Global News Tries To Smear Pierre Poilievre For Marching With James Topp

Global News writer Rachel Gilmore, put out an article yesterday attempting to smear the reputation of both Carlton MP and Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre and veteran James Topp based on the thinnest guilt-by-association connection possible.

Gilmore’s strategy is to try and smear Poilieve as having marched beside a man (Topp) with “far-right extremist ties” by digging into old interviews Topp had done during his march from the coast of Western Canada to Ottawa, to protest mandates and other restrictions, and picking the most unsavory person he happened to talk with. 

That person is Jeremy MacKenzie.

There is no doubt that MacKenzie is someone that people in the know should not want to associate with. He tries to hide his radical beliefs, but indeed is anti-semitic, a white nationalist, and has indicated his support for anti-government riots. 

The issue here is Topp is extremely unlikely to know any of this about MacKenzie and was probably willing to take an interview from anyone who appeared supportive of him during his march across Canada. 

Even the quotation Gilmore uses from Topp’s interview with MacKenzie doesn’t demonstrate he knows much about him other than he was appreciative of everyone who was helping raise awareness of his march.

Gilmore quoted Topps saying during the interview that people like MacKenzie:

Kept (him) hanging on… At least there was other dudes out there that kind of had the same idea that was like, OK, all this stuff is messed up.

Gilmore presents no smoking gun in her whole article that would indicate Topp knew about MacKenzie’s radical views, nor that Poilievre was aware Topp had appeared on MacKenzie’s show and believed Topp was aligned with MacKenzie in any meaningful way.

The whole article relies on innuendo to make any of what Topp and Poilievre did or said seem even vaguely wrong. 

Gilmore is effectively playing a game of Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon and trying to draw thin lines between different figures in Canadian politics to pretend they are all somehow in the same club. 

Gilmore in order to try and beef up her incredibly thin article by citing an “anti-hate expert” Elizabeth Simons from Bernie Farber’s Anti-Hate Network, which has a history of reporting on legitimately hateful people but then attempting to vaguely connect them to mainstream conservative politicians.

The Anti-Hate Network often engages in smear campaigns and was caught putting out blatantly false information during the Freedom Convoy 2022 protests in order to present the movement as “anti-semitic” and “extreme.”

Simons, like Gilmore, just makes vague insinuations that Poilievre and the Conservative Party has “far-right” connections by supporting mainstream anti-mandate movements like the Freedom Convoy and now Topp’s march across Canada. 

No evidence of any real connection, just more left-wing conspiracy theories from proven liars. 

In a growing pattern with Rachel Gilmore, she wrote her smear piece accusing Poilieve and Topps of being aligned with an actual bigot, and when other journalists called her out for it she immediately projects her irrationality onto others. 

Mark Slapinski, who runs Toronto 99 News, covered the story which Gilmore quickly took a screenshot of to pretend as if the reaction to her yellow journalism is what constitutes poor behaviour in this situation.

This all goes to show how the Canadian legacy media is absolutely an opponent of Canadian Conservatives and not a neutral reporter of the news as they present to be.

Any news editor worth their salt would not have published Gilmore’s smear piece and should now apologize to James Topp and MP Pierre Poilievre for having distributed such disgusting false information about them.