covet at central memorial park in calgary to protest covet
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restrictions and vaccine mandates. The radio station I worked at never showed up. I did.
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I covered it on my YouTube channel, something I wouldn't even suggest to the news director at the
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radio station I worked at. They were busy pushing COVID restrictions and vaccine mandates.
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Central Memorial Park was less than five minutes by foot from the radio station I worked at.
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then there was the woke indoctrination at work yearly training on proper business practices
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was replaced by long learning sessions on how to address people with their proper pronouns
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grievance sessions were held for all the proper intersectional groups and they had 12 of them and
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I can't even remember but they had 12 this is what the modern media has become so where did
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I begin with being a person bearing witness, and it's been a little bit of a journey to get here,
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but you might find this interesting. I thought it was around November of 2024,
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but I thought back, and I realized the power of YouTube in January of the same year.
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That year, we had a very long cold spell. You might remember. Temperatures in southern Alberta
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were in the minus 30s for a couple of weeks. I woke up one morning, it was minus 36 Celsius in
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Calgary, the whole province was under an extreme cold warning. The night before, we got an alert
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on our phone. Do you remember this? Conserve energy, we were told. Don't do laundry. Don't
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plug in your electric car, or the power might fail. I picked up my phone and recorded a video.
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My channel at that point had about 400 subscribers. How in the heck could a province like Alberta,
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a province with more, and I said this, more energy than God, be in this predicament.
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I ranted about Rachel Nautry and coal-fired power, lashed out at the Trudeau government
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and the Liberal government, and wondered how such a blessed province could be at a point where,
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if the power went off, for only a short time, millions of people would be at risk of freezing
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to death. Now, it doesn't take long for your house to get to minus 36 when it's
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minus 36 outside. I posted the video and forgot about it, but a few
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days later I looked, and 8,200 people had watched my video. And again, I had about
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400 people watching my channel. Didn't post much that year, but I think the
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Liberals were trying to ban plastic straws. I remember waving a plastic straw
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in front of my camera. The liberals say if I throw this into a recycling bin or the garbage,
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it'll end up in the ocean. How the hell does this end up in the ocean? I live 14 hours from the
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ocean. And that's what I said. This is insane. If it goes into a recycling bin, I expect it to go
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recycling. If it goes into a garbage bin, I expect it to go to a landfill. If that's not happening,
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somebody needs to go to jail. And that's what I said. So I'm waving around this plastic straw,
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But it was December 21st, 2024, when I knew I was on to something.
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December 21st, 2024 was when Jagmeet Singh decided
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he was going to introduce a motion of non-confidence in the Liberal government.
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Now, Parliament went on Christmas vacation on December the 19th.
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Singh and the NDP propped up the Trudeau and the Liberals for years.
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next Prime Minister of Canada with a landslide nothing was gonna come of what
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Jagmeet Singh decided to do here plus Singh is just waiting things out to get
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his ironclad pension in February worth millions while seniors in Canada got
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peanuts from CPP for working for a lifetime I was pissed I did a short rant
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on this called and I'm gonna bleep out the word I called it Jagmeet Singh is
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the biggest piece of blank in Canadian political history and I put it on my
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YouTube channel so more than a hundred and two thousand people have watched
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that video my subscriber count at the time was 500 a hundred and two thousand
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people watch that video. Then I realized I had a voice. I didn't call it bearing witness, but I
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guess it was, and I was. Over the next several months, we know what happened. Trudeau resigned
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on January 6th, throwing the liberals into a leadership campaign. Carney announced his
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candidacy on the 16th of January. Singh got his pension, probably ran to his Rolex authorized
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dealer to pick up a new solid gold Datejust. I'm sure he did. Carney won the leadership job,
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won the election but this was a great time to bear witness suddenly more
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people were subscribing to my channel I was making a video a day and what I
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thought was interesting some videos would hit others would miss but I was
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doing my own thing with my own perspective the election was great for
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followers I was talking with the fringe it was good for him too they started to
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go up fast it was at 20,000 I was at 25,000 I was at 35,000 and wow all of a
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sudden I was a youtuber and I'm 60 years old people were looking for alternatives
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they were looking for information they couldn't find on traditional media they
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no longer trusted the media they grew up with now this is where things get really
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bizarre this is crazy as I said I worked in radio for 35 years mostly in small
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market radio stations my friend Scott who was the best man at my wedding and he
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was at my house a couple of years back when we renewed our our vows he gave
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gave me a call and I was talking on the phone with him and he you know we
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generally would talk about daily life but he asked me what are you doing these
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days he was the news director at the radio station I worked at for years was
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in different business now so what are you doing I so well I'm I'm semi-retired
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now I'm on my 60s and I did some radio here he knew about that it worked for a
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cycling organization for a time but I told him I was a youtuber and he said
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what I said I'm a youtuber I know it sounds weird but I'm now a youtuber well
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thank you he said well how many people subscribe to your channel and at that
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point it was about 40,000 he said are you kidding I said no and here's where it
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gets really bizarre I told him that prior to the election in the month or so
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before, when things were really humming along and there was lots of interest, more people heard me
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on my YouTube channel than had heard me in my entire 35 years on radio. And you could have heard
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a pin drop, just silence. And that is true. My channel is now within a few subscriptions from
0.99
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about 50,000. I am proof that we all have a voice. I'm proof that we can all bear witness regardless
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of age, regardless of social status or income. I'm proof that we are the media. You have a mini
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television studio in your pocket. Radio and television people from 40 years ago when I started,
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they couldn't dream of such a thing this is science fiction 40 years ago ladies and gentlemen
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use this have a voice bear witness thanks very much to jason and his wife for having me here
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i do appreciate it and you all have a great day thank you