Sheila Gunn-Reid and Robert Krajek examine University of Ottawa’s pro-Hamas "squats," where young protesters avoid media but comply with organizers’ directives, using matching tents and IRGC-linked funding. Two defendants face trial for conspiracy to murder RCMP officers in May-June, while three convicted leaders await lighter sentences in July. Krajek details hostile petition attempts at Canadian ministries post-October 7th attacks, contrasting protesters’ evasion with Rebel News’ grassroots credibility. Gunn-Reid defends their casual style—Rebel News merch and real-life attire—as a deliberate contrast to mainstream media’s polished image, reinforcing authenticity over professionalism. [Automatically generated summary]
What's going on at the pro-Hamas occupation at the University of Ottawa?
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Rebel News has been carefully covering anti-Israel demonstrations, really their occupations, cropping up on private property on university campuses across this country.
The main three appear to be the University of Toronto, the University of Ottawa, and McGill.
And the reason I stress that this is on private university property is that for these anti-Semitic demonstrations to be cleared, the university has to act.
The university doesn't seem to want to act in at least these three instances.
They've said they don't want these people there harassing Jewish students on their way to school.
However, they aren't doing anything about it.
Now, as I said, Rebel News has been covering these anti-Israel demonstrations in these major cities.
And joining me today is one of the journalists dedicated to covering the demonstration, hobo squat, occupation, protest at the University of Ottawa is my friend Robert Kreitchek.
Take a listen.
So joining me now is my friend and colleague, Robert Krajek.
He's our Ottawa-based reporter, although he's been doing some great work here in Alberta, and we'll get to that in a bit.
Robert, first, I want to ask you, what was it like to spend some serious quality time here in Alberta?
Is it the way I believe us to be, that we are culturally different than the rest of the country?
Well, I loved it, and it was definitely very culturally different.
But one hedge is that I was surrounded by a particular type of person, right?
There were people who were demonstrating against this COVID-19 apparatus at risk to themselves, civilly disobedient protesters.
So it takes a particular type of person with courage and character and conviction to do that sort of thing.
And you can imagine that they're surrounded by people that share that philosophical position.
They're surrounded by their families, their loved ones.
So there's obviously an aspect of self-selection going on in terms of the people that I was around.
But yeah, generally speaking, my experience was amazing.
And I met all kinds of great people who I really aligned with ideologically, philosophically, politically, culturally, as you put it.
It was awesome.
Yeah, I always ask that question to people who are either recent refugees to Alberta or people who are from other parts of the country who spend a little bit of time here because I have, of course, selection bias.
I'm surrounded by people just like myself and I live rurally.
So people who live rurally in agriculture, it's, you know, like different kind of people.
So I'm always curious how people who spend a little bit of more time than just a quick popover in Alberta, how they find the place, you know?
So I'm glad to hear that you experience the same sort of freedom-minded people that I do.
Yeah, I think that's why we were so hard to lock down.
Like even our conservative government couldn't lock us down is just because as our documentary says, we are an ungovernable people, self-sufficient.
You know, we don't need the government telling us what to do.
Now, you have spent a fair bit of time reporting on what I have begun calling as of this morning, Hitler's hobos, the encampments against Israel, which I mean, it's really not against Israel.
These are anti-Semitic protests.
Yours was at the University of Ottawa that you went to visit.
And, you know, they say these are about divestment of the state of Israel.
But then why are they harassing Jewish students and protesters as they walk across the lawns there?
Tell me about, like, you've gone there, I think, now twice.
We've got a follow-up report.
We're recording this on Tuesday.
It might be out today.
It could be out tomorrow.
But tell me about your first assessment of the lay of the land of Hitler's hobos.
The most noteworthy takeaway is the unwillingness of protesters to speak or even more fundamentally, their obedience to their handlers, their masters.
There are these protest organizers, let's call them.
That's a charitable term.
They are professional agitators.
They're obviously not students.
You can tell by the way they look, their age, their background.
They don't speak English very well in some cases.
And they're also known quantities to people that I've come to know who pay attention to these things in Ottawa.
So the handlers, again, not students, middle-aged people are advising everyone, or let's put it this way, directing anyone who I may approach and solicit for comment or an interview, don't speak to that guy.
He's a right-wing chud.
That was a quote that was directed towards me.
And in 99% of cases, these student protesters who, again, I'm assuming are protesters based on their ages.
They're on the young side, 18, 19, 20.
They may have knapsacks on.
There's sort of evidence that they are students.
They immediately obey.
They immediately act subservient to this master or these masters.
And that's really sad.
That's sort of emblematic, I think, of this philosophical approach that people on that side of the aisle, so to speak, tend to have relative to us.
They're much more herd mentality, much more compliant, much more conciliatory.
And that was the worst part of it because I'm approaching these folks in good faith.
Even if I don't agree with them on this or that issue, I do want them to express their points of view and have that shared with the audience because the rationale behind people's attendance at these massive protests is newsworthy.
Yet, again, when they're told not to speak with me, they just shut down and don't talk.
It's very slave-like and pathetic.
Yeah.
And I wonder, you know, before I move on, I just want to say that's very evident in your video.
You are calm.
You are, you're being completely upfront with the people.
You're not saying like, I'm here to catch you in, you know, a trick question.
You tell them, like, look, I may not share your viewpoint, but I want to have a civil discussion with you.
I want to know why you're here.
I think one of the reasons they don't want them talking to you is they don't even know why they're there, that they have such a shallow grasp of the issue that even the most basic level question from you would reveal that to the world.
Yeah, I suspect that to be true.
It's clearly based on insecurity, an unwillingness to talk, or at least a fear of demonstrators talking to media on the part of these organizers, these taskmasters, these handlers, is obviously a reflection of insecurity.
They're not confident that they're able to win in the battlefield of ideas.
They don't think that the attendees at these demonstrations can elucidate or articulate positions that are persuasive or convincing.
So it just shows a lack of confidence, at least on the part of the taskmasters, but even to one degree or another, the fact that 99% of these demonstrators don't have the wherewithal or guts just to say, you know what, I want to talk to this guy. shows that they don't have confidence either in themselves and they're obedient, compliant, subservient to these people that they don't even know just because they've got this sort of self-induced aura of authority.
Yes, great point.
Not only do they likely not have a very strong grasp of the geopolitical issues at play here, but they are also cowards, which, you know, is a recipe for disaster, for a public relations disaster.
So I guess that's why their handlers come down so strong on them.
I mean, you see how little they really truly understand the issue of what's happening between Israel and Hamas in Gaza when they say stuff like stop the occupation now.
Israel hasn't been in Gaza for years.
There's not even a dead Jew, unless you're counting hostages.
I mean, they dug up the cemeteries when they withdrew from Gaza instead of leaving any, they literally left nobody behind.
There is no occupation there.
But you see these protesters saying, you know, stop the occupation now.
It's really quite bizarre.
I mean, but there are questions that I want answers to, and I think the world wants answers to.
Like, for example, who is paying for all these matching tents and matching professionally printed signage?
And I don't think they want that question asked.
There's no doubt there's a degree of central planning in a multinational sense because you're seeing the same strategy, the same type of protest, not just in Canada, but across the English-speaking world.
Let me share with you in the audience one more phenomenon, one more thing that occurred.
So the last time I was there was sometime last week.
I think it might have been Saturday.
He was very hostile.
So immediately upon my arrival, I'm recognized by one of the handlers that recognized me the first time, which was a few days prior.
And he starts aggregating these other people who I assume are also organizers.
A lot of them are middle-aged people.
Some of them are middle-aged Arabs.
They're clearly not students.
And the entire time I was there, no exaggeration, I have this entourage of maybe 10 people following me around within three, four, five feet of me, never creating any more distance than that to any person I may approach and solicit for an interview.
I probably approached 20 people, 25 people, and except for one.
And even that one person himself took a moment to sort of verify what rebel news is, to see if I'm worth speaking to.
He was, let's say, 51% compliant with the directives issued to him by these handlers not to speak with me.
And the exchange that I had with him was very superficial.
So again, I've got these people around me the entire time banging on drums quite close to me, blowing into this, what do you call it, megaphone, chanting free, free Palestine.
And they're doing everything they can to disrupt the attention, the cognition of both me and anyone I may be approaching for an interview.
There's clearly an aspect of intimidation.
Now, to be fair, I mean, the people that they're intimidating are 18, 19, 20-year-old kids.
I'm a 41-year-old grown man.
I don't get intimidated by this kind of thing.
But that vibe puts people off and obviously was effective in shutting down anyone's maybe willingness in a different circumstance to speak with me.
And also, there's this attempt to disrupt the quality of the interview.
So even if a person was open to speaking with me, and again, essentially nobody was, there's a high risk that the quality of the audio would be destroyed by that loud vlog.
So they're doing everything they can in a very obnoxious, pathetic, juvenile, aggressive, intimidating way to prevent any sort of open communication between media figures and protest participants.
Although I don't think it is all media figures, I think it is skeptical media figures because they're more than happy to talk to CBC or the mainstream media because they know that those outlets are going to be sympathetic to their nonsense.
That's right.
And also not ask a single-tough question like, how come you guys all have matching tents?
What's going on there?
How come you all have these professionally printed signs?
Who's paying for those?
Could it be IRGC-backed proxies, maybe?
They're not asking any of those questions.
So they're happy to give those interviews to the national Trudeau sycophant media.
Yeah, even at one point, about three minutes after I arrived, one of the handlers who was informed of my presence, ooh, Rebel News is here, really dangerous, goes over to this lady at this sort of de facto deus.
It's like this elevated stone.
It's sort of makeshift platform that speakers get on top of speakers meaning human beings, but they speak through speakers also, the electronic versions, and they have the ability to sort of broadcast loud volume messaging to the entire demonstration.
It's got the reach to the edge of the courtyard.
And again, minutes after my arrival, this lady gets up there.
She looks like a student to me.
And she says, guys, I'm paraphrasing, don't speak with anyone from the media.
If anyone asks you for an interview, do not talk to them.
Direct them to the media liaison.
I'm not even sure that person even exists because there was no attempt to do that at all.
So there was this obsession with me while I was there 15 minutes.
And again, it's just really pathetic and juvenile.
And I think people should not be afraid to be incorrect.
And I think people should express their points of view.
That's how we sharpen each other's understandings of the world when we sort of have these back and forth exchanges.
I'm a believer in dialogue.
Maybe I'm naive, maybe I'm idealistic, but I think that's the way to go.
Yeah.
The free and liberal exchange of ideas, the marketplace of ideas where you spar with each other.
Iron sharpens iron, as the book says.
Although I think we're probably preaching to a bunch of atheists anyway.
Now, moving on from that, what exactly do these people want?
I know they want a divestment from the state of Israel, but what else do they hope to achieve?
And how does this end?
I realize the university is private property.
I guess it's up to the university to do something about this.
And they seem pretty unwilling, actually.
Yeah, there's no question.
At least as of now, there's zero willingness to enforce the university's own stated position that these encampments are not to be permitted and will be tolerated.
So again, it's sort of an issue of intimidation from the side of the protesters against the university administration.
They're not willing to do whatever is required to enforce their own stated standard.
As far as one more thing about the vibe of the protest, this won't surprise anyone, but understand that there's not a meaningful difference between these sorts of protests and those against so-called climate change, the Me Too thing, the so-called rape culture thing.
Petition to Ministry Fails00:07:35
It's the exact same thing.
It's Occupy.
Thank you.
It's all the same people.
It just keeps getting barfed up with a new veneer.
That's exactly right.
It's the same car with a different page up.
I'm so glad you mentioned Occupy Wall Street because that was one of the largest initial iterations of this type of protest that came known to people who I think are probably watching the show.
And you'll see it everywhere.
It's the same types of people protesting.
It's the same messaging.
This is the part I wanted to get to, the vibe, the theme, the messaging.
There's a lot of this nonsense stuff like, you know, LGBTQ XYZ ABC123, you know, queers for Palestine, calls for nonsense ideas like anti-concepts such as social justice.
And it's this Of that.
So there's real no meaningful difference between this and all these other left-wing totalitarian flavor protests.
The people there, I assume, are in good faith.
The students themselves, they really think they're fighting against some sort of genocide.
They think they're fighting for human rights.
But the overall architecture, the overall organization is just about using whatever is possible to emotionally manipulate vulnerable, ignorant young people to show up to show this sort of presence of human bodies, this presence of force, while the actual purpose, the objective, the core messaging is just about destroying Western civilization.
Yes, yes, and controlling your life as best they can.
Now, you recently dropped off a petition to the Immigration Ministry.
Yeah.
Because if indeed some of these of Hitler's hobos are non-citizens in this country, they've got no business, A, breaking the law or being apologists for terror.
And so they should be kicked out of our country.
And you delivered a petition signed by thousands of Canadians to the immigration ministry saying as such, because it's not, it's one thing to sign a petition, but one of the things that we do here at Rebel News is actually demonstrate to the powers that be, these are the voices of the people that you will not listen to, physically manifested on this paper.
Please take it.
At least acknowledge these people matter.
And so you did that, but boy, you had a tough time doing it.
Give us a rundown of that.
Yeah, it was actually, I mean, I'll have a sense of humor about it because it was so hilariously pathetic.
I went down there with Alexa and with Guillaume, which is awesome to work with them, by the way.
And we go to this, you know, massive, ugly, disgusting building, which is the ministry headquarters for, I think, what they call immigration, citizenship, and refugees Canada in no particular order.
I can't remember the order of that.
All these alphabet suit bureaucracies.
Yeah.
Just, you know, just gajillions of people walking in and out with their little name tags, like, oh, I'm a government worker, right?
And, you know, there's the security gate type thing.
You can't really enter the building.
I introduce myself to the concierge.
I basically tell them that I want to deliver a petition to whoever can receive it, ideally, Mark Miller, who's the minister of this ridiculous department.
And, you know, we waited about an hour because they're so busy, right?
And they come down with their security guards because we're so threatening, right?
And right out the gate, these two, I guess, communications operatives, they're like totally just forgettable, unremarkable.
I refer to them as generic government drones.
There's just gajillions of them in the city, and they come out acrimonious and hostile and say, oh, we're not going to do any interview before I even introduce myself, like just come out irritated, agitated, anxious.
We're not doing any interviews.
We're just here to accept the petition.
I guess it took them an hour to contemplate that strategy.
Right.
And I basically just told them, look, I didn't ask for an interview, but that's okay.
And here's this petition I basically gave in the background that this is a petition of requesting that people who are non-citizens, foreigners in this country who express support for either designated terrorist groups or mass murder operations carried out by these groups like was seen by Hamas on October 7th of last year, they'd be removed from this country.
They don't need to be here.
And yeah, it was just this uncomfortable exchange, at least on their part.
Again, I'm a grown man.
I'm not really intimidated.
I don't really get uncomfortable, but you could feel this tension from them.
And I almost felt bad for them.
How can you not just have a congenial moment?
Are you always like this?
I mean, there's the littlest bit of disagreement so earth-shattering that you need an hour to prepare.
And you got this little like script that you prepared about not talking to anyone.
And yeah, it was pathetic.
One more thing.
I'll tell you this.
Also, I don't know if you spoke with Alexa about this.
When I was with Alexa earlier that day, it was maybe an hour prior, Arnaf Breyer.
She went over to Stephen Gilbo's ministry.
That's the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
Again, another absurd department that should be abolished, right?
They destroy the environment while pretending to protect exactly.
Just have a parks ministry.
Everything is gold.
It's ghost hunting, right?
Climate change is a ghost hunt, right?
Yeah.
Chasing the tooth fairy.
And she goes in there.
There's this like middle-aged white guy there working as a security guard.
He's actually employed by the ministry, is not just some third-party outsource.
And, you know, she's asking the same questions I was an hour and a half later.
You know, who can I deliver this to?
Here's a petition that we've developed over Rebel News.
We've got signatories who want to deliver it to Gilbo, the minister.
Is he around?
Who can pick it up for him if he's not available?
And again, this guy's just shuts down immediately, just like a protester at these anti-fra, so-called pro-Palestinian organizations.
Same attitude.
And then there was a time when a bunch of staffers were leaving, maybe five or six of them.
So Alexa thought this might be an opportunity to get some remarks from people who clearly work inside this ministry.
And she's asking them questions.
Of course, the same exact thing.
They literally pretend like she's not there, just fingers in the ears and look forward, just totally pathetic, totally juvenile.
And when we came back to the building just minutes later, the security guard locked the door because Alexis, oh, so scary, you know, unreal.
There's no need for these people to make it a big deal.
That's the part that really irritates me.
I've done petition drop-offs.
The best one I ever did was like the friendliest one, was the Saskatchewan legislature.
It was the Stop Classroom Grooming one.
And we delivered it to them because they're actually stopping classroom grooming.
So it was like a, hey, these are all these people cheering for you to fight on.
Don't listen to the media.
Don't listen to the activists.
Listen to these people.
The security guards are like, oh, hi, Sheila, let me get you an envelope.
Awesome.
They were so great about it.
And then, you know, a couple of weeks earlier, I had gone to the Ottawa Carlton District School Board, home of Nillie Kaplan-Mirth, crazy lady.
And I had a petition there similarly via Nilly.
And I just needed someone to take the friggin piece of paper.
Like, take the paper.
It's not radioactive.
Just take it.
Don't make it a big deal.
Just take it, put it on a desk somewhere.
That's all I need you to do.
No, we can't touch it.
We're not going to touch it.
Likewise, when I petitioned the YWCA and Regina for having trans activist Faye Johnstone be the keynote speaker at the Women of Distinction Award, I was like, can you just take this and put it on someone's desk?
And they're like, can't take it.
It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen.
Just take the paper and put it on a desk and walk away.
But no, they have to treat it like you're going to get radioactive right-wing cooties off the paper.
It's so bizarre.
They're so fragile.
Oh, it's crazy.
They turn everything into a confrontation for some reason because they look at us like we're gross and evil and I look at them like they're wrong.
Rcmp Insecurity And Sentences00:03:51
Yeah.
I also think, yeah, I suspect I can't read their minds, but I'll just play that role for a moment.
I really think it's a high degree of insecurity.
And if you're conf in your position, you can have respectful disagreement, but they just freeze up and pretend you're not there.
It's just, again, really, really childish.
Well, I think they exist in a bubble where they are told everybody outside of the bubble who thinks a little bit differently, they're crazy people.
They're insane.
And so when they are confronted by one of us, acting completely normally and hospitable, by the way, they don't know what to do.
They either they're sort of rattled because we are not that which they have convinced themselves we are.
We just are normal and polite, or they're looking us like looking at us like we're goblins.
So they don't want anything to do with us.
It's very strange.
I wanted to ask you while I have you, people want to know what's happening down at Coots because the reason I asked you about Alberta off the top of the show is because he spent a lot of time in Lethbridge covering trials down there.
So tell us what's coming up with, I think it's the Coots 4, which is now the Coots 2 trial, right?
Yeah, so the Coots 4 were four men initially charged with conspiracy to murder.
They're being accused of conspiring to murder RCMP officers.
There are two remaining.
The two remaining defendants are Chris Carbert and Anthony Olenik.
So that it's still in pre-trial.
And just for those folks that don't know what that means, pre-trial is this phase of the trial in which the defense and prosecution negotiate over some of the parameters of how the trial will proceed, sort of arguing and debating over the rules of the game to be determined by the judge as they make their cases, no pun intended, on one side or the other.
It includes disputes over evidence, whether this evidence is legitimate or not, whether it's been acquired lawfully, to what degree it has veracity, and maybe some other things regarding the rules of the game.
And that's still not concluded.
So pre-trial will resume, I think it's May 24th, the last week of May, whatever that Monday is.
And there are trial dates booked all the way through the month of June.
It may not end by June, of course.
That's to be determined, but they expect it to be.
And with the Coots 3, you know, the leadership, according to the RCMP, that were convicted, found guilty, all three of them of mischief, over $5,000.
Alex Van Herck, George Jansen, and Marco Van Hugenboss, their sentencing is in, if I recall correctly, the end of July.
So the jury's already rendered the guilty verdicts for all three men.
And now the prosecution and defense teams will make their cases to the judge over how severe or not severe or whatever the sentence will be.
Sentences, sorry, plural.
Sentences.
Yeah.
What are they potentially facing there?
If I recall correctly, the maximum sentence is 10 years in prison, which seems very impossible to believe from lawyers that I've spoken with, given what they understand to be the precedent and the nature of this particular incident.
It could also be as light as just community service.
So there's a huge range potentially facing these three men.
Well, and it's so unpredictable because I didn't think they would be convicted anyway because, you know, I heard that through testimony that, you know, even the RCMP weren't even sure that they were actually the leaders.
And, but you never know because look how they're treating Chamara Leach 50 days in jail on a non-violent mischief charge and a breach, which was not a breach.
So, I mean, it's the courts are so predictable these days.
Reporting on Inadmissible Evidence00:03:45
How do people find out more about your coverage of both of these cases?
Because you've been there from the very beginning.
Well, we've got that website that we've dedicated to these two trials.
So truckertrials.com.
We're going to have our information up there.
Obviously, the Rebel News website, we're going to put up our stories as they get composed and written and published.
And of course, the meat of our meals, of our media, is video.
So assuming I return back to Lethbridge in June, which I anticipate will be the case, that still will be to be determined.
There'll be the standard format in which I'll do a daily video update on every day of the pretrial, then subsequent trial to let the audience know what's going on in terms of the Carbert and Olanik trial.
And then in July, when the sentencing continues for the Coots 3, we'll deal with that then.
Okay, before I let you go, I just want you to clear up something surrounding some of your reporting.
And it's not bad.
Don't worry.
I would have told you off camera if you had done something wrong.
How can they publicly shame me?
No, no.
But just the publication bans are very difficult for you to report around because if you break a publication ban, guess who goes to jail for contempt of court?
You.
Just explain to us how difficult and how you really have to dance around the things that you can tell the public.
Okay, well, I'll tell you where there's an opportunity and I'll tell you why the publication ban exists.
So the rationale behind a publication ban, as stated by one of the judges in the COOS III trial, but this is a general truth that Ezra Levand also advised me of.
And this is sort of a default setting for pre-trial hearings in any criminal proceeding.
It is stated that the purpose of these publication bans during pretrial is to protect the integrity of the jury pool.
You want to ensure that the defendant or defendant's plural, if that's the case, receives or receives a fair trial, meaning that the jurors that are selected to sit in judgment haven't had their minds, let's say, contaminated or predetermined by information that was published by media outlets in regards to pre-trial proceedings when some of that information should not have been disclosed.
I'll be specific.
Imagine a scenario in which law enforcement, the cops, procure or obtain evidence unlawfully.
Maybe they didn't have a legitimate search warrant.
Maybe they just broke into your house or your car and found this, that, or the other.
Maybe they illegally surveilled you.
That information is not allowed to be entered into the trial.
But if I'm in there observing that and reporting on that, I'm putting that out there into the ecosystem of media, which can then enter the minds of persons who may then be selected to sit in judgment of these defendants or this defendant.
And that's unfair.
So it's about protecting the integrity of the jury pool.
Also, some things that come into question are the veracity of evidence.
So evidence may have been obtained, but it's not reliable for one or another reason.
Another thing, too, and this is interesting, I can't go into specifics here because this is still a publication ban.
But one of the things that can occur in a pretrial is determination of the qualifiability, if that's a word, of proposed subject matter experts.
So if the prosecution wants to enter in a particular subject matter expert that for some reason may not be legitimate, according to the defense, there's going to be a dispute over the eligibility, the legitimacy of that subject matter expert.
And the judge may say, you know what, this subject matter expert is not legitimate for one or another reason.
But if I'm reporting on that openly, I'm putting that information that was then deemed to be inadmissible in the actual trial.
So that's the purpose of the publication ban.
Now to your primary question, how do I dance around this?
David's Aside: Criticism and Compliments00:08:12
Well, look, I've gotten a bit better at this job, thank God, over time.
And one thing that I intend to do is to use these opportunities, because that's how I look at them, not just a challenge, as a way to educate the audience about different aspects in general terms regarding the trial, regarding trials in general, that don't violate any publication ban by revealing any specific information during pretrial proceedings.
So I hope I can be successful in presenting information to the audience that's both informative and educational.
So when they walk away from those news reports, they're smarter.
They're more prepared as Canadian citizens to deal with what it's like to be a Canadian.
Well, I'm glad you do that.
And it's very difficult.
I've dealt with reporting on trials where there were really extreme or complicated publication bans.
And it is psychologically exhausting to try to pay attention to what the judge is saying and then digest that into a way that the normal people who are laymen can consume while not breaking a publication ban.
I think you're doing an excellent job of it, Robert.
And I can't wait to see the good job that you do on reporting when we send you back there to cover the trial.
Robert, it's a very busy day for both of us.
I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me on the gun show.
And we'll have you back on again very soon.
Sheila, love being with you.
Thanks so much for the kind words and the votes of confidence, and I hope to deliver on that expectation.
You will.
Thanks, Robert.
Well, friends, we've come to the portion of the show where we let you have your say.
This is your part of the gun show.
I want your viewer feedback.
Send me an email to sheila at rebelnews.com.
Put gun show letters in the subject line so I know why you're emailing me because depending on the controversial thing I've said on the internet, that day I can get dozens, if not hundreds, of emails on any given day.
Or if you're watching a free version of the show over on Rumble or on YouTube and you sat through an ad or you're watching a clip of the show over there, leave me a comment there.
I will go sometimes looking for comments over there just so that I have a good mix of what's going on and how you feel about the work that we do here at Rebel News.
Now, today's gun show letter is a criticism stuffed in a compliment sandwich, which is, I think, early 90s human resources practice.
And I appreciate it.
So I'm going to read it and then I'm going to address it a little bit.
So it comes from David and it is appreciation.
See, there's the compliment.
And here comes the criticism.
Appreciation and a suggestion for professionalism.
All right.
Dear Rebel News team.
So this isn't just at me.
It's at all of us.
Although probably not David Menzies, actually, for once.
But we'll get to that in a second.
Dear Rebel News team, I hope this message finds you well.
I want to express my deep appreciation for the important work you do for Canada.
Your dedication to shedding light on crucial issues is truly inspiring.
Compliment.
I also want to offer a small suggestion.
Criticism.
I believe that presenting a more professional appearance could enhance the credibility of Rebel News.
While I respect individual expression, I think everyone dressing in a more professional manner could help strengthen the trust people have in your reporting.
Criticism.
See, compliment, criticism.
We're closing the sandwich here with another little bit of compliment.
Thank you again for your commitment to truth and justice.
I look forward to continuing to support Rebel News as you strive to make a positive impact in our country.
Best regards.
David.
Well, David, I take your criticism.
I will say that your criticism excludes my friend David Menzies because he is always a dapper, dapper man out there on the streets.
And when he dresses that way, because he's a bit of an old school journalist, he looks great, but the problem is when you wander into a protest looking like David Menzies' top hat and all, you can be a bit of a heat score for the police and other protesters, right?
So there are some ups and downs to that.
Now, when I fill in for Ezra, you might notice I dress a certain way because Ezra dresses a certain way when he hosts his show.
So I try to set aside my Sheila vibe and respect the level of professionalism in personal comportment that Ezra has on the Ezra Levant show.
Now, if I'm out on the streets, I look the way I normally do in real life when I'm doing journalism.
And for example, if I'm down at the billboard on Highway 2, standing in a farmer's field to bring you the news of another 47 linear feet of freedom being unveiled to 1.3 million monthly impressions, you might catch me looking even more so like I normally do.
Because aside from being a journalist, I live on a working farm.
And I think how I look reflects that.
Now, we do expect our journalists to dress according to the story that they're covering.
For example, if you're going to court to cover a court case, look nice.
Look the way you should in a courtroom and give the court the respect it deserves by putting yourself together accordingly.
Great.
If we are going to fancy events, we always look the part, or at least I advise our journalists to look the part.
I do my best to do that myself.
But one of the things that we do here at Rebel News is that we try to be news for the normal people.
And we don't have a budget for wardrobe like they have at the CBC.
I wear our Rebel News merch because I wear a Rebel News merch in real life.
And I want to show you how great it looks.
I've washed this sweatshirt a million times and it looks as good as it ever has.
If you want one, just go to RebelNewsStore.com and get yours today.
But I think it makes us more relatable when we talk about the issues that you care about and we look the same way that you do because we are normal people too.
I'm not a classically trained journalist, thank God.
I'm just an intellectually curious middle-aged woman with three kids and a farm.
And so the way I look reflects that and the stories I cover reflect that.
And I think that's what sets us aside from the mainstream media, but also some of our peers in conservative media.
We are just down-to-earth regular people who fell into journalism because we saw, you know, a gap to be filled by us.
And if not us, then who would do this work?
So I take your criticism, but I'll tell you why I look the way I do.
Maybe you want to look the same way I do.
You could.
Just go to rebelnewsstore.com and pick up some merch today.
Use the coupon code SheilaDun for a 10% discount.
Well, everybody, that's the show for today.
As always, thank you so much for tuning in.
And thanks to everybody who works behind the scenes to put the show together for you.