Ezra Levant argues Canada’s Ukraine war stance lacks consistency, ignoring its own oil sands while sanctioning Russian gas trade—evidencing Putin’s economic advantage. Gerald Butts’ pipeline opposition (Northern Gateway, Energy East) and alleged dark foreign funding ties to the World Wildlife Fund of Canada are scrutinized for indirectly aiding Russia. Justin Trudeau’s sanctions exclude oil/gas, mirroring Biden’s Keystone XL cancellation, which keeps U.S. markets reliant on Russian exports. CPAC attendees praised Rebel News’ Trucker Convoy coverage but criticized Canada’s religious freedom crackdowns, like Arthur Poblovsky and James Coates’ imprisonments. Judicial rulings in Ontario, NZ, and the UK now challenge vaccine mandates, signaling a global shift against authoritarian public health measures, with U.S. truckers leading similar non-extremist protests. [Automatically generated summary]
Who has helped Vladimir Putin in Russia more than anyone else?
Well, I would say it is whoever has suppressed oil and gas competition.
By that, I mean whoever has stopped the oil sands.
Because Russia's power, economic power, its political power, is its oil and gas near monopoly in Europe.
So who has done more than anyone to stop the competition?
I would say his name is Gerald Butts, and I'll make the case for that today.
Before I do, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's our video version of these podcasts.
It's eight bucks a month.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
You get daily videos from me, weekly videos from four of my colleagues.
Eight bucks a month, that's not a lot.
That's half the price of Netflix.
And of course, it helps us stay independent.
We don't take a dime from Justin Trudeau, and I think it shows.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com and click subscribe.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, there really isn't a Canadian angle to the Ukraine war, but if there was, it would involve the oil sands.
It's February 28th, and this is the Answer Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government.
I don't know why I'm publishing it.
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
There are a lot of Ukrainians in Canada Many came over more than a century ago, especially in Western Canada.
That's actually my family story from 1903.
Here's one famous Ukrainian Canadian, Wayne Gretzky.
He was born in Canada, and so was his dad, Walter.
I think a lot of people see Russia as the aggressor here.
It's not common to see such a raisin invasion of another country.
So here's Wayne Gretzky saying that Russia should not be allowed to send athletes to the World Juniors Hockey Competition being held this year in Alberta.
Hockey gets, sports gets zeroed in on, right?
If we're going to send hockey players home, we should send everybody home, right?
It's not just hockey players.
There's a lot of other people here who are making a living.
But one of the things, I was so glad to see the Polish soccer team step up and say we're not going to play against them.
And I think international hockey should say, we're not going to let them play in the World Junior Hockey Tournament.
I think we've got to, as Canadians, take that stance since the games are going to be played in Edmonton.
I sympathize with Gretzky.
International sports are a source of prestige for nations.
They're a symbol of solidarity and fraternity.
It's pretty hard to hold a symbol of brotherly togetherness when there is an actual war going on.
But does anyone remember that just a few weeks ago, Communist China actually held the Olympics, and Canada sent a full delegation, not just of athletes and coaches, but journalists and endless hangers-on and not a peep about China's totalitarian regime.
That's not good for ratings to talk about that kind of stuff.
China's Olympic Dilemma00:12:50
No talking about a million Uyghur Muslims put in concentration camps, not even a word about the three Canadian hostages who were held for nearly three years by that regime.
Nope, just lots of ads for Coca-Cola and Panasonic and Toyota and Visa.
I mean, if Disney can make a movie in China and literally thank the secret police who arrest the Uyghurs in the movie credits, seriously.
And if Nike Nike can literally lobby the U.S. government for the right to use slave labor in Xinjiang, why not have some sports ball?
I mean, seriously.
So I hear Wayne Gretzky, and I'm sympathetic.
I think it'd be weird to have the Russian team in Alberta, even though the players are under 20.
They're not political.
They're just kids, really.
But still, I get it.
But how come we didn't boycott China?
Is it because it's too tough to do that?
Because literally everything in Walmart and Costco and your favorite store is made in China.
And not just junk.
Your computer is probably made there too.
Your cell phone, probably.
Your clothes, maybe.
More of your food than you might expect, apples, fish, almost all of the medicine you take made in China.
So maybe it's what, the inconvenience?
Here's Justin Trudeau saying he's going to crack down super hard on Vladimir Putin and his inner circle, as if they have a savings account at TD Bank or something.
Today, Canada is announcing our third set of severe coordinated sanctions.
First, we will be imposing sanctions on President Putin and his fellow architects of this barbaric war, his chief of staff and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
These men bear the greatest responsibility for the death and destruction occurring in Ukraine.
Additionally, I am confirming Canada's support to remove Russia from the SWIFT payment system, a critical part of the global banking system.
We've made it clear that all options are on the table when it comes to imposing steep costs on Russia's unjustified and unprovoked invasion, and that includes taking steps to exclude Russia from making financial transactions around the world.
Excluding Russian banks from SWIFT would make it even more difficult for President Putin to finance his brutalities.
Canada is also announcing that we will levy additional sanctions on Belarus and its leaders for abetting President Putin's invasion of a free and sovereign nation.
These will target 57 individuals and are in addition to the dozens of existing strong sanctions already leveled against Alexander Lukashenko's regime for their repeated systematic human rights violations and decades of oppression of their own people.
Yeah, Trudeau banning the Russian cabinet from banking in Canada is like me banning any supermodels from dating me.
And I mean it this time.
We didn't ban anything from China after they gave us the deathly gift of COVID-19.
We didn't even ban flights.
We didn't ban anything for their concentration camps, for the Canadians they took hostage.
And when they invade Taiwan, which I think is a lot more likely now than ever before, we won't ban anything then either.
Canada literally continues to give money to China in the form of foreign aid, even now.
In fact, it's gone up.
Trudeau has poured money into China to help their research into how to fight COVID-19.
He paid it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Swear to God.
But back to Russia.
Trudeau and fidgety Christia Freeland are talking very tough about Russia, and they want to cut off Russia from the rest of the world financially, including from the international money transferring system called SWIFT.
That's the global financial transactions and payments information system.
It's how millions of payments are made every day amongst thousands of banks.
So over the weekend, it looked like Russia would be cut out of SWIFT payments.
I heard stories about credit cards associated with Russian banks just not working anymore.
There were lineups at Russian banks as people withdrew their cash.
That's probably a good idea.
But I noticed, and it was hard not to notice, that there was an exemption for financial transactions having to do with oil and gas.
Well, that's sort of like saying you're going to boycott Iran except for oil and gas.
I mean, oil and gas are literally a majority of Russia's exports to the world.
In fact, Russia produces four times as much oil and gas as Iran does.
On the gas side, Germany is heavily dependent on Russian natural gas.
And some Eastern European and Baltic countries, it's close to 90, 100% of their energy comes from Russia.
Remember, Russia has simply turned off the taps to Ukraine before in the dead of winter as a political punishment.
So my point is, Trudeau and Christy Freeland promised to shut down bank accounts of the Russian oligarchs, but none of them bank in Canada.
Trudeau and Freeland promised to shut down Russian banking altogether, but not for oil that they sell to the world.
Same with Joe Biden and the United States.
Bizarrely, they have exempted oil and gas from any sanctions because Biden canceled the Keystone Excel pipeline.
It was one of his very first things he did upon taking office.
And wouldn't you know it, those 800,000 barrels of oil a day would nicely displace the oil coming to the U.S. from Russia.
But what are you going to do?
Just stop driving?
So they have to keep buying that Russian oil.
Or maybe, I don't know, maybe use solar-powered cars and solar-powered planes or something.
And maybe Ukraine should too or something.
That's what Jem Sacchi says.
On oil leases, what this actually justifies in President Biden's view is the fact that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, on oil in general, and we need to look at other ways of having energy in our country and others.
One of the interesting things, George, we've seen over the last week or so is that a number of European countries are recognizing they need to reduce their own reliance on Russian oil.
So that's America.
It has always imported oil.
But why would Canada buy oil from Russia too?
And we have so much oil here.
Well, not really, because Gerald Butts, Trudeau's right-hand man since they were in college together, who has somehow become polite company again despite his disgraceful, unethical, corrupt conduct during the SNC Lavaland scandal, his interference in the prosecution of a crime.
How did he get back into the Ottawa polite company scene?
I don't know.
Well, remember that before he worked for Trudeau, he ran the World Wildlife Fund of Canada.
And here's what he said about Canada's own pipeline projects to bring ethical Canadian oil from Alberta to the world.
I'm going to show you two video clips.
They were both about the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have taken Alberta oil to Vancouver, which could then have been shipped on the world market to compete with Russia.
But it applies to the two other pipelines that Trudeau and Buttskill II, including Energy Each East, which would have sent oil to Canada's largest refinery in St. John, New Brunswick, which instead buys its oil on the open market from places like Russia and Saudi Arabia.
So here is Gerald Butz saying no more dirty Alberta oil.
Truth be told, we don't think there ought to be a carbon-based energy industry by the middle of this century.
That's our policy in Canada, and it's our policy all over the world.
You can choose to fight this fight on locking us into a high-carbon economy for five decades.
And I think that's a very reasonable perspective to take.
In fact, it's one we do take.
So we don't think that we think that the oil sands have been expanded too rapidly without a serious plan for environmental remediation in the first place.
So that's why we don't think it's up to us to decide whether there should be another route for a pipeline.
Because the real alternative is not an alternative route.
It's an alternative economy.
Oh, so no more dirty Alberta oil, but dirty Russian oil is fine.
Here he is again.
We ought to have a robust sense of our own possibilities from an energy perspective.
And to date, the national discussion on energy has almost been entirely circumscribed around fossil fuels.
And we have abundant sources of geothermal, solar, wind, hydro energy that aren't part of that conversation.
So it ought to be a more balanced one.
Those are both clips from much longer anti-oil rants.
You know, back then, that was about a decade ago, Butts worked for the World Wildlife Fund.
That sounds pretty friendly, but they're actually as corrupt as they come.
Millions of dollars in dark foreign money.
Here's a document from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund back in 2008 when Butts was actually just getting going at the World Wildlife Fund.
I've shown you this document before.
It's their anti-oil sands battle plan.
Page 11 shows the map of the oil sands projects and pipelines they plan to kill, and they did kill them.
Page 12 is important.
It shows you the various NGOs, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club.
And in the top right, you can see Butts' own group, the World Wildlife Fund.
$7 million a year, you can see.
Page 24 shows what that's for, just jamming up the system, which they did.
You know, I remember when the truckers were crowdfunding and Gerald Butts was all over the TV talking about dark money and foreign money and how it was going to corrupt Canadian politics.
The joke is, those were a ton of little $25 gifts from ordinary people.
The vast majority of the givers were from Canada, and of course the money was seized.
It wasn't given anyways.
But that's called psychological projection because Gerald Butts knows all about taking dark foreign money to mess around in Canadian politics.
It's what he did at the World Wildlife Fund.
And then he continued that work when he went to Ottawa as Trudeau's top aide.
Say, who spent all sorts of money secretly fighting against oil and gas in the West?
Some left-wing anti-oil groups, for sure, like Greenpeace, you bet.
But my point is, who funded them?
Because you don't see Greenpeace campaigning against fracking in Russia or against really anything in China, the most polluted place in the world.
Canada uses as much oil and gas as ever, but it's just imported now from Russia, Saudi Arabia, that kind of thing.
So who is the hidden hand?
Who's pouring in the dark money to kill the oil sands?
Let's get back to Russia for a moment.
Here's the former head of NATO, Anders Fog Rasmussen, explaining that Russia and Gazprom were spending millions of dollars in anti-fracking and anti-drilling environmentalist campaigns in the West to stop, in particular, Europe, from drilling its own natural gas.
It had to be hidden donations or it would be too obvious people would react negatively to Russia trying to fight against Western oil and gas.
But what a rate of return.
They spend $50 million in fake eco-activism and sell $50 billion in Russian natural gas.
That's a pretty good rate of return.
So yeah, Gerald Butts accepted foreign money to fight against Canada's oil sands.
And let me ask you, is there any other Canadian who has done as much to stop Canada's oil sands from being exported to Europe or Asia?
Let me put it in another way.
Is there any Canadian who has done as much to help Vladimir Putin by keeping Canada out of action as an oil and gas competitor?
Tovarich Butts, comrade Butts, has done a very good job.
He should be Putin's ambassador to Canada.
He's earned it.
And he's the reason why Trudeau can't say no to Russian oil and gas.
And neither can Europe either.
Stay with us for more.
Well, of course, we've been very focused on news in Canada for two years.
Trucker Rebellion Thanks00:04:20
And in the last month, during the Trucker Rebellion, and of course, the war, I think it's a war between Russia and Ukraine is taking up so much bandwidth, but other things are going on in the world.
And every year in the United States, there's a giant conservative convention called CPAC that used to be held in Washington, D.C., but it's moved to the freer territory of Florida, where they don't have limits on gatherings and mask mandates and vax mandates.
And wouldn't you know it, one of our journalists, Yankee Pollock, well, he moved to Florida last year because of all the crazy lockdowns in Montreal.
So besides doing the work he does in any given day, Yankee went down to CPAC to fly the Rebel News flag and to ask Americans about Canadian issues if they've been following it.
And indeed, they have.
And joining me now via Skype from Florida is our friend Yankee Pollock.
Yankee, you've been doing double duty.
You have a real job at Rebel News, but you've also gone to the CPAC convention as a video journalist.
Thanks for working so hard this past week.
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, it was amazing at CPAC.
So many conservatives, so many people.
There are thousands of people, almost no masks in sight.
The only masks I saw were on the media class.
They still wear their mask in solidarity of the left-wing movement.
Isn't that funny?
Now, what city or town is CPAC in and what venue?
Because I've been a couple times in Washington, D.C., and it's always fun to go to Washington.
Of course, I can't really travel these days, but it sounds like they've moved to Freer Florida.
Where is it being hosted in Florida?
So it was hosted in a big resort in Florida.
The name escapes me right now.
Big venue.
I'm not sure if it's bigger or smaller than the CPAC that used to be in D.C.
It's been two years since I went to that one last.
But it was big, lots of people and a lot of talk about freedom.
Where was that in Orlando or Orlando?
Well, that sounds super fun.
I mean, I tell you, it's Yankee, I know you're enjoying the Florida sun down there, but it's still pretty snowy in much of Canada.
Well, I want to show some of the clips because just before we turn the camera on, you were saying to me that a lot of people in CPAC, when they saw you holding the Rebel News microphone flash, they gave you a shout out because they recognized the name Rebel News from our coverage of the Trucker Convoy.
And just give me a little bit of what that was like before we go to the video clips.
What did people say when they could detect that you were from Rebel News?
A lot of people came over to me and just said thank you for showing what the trucker, the trucker convoys across Canada and thanking our reporters for being there.
Alexa, Lincoln, who else was there, Maurizio, David.
I can't even remember everyone.
Everyone will be mad that I missed them.
But we had, I believe, at some point over 12 people there.
And people came and went.
So people were very thankful for us being there and showing the other side of the story.
And even some people mentioning Avi, the work he's been doing in Australia.
I love Avi.
You love Avi.
Yeah.
I love him.
So a lot of people just saw the Rebel News microphone.
They didn't know necessarily who I was, but they knew the Rebel News brand, and they came over to make sure that I know that they appreciate the work that all of us are doing at Rebel.
You know, I'm thrilled to hear that, and I think it's true.
You know, I think in the last 30 days, we've had 400 million views and impressions.
Just that's my estimate, trying to add up all the different bits and pieces on Twitter and YouTube and Rumble.
And it's really been an incredible month, and I think we've had more traffic in that one month than we had in the previous year, which shows the interest people have.
So, let's go to some of the videos you took.
Why don't you introduce a few clips?
Nigel Farage Interview00:13:40
One of my favorite people you met down there was not even an American, although I think he's sort of an honorary American, Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UKIP party, just a great guy.
You talked to him for a little bit about Putin, and then you asked him about the truckers.
Let's take a quick look at that video.
Well, look, you know, I mean, I have to say, you know, Putin's gone a long way further than I hope.
I hoped he wouldn't go this far.
I kind of understood those eastern provinces being Russian-speaking.
Western Ukraine does not want to be with Moscow.
We've provoked much of it over the years with our ridiculous geopolitics of expanding the EU and NATO, but we are where we are.
And we now need American leadership on NATO to say there is a red line here with Poland and Estonia, and that's very important.
Okay, thanks.
And what is your opinion on the Canadian truckers?
But the truckers all around the world.
Well, look, you know, up the truckers.
I like that guy.
And by the way, for Canadians who don't know that phrase, when you say up the truckers, it doesn't mean up yours.
It's a different meaning.
It means yay.
It's like hooray or up with the truckers.
Like it's a British sort of football cheer.
So that's what that meant.
Tell me about some of the other folks you meant and throw to those clips.
Yeah, I met Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri and I asked him about Arthur Poblovsky, which has been in jail now for two weeks.
And he said that Canada should be put on an anti-religious freedoms list, which is scary.
You know, I grew up in Canada, lived in Canada most of my life.
I always looked at Canada as a free country, well, until COVID came along.
And Canada deserves to be called out for persecuting pastors.
And it's not only Pastor Art, there's a whole list of pastors.
Pastor Phil Hutchings, Pastor James Coates from Emonton.
He was in jail for 35 days.
Yeah, you know what?
I wish more Canadian senators cared as much as American senators.
Here's Senator Josh Hawley.
A few months ago, you came out about Canada arresting pastors.
Pastor Arthur Poblovsky has been in jail for two weeks now again.
Is there anything you think we could call Canada out on that?
I know you did a letter about that in the past.
Yeah, I think one of the things is that Canada needs to, the United States keeps a designation of folks who are religious liberty violators, nations that are religious liberty violators.
I've called for Canada to be put on that list.
And I think that we need to consider all of the options that are available for that.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, I will.
You know, that was your question that prompted that.
And I know that Fox News covered that answer as well because a lot of people really care about that.
Now, you also met some fun people, including Mike Lindell, the boss of My Pillow.
He's a larger-than-life character, and he's become a Republican hero.
Let's take a quick look at that.
Yankee Polic, Rebel News.
Who are you?
Rebel News.
Who's that?
As Relevant.
Are you a left-wing nudge?
No, a right-wing nudge.
What can I do for you?
Tell me your experience of the Canadian border.
The Canadian border, well, contrary to the lies of the media, I was not there myself.
The trucks, all of the pillows now are in Ottawa.
I got them across through New York, and I did not put them in parachutes and drop them in.
That was all fake news.
Okay.
What's your message for the Canadian truckers and truckers?
The truckers, the truckers, what they did was so important at this time in history because all of those mandates came down in Canada, like Ontario, all these places, they pulled down the map.
Now, remember, they said, well, we didn't pull them down because of the truckers.
It was just the right time.
Right.
Okay.
But it worked.
The truckers, they got all these, like I'll give an example.
I used to go to Ontario every year, still do, with my dad fishing when I was a kid, all the way up, my family going now.
But we couldn't go fishing the last couple years up there.
And we go way in northern Canada with this tribe.
There's about 1,200 Indians that live up there.
And they count 100% on United States fishermen and hunters up there.
Their economy just got completely ruined during this COVID crap with the mandates, right?
Well, thank you, Mike.
Yeah, so it's all good now up there.
Well, that's great to get him.
And so his complaint is with the fake news.
In Canada and the States, I believe it.
People love to attack him because he doesn't bend the knee.
He's very, he's a stubborn Trump supporter.
And the diehard Trump fans love him.
And the Trump derangement folks hate him so much, don't they?
They do.
They certainly do.
And, you know, I sleep on my pillow every night.
So I certainly love his props.
There's a couple more vids I wouldn't mind showing.
I'm not that familiar with this next politician.
I think he's a Republican from Florida, Rick Scott.
Let's take a look.
Thank you, Senator.
What should America do about Ukraine and the crisis with Russia?
Should America get involved?
How much?
We ought to do everything we can to help the Ukrainian government, the military, and the citizens defend themselves.
I'm glad that we finally have gotten rid of Norton 2.
That needs to be permanent, that inertia 2 never happens.
We've got to get back and make this country independent so we can be supportive, not only of our own economy, but economies around the world, our allies.
On top of that, we've got to do everything we can to make it.
Should we give them to Putin's?
From everything on top of that, what we ought to be doing is making sure Putin's held accountable.
I'm glad that we're doing sanctions against Putin.
We ought to keep doing it.
I think we ought to be providing whatever resources we can to make sure that we do weapons to Ukraine?
We should continue to give weapons to the United States.
Should we restart building of the Keystone XL to help America do everything?
We've got to do the Keystone.
We've got to allow more drillings safely in this country.
Thanks, everybody.
Thank you, Senator.
Thank you, Senator.
So he's a Florida politician, but I tell you, Yankee, the Florida politician I want to hear about more than anyone is the current governor, Ron DeSantis, who many say has presidential qualities, which I would agree with.
He's been a real leader on the lockdowns and in a number of straw polls.
I mean, Trump still wins the straw polls, but if Trump is not in the mix, Ron DeSantis comes out head and shoulders above.
Was Ron DeSantis at CPAC or maybe just not at the same time you were there?
He was there.
I unfortunately couldn't speak with him, but I was in the room when he gave a speech.
That was on Thursday, I believe, that he gave a speech.
But I unfortunately couldn't get a hold of him.
He has a lot of security around him, and he didn't come out to the public or at least I didn't see him.
Yeah, I believe he has a lot of security.
I mean, he really could be if things break a certain way.
He really could be the next president of the United States.
So I imagine and being a governor of a very large state like Florida is a high-profile job enough.
Well, I'm delighted you went, and I've been there in the past, and it really is, in my life, it would be like my Twitter feed coming to life because all these people in journalism and politics and punditry that I sort of follow electronically, all of a sudden they're standing right in front of me, and it's a fun feeling.
It has sort of a reunion feeling.
And we're in Canada, which isn't really the center of the action.
But you know what?
For the last six weeks, I think Canada actually has been the center of the action.
And I think you got a little taste of that.
Yeah, I mean, I missed out a lot not being in Ottawa, but I was here and following it and helping the team.
But yeah, it was definitely center of the action at CPAC.
There were so many people there.
And I interviewed a lot of people.
We'll see when the videos get released.
You could see them at RebelCPAC.com as they will be published.
I had an interview with former member of parliament Kerry Diot, and that interview will be released soon.
And Sebastian Gorca as well.
Well, it sounds like you were busy.
You know, I look forward to seeing that at RebelCPAC.com.
Yankee, thanks for burning the candle at both ends.
You have a lot of work as our social media boss, keeping us going on Instagram and Twitter and all our other accounts.
And then you were doing video journalism too.
So we thank you for doing double duty.
Great to see you again.
Thank you.
All right, there you have it.
Yankee Pollack from RebelSeapact.com.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Euro Letters to Me.
Someone with the nickname Think For Yourself says, I used to be prejudiced against Desert Levant years ago.
I was a leftist.
Now I am a big fan of his work in Rebel News.
They have told the truth over the last two years.
Well, the mainstream media is live to us.
Not only that, but Rebel has helped people with fight the fines.
And they have been beaten and arrested for doing good journalism by an authoritarian tyrannical government.
I have immense respect for Rebel now.
Wow, it's pretty friendly.
Thank you for that.
Someone named Ian Tuck says, nice to see Canadian flags being flown by the U.S. truckers.
Yeah, wasn't that fun?
I like that one that was half Canadian, half American.
I don't think I'd ever seen that before.
Candy C says, I was astounded listening to this.
I literally spoke out loud the words, oh my word.
And wow, twice.
This judge gave a ruling that was filled with a sense of level-headedness that is sorely lacking this day and age.
It was so well articulated and well thought out that you would think it was a ruling from Solomon himself.
Judge, if you happen to be reading the comments, I wish I could shake your hand.
You're talking about that judge in Ontario who really was solomonic in how he dealt with the mom and the dad fighting over a vaccine for the kids.
There was so much common sense there.
And I see that there's a ruling in New Zealand now against vaccine mandates and a ruling in the United Kingdom that we were involved with for a family there.
I think judges are having a hangover.
They realize that they were drunk on authoritarian public health power too.
And some of them are saying, yikes, what did I do last night?
Who's that in my bed?
What a headache.
And they're thinking, hmm, can we just pretend the last two years didn't happen?
That's what I think is going on.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.
And keep fighting for freedom.
And let me leave you with our video of the day from Jeremy LaFredo on truckers pushing back against the extremist far-right corporate media slander.
I'll say goodbye to you now and leave you with that vid.
I'm Jeremy Lafredo on assignment for Ripple News in Glen Rio, New Mexico, covering the U.S. Truckers Convoy traveling across the nation to the country's capital to demand an end to vaccine mandates.
While the mainstream media claims these people are extremists, conspiracy theorists, and far-right, it has effectively manufactured consent for the Pentagon's latest move to send troops to the capital in preparation for the convoy's arrival.
I spoke to many of the convoy's trucker participants earlier today to set the record straight about the movement's aims and beliefs.
It's all bals.
We're right down the middle.
We don't care one side or the other.
This year is about world freedom, ending the mandates, getting rid of the Emergency Powers Act.
Okay, that's all it is, so we can go back to work as American citizens.
We're just tired of being restricted.
I mean, honestly, I don't think any of it's founded.
I mean, most truckers, they just want to do their job.
They just want to go pick up from point A to point B, drop their stuff, and have a good life.
We want to get rid of the mandates, first and foremost.
Do I want to see some things accomplished through this?
Absolutely.
Do they not like it?
Probably not, right?
But that's only because it stands against their agenda.
I don't care what your agenda is.
You need to be reminded that you work for the American people, not the other way around.
I don't have a problem with people that want to take the vaccine.
I have a problem with them telling us to take the vaccine.
I know there's a lot of talk about this whole thing on both sides of it.
If it's good, bad, if we're, you know, crazy people or whatever.
We're not.
We're not extremists.
We're not terrorists as the government is trying to make us out to be.
We're American people that love the Constitution, love our freedoms.
And we see what our government has done to us over, I mean, over a long course of time, but specifically in the last two years.
Are trying to frame us as being kind of some far-right movement or an extremist group that wants to go and like storm the halls of the Capitol and whatever.
But we're far from it.
This convoy is all about peace and unity.
It's about coming together and standing up for our freedoms.
And are we making a statement trucking across the country like this?
Yes.
Why are they worried about us?
Because it's people uniting and it's people uniting from both sides of the aisle.
It's the American people coming together.
So they could try to spin it any way they want, but the people of America that are lining our roads, the people that are in this convoy, will tell you that they're lying to you.
Anybody just comes around here, walks around once, talks to the drivers, talks to the people in this convoy, stands on the side of the road, you'll see right away that this is not some far alt-right movement at all.