Liberal MP's big mouth gets him sued (Russian agent lie)
Episode Stats
Summary
Although Canada's political landscape is strewn with contemptible, low grade politicians, I would argue the most desperate and most pathetic politician is Canadian politician Mark Gerritsen. He has a famously big mouth, and despite the fact that he is the Deputy House Leader of the Liberal Party, so he s supposed to be good at answering questions and engaging in political communications, his only tactic in any political debate is the cheap smear. And now his famously bigmouth has landed him in a lawsuit for accusing one of his political opponents of being a Russian agent, with effectively no evidence.
Transcript
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Although Canada's political landscape is absolutely strewn with contemptible, low-grade politicians,
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I would argue the most desperate and the most pathetic politician is Liberal MP for Kingston
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and the Islands, Mark Gerritsen. He has a famously big mouth, and despite the fact that he is the
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deputy house leader of the Liberal Party, so he's supposed to be good at answering questions and
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engaging in political communications, his only tactic in any political debate is the cheap smear.
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And now his famously big mouth has landed him in a lawsuit for accusing one of his political opponents
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of being a Russian agent with effectively no evidence at all. I want to jump into that tweet
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he put out, but first I just quickly want to plug, because we're talking about lawsuits, this ridiculous
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one that was filed against us, which has no credibility to it like the one filed against
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Mark Gerritsen. We have a Chinese billionaire suing us for defamation, and in more than two and a half
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years, they still haven't filed any evidence against us to prove that we defamed them. So if you want to
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go to the Give, Send, Go link below in this video, you can donate and help us fight through all these
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legal costs. It's cost us more than $32,000 so far, and the guy suing us still literally has nothing.
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He is just trying to drag out the process. But now let's get into what Mark Gerritsen said.
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So this was the original instigating tweet. Mark Gerritsen, again, remember that this man is both an
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MP as well as the deputy house leader. The man does not possess the poise or composure to take people's
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order at McDonald's, but I guess for Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party, he's a great asset in the
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House of Commons. Mark here says, I finally blocked someone on here. I draw the line at a foreign
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government paying you to engage with me. Parliament needs to study this, and this person needs to be
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brought before committee to answer questions. And you can see that he has blocked Canada. For one
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thing, you're actually not allowed to block people as an MP in Canada unless it's like a bot account or
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somebody spamming actual illegal content. But Mark Gerritsen, I guess, is proud to block Cat Canada,
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who I follow her. She really doesn't spam messages at people or anything like that. Mark Gerritsen just
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wants to grandstand on the idea that as the Liberals, we are against foreign dictatorships like
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that in Russia, even though the Liberals have actually been very soft on dictatorships like Russia,
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Iran, and other ones around the world, especially China. Justin Trudeau is very, very friendly to
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China. But he just blatantly accuses Cat Canada here of being a Russian asset, saying that she's paid
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by a foreign government to engage with him on social media, which is entirely false. This is all based on
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this dumb story about tenant media in the US, which was being given money by a Russian media source
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to basically amplify anti-Ukrainian voices. That's bad. This was all being done by Lauren Chen,
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who her and her husband set up the production company or the media company, and she hired a
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bunch of content creators to make a media for tenant media. The problem is she never told any of the
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people where she was getting the money from. Most of them weren't even making videos on Ukraine for
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tenant media because they were just basically being paid to make videos. They were famous people.
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in order to drive a lot of new viewership and subscribers to tenant media to give it a base.
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One of those people was Lauren Southern, who, yes, she's made videos about Russia that I find sketchy
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six years ago. For the most part, she mostly just talks about cultural things these days.
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But this is where Cat Canada comes in. Cat Canada, who used to live in the Soviet Union and is not super
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pro-Russia. She went on Lauren Southern's show at one point on tenant media to talk about Canada and to
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talk about authoritarianism in Canada. And oddly enough, as the Russian agent that Cat Canada is,
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she compared the way that Justin Trudeau governs to the Soviet Union, to the Russian authoritarians who
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were running the Soviet Union. Not a super pro-Russian lady, but Mark Gerritsen just needed this thin
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connection to somebody who was working for Lauren Chen, who was being lied to. So the timeline here
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makes no sense. So Cat Canada gets interviewed on a show, probably wasn't paid anything. Like the vast
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majority of people who guest on a larger show, on a larger platform, you'd mostly just get paid in
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exposure because it's a smart idea to go on the show that has a lot more eyes than other platforms
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you're already on. And so because Cat Canada guested on Lauren Southern's show, and Lauren Southern was
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unknowingly being paid by Russian sources through Lauren Chen, who knew where the money was coming
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from, this makes Cat Canada a Russian agent. It makes no sense at all. And that led to the counter
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signal, Kian Bexty and Cat Canada suing Mark Gerritsen. They started a fundraiser. I'll link their
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tweets in the description of this video below. But Cat Canada ended up putting this video out saying
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that I am taking legal action against Mark Gerritsen. And I'll just play a little bit of
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this video just to get the flavor of what's going on here. Justin Trudeau's deputy government house
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leader, Mark Gerritsen, has crossed the line. And now the counter signal is lawyering up to defend me,
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a journalist, against his baseless, bigoted, and vindictive allegations that I'm a Russian agent.
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Let me make one thing clear. I'm not. I'm a single mother working tirelessly to hold Justin
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Trudeau accountable for his disastrous record. And because I'm effective at what I do, Gerritsen
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made me a target. He lied about me and used his position to call for me to be subpoenaed by
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parliament. But we're not backing down. We're not letting one of Canada's most notorious liberals
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drag my name through the mud. So there we have that. You don't need to see the whole video,
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but I will link the video in the description below. And you think that, well, you know,
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a conservative, more right-wing type media company is threatening to sue a liberal. Who cares? Well,
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Mark Gerritsen seems to care because Mark Gerritsen starts backpedaling hard. You can tell
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that somebody from Trudeau's office, from the PMO, probably went down to Mark Gerritsen's office and
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slapped him in the head and said, can you stop generating us bad press? Because what you did was
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textbook defamation. And I want to jump into what Mark Gerritsen said to try and retract
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his comments. What then what Kian Bexte said, and then going to move on to how Mark Gerritsen
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obviously is not actually remorseful for what he said. And he still believes it. And I don't even
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think to say he believes that I think is a little bit far. I think Mark Gerritsen said it and he stands
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behind what he said, but I think he also knows it's a lie. But here is Mark Gerritsen now trying
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to backpedal after they filed a lawsuit against him or it's pending to be filed. Mark Gerritsen says,
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okay, my language may not have been that clear. That's putting it lightly. I find Cat Canada's
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content to be divisive, alarmist, and deeply offensive. The Press Progress report of the video
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of Katrina with Lauren Southern and Press Progress's report on the video's alleged connection to the Russian
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influence campaign is deeply alarming. I'm not interested in interacting with or amplifying
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that kind of division. So I'm going to be blocking Katrina because of her connection to that mess.
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I am not alleging that Katrina herself was paid by the Russians. Correction, and then he just tags her in.
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Well, that's quite literally what he did. He literally said that she was being paid by a foreign
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government to engage with her. Does he mean that, oh, I'm not sure if it was the Russians I was
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referring to. I just meant a foreign government. Yeah, you're saying she's a Russian shill. She's a
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Russian agent. Everyone knew that that's what you meant. And that's why Kian Bexty responded in this
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manner. Mark, your language was clear. You accused Cat Canada, my employee, of being a Russian agent.
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You explicitly accused her of taking money from a foreign government. That was a lie. And it was seen by
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nearly one percent of all Canadians before you deleted it. There will be consequences. And he is
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right. A lot of these tweets end up getting a lot of impressions that maybe it wasn't one percent of
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Canada's population, but at least an equivalent amount of people to one percent of Canada's
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population, over 400,000 people, saw Mark Gerritsen's defamatory post. And the ridiculousness that he's
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trying to not amplify her. I'm blocking her because I don't want to amplify her. Then why would you
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post about the fact that you were blocking her and that you're blocking her because she's being
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paid by a foreign government? Because she was interviewed on a show who was taking money from an
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unknown source that the source who was giving her the money knew that it was Russian. And it was like
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connected to Russia Today, the state owned media organization in Russia. Like it's a stupid
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connection. Mark knows it's a stupid connection. He admits he read the Press Progress Report. The Press
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Progress Report, they are smear artists, but even they couldn't have alleged, they didn't allege that
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Canada was getting any money because she's not getting any money. Going on to other people's shows
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very infrequently gets you any money. That's just not how it works. If I have somebody come on for an
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interview onto my show, I'm definitely not going to pay them anything. It's good for people who are
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involved in politics or the media to guest on shows. But anyways, now I just want to jump over to
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something else that Mark has still not un-retweeted. He still has this retweeted. This
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person, Doug, that Mark Gerritsen retweeted, Dr. Doug Aylson, I don't know how to pronounce that.
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And he says, here is Pure Polyev who still refuses to apply for security clearance with a person who
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has been found to be part of a Russian misinformation campaign. Mark, Mark, you don't, you weren't
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accusing her of being paid by the Russians or a foreign government, yet you still have that
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retweeted on your account. If he went back to delete his other post, he would have run into that post
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that he retweeted. Mark is just saying the bare minimum to try and stave off the lawsuit, but he is
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refusing because he is an ego the size of Texas to actually get rid of the defamatory claims. He just
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pretends like, well, I was being more broad. No, you weren't. You were being actually very specific
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and everyone knows exactly what you're trying to say. But, you know, this is just the way that the
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liberals operate these days. They have nothing. Mark Gerritsen really has never had any point to
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make. And all they have these days is smears that the conservatives are bad people because they're
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working for the Russians or something like that. I see this all the time now. Tons of liberal left-wing
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accounts saying, even to me, they're like, oh, so you're a Russian shill. Are you being paid? Where
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is your money coming from? I donated to the Ukrainian military in February of 2022 when they
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started being invaded. I used their Stripe account that they have posted on their government's website
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to send them money. Now, I know there's some people going to be like, oh, you're funding money
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laundering. Stop it. You have to know a thing or two about foreign policy. Russians are not good
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people. Like the Russians in terms of the government are not good people. Putin's not a good person.
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Doesn't matter how many posts people make about how Putin's super trad and trying to save the West.
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He's not. He does not care. Why do you think he literally employs Islamists in his military? People
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who ISIS rejected from Chechnya, who are being absolutely insane and hard to deal with, were
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then employed by the Russian military to go into Ukraine and kill people. It's not a good place.
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But the idea that the conservatives who have actually been very supportive of our allies around
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the world are the ones who are pro-Russia, while Trudeau, the one who's cut funding out of all
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foreign endeavors, is the one who's the anti-Russian guy, is stupid. I don't think that
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he's on the Russian take, Justin Trudeau. But when he came into office, he literally gave over the
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Middle East to the Russians. He pulled our jets out of fighting ISIS because he didn't care. He sent
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winter coats to people who are getting beheaded. That's disgusting. And they have the audacity to claim
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that the conservatives are on the sides of authoritarians around the world. Justin Trudeau
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literally will lick the boots clean of the Chinese every day of the week. It's his supposed favorite
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country in terms of who he looks up to for governance. But whatever, you've all heard those
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points before. And I guess that's a good place to leave this off. I actually have to go to an event
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now. But thanks for watching, guys. Donate to the legal fund in the description below,
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the Give, Send, Go link. Donate to protect somebody from a defamation suit where it actually
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matters. Mark Harrison should lose this case because what he said was egregious. But in our case,
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we literally just repeated a bunch of reporting from the Globe and Mail. And a Chinese billionaire who
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was too scared to sue the Globe and Mail sued us instead, even though we repeated factual information
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the Globe and Mail reported on more than a year and a half before we hit publish. Anyways, that's it.