Shaun Newman Podcast - #670 - Gord Magill

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

He is a veteran trucker with 25 years of experience on roads ranging from the Australian Outback, to Canada’s ice roads. Gord writes for Newsweek, hosts the Voice of Gord podcast and writes the Autonomous Truck(er)s on substack Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text: [phone] – and be sure to let them know you’re an SNP listener.

This is Tom Bodrovix. This is Alex Kraner. This is Sean Alexander. This is Taner today. This is Tom Romago. This is Moka Bezergian. And you're listening to Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

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tax with a smile. Yeah, that's not in my repertoire, you know, smiling and trying to work through all the taxes. And, oh, man, I think I lose years off my life having to deal with that stuff. Okay. July, I've been talking about this lots. I'm probably going to keep talking about it all through July, but big things coming here podcast-wise. New episodes Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and a guest host on the mashup for the month of July. So no Wednesday episode, and Fridays, the mashup is going to have guest hosts. So you're going to see Chuck Prodnick, Vance Crow, Drew Weatherhead, and Quick Dick McDick all hopping in to be a guest or a guest host. However, Toos wants to run it for Friday morning.

So that's going to be something cool to pay attention to. In the meantime, I'm on my way or going to be on my way very soon with the family in the United States to go visit Mel's family and hang out with some people that some loved ones we don't get to see a whole lot. So we're going to slow down a few things here. We're going to come back fast and furious in August. And hopefully over the course of a month, I get to post a few more things on substack. So if you haven't subscribed to Substack, I'm going to be posting some things from our travels there.

And would love if you'd come join us there and share your thoughts and everything else. Either way, July is going to be the first time in podcast history where I slow the sucker down for a little bit. I mean, who are we kidding? There's still going to be three brand new episodes and a guest host on the mashup. So for me, that's slowing it down.

Maybe it's not slowing it down near as much as I think. Either way, let's get on to that. Tale of the tape. He's a veteran trucker with 25 years of experience on roads ranging from the Australian outback to Canada's ice roads. He writes for Newsweek, hosts the voice of Gord Podcast, and writes the autonomous truckers on Substack. I'm talking about Gord McGill.

So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Gorg McGill, so thank you, sir, for hopping on. Hey, thanks for having me, sir. Pleasure to meet you finally. Yeah, it's been an interesting road on this side, as I'm sure you're, you're your side as well you've uh you've had a well you've been popping up everywhere i would say um i didn't know who the heck you were yeah i say this all the time gordon about uh about Canada specifically

maybe the United States the same way i have no idea but uh when it comes to Canada I couldn't believe how siloed off every little area it is uh in my first uh um kind of foray in this i went to uh BC with Tamara Leach and and a group uh there and i met a whole just list of new characters that were speaking out during during covid that i was like oh who the heck are all you and they didn't know who we were i mean obviously everybody knows who tamara is but it was like oh okay and so when i first saw you on tucker i'm like who the heck is this guy and then i start reading i'm like wait voice of gourd i'm like wait a a second somewhere in the back of the brain this i i knew parts of it um for the listener let let's

just start a little bit uh who is gourd where does gorg come from and we'll dive in from there. All right. Short, short bio. Yeah, my name's Gord McGill, born in Hamilton, Ontario, son of a trucker, grandson of a trucker. My grandfather served in a Canadian uniform, drove a Sherman tank across Europe, fighting real Nazis, not the ones that occupy the minds of our political adversaries,

but real ones. And I don't know, it drove truck for most of the last. last 27 years all across Canada, the U.S. I held logs in New Zealand, drove triple road trains in Western Australia. I've sort of tried to take trucking to its maximum, a number of places it could possibly take me. And I don't know, along the way, had a pretty good time. I met a very wonderful lady from here in the United States, and we got married in 2013. I took her with me to Australia, we came back. I moved to the United States full-time in 2016.

And 2017, I was asked to write a blog post for this little tiny web forum I used to participate with called Glibertarians. It was about the electronic logging device mandate for truckers. A lot of people liked it. It got re-shared on numerous other blogs. and then somewhere along the way I started experimenting with Twitter, probably 2018, and bumped into some other sort of people talking about labor issues and treatment of workers, imposition of various technologies.

I started reading a lot more about that, and then I got an offer to go on a couple of people's podcasts to discuss this stuff. And then Freedom Convoy happened. So I go back to Canada and Ottawa. I went to Ottawa. I welcome the Freedom Convoy into the city with some friends. We went downtown. We hung out for that first weekend.

And then unfortunately, I had to go back to the United States to work. And you'll remember the smearing campaign in the media against the Freedom Convoy began immediately. And I had been live streaming video on Twitter and offering my opinions on what I saw. and a lady at Newsweek saw my stuff on Twitter and said, hey, would you like to write something for Newsweek? You know, like we see the Canadian media are saying these things. You were there. You're a trucker.

What's your opinion? So I wrote something for Newsweek, and I think I've now written 14 or 15 articles for them since. About four on the Coot situation, which I discovered about this time last year, maybe last May. was brought to my attention and those Newsweek articles made their way to the desk of Tucker Carlson and as he was coming to Alberta this past January he wanted to find out more about what was going on with the case

and I was sort of texting back and forth and sending my substack articles to his producers and his researchers and at some point they just said why don't you come on the show and so out of plucked out of nowhere total obscurity. I went from nobody truck driver to Newsweek to Tucker Carlson. And now to Sean Newman podcast. It just keeps getting better.

Yeah, I like how you put the SMP above the Tucker. I do enjoy that. It's funny though. If there's an underlying thing, Gorp, you might say, you might say, start talking about the truth. And a lot of doors will just start to open. Because that's what you're talking about, right? Like you just started writing about what you were seeing and wouldn't you know it? People started to pay attention. And as more people started to pay attention, you started to dig in some things,

well, then the offers come and all of a sudden you're sitting on Tucker Carlson. There's a whole list of names you've been on now that is almost like the A list of spaces. It's been almost, when you put it that way, it's almost incredible. It is. And you're right about the truth thing.

And something people need to understand, you know, I get texts from folks, oh, hey, man, you're famous now. I'm like, well, no, not really, but like, you're right about the truth thing, and it has opened some doors. But at the end of the day, I'm only really capable of writing or confident about writing about two things. That's trucking and everything that's gone on in Canada recently. So if I'm good at that, so be it. And the thing with the Coots case is I just find it deeply offensive. because, you know, even though I live in the United States now,

I'm still fairly patriotic about Canada. I go home there all the time, my dad and my sisters and cousins, and I've got tons of family and friends back there. And, you know, I want my daughters to go back to where their dad came from one day. And I'd rather the place didn't fall apart and turn into Venezuela or North Korea or something, which is the trajectory Canada seems to be on at the moment. and the Coots case thing, once I started digging into it and finding out what was going on, and then all of the, like, just bizarre circumstances around it, like, you know, publication bans,

troubles with lawyers, you know, clients with, like, all these different groups, and then, like, it's just, it's so bizarre, but when you dig into it at root, what's happened to these guys is basically politically, persecution, right? Like, the government doesn't have anything on them. They're attempting to construct a fantasy out of like various circumstantial related and unrelated things, none of which amounts to what they claim to be. And in the meantime, these guys were kept in jail for two years, denied bail, even though none of them really has a criminal record, no history of violence. They didn't meet any of the initial tests for being denied bail. I mean, they should have been out and they weren't.

And then the media, okay, I'm going to try not to swear, but let's just say, I hold them in very low regard. Very low esteem. I do too. And they have not asked any questions about this when we have a situation. You know, Canada prides itself, you know. Lester B. Pearson started the United Nations.

We've always prided ourselves on peacekeeping and on, you know, trying to do the right thing and trying to be this, you know, liberal democracy. And then this clown Trudeau comes along. And I guarantee you, if people could get a hold of the right documents and dig further, the Coots thing goes all the way to him. It goes all the way to the PMO and his incident response group who are looking around for something, anything, to hang the Emergencies Act on.

And they created the conditions for this dragnet and Coots to where they basically concoct a fantasy in order to fulfill that desire for legitimation of the Emergencies Act. And, you know, I just, I'm not, I'm not going to stop shutting up about that until these guys are out and, you know, their names are cleared. Like, it's just offensive to me, man. Like, my grandpa drove across Europe to, you know, fight this kind of authoritarianism, so we're told. And now it's happening in my own backyard.

Like, no, not on my watch, man. Yeah, it's. I go back to when they first released the picture, and I'd had Donald Best on once upon a time to talk about it, because it said, you know, like the picture of all the guns, and it's funny sitting on this side, but I don't know why the picture just, well, I did what it was supposed to do. I took a step back.

I went, oh, man, this is, okay. I'm not about killing cops like that. That's not what we want to do. And then, you know, it took time. And all of a sudden I started doing more interviews and more interviews and more interviews. And you're like, wait a second, this smells to high heaven. Like, this stinks. And yet, you know, I think it's a foregone, it's not a foregone conclusion because they're still sitting there.

But you look at it and you're like, these guys are getting out. And when they get out, they're suing the pants off the government because they've literally been screwed now for over two years. And they've been put through, you know, like remand, you know, you're supposed to be in and out of there. It's been 800 plus days. Like, we're at an insane level. And you think here in Alberta, we're like, the. freest spot in all of Canada. We're the last passion of hope.

And yet, strangeness just keeps occurring, uh, gourd all, well, every day. And, and no matter how much we talk about it,

it seems like there, well, there's nothing that can be done. There's nothing that can be done. It's the court system. It's in this court system. It's in that court system. This is,

this is really strange, you know? We stare at the United States and all the, the craziness that has gone on there and continues to go on there, I might add. But here,

you know, Canadians got to look a little closer to home because it's happening right here right. Yeah. And that's that's that's that's the real importation. One of the things I bang on about a lot is Canada's pathological relationship with the United States, right, as far as invoking them for our own sort of like internal identity ends. You know, the United States are either the crazy, methodal, lunatic neighbors with guns, whenever a Republican is in the power, when someone like Barack Obama is in power and they notice us,

it's like, oh, swoon, yay. You know, John Stewart talked about us on the Daily Show. You remember that? And that was like front page news in Canada. And if you look back throughout history, it's been like this forever. So we have this crazy relationship with the U.S. and the Americans, to their credit, mostly ignore us.

And, you know, in recent times in the Trump era, populist area, whatever you want to call it, there's a lot of people in Canada who claim that like Pierre Palaevra is importing populist politics from the United States.

Trump is moving north and like all this pants shitting. But none of that's actually happening. What's actually happening is the importation of the Democrats' most dirty techniques of keeping themselves in power, right? And the main one being law fair.

So you see how Donald Trump has just been getting lawsuit after lawsuit and charges. And he's just having to put out fires all over the place. Most of the stuff is spurious. And what's happening in Canada is Trudeau and his minions have done that with the Freedom Convoy people. Chris Barber and Tamara Leach still facing this mischief trial. Hundreds of people across the country facing similar charges that nobody knows about because the media doesn't talk about it. You know, I had a woman on my show here recently named Christine DeKare, and she went to Ottawa, peacefully protested, didn't do anything wrong,

got arrested and charged by the cops. A year later, beats all the charges, she gets acquitted. The Crown decides to appeal, like drag her back into court. And for what? Right? So what they're doing is they're engaging in lawfare, and what's happening with the Coates guys is the same thing. You know, during the POEC, Justice Rulow's

ruling pinched on the Coots guys being guilty, right? Like he didn't really have any other violence. There was nothing else to be said, at least for that component of the story, except for Coots. How is it that their trial didn't get underway until after the POEC? Right. This is what I'm saying about lawfare. They're using the legal system to punish people they actually don't have anything against. That is something the Democrats started doing in the United States and Trudeau's copycatting them. here. That's that's that's that's the real creeping um American policies coming north. Well, one of the things we've talked an awful lot about on here, you know, one of the ideas is,

you know, like, um, we need a better class of journalist or podcast or or media, whatever you want to classify it as Gord in Canada because we, we, we look to the states to tell us how our country's going, you know? It's like, I love Joe Rogan. I love Joe Rogan. I love Tucker Carlson. I love a bunch of these guys. They're very, very. popular, they're very good, they get interviews that you're just like, wow, that is something. That was, that was a great piece. But when it comes to Canada, we need Canadians to start talking about Canadian things. Because, you know, Trump getting everything that happened to Trump.

It's like, that's great. Like, I mean, not great in the sense. It's great. It's great that there's coverage of it. The thing is, is like here in Canada, every time Trudeau does something just absolutely insane, it is slowly getting better, maybe quickly. because you can tell the changes in the air, you know, last night. Yeah, the blood is in the water.

No, they just lost their riding in Toronto. Toronto St. Paul, gone, right? And that's been a liberal stronghold for 30 years. So maybe it is slowly changing. But I go back to the Canadian thing and journalism or whatever, state of media, is we need Canadians to do better. And I put a lot of that on my shoulders as does probably. a lot of people who do podcasts or shows up here.

The thing is, is you're running against a fully funded, fully government funded media that, no matter how bad they are, they just get more billions of dollars, they get to advertise. Like I was watching the Euler game, and obviously they didn't win,

but in it, it goes CBC GM, everything free, basically free. And I'm like, but that's not true. I'm literally paying for it with my tax dollars. Literally, it's funded by me, and it sucks. You suck, get it off. We're paying to be lied to.

Correct. And you think on the biggest stage of the NHL, game seven of a Stanley Cup finals, there's CBC trying to tell me it's free. And nobody watches it. And they get the best, you know, and so it's difficult. I'm meandering here.

But I go back to, I go back to, you know, the state of media and Canada. And a lot of us need to continue to push because, you know, we can't look to the United States. I don't mean that Canadians can't live in the States because that's what you're doing. I just mean that as far as Americans go and American shows, we need to be better. We need to be, you know, like you've given a real, I think a real path for a lot of people, right?

You started writing. I got to know, I'll toss that to the side. You started writing. You talked about some truthful things. And for that, you're, in my opinion, were rewarded by a whole bunch of different spots. You've become a louder voice than you were a year ago. show, in my opinion. And all that came from talking about what's going on in Canada in a fashion that is

legible, that makes sense, and questions things people should be questioning. We need more of that from Canadians, is what I'm trying to say. Right. Yeah, we do. And, you know, when you mentioned at the beginning of the show that you bumped into these people in BC, I had no idea who they are. Lots of us, we're all scattered to the wind. Canada's a large country.

The internet's supposed to make it smaller, but the internet also, you know, you have you have these algorithmic silos and it's hard to like get crossover and like you know the way these platforms work sort of puts us in certain places and then we're still going through the echoes of like COVID lockdowns where like our society is still not back functioning the way it was in say 2019 you know setting aside all of the sort of long running other dysfunctions and so we have this problem of information siloing and I I run into this on Twitter, you know, like I'll say something about the koot stuff and I'll get these sort of reply weirdos telling me that they're terrorists and saying things about, you know, aspects of the case that are like 100% not true, 100% verifiably false. And I'll tell them.

I'm like, look, here it is. Here's an article. Here's something from other people. Here are the facts. Here's something you should know about the case that happened last week. You know, the publication bans off now. And they just don't know. or they just dismiss it and don't believe me or I get blocked.

That happens all the time. I'll be like, hey, here, here's a whole list of things that have been written by me and others about the Coots case, that the media, I'm sorry they lied to you, but they lied to you.

Avail yourself of this information. And then they'll just either ignore me or get blocked. Like they don't want to know. There was something that was planted somewhere along the way in people's heads. Good guy, bad guy, friend, enemy, and no thinking about the truths that transcends. send those two groups. That's, yeah.

I remember de-plugging from the Matrix, if you will. I remember sitting in Ottawa when Trudeau came out and he barely talked about it and right at the end, you know, he said a few things about the trucker convoy and being like, holy crap, this is insane. I remember watching the CBC literally filmed the opposite way of the protest and being like, this is literally happening in front of me. I can't, like, you can't like unsee it. You know what I mean?

like you just can't unsee it and it's it's interesting to watch as like any speaker you can you know like you could just see how they're going to do it we we had the injection of truth town hall in alberta uh monday june 17 right and we had like byron bridle and and and uh dr chris shoemaker and dr mark trozian i'm going to space on a couple of the other names there was a great uh david speaker and regardless uh great lineup of doctors hosted by a riding for the UCP and you read all the articles on it and they just lamb based it everybody a part of it right but you know all the the the keywords you know far right uh these doctors have been disgraced they've lost their license on and on and on it's like they've built the story and then they just regurgitate it

instead of actually like showing up and asking them questions like being a hey like uh i'm here from the cbc i would have loved to have seen that they were not there and uh we'd just want to know, you know, a series of these questions. Except we, here we see it all the time. They were all invited. Nobody shows up. So like, if you're only getting your information from the CBC, CTV, global, on and on and it goes,

and they don't show up when the other side talks, that should be a huge red flag. And why people don't do that? That's a, that's an interesting conundrum, Gordon. Well, it's lying by omission. Right? So if you don't tell, if people don't know

of the other half of the story, countervailing evidence, other aspects of things. And then they're not equipped to properly, to come up with a proper understanding of things, right? They remain in ignorance. And power, political power, relies on people being ignorant. Because if you know the whole story, you might not vote for the people who are trying to keep you in the dark about things.

You know, and this has got nothing to do with, like, partisanship, right? Like, all parties do this. to one level or another. But like the problem in Canada, again, is the sort of hypocrisy of our sort of self-reference and then what actually goes on, right? And the fact that like our media will not talk about the Coots thing, will not talk about the downstream effects of all the COVID stuff, will not talk about the fact that the freedom convoy has basically been exonerated in every way.

They won't admit to being party to the lies. and the smearing. They just keep, they just keep leaning into all the thought terminating cliches. It's far right, conspiracist, anti this. There's no,

there's never going to be, you know, taking on the ideas head on, taking on policy head on, taking on issues head on. It's just smear, smear, smear, smear, and move on. Or that's if they talk about you at all.

Sometimes you just don't even get discussed whatsoever. Well, and then you then tack on the fact that, okay, so they won't, they won't talk directly to some of the issues, some of the biggest issues in Canada. And then tack on what just happened to Blacklocks reporter in the last two weeks. And that is, you know, Blacklocks reporter, Holly Donne, Tom Korski, for people who are unaware, they, like, break, I don't know how many stories in Canada. If there's 10 a, 10 a week, they're breaking eight of them. It's insane. And they're the subscription-based model, right? So you have to

pay to get in. And it just got ruled that, you know, Parks Canada is the, is the one in question, can buy one membership and then give it out to their entire staff, right? And they can all use it. That's been held up in court. It's like, well, that's an attack on independent journalism right there, right? Like you're making a model to where they're funded so they can go do work and investigate government, follow the money. And the judicial system upholds that, no, you can buy one membership and give it out to your entire staff. That is, well, you're seeing this level of warfare, right? You call it law fair.

Yeah, and it's asymmetric, right? Because we don't, you know, those of us, quote unquote, in the freedom movement, those of us who, you know, want old norms held on to, we are the little guys, you know, and the government has got oodles and oodles of your money to fight you with. They have the media on lockdown. They have all the institutions on lockdown. It's basically a single party state at this point. Like we can go off about conservatives, NDP, liberal, but much like in the United States,

like you have a deep state that undergirds that. In Canada, it's called the Laurentian elite. And they've got the place on lockdown. And, you know, I don't know what we need to do to fight it. glad people are doing it. We have to keep talking about it. You know, good for Blacklocks. I wish I could afford a membership to those guys.

But, you know, like we, people have to understand that, like, our ideas of what democracy are don't matter anymore. And things we were warned about from previous writers and from history, previous historical events about authoritarian societies. A version of that is happening now. The United States is a one-party state. It's the deep state, the uniparty. Canada is a one-party state. It's the Laurentian elite. We are given this mirage of choice, but at the end of the day,

that state that undergirds it, the bureaucrats, the funders, the power behind the face of power, if they don't get what they want out of the people you choose, they just undercut you, right? And we have to contend with that. Like, people need to wrap their heads around the fact that, like, what we are presented as this democratic system is not what it was originally sold to us as. It's changed into something else.

Well, over time, it's been corrupted. Or do you think it's been corrupted right from the get-go? That's a good question. Lots of people talk about that. I follow a number of sort of dissident thinkers. And, man, you can go down a real deep rabbit hole about how far back the corruption goes. with some of those guys and it's like centuries.

Well, the thing with corruption, there's people who say the enlightenment was a bad idea, you know? Well, I think corruption as, you know, that's been around for thousands of years. That isn't something new. That's a human trait.

I just wonder about the entire system, like the way this mind virus is working through every level of, you know, it's just working itself through everything. It just isn't a way that it's just sitting there. It's just so evident. You're like, how on earth did this happen?

It didn't happen overnight. It just didn't happen overnight. To me, corruption itself has been around for a very long time. You can go back to biblical times and see corruption and see how things are twisted and done. But where we get to today, you know, is like it just didn't happen overnight. And, you know. All this, all the systems. that are the systems and safety valves that are supposed to be in place,

the countermeasures that are supposed to keep the system honest, clearly aren't working, right? Like, think of all the scandals of Trudeau. Think of all the scandals of Harper before him. Think of all the scandals of, you know, Kretchen. Every leader in Canada has had some number of scandals, but like they seem to just get bigger and bigger and bigger, right? And every new scandal is like more crazier than the next.

And you're like, how is this guy still in power? You know, like, what's going on here? You know, where are the systems to deal with this? Like, I don't know how. You know, Peterson's harped on about this. Like, how many scandals does Trudeau have to be involved in before he's gone? But the bureaucracy and the systems parliament, the whole thing, there's just, it's built like its own force field around itself so that the Systems meant to keep it from being corrupt don't actually work.

They themselves are corrupted. That's how deep it goes so that you can't fight the corruption from within the corruption. Does that make sense? Yes. But it's interesting because I'd had on Randy Hillier and he talked, you know, about, like, I didn't know these stories. Like Canadians, we live in such bloody silos. I can't figure it off this is the United States too. You're the guy.

I'm married to an American as well. Um, and God, God bless your wife and for bringing her your children. Yes. Yeah. Well, she's a lovely woman. And I go back to Randy Hillier. He got talking to me about how 20 years ago, roughly, in Ontario, they had giant protests, uh, the Lanark landowners, uh, group.

They shut down the 401 with like 500 plus tractors, um, 1,500 plus vehicles. I remember that. They had auction catalog. They unloaded cattle downtown Ottawa and had auctions. They shut down an international bridge. And I'm like, really? I'm like, okay, what did the prime minister at that time? Oh, he came and spoke.

I'm like, the prime minister came and spoke at one of your protests. He's like, yes, that was Harper. Mike, interesting. So times have drastically changed in 20 years, right? You think about it or it's just Trudeau. because like the corruption has been there the entire time. But 20 years ago, he shut down the 401 or their group shut down the 401 and, you know, there isn't eight of those guys rotting in prison.

He's like, honestly, I don't think we had a single person arrested, which is interesting, right? And I being from Alberta and being younger, you know, I was in high school at that time. I just didn't even know what was going on. I had no idea. Now, in fairness, I probably wasn't reading the news because it probably wasn't. there and a guy should really go dig back and see if they reported on it because to me what's what's shocking right now is how the cbc all these like all these giant media conglomerates don't show up to anything it's part of the narrative i get it but at some point if the public you know you just got to be

like what what what is going on here and 20 years ago it seems like they were reporting on what was happening in a very similar sense to what it happened just a couple years ago. So there's an American dissident thinker by the name of Curtis Yarvin. He used to blog under the name Menchus Moldbug. And when he was still known as Mentius Moldbug, he came up with this sort of new term to encapsulate the trend you're seeing. He calls it the cathedral. It's the confluence of media, the academy, and the government, right?

So universities, our information sharing systems and the state working together to set narratives, to set policy, and to consolidate power. Now you take that cathedral, there's a version of it in Canada, and there's a version of it in all Western countries now. And then we also have this sort of rise of unaccountable, international, you know, some people use the term globalists. and they've got their own agendas and they are absolutely uninterested in democratic contestation. They don't actually believe in democracy. Whenever individual nation state objects to what they're doing, they go and they smear it.

Look at what they've done to say Poland and Hungary. And then another thing that we've imported from the United States that's in this vein is astroturfing, right? So there's a practice that the United States State Department uses when they go into other countries is what they'll do is they'll set up a bogus newspaper with some locals who are sort of friendly to the State Department's aims, claim that they're advocating on behalf of all these groups. And then the sort of rainbow regime moves in and says, you guys have to extend these same rights that these minority groups in the United States have now, even though it might go. against your culture and people might object to that happening there. And then if you don't comply, you know, the State Department comes in with all kinds of money and then funds other candidates to run against, you know, local, popular politicians.

And what they do is they have stories printed in these other countries fake AstroTurfed newspapers. And most people back home in the West have no idea that they're fake AstroTurfed newspapers. And then those stories get quoted back here as if to say the will of the State Department is popular in those other countries, right? It's called laundry. It's information laundering and policy laundering and popularity laundering, right? And we see the same thing happening in Canada. And they do it with, you know, people like the Canadian anti-hate network and all these activist groups who just make stuff up on a whole cloth and have their very own conspiracy theories, but they're ones the government likes.

the government quotes them, puts those press releases out, the media repeats it verbatim, and then when people come, you know, other media or citizens ask the cops or the government, you know, what's going on at the Freedom Convoy or what's going on with this particular issue, and then the authorities and the cops just quote back the same press stuff. And it's like in a feedback loop, right? But none of it's, most of it's never true. And it's just laundering information.

these systems of legitimation, right? Through the government, through the media. And then everybody just believes it. Oh, wow. Well, they said it in the Toronto Star. They said it on the CBC. It must be true. Right.

Like, this is part of the reason that we're having such an uphill battle with getting the truth out, is that we have literal information legitimation systems, which are themselves passing around misinformation through all these various channels, and then back to themselves. and then thereby creating this sort of fake legitimacy and popular appeal that don't actually exist. That's really well put, really well said, Gordon.

I got to think about that for, like, it completely makes sense. It totally happened with the Emergencies Act, man. It's exactly what it did. The con would put something out. The government would repeat it. The cops would get asked about stuff. They would quote the same news pieces, and it just went back around and around in circles, but there was nothing ever to it.

And then when they did the hate gate report on, you know, the accusations against, you know, Diagallon and Jeremy McKenzie, you know, think what you will about those guys. But like what happened to them was this very same information legitimation cycle that had nothing to it. And the elements of our intelligence community said that explicitly. we have no way to triangulate this. There's only one source, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. But because it went through this information

legitimation cycle, it basically became the law of the land without having any substance to it. And then quietly as we sit, all charges against Jeremy McKenzie have just not held up in court. And does that get reported? No, right?

No. There's not going to report when they're wrong. They never say sorry. Canadians are, nobody in the Freedom Convoy is ever, ever, ever going to get an apology for how we were smeared. Canadians who suffered under Trudeau's COVID regime, dying relatives you couldn't go see, families torn apart over the questions of vaccines, jobs lost, people succumbing to vaccine reactions. We are never going to get an apology for that. And I don't think we're ever going to get any accountability either unless like we fundamentally changed the system. under which we are under and man good luck with that yeah in order for the system to fundamentally

change some dark days got to come and i'm like i don't know what i even mean by that statement because dark days were the middle of covid right like i mean that's what led to the convoy was everybody's back was against walls like they might they might be dark decades not just days yeah well and that's that's right that's what i mean i i you know It's like that's a very open broad statement, dark decades. You're not wrong, right? To like absolutely throw off because you think how many people does it take to dismantle a democracy, right? Thousands upon thousands of angry human beings.

And while we had that during the convoy and they literally painted it one way and you know, and you're seeing the follow out from all of that that continues to happen. And I think, you know, like, they're playing like, they're playing very, like, they're not dumb. And you think, like, take Tamara and Chris, for instance, like, they've been in trial now for, like, an insane amount of time. And I, I would say, if they get convicted, there'll be protests all over Canada and they'll be out, like, the next day. Which means the way they're doing it is this slow play of, like, just dragging it on for as long as humanly possible, which we both know costs. A ton of money. And the public doesn't get crazy mad about it because they're like, well, they're in trial.

And somehow in trial means they're getting justice. Yet it's kangaroo court. And they're just sitting there for as long. You go back to the Coots 2 now sitting in on their trial. And like you look at all the craziness. Like the envelope. Like whatever happened to that. It's just, oh, no, we're not going to do anything with that.

And the media, well, media can't talk about anything that's. going on in here. They're playing all these little shadow games where it doesn't seem to irritate the public enough to get angry and go protest or go spread their voice. And so that's this long slow play. Right. Yeah. And the longer they drag it out, they're relying on, you know, humans have only got like a

sort of limited bandwidth, right? You got your immediate family and friends around you, your. immediate community group. You got all your sort of proximate concerns. And it's hard to pay attention to extremely detailed legal cases that are happening far away from you and are happening at a scale that there's not really anything you can do about in your sort of capacity as an individual and your distance from it. And so they sort of rely on this to make people feel powerless.

And, you know, some people just might be legitimately checked out. They might just be normies living in blissful ignorance and they don't want to know. They don't care. Life goes on. Got my paycheck. Got my boat. Got my cottage on the weekends. You know,

got my pickup truck. I'm fine. Well, you're fine for now. How much is that fill up costing you at the gas station these days? You know? What about, oh,

yeah, bummer about your cousin that had a heart attack after that vaccination campaign. Like, the signs are all around us, but like, it takes a lot to get people motivated. And the time, I think a strategy that the government's using is the time it takes to engage in this lawfare is to just keep, like I say, stretch it out and make it just seem like it's all gone away, diffuse everything, and take the, you know, raging, boiling waters, the freedom convoy and let them sort of, you know, get back to a nice simmer without causing too much trouble. You know, they're just sort of waiting for it to go away.

When it comes to the Coots, too, how can people help, Gord? I mean, you've been on this like a white on rice, and I know there's others, right? Yeah, there's a few people. So, you know, we're having a sort of discussion back channel myself and a number of these other folks about what to do because we have this information silo, right? Like, you know, I've gone on Tucker Carlson. I've been writing about this at Newsweek, but like it still hasn't penetrated. our consciousness either because of algorithms or because of just again people there's a there's a million scandals with the trudo government there's all this other stuff going on it's hard to get people to care

about it and you know we just had julia and asange released yesterday and we had this Tommy robinson guy got picked up in calgary last year and i guess they let him out under some conditions and there's just so much craziness happening but as far as helping the coots guys and getting that out like we just somehow have to punish him the puncture the information silos. We have to keep talking about it. We have to shame your MPs. Call your local MPs office and say,

hey, how come you guys aren't talking about this crazy case in Alberta? How come you haven't said anything about it? You know, maybe, you know, whatever. I guess MPs aren't supposed to interfere in court cases, but like you're allowed to release statements on stuff. You could make like a sort of vague statement in support of certain principles. You could, you know, write letters to your local newspapers. such as any of those exist anymore.

And just keep pushing it. Just keep pushing because the media are not going to help us. You know, what few mainstream media there are covering the Coots case, and some of them have pulled their thumb out of their ass and showed up. The Canadian press, there's a lady from a Globe of Mail, and they are doing the same thing that the media did during COVID. They are repeating the government narrative. They are repeating the allegations from the undercover office.

officers verbatim. And then in their articles, they do not tell you that the things that those undercover officers said are hearsay that are not backed up by any recordings, no wires. They don't ask any pertinent questions in these articles about like, how come the other two got released? Some of those articles don't even mention that Jerry Moran and Chris Leisack had all of their original charges dropped against them, which brings into question the notion of conspiracy at all. Right? So like the mainstream media are not. not going to do it for us and we cannot rely on them. So just keep sharing, keep talking about it in person.

You can help with their legal funds. I set up a GiveSendGo. Givesendgo.com slash Trudeau's political prisoners. God knows the legal bills are piling up. You know, Tony Olionick, to his previous lawyer, got soaked for over half a million dollars, something like six or seven hundred K. I mean, I don't want to get into the details about that, but there's going to be motions to deal with that incident.

But, you know, Chris Lysack and Jerry Moran still have outstanding legal bills. Like, it costs a lot of money to fight the government. So every little dollar people can help with, you know, if it's $10, $5, $1, something, anything. You know, like I say, fighting the government costs a lot of money. And you can't make any money when you're sitting in jail for two years because you've been denied bail for political reasons. When you, Chris Lysick, Jerry Moran, the two that pleaded out, what did you, what have you heard? What do you make of that? I don't know how much, you know, you can share or not share.

I just, I know you're in closer contact with this group than I am. And if there's anything that's pertinent to bring up to the audience, fire away. All of the original heinous charges against them were dropped. Conspiracy to murder police officers, felony gunstaff, mischief, you know, all of the bad things they got thrown in jail for were dropped. Chris Lysak pled out on mishandling his pistol charge. And under normal circumstances, like, you know, it's like failure to follow his travel permit for his pistol. That would have been like a fine. Maybe the government would have taken his pistol away from him and seized him.

it and, you know, canceled his restrictive license, he wouldn't have done two years in jail. So that's what Lysak got out on. Morin got out on a stupid false, false confession because Jerry Moran was kept in solitary confinement. Jerry Morin was kept in Calgary, unlike all the other guys who were either in Medicine Manhattan, Lethbridge, and he was kept with like the worst of the worst. Murderers, gang members, rapists, all the bad dudes. Jerry Moran was in a real bad way.

So, you know, the confession he signed to was false. The government knows it. His lawyer knew it. But he wanted out. So he signed to it anyway. I don't know if there's any appeal or a way to deal with that after the fact. Maybe there is. Maybe there isn't.

I don't know. But the main point being, the crown dropped all four original charges against both of those guys. So what does that say about the other two? And, you know, the other two, Tony Olionick and Chris Carbert, since the trial started, most of the proceedings have been focused on Tony Olionic. They have barely talked about Chris Carbert at all. They haven't, like, said anything about what he's alleged to have said. They haven't played any video or evidence of him in court.

It's almost all Tony Olionic's party. So why is Chris Carbert still in there? Well, conspiracy kind of means it involves more than one person. So Chris Carbert's getting thrown to the wolves by the government so that they can go after Tony. And they're going after Tony because Tony is a very outgoing guy who will talk to anybody, may have been a little bit naive about the situation he found himself in. And they're literally trying to get him for thought crimes. This is the thing.

They're trying to smear Tony by things they say he said for which they have no evidence. And then things he said on his Instagram, which, you know, I think he called the cops effing communists or something, which is not against the law. And then on Instagram, he invited them to have coffee with them before he got arrested. So, like, you know,

they don't have a case at all. And when you look at all these factors, you have to ask yourself, what is going on here? And unfortunately, the mainstream media in Canada are being paid to do their jobs, which is to misinform you

and not ask pertinent questions, not hold power to account. The media, in Canada and all around the world now are not there to do their job of holding power to account. They are there to do their job of keeping you misinformed and keeping the powerful in power. And so like we just have to remember that going forward here. And I've got to chat with with Tony on the, you know, like one of the strangest interviews I've probably ever had. Yeah.

Surreal, I mean. I listened. It was, I listened. It was very good. and thank you for having him on. Yeah, well, to me, you know, I've always wondered what it would have been like to have had take any political prisoner from the past

and get to sit with them and hear their thoughts while they're sitting there. And then I'm like, I literally got to deal with Tony. Like it's, I'm like, this is, what are you going to say to it? If people want to do the deep dive, the interviews are there to go listen to these guys, to go listen to the stories,

to listen to the, the Mocha Buzergan, the, I mean, Jason Labien, been there. I'm probably spacing on a few different people that have been trying to cover it. Certainly on this show, we've had a whole cast of characters come on to try and talk about it and talk about it in a way that you can kind of make sense of what's happening. And so for the public, you know, I would say probably share the content is probably a good way. You mentioned give saying go. You know, like there's a bunch of different ways to try and put this out there into the world. But we do

hit the silo problem, which is a giant problem. And I'm not if we could solve that one, we'd probably be billionaires. Because I mean, at this point, it's like, you know, it's like how do you, how do you get, you know, like certain people or Twitter people? Yeah, you know, some people aren't. I know, there's a funny dichotomy here too, right? We have, in our hands, the tool we are

using right now, the internet, the greatest communication tool ever built by man, instant communication across the entire world. There are people who criticize it and say that the human mind is not capable of dealing with the speed and volume of information that we now have access to. That's one argument. But what's incredible to me is we have this tool that can spread information right now to anybody in the world that wants it, and yet these silos still exist. Think on that for a minute. How is it we have all these communication tools? Now, there are those who would say, you know, like the freedom movement's getting bigger,

resistance movements are getting bigger, the sort of current populist moment in the United States and other countries has been, you know, it's made use of the internet and speedy communication. but like our enemies have their fingers on it and they get to use it too and they have more control over it than we do so you know it's just interesting situation yeah i i go back to the middle of covid and i remember you know looking at the statistics and and you know like uh there's there's been many a person to break down the federal statistics or the provincial statistics in more depth than I ever did. But one of the most impactful things I did, because I feel like for most people, it's like, man, this is confusing. I don't know. I'm just going to go, I'm going to go for a walk.

I'm going to go flick on Netflix. I'm going to do whatever. I don't hang out with the kids. I don't mean it has to all be bad. It could be something that's just like, this is way too confusing. There's way too much here. How am I ever going to start on and on it goes? In middle of COVID, I remember doing this little exercise because I was just like really frustrated. I'm like, well, maybe I'm wrong, right? Maybe, maybe I don't know what the heck I'm doing. and I just started pulling up government data on COVID from all over the world. It started with Alberta. Then I went to Canada.

Then I did my wife's home state of Minnesota. I did South Dakota. I did Florida. I did Finland. And I just started pulling up the death statistics because I'm like from COVID because they all were publishing it. And once I saw it for my own eyes, I literally did the work. I'm like, I can't go back now because I've done the work. It's like I put in a little bit of energy to it.

And when it comes to everyday people, it's pretty easy just to go glaze by anything, right? You got your work. Like in today's world, we are busier than ever. I'm talking about Canada. I'm talking about Western culture. You know, you've mentioned having kids. I got young kids between young kids, being married and having a full-time job. If you don't put a little bit of energy into trying to figure out what's going on, you're not going to know what's going.

on because frankly it takes a lot of time to invest a little bit of energy your own like willpower to do a little bit of digging to use this great tool if you put it with the internet to just like start digging on things because all the information is sitting there but it does take energy you have to put energy into it just like anything going to the gym you don't get you don't get jacked by just walking in the building you got to put energy in if you don't put the energy in you get no results and this is the same for all of the public so you get frustrated with people when they just slide by everything. Well, I come back to, you know, I'm a giant hockey fan.

That's what it was. Bummer about the Oilers last night, eh? I tell you what. Sorry, I haven't, you know what? The last time I paid attention to the NHL playoffs, I think was 2006 or seven when the Oilers had a pretty good run. When they lost in game seven again. Yeah.

But you look at hockey, you look at hockey gore and you go like, why is it that so many of us Canadians know so many random stats, and I'm talking about men here, about hockey? Well, because we enjoy it, we invest time in it, we watch things on it, we listen to commentators on it, and on and on and it goes. And I come back to what we're talking about. The goal or the challenge that I have as a host is to bring people on to. such as yourself and others that make it like that for people so that when they're listening about the Coots too, it's something that is like engaging.

You're like, man, I got to listen to Gore when he comes back on because that is something. And listen, there's been an entire industry built around the NHL or any sport you want. It doesn't matter. And they have the best there. Or at least they did. I mean, now they're really trying for that old equity and diversity and all that good stuff. And you're like, well, that's going to be an amize of you. You're going to change that at something.

point because you're going to start to see a diminishing results. But regardless, you look at Canada, you look at, like, you look at the states. Why do you tune in and Tucker Carlson? He's fantastic. He's, he is, there's bar none to him when it comes to the political, uh, sphere. And we just lost our Rex Murphy. Rex Murphy passed away and you go, who do you got after that? Of course, in Canada, who did we have after Rex Murphy for top of the ladder when it comes to talking about what is happening in this country? Man, that's a great. question because I don't I don't know I mean the only sort of guy I can think of is off the top of my head is Peterson and I mean I think I think he lives down here now and he works for the daily wire but Peterson isn't a in my opinion and I mean this in no disrespect to Peterson Peterson is one of the greatest commentators Canada has had when it comes to somebody interviewing and going around and getting the Peterson's do we have anyone that's that's a good question I'm not sure and you know, I think

part of the problem with this question is the same problem we're having with puncturing the silos, getting the Coot's story out, is that the Canadian media is subsidized to the Hilt and everyone is afraid of losing that money because the media

are now having their asses handed to them by people who do this for free like us and because we tell the truth and they don't. But if they do tell the truth, if they do say anything interesting or, you know, outside of the Overton window, then their paymasters are going to be upset with them and they're going to lose money and then that's it. They're done. And, you know, we also have the Laurentian elite who make up most of journalism in Canada.

And I use those air quotes intently because I consider them regime stenographers. They repeat what they're told. I've tried, man. Oh, trust me, there's other big podcasts that are like quote-unquote mainstream. stream, you know, Canada land, the line, whoever. I've tried to get their attention, guys like Jonathan Kay, National Post. Hey, we have a problem here with this coup situation. I've had certain of those people tell me there's nothing there.

It's proceeding as it should be. There's no story. We're not talking about this. There's your media, Canada. And that's why you're not going to get another ex-Murphy ever. Well, here's to hoping that's not. true. Not that what you just said isn't true. I know that to be true. I like to think there is a little bit of sunshine maybe or a light far off in the distance because on the flip side.

That's right. That's right. It's you. Well, on the flip side, I see myself. I see different people like maybe Trish Wood or I'm sure I'm spacing on like Shadow Davis, you know. Yeah, there's people. Yes, there's people. There's a whole network of folks out there doing this stuff. great and hats off to all of them that's off to you um but again we are being siloed uh in part by algorithms in part by you know the strangle hold on discourse that the mainstream media has with you know the normies and just indifference you know people there's a lot of people that are still indifferent so like this is a complex problem how do we solve it i don't know but as you said just keep pushing the people that are talking about it.

Yeah, well, and I'll finish my earlier thought off by saying the way that you get normies to start to broach this is they have to put energy in, which means they got to put that literally means listening time. Right? Like they just got to, oh, oh, Gord's going to talk about this? Interesting. That's why

it'd be important to have your MP be like, hey, just in case you didn't know, we got political prisoners of 800 plus days. I'm sure the courts have it under control, but just wanted to point that out again that we have two guys still, you know, and that would put it in the public realm again for them maybe to be like, what, what's going on? Because if you haven't been listening to people, when was the last time any of this got talked about? Honestly, two years ago with one picture and a bunch of guns, and after that, everybody just kind of forgot about it. Yeah, a masterful piece of propaganda.

Masterful. Yeah. You know what the funny part about that is, is I think three or four of those guns, they still don't know who owns them. They're not the guys that got arrested. None of them ever belonged to Jerry Moran. The one guy who did have one there has been let out. And Chris Carbarts and Tony Olion X were like properly stored and locked up at private property, not away from Coots, but not on the protest site. And like we just, 13 people were arrested.

Like there's a whole lot about that stuff that's like either irrelevant or we don't know. But that photo went around to get everybody to turn their brains off. Ooh, scary guns, case closed, throw them away forever. Stop thinking about it. And for many people in this country, that photograph worked exactly as planned. Hey, I'll put my hand up first. I talk about this lots with COVID, right? I wasn't the guy day one of whatever month you want to pick.

I just remember in March of 2020. I wasn't the guy that went, this is bullshit right from the start. And when it came to that photo, I'll be the first. to say like that that terrified i was like holy crap conspirator like this is insane and yet it's canada it's version of weapons of mass destruction yes right yes the law the law goes around the world before the truth has even had time to put its shoes on i i agree 100% well gordon i appreciate you giving me some time this morning i know you got kids uh in the house and uh you're on uh father duty so i don't want to hold you here too long uh let's do this again uh soon enough uh i appreciate you

appreciate you giving me some time today. Yeah, no. Thanks, Sean. Thank you for paying attention to this issue. Thank you for doing what you do. Anybody who wants to follow me, Autonomoustruckers.substack.com on Twitter at Gord McGill. And yeah, just keep paying attention and keep trying to puncture the silos

and don't stop talking about it. This is a pretty major issue and a pretty dark stain on Canada, and we need to clean it. Thanks again, Gord. appreciate what you're doing and uh well let's stay in touch yes sir absolutely