Fox News host Will Cain took the network’s overt cheerleading of the so-called Canadian “Freedom Convoy” to a new level on Wednesday, dramatically claiming the far-right collection of anti-vax demonstrators currently represents the “divide between the common man and the elite.”
Over the past two weeks, Fox News has devoted outsized coverage fawning over the protests against COVID-19 restrictions in Canada, which began as a convoy of truckers raging against the country’s vaccine mandates for crossing the U.S.-Canada border. Since then, hundreds of semi-trucks and passenger vehicles have snarled traffic in and around the Canadian capital of Ottawa, prompting local residents and government officials to label it an “occupation.”
Even as the protests have attracted fringe elements and increasingly drawn criticism from Canadians themselves, especially after truckers blocked the busiest crossing on the U.S.-Canada border, the network and American conservatives have cheered on the anti-vax truckers while describing them as “mainstream.”
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With Canadian police now seizing vehicles and making arrests in an effort to break up the ongoing Ottawa protest, Cain appeared on Fox News’ The Faulkner Focus to discuss the possibility that the United States could see a similar protest hit Washington, D.C. (Crowdfunding for the Canadian protests have disproportionately come from American sources and right-wing influencers.)
Calling the convoy the “most fascinating thing taking place in the news cycle,” Cain said the protests—which have since morphed into a denunciation of ALL coronavirus mitigation efforts—are “an illustration” of the most “inherent divide” taking place across all of Western civilization.
“It is not racial. It’s not Black or white. It’s not political. It’s not Republican or Democrat,” the Fox & Friends Weekend co-host declared. “It truly is—to anyone that thinks this sounds pandering, it truly has only become more so obvious—the divide between the common man and the elite.”
Cain, who has relentlessly railed against mitigation efforts, continued: “What you see happening in Canada is the rising up of the blue-collar worker—the common man. These people are not anti-vax, these people are not necessarily Republicans. These people are not necessarily conservatives. These are people that individuals should retain the right of choice and they are resisting a top-down approach to their life from the elites who tell them what they should think and hear and what they should submit to in terms of mandates.”
A recent poll among actual Canadians, however, shows that the vast majority of citizens in that country don’t agree with the protesters.
While a significant portion of the country expresses frustration with the nation’s pandemic restrictions, 68 percent of those interviewed feel they have “very little in common with how the protestors in Ottawa see things.” Even the majority of conservatives don’t sympathize with the Ottawa protesters.
Furthermore, the country itself has a 79 percent vaccination rate, and 90 percent of Canada’s trucking force has been vaccinated.
Anchor Harris Faulkner, meanwhile, said Americans should “look at Canada for some of that answer” on resisting COVID-19 mandates because “they’re winning their argument.” She also noted that the organizers of the self-described “Freedom Convoy” are “downright disgusted” with how the “liberal media” has covered the protests.
“These truckers have been called every insult under the sun from fringe to far right to hateful to a cult,” Cain reacted. “And Harris, I think you are right that the United States is sort of the original freedom-loving population but we’re not leading the way right now when it comes to resisting top-down elite mandates. Right now, we’re being led by Canadian truckers.”
