ARE CASTING-CALL LOOKS WHY U.S. PRESIDENT SEEMS TO LIKE TRUDEAU?
Appearance matters to former reality TV host
At first glance, President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seem like unlikely buds.
But on Canada Day, Trump fired off an unusually warm message to “the great people of Canada” and his “new found friend” Justin Trudeau. The tweet was made even more unusual by the fact that it was followed up by ill-tempered messages about NBC, voter fraud and MSNBC Morning Joe cohosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
On policy and in manner, the two leaders are almost complete opposites.
Trump, the right wing populist, ran on a platform of shutting Muslims out of the United States, and Trudeau, the Liberal, promised to open up Canada to refugees.
Trudeau declared himself a feminist while Trump was caught bragging about sexual assault.
But in one crucial way, Trudeau is everything Trump looks for in a pal.
When Trump was choosing his cabinet in December, the Washington Post took notice of the parade of dapper men — it was almost exclusively men — filing in to Trump Tower. The former reality TV star was treating the exercise like a casting call.
Gen. James Mattis looks like a nail- eating defence secretary straight out of a Hollywood film. Trump liked Vice President Mike Pence’s economic record but also that he “looks very good.”
Trump’s aides told the Post he was unlikely to hire people if they weren’t attractive.
In January, after press secretary Sean Spicer gave a disastrous briefing about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration, it wasn’t the negative coverage that angered the president, it was Spicer’s baggy suit. A Washington Post style reporter wrote that Spicer’s “shirt collar was so snug that his neck overflowed its boundaries.”
Days later, Spicer looked fresh from an extreme makeover and he briefed the press in a dashing new suit.
There is a darker side to Trump’s hiring preferences, too. An LA Times story reported that “when Trump saw less- attractive women working at his club, accordi ng to court records, he wanted them fired.”
For Trudeau, his uncanny resemblance to Jared Kushner — Trump’s son- in- law who commands enormous responsibility in the White House — could be a clue to his popularity with the president. Both Kushner and Trudeau are young, similarly handsome and come from famous families.
Trump has almost limitless belief in Kushner’s abilities and has tasked him with, among other things, forging peace in the Middle East.
And if it’s true that Trump has a “casting call” way of looking at the world, then whatever you think of him, it’s hard to deny that Trudeau looks the part.
Trudeau’s success at becoming an all-important gobetween for Europe and the United States could be seen as a brilliant strategic move.
Or it could just be that Trump liked the prime minister’s suit.