Participants in the Canadian trucker convoy protest in the capital city of Ottawa against vaccine mandates are slamming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after he claimed Monday that they were “racist” and that participants defaced war memorials.
Over the past week, hundreds of truckers drove across the country to converge on the capital to protest vaccine mandates for truckers crossing the U.S-Canada border. They were cheered along the way by supporters, and have protested peacefully.
Establishment media outlets attempted to paint the truckers as racist, antisemitic, and Islamophobic, citing “experts.”
Rebel News founder Ezra Levant addressed the crowd on Saturday: noting that it was both diverse and non-violent:
The protesters briefly decorated a statue to Terry Fox, a Canadian runner and cancer research activist, with flags and signs.
They later cleaned the statue, though media reports claimed they had vandalized it.
They also cleaned up the protest site:
Trudeau, speaking from quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19, declared Monday:
Over the past few days, Canadians were shocked and, frankly, disgusted by the behavior displayed by some people protesting in our nation’s capital. I want to be very clear: we are not intimidated by those who hurl insults and abuse at small business workers and steal food from the homeless. We won’t give in to those who fly racist flags. We won’t cave to those who engage in vandalism or dishonor the memory of our veterans.
Trudeau appeared to be echoing unverified claims on social media, including claims about the Terry Fox statue, and a claim that truckers had parked their cars on a war memorial.
Levant told Breitbart News that the two people who had parked on the monument moved their cars when told to do so. He added that the claim of stealing food from the homeless arose from an incident in which a protester had asked to be fed at a soup kitchen.
Trudeau also appeared to refer to claims that truckers flew swastika flags, including one flown from an expensive hotel at some distance from the protest:
Levant said that one protester drew a swastika on a Canadian flag — not to endorse the swastika, but as a commentary on Trudeau’s “fascist” mandates, one with which Levant said he did not agree, but which was not intended as a racist statement.
Another man showed up wearing a Confederate flag, Levant said, but had his face covered and was told by others to leave.
Trudeau’s claims were “complete B.S.,” Levant said, and an attempt to discredit legitimate protest.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.