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Rob Ford Crack Scandal: 16 tweets by diehard Rob Ford supporters

Rob Ford Crack Scandal: 16 tweets by diehard Rob Ford supporters

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(Image: Nisarg Lakhmani)

Who cares if the city’s police chief has seen a video of Rob Ford smoking what might be crack? Certainly not Ford Nation. Yesterday, the mayor’s ever-loyal  fan base proved that no amount of so-called “police documents” or “facts” will make them turn away from his Fordship. Below, a sampling from the hardliners—a list we’ll update as more become available.


Topics: Rob Ford Rob Ford Crack Scandal Toronto

69 thoughts on “Rob Ford Crack Scandal: 16 tweets by diehard Rob Ford supporters”

  3. ALL TRUE FACTS

    NOTHING BUT A WHICH HUNT

    where are the questions for the unelected (appointed by DAVID MILLER) police chief? why aren’t we focusing on the possible conspiracy there?

  6. The sad fact is that even a(n alleged) crack user is doing a better job as mayor than anyone else on council would. Those sore losers who are bitching and moaning about the ‘distraction’ should just let him do his job instead of whining as you have since your horse lost the election and there would be little distraction. Leave the man alone.

  8. What has he done? Only waste Police time and resources, lying through his teeth and not come clean about what he has been up to. Tell me what has he done for this city other than show contempt for the people of Toronto and spew out platitudes about stopping this imaginary gravy train?

  9. There is no way you are a real person!

    A couple free lessons for you:
    1. A “fact” is always true if it is a fact. You speak like a redundant moron.
    2. Which is not a witch… I don’t think this needs an explanation.

    Rob Ford is represented by his supporters – by looking at these tweets and your comments, he marches with his equals…

  11. Rob Ford is NOT a great mayor, or even a good one. He is a self-destructive MORON, who believes he can get way with anything! His (late) father would be very ashamed of his son{s}. How horrid. Tell people what they want to hear, Rob.

  12. The funny thing is that if Ford survives this, he could easily win re-election next November. Many people in Toronto are satisfied with the way he’s been running the city.

    Anyone that owns any real estate in Toronto has “skin in the game” and would vote for him simply out of self-interest – they want to keep their property taxes low and keep spending under control.

    In the downtown core that includes a LOT of condominium owners, consisting of young professionals and baby boomer empty nesters. This is a purely anecdotal observation, but a lot of people with whom I’ve discussed this issue with at work and in social circles said that they’d vote for him again if given the opportunity.

    I don’t think he should resign as Mayor unless he’s actually charged with something.He should just fess up to his addiction problem and take a short-term leave of absence and go into rehab.

  15. how can you people think he is a good mayor?? Ford is disgusting and embarrassing and CORRUPT…..WAKE UP RIGHT WINGERS.

  16. He’s lied about issues surrounding his personal life, no argument there. But he has been doing a competent job managing the city’s fiscal affairs.

    Contrast him with David Miller: Miller was a smart, honest guy with good intentions but his tenure as mayor was an abject failure. Remember the garbage strike? Remember how much he increased the city’s debt?

    So yeah, Ford’s made a lot of wrong decisions concerning his private life, but it’s not what he does wrong in his private life that matters to the citizenry, but what he does right in managing the city’s affairs.

    I’d rather have a buffoon as mayor who knows how to run a city than an intellectual who runs a city’s finances into ruin. And LOT of people agree with me…

  17. Most of the people I know are pretty aware that real estate prices tend to deteriorate when the city stops investing in services.

  18. I always said the suburbs were filled with dimwits. This confirms it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  19. Im a taxpayer and condo owner who would vote for a shit-flinging monkey over Rob Ford if those were the only choices I had,

  20. When Don Cherry said “put THAT in your pipe,” Ford must have thought that Cherry was addressing HIM!

  23. I’m not from Toronto, but this whole story makes absolutely no sense as presently constructed and there are quite clearly liberal biases in it that some people refuse to consider simply because “it’s Rob Ford, he’s old, he’s white, he’s a buffoon, he’s fat, so he’s evil.” He doesn’t do himself any favours in public by the way he presents himself, but the story we’re being fed is quite painfully untrue.

    Three things that most people aren’t considering:

    1) The cops haven’t actually arrested Ford yet. They say they “have the video” and have assorted other evidence. As Clayton Ruby of all people has pointed out, inadvertently defending Ford in the process, where are the wiretaps of the phone calls? Why didn’t they arrest him on the spot for lighting a crack pipe? Why haven’t they obtained a search warrant on probable cause grounds? None of this has happened, and while Ruby thinks it’s due to a buddy-buddy relationship with the police, they wouldn’t have said a word about the video if that were the case.

    Most cops are corrupt, but if they’re leaking this there’s something more than we’re being told going on here. This goes beyond just a “botched investigation”.

    One would also have to think that any officers investigating this case would do anything they could to be the person to find the evidence leading to Rob Ford’s arrest, and ideally be the arresting officer. That’s a career-making arrest. If you’re the officer that slaps the handcuffs on Rob Ford, you’re on the front page of every Toronto daily, you’re going to be interviewed for a week straight by every radio and TV outlet, and you’re going to probably be in line for significant career advancement.

    2) If anyone looked at the PDF containing the items of evidence that were being searched for by the police, the first item is “marihuana”. Yes, there’s the crack cocaine angle as well, but they were allegedly looking for pot and that was the higher priority. If you’re for the legalization of pot, that should bother you because it means that they can come after you for the same thing. So if anything, those of you who are against the nanny state (and I suspect that’s some of the more liberal commenters among you) should be siding with Ford if for no other reason than self-preservation.

    3) This is the same video that Somali drug pirates supposedly were trying to sell to Gawker for $200,000 and that never got sold. The same cops who can’t get a search warrant for Rob Ford’s house for evidence somehow managed to acquire this video, which by itself would present probable cause for a search warrant for evidence. This is what we’re supposed to believe.

    If we look at this objectively and logically, with any pro-Ford and anti-Ford biases aside, this is obviously a ridiculous story with some serious holes. It’s completely illogical.

    Side note: at least some of the “pro-Ford commenters” above are clearly being sarcastic. I don’t know if anyone else caught that, but it’s an example of mainstream media’s skewing of “facts” in this story because it’s topical and interesting.

  24. How do you feel about a mayor who consorts with criminals (including on weekdays according to the police doc, with his city hall staff) and may be connected to a murder?

  26. There is tons of evidence we don’t know about yet. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Project Brazen 2 and Project Traveller were massive. Cops can’t arrest him just for what he appeared to do in the video, and they weren’t there when he did it. I have questions too, like about the search warrants, but this has only just begun.

  27. Tell me what he has done to manage the City’s fiscal affairs well. I still am none the wiser after reading your reply.

  29. Here’s a sample (source Toronto Star):

    December 2010 – Councillor expenses cut: they agreed to limit their annual expenses to $30,000 from $50,445

    December 2010 – TTC declared an essential service, taking away the workers’ right to strike and further disrupting the city. Remember the “wildcat” strikes during Miller’s tenure and how it nearly shut down the city?

    December 2010 – Vehicle tax that was introduced under Miller is repealed

    February 2012 – Four year deal is reached with unionized civic workers without disruption of city services

    October 2012 – City council approves contracting out garbage collection which covers 165,000 households between Yonge St. and the Humber River. The city saves a lot of money.

  30. Not too great – pretty shameful behaviour to be honest with you.

    But that doesn’t take away from what he’s accomplished for the city financially. You have to separate the man from his work. That’s what a lot of people advocated when assessing Bill Clinton’s presidency after all…

  31. Frightening. Rob Ford could behead his own mother on live television and some people would still support him.

  32. Wow! So much! He had little or nothing to do with the first 3. He was elected December 1st 2010 and all were already in process when he became Mayor. He’s a liability in every way. He’s a bully boy who cares little about his constituents.

  33. According to one of a series of Toronto Star articles investigating the crack video incident, the video was being shopped around by “by a group of Somali men involved in the drug trade.”

    The Star addressed concerns about overdoing the Somali references in that article, but the fact that these individuals were of Somali background was factually correct. Here’s the link:

    http://www.thestar.com/opinion/public_editor/2013/05/24/star_overdid_somali_references_in_first_report_of_drug_dealers_peddling_rob_ford_crack_video_public_editor.html

  36. I think if you’re connected to a murder, nothing else should matter that much. Plus his claims have been debunked many times.

    And just today, a weekday, he hung out at his mom’s house and bought sausages.

  37. Rob Ford’s problem is that he is just plain stupid. and you know what happens to stupid people? They do stupid things, period! Saving the taxpayers money and returning phone calls is no excuse for bad behaviour. There is help available, your Worship. Please take it, move on and get someone in office who is smart, has some common sense and is not on the pipe.

  40. I’m only using the word that was used at various points by various media sources, although I can’t find the sources right now.

    But even if we remove the word “pirates” (pedantic, but whatever), the point still remains…we were told that Somali individuals involved in the drug trade held the video, and somehow the police were able to extricate the video from these same individuals. Yet 1) they can’t secure a search warrant and 2) they haven’t found anything else to arrest Ford on.

    Until either more facts emerge…as in clear facts that haven’t been distorted, disseminated and spoonfed to us by our friends in the media…or something else of significance happens, the story isn’t plausible if looked at objectively.

  41. Okay…let’s accept that it has only just begun. That’s not an unreasonable way to look at the situation. However, if it has only just begun, then we don’t know the majority of the story. That means we haven’t been told, and probably never will be told, large pieces of information. But what we have been told is inconsistent, illogical, and implausible. That’s the problem that I have with this story as it’s told to us.

  43. The only conspiracy is a criminal one and the mayor is complicit and therefore a conspirator. However, I do like the idea of burning him at the stake.

  45. You’ve not followed the story very closely, have you? You’ve got your facts scrambled. 1. No one knew Ford smoked anything until Gawker and the Star journalists were shown the video, so how could the cops arrest him? 2. The police were investigating Lisi, not Ford. 3. The police cannot arrest anyone for possessing illegal drugs unless they are caught with them. A video of someone smoking is not proof of that. 4. What matters now is that he’s lost the confidence of Toronto citizens (except for blowhards) and likely most of council. He can’t be an effective mayor under those circumstances. So: 5. He should resign. If he had a shred of decency left, he would. 6. He doesn’t have that shred of decency. Sad.

  46. Downtown Toronto didn’t support him last time, and downtown Toronto will not support him next time either. Nearly every ward in the old city of Toronto voted 2:1 against Ford.

    “Many people in Toronto are satisfied with the way he’s been running the city.”

    Really? A poll reported on here – Toronto Life – showed his support before yesterdays revelations was at 39%. Not exactly a lot of support.

    “A Forum Research poll of 1,093 Torontonians that was obtained by the Sun put mayor Rob Ford’s approval rating just 39 per cent.” – Toronto Life

    “Around 61% of those surveyed on Tuesday disapprove of the job Ford is doing as mayor.” – Toronto Sun

  50. Anyone who actually cared about their city and the people who inhabit it would have stepped down after having so many “conspiracy theories” aimed at them. Whether or not Ford should be held up on criminal charges is irrelevant. The fact is that he has caused a lot of shame and embarrassment to our entire country, (a lofty feat for a municipal leader) and should know that it is time to walk away, not drag his office through the muck. Crack pipe, hash pipe, bubble wand, whatever the case, the man has got to go.

    And PS. Q: Why is it that when conservatives are being attacked in the media we are told that it is propaganda but when liberals are attacked it’s hardly questioned? A: The right wing owns the media

  51. And all of these “savings” were wiped out in a single stroke when Ford insisted on a subway in Scarborough and rejected the fully funded LRT. He saves dimes and wastes millions of dollars

  52. Most of us who think that Ford is unqualified to be mayor wouldn’t have the same problem at all if right-wingers in this city could find a decent man or woman to represent them in a mayoral election. The problem now isn’t Ford’s politics, it’s his shady character, evident poor judgement, and inability to put the interests of the city above his personal desires.

  53. Are these people delusional? Wow, I just can’t see how anyone reasonable would even suggest that the Toronto Police Union and the media are conspiring together to oust Ford from office. That is tinfoil hat material.

  55. Going to do these out of order for a reason.

    Let’s look at #3. A video of someone smoking crack is does not constitute proof of activity. Then why is everyone judging the man? If we can’t prove he did anything from the video, then how is he guilty of anything?

    People are claiming Ford is using cocaine based on the “video”, which no one has seen other than the police and a select few members of the mainstream media…neither of which are credible or trustworthy sources. If you think police are credible, there’s a video called “Don’t Talk To Police” on YouTube that you should watch. As far as mainstream media is concerned…the bloom came off that rose a long time ago.

    Even if the video does exist and we do get to watch it (which we never will), then it’s at best inconclusive evidence.

    #1: If Gawker / The Star broke the story and the police have had months to find sufficient evidence to arrest him if he was doing anything serious. They botched the investigation and / or Ford wasn’t doing anything to begin with.

    #2: If they have sufficient reason to investigate someone, they will. The targets of investigation as it pertains to criminal activity change frequently. If you’ve ever been involved on any level with a criminal investigation, you’d be aware of that. For your sake, I hope that never happens…it’s not a pleasant experience, even if you’re innocent (which fortunately, I was and could sufficiently prove).

    #4: I don’t think his popularity will change much long term. There will be some short-term knee-jerk reaction, but as the story dies down (assuming there is no additional “evidence”, legitimate or otherwise) he’ll go back to being the same polarizing character he always was and his popularity won’t change.

    #5 and #6: For what? Nothing’s been established or proven, and there is insufficient evidence to even suggest that something could be proven. A poorly-constructed story that has significant question marks and holes in it does not constitute proof.

    Since if he has a drug problem he won’t admit it, and if he does have a drug problem TPS sure isn’t going to figure it out, that means that resigning based solely on the “scandal” isn’t an option. The only reason he would resign isn’t because of the story, but because he believes that it isn’t worth fighting the media, municipal council, and the section of the public that refuses to accept him. He could easily walk away, go back to private enterprise, focus on his business, collect a paycheque and call it a life at this point if he wanted to. The possibility does exist that he’s standing and fighting either based on his principles or because he believes if he’s going to go down no matter what he does, he might as well go down swinging. Either suggests a certain decency that isn’t immediately apparent.

    Again, he does himself no favours with his presentation and he is far from the most media-savvy public figure out there, so he has to expect backlash. But until we see some real, hard evidence and not just third-hand media speculation and fractured fairy tales, there’s nothing to judge him on.

  57. With what looks to be iimpending charges if, as i suspect, the police manage to turn Lisi around with promises of dropped charges if he gives up Rob Ford, it woudl not be in his best interest to speak now.

  58. I am not a Ford supporter, nor am I am part of the media/elites bashing him. In fact, I always suspected he did smoke crack but I still felt it was abhorrent to speak of it without proof and even now, although i do believe it is, it cant be proven, hence, it should not be spoken of. That said, HOW has he saved this city money??? I keep seeing this and I am at a loss to understand how he has, aside from cutting back on councillors expenditures which BTW I felt was a great thing that he did but I have always been at a loss to understand hoe he has saved this city money in the long run. But instead of the typical answers, Id love to hear from someone very well researched into this that does know of what they speak.. Please tell me

  59. Clayton Ruby’s piece was really just an excuse to get PR for himself. It always pays to use whatever you can to get your name in the paper and Clayton Ruby is very good at what he does..
    No they have not arrested him nor can they at this point with what they have or what they don’t have. I suspect the pressure put on to Lisis has all been devised to get him so badly beaten down from all the charges, that he will be willing to make a deal and give them Ford. They aren’t interested in the drugs but what to find out WHO instructed Lisi to go out and get the tape. IF it were Ford and he says so, he’s will have so many charges thrown at him our heads will spin, conspiracy to commit this offence or that offence and so on .
    No matter how corrupt i personally feel Blair to be, in all honesty I don’t think he meant to slip up and say that he was disappointed. If you watch the video, when he does that, a look crosses his face that suggests he knew he just screwed up very badly but once said, he cant take it back.
    Clayton Ruby’s piece isn’t necessarily correct which again points to why its just a PR stunt for himself. That being, that the cops didn’t MISS opportunities to “get” Rob but they have to be extremely careful and cross their T’s and Dot their i”s or they can be charged themselves with harassment and all chance of a case would be lost at such a point. Its easier to go after Lisi and have him give up Rob IF he’s so inclined. It would appear that they only got the tap because whoever was in possession of it, knew t hey had a goldmine in their possession and made a deal no doubt for a reduced set of charges or absolute stay of charges for giving up that file for it had already been deleted. Yes it is possible that they might have had Forensic geeks that have gone through all the hard drives they had and checked all of them but whoever deleted it didn’t delete it enough times, 7x being the standard for it being unretrievable.
    In any event, yes, it all makes perfect sense if you understand how the police make most of their arrests and its done through informants as I suspect they now wish to turn Lisi into.

  60. I agree with you Adam when you first suggest that since they cant prove its crack, how can he be charged? But you are assuming that the cops even care about the drugs. They don’t. Its finding out WHO sent Lisi for the tap using various criminal means in which to do so they are after…..If you read my post above as i don’t wish to repeat myself, it appears the pressure is on Lisi for a reason. All to do with putting him in such an unwanted hole that he could become quite willing to give up Ford to the police for his charges all to be dropped. If that happens, Ford losing his mayoral seat will be the least of his concerns for he cold then be doing a jail term…..But going back to the point you are attempting to make, which is how can they do this if they don’t know its crack, how can they convict him in a court of public opinion? If this were the only mistake that had come up it would have been overlooked but there have been far too many and where there is smoke there is usually fire as well and it appears in this case its rather blazing hot. Bearing in mind, after I have said all of that and believe him to be guilty I do also believe there has been a witch hunt of him first created by the Star and no matter how many times they say that they were just following a story in many ways i feel they have created the story as well, and are just as guilty as Ford himself for creating it. The Star has been out for Ford since long before the election and if it Lisi had not openly been going around and threatening various individuals then I would have had to say they really didn’t have anything.
    There is also one other angle many people aren’t looking at and that is that Ford has been given very preferential treatment due to his being a mayor that anyone else you or I, NEVER would have been given. That should anger some people alone, even before anything tlese

  61. There’s no question in my mind that Ruby intended to draw attention to himself through media, although having seen how media can turn on someone second-hand (it happened to a client of mine via the Star) I know that’s a very dangerous proposition. So yeah, he had a motive.

    The problem is that Blair did as well. He’s using the media to garner sympathy to the cause and try to find additional “facts” that people may have. It’s similar, but on a much larger scale, to the police reports that come out on CityTV where they mention “so-and-so has been chatting on the Internet and stalking and raping several women.” They go into all sorts of detail about the crimes the individual committed. At the end, they say something to the effect of “if you have any additional information, call Crime Stoppers.” If you just spent 45 seconds to a minute going through all the intel you have on a perpetrator of a crime…evidence that should hold up in a court of law…then why do you need people to call Crime Stoppers? Arrest the person quietly rather than making a media play. This is one of the reasons why it’s equally difficult to believe TPS in this situation. They play the media as much as anyone, and the media allows it.

    So since both sides have a motive, we need to examine what’s being said. In this case, what Ruby said makes a lot more sense…there are large parts of the investigation that don’t appear to have been performed or performed correctly. If they had and Ford is as guilty as we’re being led to believe, inducing a statement from someone else under duress shouldn’t even be necessary. It also makes any statement they get from Lisi that much harder to believe, as we’ll never be sure whether he made a statement to reduce his own sentence or because it’s true. There’s no question they want to turn Lisi into an informant, but there’s a huge question surrounding the legitimacy of the tactic.

    This is also part of the problem with the story…rather than discussing the facts of the situation, of which we’re being given very few, we’re discussing strategy and motives. Again, if the facts existed to back up the story, the facts are what should be presented and discussed. Granted, some of it has to be hidden because Ford has a right to due process, but what has been revealed doesn’t suggest that there’s very much more, if anything, to form any kind of a judgement on.

  62. everyone has bias, including you, and yours is allowing you to conveniently leave out a few facts that contextualize the points you seem to think nobody is considering:
    1) There are many common sense reasons that they haven’t charged him, not the least of which being that the investigation is still ongoing. This case is much broader and more complex than just a matter of whether what he was smoking was crack. And, for better or for worse, video of someone smoking crack is not enough evidence to charge them, but it doesn’t meant that Rob wasn’t smoking crack (and isn’t it just bad enough that he’s hanging out with proven crack dealers??). And for someone accusing everyone else of bias, it’s pretty rich to say “most cops are corrupt” as a way to support your argument.
    2) Straw man argument, because they were focusing on the trafficking of marijuana (not simple use). I smoke pot too and I’m all for legalization, but I’m not all for organized crime as a means of trafficking marijuana and that’s what the cops are cracking down on (not individual users).
    3) I don’t know what your point is here exactly – based on information from an informant, the police obtained a search warrant for the apartment where the video was alleged to have been held and they recovered it from an erased hard drive they found there. This is done all the time in police forensics. For any number of legal/logistical reasons, it would have been far more difficult for Gawker to successfully complete their transaction. And of course they weren’t able to get a warrant to search Ford’s house because there was no reliable information to suggest it was there.

    Disagree with me if you like but nothing I’ve said is untrue. It is true that we don’t have all the answers yet, but viewing this situation “objectively and logically”, it’s simply not accurate to describe it as “completely illogical”.

  63. not pedantic, just a bit racist…and yeah, we’d all like to see your media sources for the use of the word pirate because i think you just made that up

  64. are you kidding me ! oh wait i know some substance abuse counseling.then he can be over 10 years clean like me!!!

  65. People need to cut Mr. Ford some slack! I mean, he is human, and to f-up is human! Look at all these actors, actresses, and Rap stars, musicians, smoking crack, f-ing-up and going to rehab, and being forgiven, and just jump back on screen and playing music, perverting the young minds that worship them! They get some slack! A whole lotta slack! Rob just needs to step back, hit one of them upper-class rehabs for the well-to-do, like Betty Ford, and do a 6 week stint, and come out clean, and get back to doing his job, being Mayor!

  67. Rob Ford is history!
    Soon he will be a powerless wind bag sitting out his mandate and sucking on the taxpayers tit a healthy salary for doing nothing for the next ten months.
    The very thing he was elected to stop , he now is one of the parasites on the public purse.
    All the doing of Rob Ford, not the media or police or any imagined liberal conspiracy.

    I don’t care what other posters say who are supporting this fool.

    You have no valid argument to validate what Rob has done to himself and the embarrassment he as caused to the people of Toronto.

    Stop posting ridiculous arguments that are making you look as moronic as Rob and his brother are.

  68. um rob forders supporters, he is not a good mayor. he’s made some very stupid decisions and also his demeanour has been poor in other matters uncorrelated to his crack addiction. (e.g. possible sexual harassment) are you saying that its acceptable? i understand about forgiveness and compassion. i have a lot of compassion for his family but ro ford is an idiot. i’m sorry but that decision he almost wanted to make a coupe years ago (which involved cutting some funds to childcares?) and some of your rob ford supports like to hate on all liberals. i understand about seperating work from private life but he may have some of this on city time. also, i wouldn’t care if he smoked weed . weed can be fine . but stay away from crack. i would have more compassion for rob ford if he didn’t make other stupid decisions for the city that also impacted the gta. i don’t even live in toronto.

  69. 1Rob Ford was not a ‘great mayor’ nor even a good one.Hang around with gang members? Rob Ford

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