Trudeau skates by in Trumpworld
Out of sheer gratitude, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should have sent U.S. President Donald Trump a huge thankyou card for Christmas, maybe including three “I will publicly declare how awesome you are” cards to be used at any time in 2018.
Thanks to the actions and utterances of the Oval Office Oaf, Canadians are mostly pretty grateful Trudeau is the prime minister and Rolling Stone magazine thinks he’s so cool that they put him on the cover.
Furthermore, even people who don’t follow U.S. politics much are aware of a special investigation into Russia meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and how Trump and his campaign may be implicated in that meddling.
Based on those observations, far too many Canadians have bought into Trudeau’s sweet and innocent sunny ways. He’s not as bad as Trump and he and the people around him aren’t being investigated for possible criminal acts, such as money laundering, colluding with a foreign power and obstruction of justice.
If anyone else but Trump were in the White House at the moment, however, Trudeau would have been vilified, both in the news media and in coffee shops from coast to coast, for becoming the first prime minister in Canadian history to have been found guilty of multiple violations under the Conflict of Interest Act.
Basically, Trudeau, his family and his friends accepted free private transportation to and from the personal island in the Bahamas of a guy so rich he’s referred to simply by his ceremonial title, the Aga Khan. He has business interests in Canada but
Trudeau claimed to Mary
Dawson, the ethics commissioner investigating the matter, that he’s friends with the Aga Khan and even if he wasn’t, his meetings with the Aga Khan were ceremonial and not business.
Dawson didn’t buy it, concluding in her report that Trudeau’s relationship with the Aga Khan didn’t constitute friendship and Trudeau doesn’t get to decide the nature of his job as prime minister, based on who he meets and where.
For anyone who enjoys seeing politicians made speechless by a pointed question from a reporter or needs an extra dose of Trudeau’s notorious “ums” and “ahs” while he speaks, watch the YouTube video of Trudeau absolutely tongue-tied by Rosemary Barton of CBC’s The National during a scrum where he apologized for his ethical mistakes... uh, for getting caught, that is.
“So how could it not have occurred to you – with all due respect,” she asked, “you were going to take a free holiday from someone you consider a friend – but obviously you have a different definition of a friend from the commissioner – you knew that they had a lobbying registry, that they were set up to lobby the government, how could it not have occurred to you that that might not have been OK?”
Once he finally untangled his tongue from his feet, Trudeau fell back to the same excuses that the ethics commissioner had just dismissed – um... family friend, ah... friend of Canada, blahblahblahblah.
In other words, his apology was fake and insincere because he believed he didn’t do anything wrong, ethics commissioner report and Conflict of Interest Act be damned.
Dawson’s report is simply a dry, legal explanation of the conclusion Rick Mercer rightly came to when the holiday first came to light a year ago: “Canadians have always bummed cabins and cottages, it’s part of our heritage. I’m sorry, Justin, you can’t do the same but that is the cost of doing business and your business is being Prime Minister of Canada, first, foremost and always.”
Dawson’s report came out a week before Christmas but the holidays weren’t Trudeau’s real political cover from this sense of entitlement and horrible lack of judgment.
The cover came from down south, where Trump continues to set a new and declining level for poor leadership, improper conduct and unfitness for office.
If anyone else were the American president, Trudeau’s serious conflict of interest violations would have led to calls for his resignation, possibly from within his own caucus.
Seen under Trumpworld’s garish lens, however, Trudeau’s indiscretion is hardly worth a mention because at least he’s not threatening thermonuclear war on Twitter.
How low our standards have fallen.
In other words, his apology was fake and insincere because (Prime Minister Trudeau) believed he didn’t do anything wrong, ethics commissioner report and Conflict of Interest Act be damned.