It's about dividing us so people like Steve Bannon and Fox can get more power: Rick Wilson on Canadian trucker protest
In a conversation about the Canadian trucker protest, Republican strategist Rick Wilson explained that this fight is really nothing more than an opportunity to ignite the right and fight back against institutions and experts under the guise that the "elites" shouldn't be trusted.
Speaking to MSNBC on Sunday, Wilson said that attempting to bring those in power means that people like Steve Bannon can weasel his way into power.
"I think what you're seeing here is the performative nature of what used to be conservativism," he told host Yasmin Vossoughian. "Now it is just the objection to power, the objection to expertise, the objection to anyone they call the elites. What you're seeing in a thing like this is essentially they're always looking for any wedge between working people and norms and institutions in the modern era. They want the disruption. They want the chaos. Their idea is not about vaccination. It's about destroying the infrastructure politically and socially that keeps people like Steve Bannon and the folks at Fox News from assuming more power. They believe in chaos. They believe in disorder."
It harkens back to Mark 3:25, "And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand." The U.S. adopted it during World War II or posters saying, "United we stand. Divided we fall." Wilson says that the far-right can't win because they're such a small minority. If they divide people, however, they can rise to power.
Vossoughian noted that 85 percent of the Canadian truckers are fully vaccinated and that those truckers who were in Ottawa protesting were very few. There were more anti-vaccine supporters from the U.S. and Canada who joined the protest than actual truckers themselves.
She then ran a clip of "The Daily Show's," Jordan Klepper who captured the Canadian truckers revealing that they're being influenced by QAnon conspiracy theories, like the return of JFK Jr.
"If it wasn't so dangerous, it would be laughably funny and we could joke about it, but I agree completely with Rick," said Matthew Dowd. "I would actually -- I think all of this is a seamless thing, including adding to Fox News' stand on Ukraine and Russia. I think it's all part of the exact same pattern, which there is a segment of society, and Fox News seems to be infiltrating it. It's not just America and us lending our worst ideas to our foreign -- our northern neighbor, but it's happening in other countries in the world. And this is the danger: The danger is that there is a group of people that no longer believe in the 'we.' They no longer believe in the common good. They no longer believe in the first, you know, seven words of the Constitution of the United States of America, which is 'We the people of the United States."
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