Exclusive - NJ State Sen. Ed Durr on Canada: 'I Support the Truckers'

State Sen. Ed Durr (R-NJ), who wowed the nation by defeating longtime Senate President Stephen Sweeney last year, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview Wednesday that he supported the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” led by fellow truckers, who have been “social distancing in trucking long before it became a popular phrase.”

Durr asserted that any decision to receive a vaccine or any medical intervention is “personal business, not the government’s business,” and dismissed far-left Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “joke” for calling trucker protesters racist when he himself has a long history of wearing blackface.

Last November, Durr became the most famous trucker in America when he defeated the Garden State’s longtime Senate President Steve Sweeney (D) in a stunning upset that wowed political experts across the spectrum. After 25 years on the road with over two million miles driven, he knows a thing or two about what motivated the truckers to protest the vaccine mandates up in Canada.

“I support the truckers,” Durr said over the phone. “I feel that anybody’s health is their personal business, not the government’s business. So when you have a mandate that requires you to tell everybody what your health status is to enter a country or have a job, it is wrong.”

“I think it’s a private issue between yourself, your doctor, your spouse. It’s not for public knowledge. It’s not for your government to know,” he added.

When asked how truckers can specifically influence policy in ways that other protests cannot, Durr put it bluntly: “When the wheels stop, the world stops.”

“You need truckers,” Durr said. “You need truckers to get the products from the ships to the stores, from the stores to the factories, and from the factories to the stores. From the railyards, from the airport, it takes a truck. You’ll never move product without a truck. They are needed.”

“When they are saying that they are not going to accept this, they will affect policy. I firmly believe it,” he added.

Regarding the challenges these vaccine mandates imposed on truckers that might not be obvious to the average citizen, Durr noted that truckers already work a job in isolation. From a trucker’s perspective, the mandates appear less like a public health measure and more like a tool for political control.

“It’s always about control,” Durr said. “We’ve been social distancing in trucking long before it became a popular phrase. We spent hours, days, weeks in a truck alone, and you just have yourself to deal with. You have the long hauls. I used to do the long hauls. I used to run to Quebec. It is hard enough to go through the border crossings. Now to add a medical procedure to go through the border. It’s just ridiculous. It is a punishment of sorts.”

Durr noted that millions of migrants cross the southern border into the United States every day, and few, if any, are being asked to present a vaccine passport.

When the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” launched late last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attempted to dismiss it as little more than a “fringe minority” composed of racists and kooks. Durr noted that Trudeau should check his own racist past before maligning hardworking people.

“Justin Trudeau, I don’t know him personally, but he is a joke,” said Durr. “For somebody who can go and call other individuals racist with the things he has done in the past just seems absurd.”

Beyond Canada, Durr believed that the truckers in America should be inspired by their friends up north and even form their own “Freedom Convoy” in Washington, DC.

I think their voices definitely need to be heard. I think the only way that people hear things is when you protest. They were concerned with police brutality when Black Lives Matter started protesting. It seems like they were concerned with all the other activists when they would protest. So why shouldn’t truck drivers protest and let their voices be heard and state that this is a discrimination against them?

Driving a truck across the border is no different than driving your car up and down the highway. They are isolated. They do not touch anybody. They don’t see anybody. What is the reason? It’s just politics.

In his home state of New Jersey, Durr said he would continue to fight for people’s bodily autonomy in the face of government mandates. He is currently sponsoring a bill (S1106) that seeks to prohibit the “mandatory use of medical devices by minors without informed parental consent.”

“We have a major issue here in New Jersey with parents being concerned about their children being masked in schools,” he said. “I presented a bill this week (S1106) that would do away with the masking because it would put it in the parents’ hands. It would do away with the school deciding and would allow the parents to decide.”