Fox News host Laura Ingraham clapped back at the decision to reinstall security fencing around the U.S. Capitol ahead of a protest scheduled for this weekend in Washington, D.C.
Truckers taking part in “The People’s Convoy,” a demonstration similar to the Canadian “Freedom Convoy,” are expected to arrive in D.C. by week’s end, vowing to block highways in protest of Biden administration policies.
As such, authorities in the nation’s capital have ordered fencing put back up, which Ingraham criticized along with Ezra Levant, founder of Canada-based Rebel News, who was a guest on her show along with The Federalist senior editor Molly Hemingway.
“Blocking off Ottawa, fencing around the Capitol…I mean – they love that fence,” Ingraham said. “They don’t like it at the border, no fence at the border, they hate the fence at the border, but they like to wall off the U.S. Capitol because they never much liked the people who went in to visit the Capitol,” said Ingraham.
“So, it’s all going up again. I don’t know if the razor wire’s going up, but this is a prison camp feel around our elected officials,” she added.
“The police literally tell the banks which accounts to freeze and they do it,” Levant said in response to the administration of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after he invoked the Emergencies Act to disband the weeks-long Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa.
“There’s no legal recourse and you’re in fact banned from suing. So, what that means is if there’s someone who’s merely accused of supporting the truckers, maybe had chipped in $50 to their crowdfund, maybe you walked alongside their trucks one day, your entire family bank account is frozen, so not just you, but your wife and your kids can’t get money for groceries or rent or gas and there is no legal appeal,” Levant added.
“That is exactly the Chinese social credit system and that could come to America just as easily as the rest of the martial law.”
The Pentagon has also authorized the National Guard to be deployed to D.C. to assist police, reports said Wednesday.
Here is a transcript of the segment:
Laura Ingraham: “Ezra Levant, publisher of Rebel News, and Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, Fox News contributor. Ezra, that was your journalist injured by the police. This is very personal to you, I know. Is there a warning that Americans should take from what [Justin] Trudeau is doing up north?”
Ezra Levant: “Absolutely, there’s a template here. I mean, the violence is outrageous; the ‘show your papers’ is outrageous. I’m deeply concerned about what they’re doing to journalists that are not with the government agenda. I can’t believe they actually shot our reporter, but I think what is a graver and far-reaching threat is that of the social credit-style approach to punishing anyone with the wrong opinions. Justin Trudeau has cleared the streets, that was not hard to do. There weren’t that many trucks, but he’s persisting with his emergency powers, so he can seize and freeze bank accounts of anyone who’s in his opposition without going to court. The police literally tell the banks which accounts to freeze and they do it. There’s no legal recourse and you’re in fact banned from suing. So, what that means is if there’s someone who’s merely accused of supporting the truckers, maybe had chipped in $50 to their crowdfund, maybe you walked alongside their trucks one day, your entire family bank account is frozen, so not just you, but your wife and your kids can’t get money for groceries or rent or gas and there is no legal appeal. That is exactly the Chinese social credit system and that could come to America just as easily as the rest of the martial law.”
Ingraham: “Well, Mollie, you know, I sort of went through this in the Angle, but given the fact that both Biden and Trudeau, over the course of, you know – really separated by only 5 days, 6 days, extended their emergency authority when COVID is petering out. What does this tell you?”
Mollie Hemingway: “Well, it’s what we’ve seen for the last two years, where we’ve had this amazing, constraining of freedoms in this country and other western countries and what we’re watching happen in Canada is horrifying on its own merits, but also because we know that this is what the regime wants to do here, as well. And there are multiple problems with it. You know, this seizing of these bank accounts is done in complete violation of presumption of innocence and that’s something that both Canada and our country share, is a belief, is we say that you have the right to be presumed innocent. That’s not happening here, but if you don’t have the right to make financial transactions, you don’t have any rights at all: you don’t have freedom of speech, you don’t have freedom of religion, you don’t have freedom to protest. This is a direct assault on democratic republics and from the very same people who claim that they’re out to save democracy, these are where the assaults are coming from. These authoritarian tyrants who are cracking down on natural rights that we all have.”
Ingraham: “Blocking off Ottawa, fencing around the Capitol, Ezra, here in Washington D.C., I mean – they love that fence. They don’t like it at the border, no fence at the border, they hate the fence at the border, but they like to wall off the U.S. Capitol because they never much liked the people who went in to visit the Capitol. So, it’s all going up again. I don’t know if the razor wire’s going up, but this is a prison camp feel around our elected officials, Ezra.”
Levant: “Well, they’re doing the same thing in Ottawa, also. There’s a huge plaza right outside Parliament that is traditionally where peaceful protests happen. Police refuse to allow anyone to go there. Like I say, there are about 100 checkpoints in Ottawa where you have to show your ID or you’ll be arrested or even assaulted. Even journalists in Alexa’s case and two of our other journalists, they demand to know what media company they’re with and if the police in their whimsical, capricious choice don’t like that journalistic company or that one, they deny them access. I’ve been to military checkpoints in a third world country; it has that same dangerous feeling, where you’re at the whim of any guy with a gun. That’s in downtown Ottawa today.”
Ingraham: “And this is why Washington, D.C., to this day, is kind of a ghost town, lots of parts of this city, it doesn’t feel like the Washington, D.C. that I first came to, that’s for sure. Ezra and Mollie, thank you.”