BUCK: Right now, there are reports of a full-on crackdown, as in the arrests are beginning right now in Ottawa of the Canadian Freedom Convoy. We’re joined now by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Senator, thanks for being with us.
SEN. JOHNSON: Well, guys, glad to be here.
BUCK: You’re a border state — a different border — and not too far from the state that you represent, Senator, you’ve got a situation unfolding right now with the Trudeau government calling in for the police to just start making all the arrests of the trucker convoy. This comes after the news broke that they were seizing people’s bank accounts as well as some of the Democrat corporate media were naming and shaming people after a hack of those who had tried to donate money. What do you make of all this especially given that this might be the day of all of it coming to an end?
SEN. JOHNSON: Well, you’re right, we are a border state. We speak kind of speak semi-Canadian, eh? But there’s such a simple solution here. Why don’t they just respect their freedom and their personal health autonomy. Doesn’t have to come down to police cracking down, turning Canada into a totalitarian state. Just respect people’s freedom. Just blows me away. Our response to covid is just insane. I was listening to you earlier in the hour.
There’s so much about how we respond to covid that makes no sense, and this is just the latest example. Just acknowledge their freedom, their personal health autonomy and let ’em live their lives — I mean, particularly truckers. They work alone. They’re not in contact with too many people; they’re not a danger to anybody. This is just bizarre, what’s happening in Canada. Now, I am 100% behind the freedom fighters, those Canadian truckers in Canada and anybody who’s willing to fight for freedom.
CLAY: Senator Johnson, I don’t know if you paid attention to the story that came out of Louisville about the BLM member who tried to assassinate a mayoral candidate in Louisville. The reason why I’m bringing it up with you in particular is in Kenosha we saw Kyle Rittenhouse not allowed to raise money for his own defense, even though obviously a jury thankfully saw the evidence and said that was legitimate self-defense. Should we have a real investigation into these crowdfunding platforms and the choices that they make?
Because they allowed BLM to raise $100,000 and bail out this guy who tried to assassinate a mayoral candidate in Louisville. We’re seeing what happens with them in Canada. Obviously, that’s a different country. But to me what they’ve tried to do and what they are doing in terms of the way that they’re using their platform is crying out for an investigation from the government into how they are applying their policies in what would otherwise seem to be very similar situations where people are trying to raise money to be able to provide the best defense in a criminal context.
SEN. JOHNSON: You’re not saying there’s a double standard, are you?
CLAY: (laughing)
SEN. JOHNSON: Again, I was listening earlier, and you’re exactly right. What keeps our financial system together is just confidence. You have to have confidence that if you deposit something in a bank and it gets turned into digital bits, that when you go back and need that money, you’re gonna get that cash back ,or those digital bits aren’t just gonna disappear. So, these platforms that are — you know, these GoFundMe and those types of things.
Now people don’t have the confidence that if they deposit money for a particular cause…? I think they’re slitting their own throats, quite honestly. But, yeah, I’m happy to investigate all this stuff. But guys, we are faced with double standard after double standard whether we’re talking about the Russian collusion hoax and the way that the press is not covering the Michael Sussman indictment — whether we’re just talking about so many things — there’s a huge double standard.
But we’re up against people that have the power to maintain that double standard. It just, we have the truth on our side. We have policies that actually work to maintain freedom and create opportunity but they’ve got the power of the media, of the Big Tech social media, those giants. As conservatives we are facing many, many challenges.
BUCK: Speaking to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. And, Senator, I mentioned that it is true you’re a border state of course with Canada, but every state in the era of the Biden administration in a sense becomes a border state because of the wide-open southern border that we currently have. DHS just reported earlier this week 153,941 “migrant encounters,” apprehensions in January, that is about double what it was in January of 2021, quadruple what it was in January of 2020.
And DHS reported that just for the month of January alone, 62,573 migrants who entered illegally were released into the interior of the United States with no real tracking mechanism or anything else going on there. How is this sustainable? They had the worst year ever for illegal immigration in this country last year on Biden’s watch. They’re advocating in so many ways, it seems, for illegals to come into the United States. Are the American people is it just…? They’re hoping that we don’t pay attention? We don’t notice? ‘Cause probably gonna be worse this year, Senator.
But in terms of who they process and disperse, plus the 344,000 known got-aways, there is about a million and a quarter people that somehow got in this country illegally. They’re not document. We don’t know where they are. But put that in perspective, guys. That’s a number that’s larger than the population in eight states. That’s the extent of this problem — and of course we don’t talk about the human depredations of the human trafficking, the sex trafficking, the drug trafficking, hundred thousand overdoses.
How about the gang members that are getting in, MS-13 and other just vicious gangs? No, the news media, let’s face it, they got their candidates elected, even though he campaigned from a basement, they got Biden elected. Now they’re gonna cover up for all the disasters that his policies are creating for Americans. But, again, I’m somewhat hopeful that they really can’t find 7.5% inflation, rising gas prices, the rising crime brought about by their low bail policies their defund police. They can’t hide that from the people that are devastated from the results of their policies.
CLAY: Senator Johnson, what did you think of the Durham revelations and of the fact — and this is not gonna surprise you, I know, but how quickly — many in the, quote– unquote, mainstream media ran to help cover for Hillary Clinton? She emerged and made her speech and claimed it’s the fevered dream of Fox News deplorables, basically. What do you think about the significance of what has been laid out so far, and where are we headed as it pertains to the Clinton apparatus spying on President Trump?
SEN. JOHNSON: Well, first of all, it’s just Exhibit A of the double standard, the grotesque double standards of the media and literally we don’t have journalists in the mainstream, we have advocates, advocates for the Democrat Party but it’s really confirming what I always expect. We uncovered the Lisa Page, Peter Strzok texts, and I made those things public. The email that I — or the text that I — always used to highlight, still do, was written by Strzok to Page in December 2016, between the election and the inauguration of Trump.
It said, “[O]ur sisters are leaking like mad. Scorned, worried, political. They’re kicking into overdrive.” Now, what did Peter Strzok know they were worried about? Could it be their involvement in the wrongdoings, in the 2016 campaign, the Russian hoax, the Steele dossier that was Russian misinformation which they knew as early as October 2016? Could it be they knew about Michael Sussman and what he was doing with highly sensitive government contracts to allow them to track the internet traffic from Trump Tower as well as then later on the executive office of the president?
I’ve always felt that the Russian hoax was an intelligence community — and Buck, you’re from the CIA. They’re good at this. This is a diversionary operation by the people in the intelligence community. Remember when you had, what, 50 intelligence agency professionals come out and say, “Oh, that’s disk drive? That’s Russian disinformation.” They had no evidence of that. It’s just all part of the diversion operation. That’s what I’m fairly convinced about, and I think that’s really what the John Durham indictments are showing.
I just hope he’s gotten his hands on a lot more evidence than we were able to get our hands a hold of from the FBI even though we subpoenaed Christopher Wray. So he’s gotta reveal all this. Merrick Garland has to make his entire report public. Gina Haspel. Here’s an example. Chuck Grassley and I wrote a letter just kind of laying out all information we need from the CIA. This is in June of 2020.
We couldn’t even get her to give us a phone call to tell us why she wasn’t responding to our legitimate congressional oversight requests. That’s the contempt that these people have for the American public, the contempt they hold for the people’s elected representatives. This is an enormous scandal and the silence in the mainstream media is deafening but it’s very revealing.
BUCK: Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Senator, always appreciate you coming by to hang out with us. Thank you, sir.
SEN. JOHNSON: Have a great day. Stay well.
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