Tucker: This is 'the single most successful human rights protest in a generation'
Fox News host gives his take on the Freedom Convoy protests on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
When Democratic politicians across this country all of a sudden start to pull back their mask mandates, they did it virtually overnight and of course they did it in unison, we naturally assumed that new polling had to be behind it.
Someone at the DNC must have seen terrifying public opinion numbers and decided to abandon "Project Quarantine" before the midterm elections. That made sense to us. We explain that theory on the show last night. We still think it's probably pretty true, but it's also clear as of tonight that there was another explanation for this. Democrats in this country are looking north to their friends in the ruling party of Canada and what they see there scares them.
Canada's working class has finally rebelled after years of relentless abuse. Truck drivers are threatening to topple Justin Trudeau's creepy little government with their big rigs, and they may succeed, actually. The protests against Justin Trudeau's vaccine mandates have been far more effective than anyone in charge imagined.
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Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, during a news conference from the National Capital Region in Canada on Jan. 31, 2022. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
For Democrats in the United States, that's a pretty obvious lesson. Over the past 48 hours, Canadian truckers have blocked the major trade routes between their country and ours. Last night, farmers driving heavy agricultural equipment shut down the highways at the Manitoba border with the United States.
Eleven hundred miles away, a similar scene on the border of Ontario in the United States. Green tractors with Canadian flags lining the highway in protest, but the most meaningful blockade of all is taking place right now on the Ambassador Bridge. That's the privately-owned span that connects Detroit to Windsor, Ontario.
If you live in the Upper Midwest, you know it well. A quarter of all the trade between the United States and Canada, one another's biggest trading partners, that's billions of dollars, comes across that bridge and as Fox's Molly Line is reporting from Ottawa, that bridge is now completely shut down.
CANADIAN PROTESTER: We're, Canadian and we want to be free Canadians.
MOLLY LINE: Increasing concern spreading through Canada and now the U.S. as the Freedom Convoy threatens trade along the border. Truckers blocking traffic at the Ambassador Bridge, connecting Detroit and Ontario. A second crossing, linking Alberta and Montana, also shut down by protesters calling for an end to all COVID restrictions and vaccine mandates.
PROTESTER: We have freedom, freedom of all mandates, and that's what we're fighting for.
MOLLY LINE: The Ambassador Bridge is the busiest international crossing in North America, carrying 25% of all trade between Canada and the U.S.
"We want freedom," the truckers are saying," freedom from mandates." It's a very straightforward ask, but so far the truckers don't have that freedom and so their blockade continues.
So far, that blockade has forced the Ford Motor Company to shut down one of its manufacturing plants and to operate another plant with a skeleton crew.
Toyota says it won't be able to manufacture vehicles in Ontario for the rest of the week. General Motors has canceled multiple shifts at its plant in Lansing, Michigan, due to part shortages. So this protest is less than a week old, and already it is causing deep pain to at least one global industry.
It's hard to overstate the historical significance of what we're watching right here. The Canadian trucker convoy is the single most successful human rights protest in a generation. If nothing else, it has been a very useful reminder to our entitled ruling class. The working-class men can be pushed, but only so far. When they push back, it hurts.
It turns out that truck drivers are more important to a country's future than, say, diversity consultants or even MSNBC contributors. Who knew? The White House has no interest in knowing. According to the Associated Press, tonight, the Biden administration is, "urging the Trudeau government" to "use its federal powers to stop this protest" to end the truckers' protest. In other words, crush them by force.
Politico was reporting that Biden officials are coordinating with Canadian authorities to, "establish alternate traffic routes around the protesters." That Scranton Joe, the pro-union guy shutting down a labor action. Pete Buttigieg is the completely incompetent transportation secretary in this country. Apparently, he's in charge of this effort. What Mayor Pete does not realize is it's not so easy.
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Truck drivers know a lot more about roads than McKinsey consultants do. An alternative border crossing in Alberta, for example, has already been totally shut down. They thought of that already, Mayor Pete. The Blue Water Bridge, which connects Ontario to Port Huron, Michigan, has been reporting delays tonight of nearly five hours.
Now there is an obvious way to fix this problem. Manuel Moroun, who is the owner of the Ambassador Bridge into Michigan, just spelled it out for Justin Trudeau, who is not terribly bright. End the vaccine mandates and the bridge reopens. It's not hard, but Justin Trudeau won't, and he's decided he doesn't have to because the truckers, as he's explained, have no legitimate complaint. They're racists, so we're not required to listen to them.
Here was Trudeau in the Canadian Parliament on Monday:
JUSTIN TRUDEAU: "The people of Ottawa don't deserve to be harassed in their own neighborhoods. They don't deserve to be confronted with the inherent violence of a swastika flying on a street corner or a Confederate flag, or the insults and jeers just because they're wearing a mask. That's not who Canada...who Canadians are."
Oh, so they're not even really Canadians? They're Nazis. So you don't have to hear anything they say. They don't even belong here. Maybe we'll intern them or expel them. Trudeau state broadcasters have been repeating these lies over and over and over again for maximum effect. Pravda parroting Brezhnev. That's what they do. What's striking, however, is that the media in our country claim to be independent, but they've been doing the very same thing.
MSNBC: Some of the organizers of this protest, which, as I mentioned, started more than a week ago, they do want to overthrow the government.
MSNBC: Canadian officials calling the situation a "nationwide insurrection."
CNN: The police chief says COVID protests are a "nationwide insurrection" driven by madness.
CNN: A nationwide insurrection driven by madness.
CNN: And just think of the language. I know it sounds familiar to you, right? A threat to democracy, an insurrection, sedition.
MSNBC: The police say that they are under-resourced, and they are overwhelmed. They have said that this city is under siege.
MSNBC: It's not just truckers. There's a lot of... I've heard there is QAnon supporters in the crowd.
CNN: Residents that I have spoken to, who say they feel terrorized, intimidated.
MSNBC: It's. A. Cult.
There are QAnon supporters in the crowd. It's a cult. They're Nazis and they're crazy! Insurrectionists on the Edmund Pettus Bridge!" Imagine.
Now they're using these smears because typically they work. Just dismiss these people. Don't listen to them. They didn't go to college, but what Justin Trudeau apparently didn't count on is that a handful of independent journalists are committing journalism inside Canada and a free press works. That's why we have it - or did.
Liberal leader Justin Trudeau makes a point during the federal election French-language leaders debate on Sept. 8, 2021, in Gatineau, Quebec. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP)
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So, instead of repeating state-mandated talking points, like their journalists do in the morons and our press corps do, these independent reporters have been broadcasting hours-long interviews with the truckers themselves in their cabs, totally unfiltered so you can decide what you think. You can actually make your own judgment about reality.
So you watch these streams for just a few minutes, and you realize that these truckers, whatever their faults may be, are far less odious and much harder-working than the journalists and the politicians who call them Nazis.
Here's one 24-year-old protester who saved up and bought his own truck. He's an owner-operator now. He's losing hundreds of dollars every day because he's no longer working, but he says it's worth it because he's more concerned about human rights than about his own paycheck. You decide.
INTERVIEWEE: I agree with freedom of choice, so people should be..If you want to wear a diaper over your face, say, go ahead, you know. I mean, you can wear a face diaper if you want, but why should I? Because of your fear, I got to wear that garbage on my face, you know? Doing that for... Two years. They said two weeks, but it's turned into two years. So, enough is enough.
Yeah, the voice of the working man there. Now, we know he's a Nazi? Because he used the word "freedom." Now that footage, of course, was not shot by the CBC, which is Canadian state media, the most dishonest of all. It was from a livestream on the YouTube channel Zot. It was filmed just after midnight this morning.
Zot is run by a man you've never heard of called Matt Garcia. Garcia is one of a handful of independent YouTube channel operators who are doing what legacy media refuses to do anywhere, ever, anymore. Garcia actually talks to people. He reports. He's not paid to do this.
He's doing it because nobody else will do it. You should watch it. It's compelling because you can hear people speak and you can decide what you think about what they have to say.
Here's another protester that Garcia spoke to in the streets of Ottawa. This man says that Justin Trudeau's authoritarian behavior reminds him of the ayatollahs in the country he left, which is Iran.
PROTESTER: I'm from Iran and I am proud to be between the freedom-loving Canadian patriots. No, I came here from Toronto, where I did a speech on the stage and I lost my freedom once in Iran by the ayatollahs, by the .. but I don't want to lost my freedom again in Canada.
So what's the answer to him? Is he in QAnon? Is he a Nazi? Is he a White supremacist? Canada's leaders have no response whatsoever. They just accuse all these people of bigotry and then they turn away.
The protesters are so immoral we have no obligation to listen to them because democracy. We all lose when they do that because actually, the truckers do have something to say, and some of them are pretty articulate. Some of them are even eloquent about what they want. So, as a public service, we thought you might like to read it.
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TRUCK DRIVER: It's nothing extreme about wanting people to be able to make their own decisions in their home, that is the best decision for their families. There's nothing extreme about that.
No, that's not extreme. If you want to see extremism, take a close look at how Canada's ruling class is responding to these decidedly non-extreme protests. Authorities in Canada are now stealing firewood from protesters in subzero temperatures.
We're not making it up. Now, that one is not being used in a crime. They're not using it to rob liquor stores. The protesters are using the wood to keep from freezing to death in February, but Trudeau's enforcers just took it from them. They also seized fuel, which the truckers are using to keep from dying in their cabs overnight. Watch.
PROTESTER: Take those cans off of that truck. Is that your property? It is now. So you have the right to take gas cans off of the truckers truck, is that correct? It is correct, according to what? Aiding and abetting criminal? A criminal offense? So now when you have gas cans on your truck, it's a criminal offense. This guy's name is Trudeau.
So, let's say you were on American television or you worked at the Brookings Institution or the Atlantic Council or you were Liz Cheney or any one of the many people who lecture you every day about democracy. What would you make of that exchange? Now you might not like the guy's beard, or you may not like who we voted for, but what's your answer to him?
If police are breaking the law by enforcing an order from the guy who runs the country, is that a democracy? No, it's not. It's not a free country. It's a very scary place and that's exactly what Canada has become under Justin Trudeau.
We'll show just one more example. There are a lot of these, but we're not going to drag it out. You see the point. Watch this one. These are police acting under Justin Trudeau's orders, dragging an elderly man to jail and hurting him along the way. Why? Because he dared to honk his horn in support of the truckers.
MAN: What's your name and badge number? Yeah, you're right there. Look, they're hurting old man, a Canadian citizen. Communism. This is communism. He's scared. Communist! Still with the communist... government. Call your police chief. He'll back you up. Call the police. Call your police chief. Arrested an old man! Shame on you! Shame on you!
They hurt him too. Look up his bruises on the internet. So in the end, Canadians are nice people. The cliche is true and they're seeing some of this. It's being hidden from them on their state media, but it's all on the internet.
So, Justin Trudeau is attacking human rights and attacking humans, and that ultimately is bound to provoke a backlash, and it is. The province of Alberta just announced it is lifting its COVID restrictions and scrapping its vaccine passport system completely. Saskatchewan, Quebec, Prince Edward Island have done the same. They're getting rid of most of their COVID restrictions in the face of this, in response to this. When you go too far as Ceausescu learned, people turn against you.
It was just a few days ago that a guy called Jagmeet Singh, he's the leader of Canada's supposedly pro-worker NDP party, smeared the truckers as racists, of course, "those that claim the superiority of the White bloodline." What a pig. It's always the same lie, but yesterday, even Jagmeet Singh finally realized the same old slander doesn't work anymore. So he went to Plan B. He went for a federal plan to "exit the pandemic."
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In other words, he caved in the face of principled human rights protests. That's how that works. Several members of Justin Trudeau's own Liberal Party are now rebuking Justin Trudeau. One of those lawmakers, a member of parliament called Joel Lightbound, described Justin Trudeau's vaccine mandates as "an attempt to wedge to divide and to stigmatize. I fear that this politicization of the pandemic risks undermining the public's trust in our public health institutions."
Ya think? Yeah, we in America know a little bit about that. Who will trust a doctor when the smoke settles from coronavirus? Seriously. But on a political level, anyone watching this understands just how profound the betrayal is, the betrayal both in Canada and in the United States. Self-described liberals, the ones who've lectured you for decades about the nobility of organized labor are now taking the side of management, of strikebreakers over striking workers. They're applauding, like Mr. Burns on The Simpsons as cops harass and abuse strikers and their families.
Pretty soon, they'll be demanding scabs, literally, if they aren't already. It's so deeply revealing. Scratch a liberal and you'll find a fascist. Today on Twitter, an Obama DHS official called Juliette Kayyem called for violence against the truckers. "Slash their tires," she demanded, but don't stop there. "Cancel their insurance, suspend their driver's licenses, prohibit any future regulatory certification for truckers, etc. Have we learned nothing? Fellow members of the ruling class? These things fester when there are no consequences." Crush them before they get big ideas.
Now, Juliette Kayyem is a nasty little fascist, and of course, she is a CNN contributor, too. Of course she is, but we will concede Juliette Kayyem is right about one thing. These things do fester when you ignore the population's legitimate concerns for long enough.
A deserted street near the "Freedom Convoy" protest in downtown Ottawa (Fox News Digital/Lisa Bennatan)
When you dismiss, your own citizens as racists and conspiracy nuts and try and shut them down for long enough, at some point, they are apt to revolt. Once people realize they're citizens, not serfs, you can't really know where things go from there.
And in that vein, tonight, a group of American truckers announced they will begin a nationwide truck convoy in this country starting next month in protest against Joe Biden's vaccine mandates. That rally will begin in southern California on March 5th, and then it will progress eastward, by truck, to Washington, D.C., a city they still perhaps naively assume is the capital of their country.
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How does the supposedly pro-union White House feel about this? They're completely panicked. Working-class people expressing their opinions? That's not allowed.
So Joe Biden, taking a page from Justin Trudeau, his friend to the North, has already set the Department of Homeland Security to work to shut them down. We'll be covering that in some detail. There is some drama ahead.
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