Pierre Poilievre’s leadership hinges on his controversial Trump alignment, with critics warning it could erode Canada’s sovereignty—his past rhetoric and supporters’ suspected pro-Trump leanings raise doubts about opposing U.S. tariffs or statehood calls. Polls show declining support, yet conservative backers dismiss mainstream data (e.g., Juno News’ One Persuasion poll) as "reality denial," mirroring global right-wing tactics. His evasive campaign—slogans over substance, media avoidance—fails to counter stronger alternatives, while refusal to concede risks deepening conspiracy theories like rigged voting boxes. Voters must reject disinformation-driven politics and demand leaders uphold democratic norms. [Automatically generated summary]
This is the show that takes you inside the Stooniverse, where Stu Anon and Bluenon reside.
Within this universe, we examine a cult expert who gave up his Chilean foster child when he joined the Moonies, a former Trump supporter whose mom may be a serial killer, a former Breitbart journalist who wrote a steamy erotic novel, The Cult of Refikiism, named after a character from the Lion King, QAnon, Extremism, Conspiracies, Disinformation, and more.
I hope you will join me as I cover these and much more on Six Degrees of Stew and Into the Stooniverse on Twitch weekly at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time with Steph Hemmer.
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that's creating and interpreting the language of the disinformation age.
I'm Spencer, your host.
And before I get into my content today, I want to remind everyone that if you have any questions, comments, complaints, concerns about anything you hear on this podcast, you can send that email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
So, Pierre Polyev has an electability problem.
And Canadian Conservatives have a Pierre Polyev problem.
The question that's always asked of every politician is, what will they do when they become the leader?
So, we deserve to ask the same of Polyev.
What would Pierre Polyev do if he became the Prime Minister of Canada?
Would he do what would he do about Trump and the tariffs?
What would he do about a call to become the 51st state?
Some think that Polyev would totally capitulate to Trump.
I don't think he will, but would Trump think that Polyev would capitulate?
If Polyev thinks that a significant amount of his own base supports him only because of Polyev's alignment with Trump, then will Polyev be hesitant to oppose Trump?
Would Polyev steer the boat toward the things Trump wants?
Also, what new and outrageous things would Trump maybe demand?
Every time we imagine an outer limit to something Trump might demand and we speak it into existence, it seems it makes its way back to him and he takes it as a challenge.
We should stop believing that the man has any limits to what he might do.
Stop stress testing the institutions that were put in place to rein in an authoritarian in Washington and just work to limit his power in any and every way we possibly can.
For me and a lot of Canadians, that means limiting his ability to use Canada as a hegemonic pawn in a global power game.
Once there exists a Canadian prime minister who will quietly or loudly do anything that the U.S. president wants, then we might as well be the 51st state.
From the perspective of the overall outcome, it'll be no different.
Which is why the question to ask the Polyev supporters right now is, do you want to become the 51st state?
If they say that they don't, you need to ask a follow-up question.
Why do you support a candidate who says all the same things as the guy who wants us to become the 51st state?
Polyev isn't doing well in the polls right now.
I'm not surprised.
I've said here on this podcast and in other conversations that the man has the charisma of a wet toad.
That conclusion was formed three years ago when he first put his foot forward to become the leader of the Conservative Party.
I'll say that he has upgraded himself somewhat.
He actually has a very nice smile when he figures out how to use it.
His charisma has improved, but I'm not convinced it's good enough to win this election.
Polyev was doing well in the polls against Trudeau way back in December.
This was boosted mostly by the fact that Trudeau was failing at his role as prime minister and needed to go badly.
This might be a surprise to many people outside of Canada who largely saw Trudeau as that attractive, younger-seeming world leader who said all the right things at all those meetings of the other world leaders.
But trust me, he had to go.
Against Trudeau, Polyev was crushing the polls.
It was looking to be a landslide victory for the conservatives.
But politics is a fickle mistress.
And the situation changed.
Trump won the U.S. election in November and started making some noises about what he wanted to do as president.
Trudeau announced on January 6th that he would step down as prime minister as soon as a new party leader was chosen.
Trump was sworn in on January 20th and started actually doing some of the things that many people still thought were the ramblings of a senile old man.
And largely because of these things that were entirely out of Polyev's control, his political future was put in jeopardy.
So what do we think conservatives did once confronted with the idea that they might not get the outcome that they wanted?
Trust the unreality steps up to become a dance partner once again.
This past Wednesday, April 9th, Conservative Party supporters were seen outside a polyev rally wearing sweatshirts and carrying signs that read, Do you believe the polls?
This is apparently in response to the fact that every polling company in Canada is currently projecting a majority win for the Liberal Party.
Okay, maybe.
Canadian politics can swing pretty wildly sometimes, and this election isn't over yet.
The debates will happen in a few days, and we'll see how this turns out.
The Conservatives shouldn't be giving up.
Everyone should go and vote.
Vote early if you're already convinced of who you prefer to win.
Wait until Election Day itself if you can't vote early or you want to watch the debates first to see how they turn out.
Do not decline to vote because you feel like your vote won't matter.
Don't decline to vote because you're a conservative in a strong liberal riding and you believe you can't change that outcome.
Don't decline to vote because you're a liberal in a strong liberal riding and you feel that piling on with extra votes won't help.
Unless you're giving birth, there is nothing you might be doing that is more important on April 28th than casting your vote.
And if you think you might be giving birth that day, vote early.
The polls are being reinterpreted by Canadian right-wing pundits as a manipulation of our media reality to make everyone in the country believe that the Liberals will win.
The claim is made that this is done to discourage conservative voters and thus to dampen the turnout of the conservative vote.
That same logic works the other way though, right?
If a liberal supporter believes that their vote won't be needed and that since they've had a really long day, they might prefer to take a long bath instead of waiting in a lineup to vote.
And they might just skip it.
No one should try to metagame this by examining the polls.
Just go and vote.
Aside from that, this is a dangerous turn toward unreality.
And I'm not at all surprised that this is happening.
Conservatives have a long and storied history of ignoring reality whenever it suits them.
This is part of a larger worldwide trend of people on the right turning to lies and obfuscations to counter failing political narratives.
One might at first think that this is due to some coordination of right-wing think tanks and pundits and some version of a right-leaning Illuminati that pulls the strings in order to get right-wingers elected worldwide.
But one doesn't need to go full conspiracy to find an explanation.
I think this is due to a combination of strategy and the ease with which propaganda can be created and disseminated.
I call it the dishonesty of zealotry.
Basically, when you imagine that the other side is lying and getting away with it, you are in turn inspired to come up with your own lies to counter them.
I find examples of this in a lot of places.
It's very difficult to know what's inside the mind of a person, so I can't ever say with 100% certainty that this is happening in any particular situation.
But there are a lot of situations where it looks very, very likely to be happening.
Here's one such example.
Juno News is in the media space that might be called alternative media.
Its content looks like right-wing propaganda.
The first thing they attempt to say when looking at their YouTube page is, the legacy media is lying to you.
We see this a lot from right-wing content creators, and it's a sign of reality denial.
Here's the subtext of what they're communicating.
Don't trust what anyone else is telling you.
Come to me for your information.
I'll tell you the truth.
Every source that disagrees with you is wrong.
You are secretly correct in every belief you have, and you never have to change your mind about anything you feel strongly about.
I will continually reassure you that you and your feelings have been correct the entire time.
It's pure grift.
here's part of the intro to the video showing the juno news poll analysis hi and welcome to the candace malcolm show So as you know, folks, I am deeply skeptical of the national polls.
I think the national polling companies mostly work for the legacy media, the liberal media, and they are doing what they are supposed to do, which is create hope and optimism for the liberals, prop up the liberals despite all of their scandals and the terrible job they've done running this country, and to try to demoralize conservatives, to try to make sure that conservatives stay at home.
They don't believe that we actually have a shot of winning this campaign.
And that is why at Juno News, we decided to commission our own polls during these elections so that we could see with our own eyes, see the data, see what is happening.
And that includes asking different types of questions that the legacy media pollsters do not ask.
And I'm very excited today to announce that we have a new poll that has just been released this morning.
And it shows a very different story than the national poll.
So you're going to want to listen to this interview.
I am pleased to be joined by David Murray, who is our in-house pollster here at Juno News.
He works for a company called One Persuasion, which is one of the best polling companies in the country.
And the work that he's doing is incredible in showing a totally different picture of the mood of the country right now.
So David, welcome to the poll.
Juno News is attempting to say that the polls are all wrong.
They claim to have a poll that shows a result that is different than all the other polls.
And therefore, all of the other 31 polls can be discarded.
Again, the subtext here is, you and your side are secretly winning.
And the evil powers that be want you to give up.
So they've gone through all the trouble to create an entire fake reality that's meant to dissuade you from fighting back.
It's a conspiracy that's powerful enough to seamlessly manufacture this illusion, but not powerful enough to have gained all the power of the government yet.
But the poll that Juno News is attempting to use as a counter to the collection of other polling companies is not a publicly published poll.
It's done by a company called One Persuasion that states openly on its website that it does advocacy for Pierre Polyev.
Also, Danielle Smith and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, but mostly Polyev.
Poll results can be manipulated in many ways without actually lying.
One of the easiest ways to do this manipulation is to show only some of the results.
Maybe results from very particular writings or from very particular age groups that favor your candidate.
Parties all have internal polling results, and sometimes they play this game of selective reveal.
And that's exactly what happens in the Juno News video that very openly attempts to claim that the rest of the polls are all just lying.
The video attempts to give hope to people cheering for a polyev win by examining a select few writings and demographics that they claim show a path to victory for the conservatives.
Even in this very slanted view, most of the support for this supposed path to victory would come from a renewed support for the NDP and the bloc.
And therefore, this would erode the overall strength of the looming liberal majority.
Vote splitting.
Not exactly the conservative resurgence that may have been implied by a video titled Exclusive Poll, Signs Polyev is winning.
One second.
Exclusive poll signs Polyev is winning.
Also worth noting is that even in the One Persuasion poll, the liberals are ahead overall.
That means that the One Persuasion poll isn't even all that much different from any of the other polls.
It's just being reimagined as a potential winning result instead of a losing result.
Reality inversion.
I, for one, would like to have reasonable representation from political parties outside of just the two larger options.
I think it makes for a better outcome.
When political parties need to cooperate to get what they want, having politicians keep each other in check so that I can spend more time working on other things and it works to my advantage.
The prospect of a Trump-led threat to Canadian sovereignty puts those conveniences in jeopardy.
I think that's a calculation many other Canadians have also made, which has caused some of the supporters of the smaller parties to reconsider that support in favor of the liberals.
And again, we're still two weeks from Election Day.
That all could change.
Notice that my explanation falls perfectly in line with the polls as stated, and also that it doesn't require a belief that all the pollsters are in league with the legacy media to put their thumb on the scale.
But we need to talk about the real problem with Pierre Polyev as a leader.
He's a leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, and he would like to be the leader of the nation as prime minister.
Roughly two years ago, Polyev made the political calculation that actively imitating the language and catchphrases of Donald Trump would lead Polyev to victory.
To catch the edges of a rising tide of American populism is a maneuver that probably would have worked out better if Trump had lost last November.
But Canadians don't get to dictate how the elephant rolls, and Polyev is no exception.
Now that Trump is once again president and is not so secretly using tariffs as a disruptive mechanism for annexation of Canada, Polyev's in a real pickle.
It turns out that adopting every talking point of Donald Trump and incorporating it into your platform is a sucker play.
So how does Polyev distance himself from all of the political messaging he's done for the past two years?
And perhaps more than that, how does he convince the throng of enthusiastic conservatives he's been talking to for those two years that Canada shouldn't use any of the political tactics that Trump has used to gain power?
How does Polyev tell his supporters that they shouldn't do a stop the steel rally?
How does he tell them they're not invited to his rallies when they wear do you believe the poll sweatshirts and hold up too big to rig signs?
How is any of that going to convince the rest of Canada that further support for Polyev won't lead to all the things currently happening in the U.S. under Trump Part 2?
The simple fact of Mr. Polyev's fate in this election is that he has backed the wrong set of political ideas by embracing Trumpian politics.
Now that the biggest threat to Canada is Donald Trump, it becomes really difficult to step away from.
Reassurances that Polyev will actively fight against Donald Trump have fallen flat.
Until a few months ago, Trump appeared to be Polyev's political guru and role model.
Zero people who strongly oppose Donald Trump believe Polyev when he speaks out against Trump.
And some of Polyev's enthusiastic supporters actually hate when he does this because they secretly want Donald Trump.
If you ask them, some of them will actually tell you.
They hate having to keep it a secret.
So what is Polyev likely to do?
I think we've already seen him doing it.
We have seen too big to rig.
Do you believe the polls?
And now, don't you like the size of my rallies?
I think Polyev is going to lean into Trumpian politics because it's too late to reverse course.
And once there, how hard will he work to oppose whatever Donald Trump asks of him?
How hard will he work against the person who, apparently, shares all of his ideas?
Will Polyev come to believe that it was a concerted effort to copy Trump that got Polyev elected?
If you think he won't, then I have to ask you why you think he wouldn't.
It's been the cornerstone of his campaign rhetoric for a very long time.
Would Polyev believe that opposing Trump will reduce Polyev's support among the people?
Will this lead to a Canadian prime minister who is unwilling to say no to Trump?
More than that, how are Polyev's supporters going to act if Polyev loses?
Are they going to reenact all of the turns toward unreality we've seen play out in the U.S. in recent years?
Is it possible that the Polyev campaign has breathed life into a set of ideas that will bring more of the conspiracism from the U.S. directly into Canada?
How likely are we to see a full-on denial of the election result?
Conspiracy ideas of mysterious voting boxes being brought into polling stations at the last minute.
Grainy, closed-circuit video of people doing some obvious ballot shenanigans that will turn out to actually be video from Russia.
Claims that some communications company was able to somehow intercept signals and swap them out with different ones that show a different number of votes or a different winner, as though the massive amount of paperwork surrounding the vote counts wouldn't reveal that lie immediately.
Will Polyev be asked about whether or not he would concede on election night?
We cannot afford to have the kind of division and break in reality that this could bring to Canada.
Conservatives are attempting to manufacture the idea that Polyev is winning, despite evidence that he is not.
And they justify doing this by pointing to the idea that they themselves created that all of reality is fake and is actually the result of a complicated disinformation campaign involving every publicly published polling company in Canada coordinating their efforts to manufacture the idea that Polyev is losing.
This is Illuminati level bullshit and needs to be actively discredited whenever it appears.
If Polyev loses on April 28th, there will be a host of right-wing grifters who point to the poll results and claim loudly that polls simply do not shift this quickly.
Except when they do.
Looking at you, Kim Campbell.
If you know, you know.
The idea that people's opinions don't change this quickly needs to be measured against our current political atmosphere.
Trump changes his tariff tactics with each new sway of the breeze, and the internet makes the communication of information that might change someone's vote very easy to access.
Also, let's face it, Pierre Polyev isn't a very good candidate.
He won't let any media on his plane, which means that they don't have a lot of opportunity to ask him questions, and they always get there late to his campaign stops as a result.
He allows very few follow-up questions, and his speeches are rife with slogans that make the entire experience feel more than just a little rehearsed.
Against a failing Trudeau, he was doing well.
Against the new option, he's not.
Here's the real deal: Any politician who fails to concede on election night is someone who won't take responsibility for their own campaign and therefore shouldn't be trusted with the power and responsibility that comes with leadership.
Full stop.
And anyone who will choose to ignore reality in favor of their conspiracy fantasy should also be ignored.
Don't feed the trolls.
Don't make stupid people famous.
Don't mention grifters without also mentioning why no one else should participate in their grift.
Counter unreality.
And if you support a set of political ideas that run counter to actual reality, then you should rethink your set of political ideas.
If you have to knowingly support lies in order to get the political outcome you want, then what sort of outcome will you really get in the end?