Bloggers Note: with transcript
VIDEO ....
with transcript
- I explained that these passports,
according to the agent in the booth, and I don't think he was lying to me, maybe he was, but I don't think so, he said to me when I went to show him my barcode, he said, "It's okay, I don't need to see it "because you just pop up on the screen." So there's some sort of radius that they detect all the phones that have a COVID passport on it. And yesterday I came across the border as well again. I did a quick little run yesterday. This time I didn't even volunteer the passport. 'cause that apparently links to their system and all my information pops up on their screen, and that's what you guys are gonna get, as well. - I'm Dave Rubin, and joining me today is the spokesman for the Canadian truckers' Freedom Convoy, a busy man. BJ Dichter, welcome to the Rubin Report. - You have no idea how busy, and I started my day with a car accident, so, you know, there you go. Does it have anything to do with the convoy? I'm gonna need a new car, unfortunately, so. But what are you gonna do? Okay, well, we'll put that aside for a moment. First off, where are you right now and how did you become the spokesman for this freedom caravan, or as your prime minister, Justin Trudeau, calls it, this group of Islamophobic, transphobic, antisemitic, crazy people? I have a good friend from Alberta. She is a Metis, a very influential Metis native in Alberta. and her and some friends came up with this idea that you know, we're fed up. Our economy's crushed, we have no lives. One of them, Brigitte, was just about to lose her job, and they just decided we gotta do something, They did one a couple years ago, and it was small and unfortunately it didn't do the internal wrangling. It didn't achieve what it wanted to do, so they decided this is gonna be the convoy of all convoys. So they put the GoFundMe up and they figured, well let's get, you know, maybe we'll get a hundred trucks, we'll get, like, I don't know, $20,000. We'll get a little bit of money and we'll go and have our voices heard. And Tamara called me I think the day after they started the GoFundMe, maybe more or less day after, maybe two days, but I think it was the day after. And she said, "Oh my God, I need help. I'm like, "What's going on?" She said, "We started this thing and it's everywhere. "We're already at like," I don't know what it was, a hundred, $200,000, whatever. And she said, "Can you come on board and help me?" 'Cause she knows I produce podcasts, I do messaging and all that sort of stuff. And I said, "Yeah, sure, it'd be my pleasure," and I also happened to have a truck, as well. and there we are changing the world. - So you guys put the GoFundMe up, and as we speak, is the go GoFundMe still up? I thought I had heard something just in the last hour or so that maybe it had been taken down because of a violation of terms of service or something? Every three minutes we get 1,000, 2,000 messages telling us it's up, it's down, it's up again, it's down again, everybody is. People are unfortunately a little enthusiastic and they come up with some ideas of what's going on. But right now, as far as I know, the last I spoke to them, the funds now are held for review again, and I'll explain what happened. The first time, the mainstream, sorry, the fake news media, it's not mainstream, (Dave laughs) started producing all these stories, Toronto Star, CBC, Yahoo News, that our funds were frozen because of extremists and right wingers and all that sort of stuff. And I said to the team, don't respond. These are banking regulations. It always takes seven to 10 days for a new account. It won't be blocked, trust me. And so they're going around building this narrative, oh, all this speculation of why it's blocked and it is. It wasn't blocked, and then we issued a press releaser once GoFundMe said, "Yeah, you're good to go. "You meet all the criteria." We sent a press releaser, say, to all the fake news media. "We don't know why you would release such a story. "It was never frozen for those reasons. "It's just a regular protocol, "and GoFundMe has been great to work with." - All right, well, I'm glad to hear that. For the record, what is the GoFundMe? Let's actually say it here so that people can donate. I know a lot of our audience has been donating already. - It's Freedom Convoy 2022. So if you go there, or you type that or Freedom Convoy Canada you'll find that. But what has happened now is now, it has been frozen again. - That seemed too positive a story. Everything was going along. They were just starting to do the first e-transfers, and we did get some money transferred or whatever, and then yesterday, last night, boom, message on the screen, 10 point one million dollars, whatever, now it's being held for review. and this tends to happen a lot for people who use GoFundMe, it tends to happen a lot from the fake news media. What they'll do is they'll get, or the leftist politicians, they'll get an army of people brigading your account and just, you know, overload the system, and then the algorithm triggers, and then boom, it's being sent for review. because there's been so much international attention, we have a team of lawyers and a couple of accountants They're on site now in Ottawa. and they're now starting the dialogue working with GoFundMe and all that sort of stuff. So I imagine GoFundMe wants to avoid the PR disaster of all PR disasters and will be good to go. So let's cross our fingers on that. So in the simplest, in the simplest terms, now that we've all seen the videos, I'm covering it every day, it's starting even to bubble up a little bit in mainstream media, although as you say, fake news media, it's tough to get these guys to have to pay attention to the right things, what is it that you guys want? What is the end game for the truckers End the mandates and the passports. Now, the reason there's those two things, the mandates, obviously, that's the vaccine mandates. There's certain people who want it, don't want it. Some of people are, some of them aren't, It's not the government's choice to, you know, it's your body, our choice. No, that's not how it works here, right? - The other thing is, the passports, as I think you saw when I was on "Tucker", I explained that these passports, according to the agent in the booth, and I don't think he was lying to me, maybe he was, but I don't think so, he said to me when I went to show him my barcode, he said, "It's okay, I don't need to see it "because you just pop up on the screen," so there's some sort of radius that they detect all the phones that have a COVID passport on it. And yesterday I came across the border as well again. I did a quick little run yesterday. This time I didn't even volunteer the passport. 'cause that apparently links to their system and all my information pops up on their screen, and that's what you guys are gonna get, as well. - I mean, it's truly, it's an episode of "Black Mirror" with a little bit of "Minority Reports" and "Total Recall", a little bit of "The Matrix". It's all happening right now. Okay, so the reaction to you guys from say the people that watch this show has been pretty positive. The reaction from Tucker's audience has been pretty positive, worldwide, pretty positive. So I guess I got two on that, which is number one, how does it feel to be in the thick of something? I mean, Canadians are not used to being in the thick of, like, a true cultural political moment. I mean, that's number one. And then number two, do you think that there's gonna be real change because of this? I mean, it seems in the last day, even though Trudeau's hiding, you know the premier of Alberta kind of was like, oh maybe we should give into some of these demands. He was sort of like, oh, I kind of wanted to do it, but now maybe they'll actually do it. I've told this story a couple of times to people that I went behind the parliament buildings when I first arrived here. There's a park behind the parliament buildings, and there's a bridge that crosses over into Quebec, and I'm sure Viva Frei can expand on this. There were, it was an army. I don't wanna use that word. That means we're violent. - No. - There was thousands, thousands of people crossing the bridge into Ontario with their Quebec flags and their Canadian flags, remember, separatism has always been a problem in Canada, together and going to meet their Albertan and prairie truck drivers and hanging out together, giving each other hugs. And, you know, some guys didn't speak English, some guys didn't speak French, but they're trying to figure out how to talk to each other, showing each other, you know, look, this is truck, And, you know, like, it was wonderful. For the first time in this country's history, you got this sense of unity. And one, you know, Canadians are not gonna like me saying this, but one inferiority complex that we tend to have in Canada is you do have that unity of what it is to be an American, right? And for the first time I'm seeing that in Canada. - It's absolutely amazing, so to be in the middle of that, it's awe-inspiring. - Are you shocked how ridiculous the over-the-top attacks have been? I mean that tweet by Trudeau, it's like he's got nothing left, nothing left. And there was the other tweet from him, you know, a year ago, truckers are all heroes, and now truckers are all the bad guys. - I'm not surprised in the least. I actually, before he did that press conference, I put on my Twitter, prediction, Prime Minister Diversity Blackface is gonna come out and call us all racist and bigots and whatever phobes, and he's gonna publicly shame us. Because extremists always double down. They only have one strategy, and that's it. - Where do you see this going over the next couple days? I mean, do you think that they're gonna really turn around Do you think that this gets protracted? Are you afraid that maybe they give you an inch? I mean, this has been the thing that I've seen where it's like, all right, the premier of Alberta says, okay we'll move on some of this stuff. And then you guys dissipate, you go back throughout the country, and then they just ramp it up again a week later, knowing that, you know, you can do this once, but you probably can't do it at this level twice. - Yeah, that's what they tried with their convoy a couple of years ago, and they were successful in basically divide and conquer, and the politicians got one faction of their convoy fighting with another faction, and then it just fell apart. And a lot of people from out west learned that lesson that we're not gonna let this happen again. Personally, I honestly don't see this going on too much longer. That's just my, I might be wrong. The morale on the ground is great. There's people dancing, meeting, people falling in love. Like, it's like a hippie party, like we become hippies. - I love it. - We're playing the videos, and they're cleaning up after themselves and shoveling snow. - And so we've had some communications with the police because we do have a command center with ex-military and a couple of ex-police officers there ensuring that we have safety protocols, emergency vehicles have paths that they can go around things. it was really disorganized when we got here, 'cause we were overwhelmed, but what the police have indicated to us, they were monitoring us for several days and they said, all right, "You guys have been peaceful. "We know all that stuff in the media are complete lies. "We are not going to act. "This is now a political issue, "and the government will deal with you." The Conservative leader was forced to resign, which I had told him a while ago, I'll get you, and we did. It was chasing Trudeau off a cliff, and well, there you go. So I don't see this going on for too, at some point Trudeau's gotta realize all these countries in Europe have abandoned the mandates. It's the easiest win in the world for him I, the people, I disagree with them, but you know what? We're gonna follow the European Union and the UK and we're gonna remove all the restrictions. - Right, 'cause it's hard once you've called everybody a bunch of racist, bigot-- - That's right. - Homophobes to be like, ah, you know, but they did have a good point. You mentioned that the Conservative leader So obviously I'm not an expert in Canadian politics, but I think I have a decent handle. And in essence, you guys sort of have two liberal parties actually. One of them's just kinda called the Conservative Party. They're not very conservative in any way, but then you have the People's Party, which Maxime Bernier, who I've had on, who's been very involved in all of this. is the more libertarian party. Do you sense that they could gain a lot out of this? and Liberal party are just gonna morph into one thing? Like, do you see a real reshaping of politics in Canada, because it's like freedom or not, pick one? - I wish that were the case, but no, and I'll tell you why. And I know Max personally. I spoke at his first conference. The Conservative Party after Stephen Harper lost decided, and I met some of those people and I was in some of meetings, and they said, "Well, we're gonna go more center." And I said, "You wanna go center? Like, I'm very libertarian socially. That's a good idea, but don't follow those guys off a cliff. So now they have to rediscover their roots and become actual conservatives. But there's 45 MPs that voted to keep Erin O'Toole, the bald version of Justin Trudeau, so that's gonna be a problem internally in the party. with the PPC is there's no ground game. The last two elections I asked him and I'd asked his other candidates, I said, "What's your GOTV strategy?", your get out the vote. "Oh, we're gonna do it at the conference. "We're gonna do it here." And I asked their candidates, they have no idea. So if they're gonna be serious about it, I think they gotta dial back the grand standing a little bit and actually do community engagement, and they do nothing. I mean, that's how politics works, right? You gotta get riding by riding, and they're doing none of it. that they're using right now is just gonna lead to back to the old liberal versus conservative. But the question is, will the Conservative Party become more center-right? With Candice at the helm, yes, but she's an interim leader, and it's frustrating. from a lot of this stuff is because you say to them, okay, well, take her, use her an intern leader, go into an election as soon as possible, and then if she wins, then keep her as leader. But everybody turns into a bureaucrat. Well, you know, the rules and the policy guide is she can't. Like, screw the rules, amend, use your head, use your moral will and moral skill. But they have that inability, and that's the biggest thing that destroys that party in all the years that I've known it. - To Candice Bergen's credit, at least she called him out on the black face the other day-- - She's great. - In Parliament, so that was pretty good. All right, here's the bumper clip. We're gonna clip this thing and put it up on social media. If you had a message-- - No pressure. - Right now, maybe to Justin Trudeau and to the world, it can be two messages, it can be one message. Give something that everybody can see and hear and truly under what you guys are all about. - If you're anywhere near Ottawa, come down to Trudeau's Truckstop right in front of his office and his Parliament. It is all peace and love. We are gonna solve this together. They want change, and change is on the horizon but we're gonna do that when we stick together and we be unified and we don't take the bait from the leftist activists, and we got all the time in the world. And I think once we do, once we're successful with it, you're gonna see all the provinces follow suit. And that might, I'm hoping, will have a ripple effect given the amount of support we're getting from our American brethren in the trucking industry. And there's a whole convoy of American trucks at the border. I think, it's not Montana, it's another border. American trucks draped in Canadian flags. Would you ever have dreamed of thinking of that ever happening? That's the type of unity that is gonna come out of this, and we're right on the crusp of a new golden age, where we all start to listen to each other. - How about that for a positive story BJ, I wish you guys the best of luck. Anything I can do for help, you know where to get me, and now get out there and change the world, man. We'll talk to you soon, thanks again. - If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about international issues instead of nonstop yelling, check out our international playlist. And if you wanna watch full interviews on a variety of topics, check out our full episode playlist. They're all right over here. And to get notified of all future videos, be sure to subscribe and click the notification bell.
