Jordan Klepper has rarely witnessed a right-wing protest he didn’t want to infiltrate. So for his latest episode of “Fingers the Pulse,” The Daily Show correspondent headed to Ottawa to get to the bottom of the Great Canadian Trucker Convoy of 2022—yep, the same protestors that Russell Brand is for some reason praising. Among the questions Klepper wanted answered: How long do you plan to stay here? (Two years was one man’s answer.) Are you smoking a lot of weed to pass the time? (Yes, the same man said.) And have you seen the end table Klepper ordered from Wayfair several weeks ago and has yet to receive (no luck there)?
As Klepper attempted to make his way around the streets of what he called “Canada’s eighth-best city,” he couldn’t help but wonder: How had it come to this? What began as a protest against vaccine requirements for truckers entering Canada has morphed into an all-out war against vaccine mandates in general and the kind of thing Tomi Lahren and Ted Cruz are on board with (which is never a good thing). Yet the results of this ‘Freedom Convoy’ have meant a further disruption to the already challenging supply chain in America, plus higher prices for American consumers. None of which really hits Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau where it hurts, which seems to be their primary goal… if they even have one.
When one protestor told Klepper that the demonstrations were “about our freedoms,” he asked if she could “be any more generic?” It turns out, she could: “You know, if you are vaccinated, you get to do certain things. If you’re not vaccinated, you don’t. I don’t think people should be divided. We should all be together, united.”
Klepper, ever the professional, wanted to make sure he had the protestors’ side of the story right, so he clarified: “We’re setting up, essentially, a truck barrier to keep everybody together so they can be united,” and was told “yes,” exactly that. “Gotcha,” he replied. “We might as well lock them in. Sort of like a parent who locks the door and says, ‘You guys are in here until the water runs out, you become friends, or democracy crumbles.’” Again, he was met with two nodding heads of agreement.
Klepper learned a lot more during his north of the border adventure, including that Canadians love to appropriate American culture by comparing vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany, pushing QAnon conspiracy theories, and stealing the line that Donald Trump stole from Adolf Hitler by declaring that we should “Make North America Great Again.” He also learned about Agenda 2030, which one protestor described as the world being headed toward “one government” that will “sterilize us [so] that only certain people can have kids.” (Though he also guessed that he might be sterile already.)
You can watch the full segment above.