At Poilievre’s Windsor rally, a YouTuber collides with a ‘mainstream journalist’ (That journalist was me)

A cheerfully brash bald guy cavorts among the thousands at a Poilievre rally in Windsor, Ont., livestreaming his antics from a pole-mounted iPhone.

“Hi, hi, let’s go!” I hear him call. “Do you believe the polls?”

“Not for a second,” comes the answer.

It’s The Pleb, a right-wing YouTuber and darling of the Freedom Convoy movement who’s been following Poilievre around the country, same as me. Everyone at these rallies seems to know and love him. The Pleb has a quarter million followers on YouTube and over 150,000 on X; this fan base, along with a brand ambassadorship for the cryptocurrency betting platform Polymarket, has sponsored his cross-country travels. 

I’d never heard of Pleb, as everyone here calls him, until I met him at the Penticton rally one week earlier. (Pleb doesn’t share his real name publicly; when I emailed to ask him to confirm his real name, he replied “I receive so many death threats and have so many stalkers. I would prefer if you used the name ‘The Pleb.’”) Even in a crowd of thousands he’s impossible to miss: a high-volume walking stream of consciousness, laughing and joking his way through the masses like the star of his own birthday party. He instantly reminded me of certain friends I used to party with: the gregarious cheerleader whose energy feeds the crowd, and vice versa. That day in Penticton, when I introduced myself as a reporter for Canada’s National Observer; he replied without skipping a beat, “oh boy, I know what you think of us!” We both laughed and bumped fists. 

We’ve met up at almost every rally since, building a wary camaraderie expressed through high fives and knowing looks from across the crowd we’ve both been paid to cover. These rallies are wild. We’re lucky to be here. On that much, we agree.

In Windsor, I walked past Pleb and entered the party without interrupting. The cavernous space inside echoed with rockabilly tunes and sporadic “Bring It Home” chants. I chatted with nearby strangers as we waited for Poilievre to arrive. Ryan Guptill, the guy who runs communications for the Conservative campaign spotted me and urged me to go to the journalist pen, a cordoned-off area in front of the podium where reporters can get the best view of Poilievre, but also can’t speak to the public. Poilievre’s staffers don’t like us mingling.

“I’m a journalist at a public event,” I reminded Guptill.

“I know,” Guptill said politely. “It’s just…”

“You’d prefer me to stay in the pen?”

“Yeah,” he smiled, and wandered off.  

Eventually I did make my way there. It’s the only place to get a good view of the podium without being crushed. And there was the Pleb, standing just outside the cordon, posing for selfies with fans, beaming and calling “let’s go!” 

I ducked over and said hi. “Hey man!” he grinned. We bumped fists. His camera was pointed at me, rolling. I said I’d seen him outside earlier, talking about the polls, and asked him what he thought of them.

His laugh took on a hint of uncertainty. “Am I the big culprit now for ‘don’t believe the polls’?”

**

A few hours later, alone in my hotel room, I watched the stream he posted to his Youtube channel. I skipped to an hour and thirty six minutes in – the moment I arrived, unbeknownst to Pleb: Pleb’s walking through the lineup, talking to the chat group watching live online (at that point in the evening there are 6,000 of them). “This is what a blue wave looks like, Chat. This is a blue wave!” 

He gets swarmed by rough men in hoodies and ballcaps, their faces lit up in his presence. It’s a different crowd, far warmer, when you see it through his eyes. They tell him they love him, watch him all the time, he’s changed their lives. “Thanks!” he replies. “Hi! Nice to meet you! Thank you! Hi, Hi!”

 Walking on, he continues his narration. “I believe the crowd, I believe my eyes,” he tells Chat. “Let’s go! Look how many people are coming in!”

“Too big to rig!” someone shouts. 

“Too big to rig!” Pleb shouts back, swinging the camera around.

We see two surly men, one bearded, one draped in a body-length Canadian flag.

“Do you believe the polls?” Pleb asks them. 

“Not for a second,” the bearded one declares. He spreads his arms wide. “Look around you, yeah!”

“This is the polls right here,” Pleb says, raising his camera high to pan the couple hundred people lined up in a snaking queue. “Insane … don’t believe your lying eyes,” he says with irony. “That’s Orwell.”

Twenty-four minutes later, he’s inside the warehouse, just outside the journalist pen, talking to me. 

“Am I the big culprit now for ‘don’t believe the polls’?”

I laugh too, a little awkward. “I heard you talking earlier about it, so I wondered, what’s your opinion?”

He pauses, treading carefully, then says: “My prediction is, in the Saskatchewan election they predicted the NDP would win, and they got it completely wrong.”

“Okay,” I say.

“My prediction is, I think the polls are wrong here too. I mean I’ve been to these rallies all over the country, we’re seeing record-breaking crowds everywhere we’re going. It’s hard for me to believe — I’m not going to say I don’t believe the polls fully. But I believe the crowds more. You know?”

“I guess my question is, would you have been this skeptical five months ago, when Poilievre was 20 points ahead?”

“No! When Poilievre’s ahead, the polls are real, you didn’t know that?”

We laugh, the tension breaks, he claps me on the shoulder. “That’s my joke, no, no I’m just kidding around.”

A fan interrupts us. “Oh you want a picture?” Pleb says. “Come on in.” 

The woman hands her phone to a Conservative staffer standing right behind us, who obligingly snaps a photo. Pleb asks if he can get a press pass today and enter the pen. The answer is no. We part ways.

**

Poilievre’s team seems to have a conflicted relationship with Pleb. Many treat him warmly and seem to personally like him. They take pictures for his fans. But this is a delicate dance, and boundaries are crucial. 

Not to Pleb, of course, who kept slipping into the journalist’s pen, only to be kindly but firmly ushered out by staffers. It’s us they want inside. Him, they want out. 

That’s where he’s most useful. Pleb works these crowds like no one else. He’s a dream cheerleader, mainlining Conservative enthusiasm straight into the veins of a quarter million Canadians. That enthusiasm runs on official slogans – “axe the tax” and “stop the crime” — but also sketchier ones that Poilievre can’t afford to be formally associated with. Slogans like “too big to rig.” Slogans that are harmless until they aren’t. 

What a gift to Poilievre, then, when the CBC (his supposed enemy) reported on Sunday how Liberal operatives had planted “stop the steal” buttons at a recent Conservative conference, in a hamfisted attempt to connect Conservatives with Trump slogans. The Conservative campaign pounced instantly, claiming this as proof that “it’s the Liberals who are attempting to bring American-style politics to our country.”

That news came on the heels of a Globe and Mail editorial critiquing the narrative that Poilievre’s stoking doubt in the electoral process. “We don’t deny that some of the Conservative supporters asking ‘do you believe the polls’ may be blurring the line between legitimate skepticism and conspiracy theory,” the Globe wrote. “But it seems mostly to be a sentiment held by partisans who are coming to grips with the massive swing in the polls.” Besides, they added, all parties downplay the polls when things aren’t looking good. “It is a strategy designed to keep partisans engaged that has never before led to the suspicion that the party involved intended to question the outcome of an election.”

Fair enough. But it remains true that this Conservative party is doing all kinds of things that have never been done before. They’ve banned reporters from the campaign bus. They’ve radically clamped down on the number of questions we can ask their leader. And they’re actively, knowingly pumping Trump’s ideology (a hallmark of which is disbelief in unfavourable polls and electoral loss) into the base, through channels the general public is unaware of. 

One of those channels is Pleb, whose profile banner on X features an image of Trump smiling beside Poilievre in mid-apple-bite. Pleb’s language, his entire ethos, is the lingua franca of Trumpworld. In that playful, joking-not-joking way, Pleb’s spreading the conspiracies that have suddenly cost Poilievre his 20-point lead.

That, surely, is one reason why those staffers don’t want him in the pen. There, the outside world might notice him.

So long as he’s immersed in the crowd, Pleb remains invisible to everyone who isn’t part of his enormous echo chamber. Apparently that includes the Globe and Mail’s editorial board. But for Poilievre’s massive base, Pleb’s on centre stage, performing under floodlights. For them, he’s the real journalist. In another video from that rally, posted by Rebel News’ David Menzies, two women cite the Pleb as a reason not to believe the polls. “That’s who people need to listen to,” one says. Many of Pleb’s fans are watching his livestream on their phones when he approaches at a rally in real life; when they meet and clasp hands, they’re briefly occupying two realities at once. 

It’s an ecstatic experience for everyone involved, including, at some level, the Conservative campaign — for eventually the staffers relented and let Pleb join us in the pen. He put his camera down for a minute – he was losing his voice – and shook my hand again. We started chatting. He asked me how long I’ve been covering politics. I told him I’ve been writing for years but have never covered an entire campaign. What a rush, we agreed. There was just so much energy in here. 

“Two years ago I was driving a garbage truck,” he said, shaking his head in wonder. “YouTube, man. It’s crazy.” Now, on the back of pure charisma and riding a political wave, he’s got a quarter million friends and gets paid to travel the world. “I’m grateful for it all.” 

In an almost bashful tone, he told me he models himself after Hunter S. Thompson. His profile picture on YouTube shows him holding up a press pass – in earnest. A part of him wants to be considered a serious journalist, even though he disparages mainstream journalism. Then he asked if I was going to quote him on the polls.

“I might!” I said.

“I was joking; you know that right?” He was afraid I’d think he was gullible – that I’d think he actually believed the polls are fake.

“Of course,” I said. “That was obvious.” 

What I didn’t say was, that’s the problem. I know he’s joking. But it’s not at all clear that his followers do.

**

 In Pleb’s YouTube stream from that night, he turns the camera on himself right after our interaction. “I’ve got people from the mainstream media asking me about this polls narrative!” he exclaims to Chat. “Now they’re gonna blame me for telling people not to believe the polls. I’m being blamed for this!” 

A look of consternation passes over his face. Maybe it’s his annoyance with me; maybe it’s the knowledge that he’s been signal boosting “too big to rig” to 6000 people live, and untold thousands more at their leisure. It’s hardly just tonight – his Youtube page has a stream from ten days ago called “Pierre Poilievre crowd sizes prove the POLLS ARE ALL FAKE!” with 137,000 views. 

The grim thought passes. Pleb burst back into a grin, proclaims, “but that’s okay, I’ll be glad to own it.” He poses with a fan for another selfie. That done, he looks at his camera and says “7,800 in the Chat, get this to 10K! Of course he’s gonna quote me! He’s gonna quote me, I said the polls are real when Pierre’s ahead. It was a joke, but he’ll probably use my actual quote.” His eyes drop. 

A few minutes on, his camera finds me unawares. I’ve climbed a 10-foot photo ladder in the pen and am looking towards the podium, my back to him. He’s filming me, I’m writing about him. 

“That was the journalist who asked me the question right there,” he tells Chat. “Do you guys think he’s gonna quote me? I think he’ll probably quote me. Just kidding.” 

He reverses the camera back to his own face, and resumes his travels through the crowd, stopping every five feet for a selfie. “Hi, hi, nice to meet you!” 

“Too big to rig!” someone calls. He smiles and calls back, still looking straight ahead to just beside the camera lens, “Too big to rig, Chat. Too big to rig.”