Wynne calls Ford a ‘bully,’ says he’s just like Trump

Likening Doug Ford to Donald Trump, Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne says the Progressive Conservative leader is a “bully” who tells “lies.”

In a stunning broadside against Ford three weeks before official start of the June 7 election, Wynne said “Doug Ford sounds like Donald Trump and that’s because he is like Donald Trump.”

“He believes in ugly, vicious brand of politics that traffics in smears and lies. He’ll say anything about anyone at any time because just like Trump, it is all about him,” the premier said Wednesday at Sunnybrook Hospital.

“That’s how Trump campaigned in 2016 and that’s how Ford is campaigning right now. I guarantee you that it will get worse before it gets better,” she said.

“We saw it this week when Doug lied — flat out lied — about his appalling comments about families living with autism, lacking the courage to admit the truth and own up to his own words. He took the coward’s way out and he denied the undeniable.”

That was a reference to Ford claiming he never said in 2014 that an Etobicoke home for children with autism and developmental disabilities was an “absolute nightmare” that “ruined the community.”

“You’re going to hear a lot of lies. Desperate lies,” the Progressive Conservative leader said Sunday as he unveiled his campaign bus.

But the statement, made while he was a Toronto councillor, was widely reported at the time.

Wynne, who is trailing Ford in every public-opinion poll, was outraged the Tory leader suggested Tuesday Liberals could end up behind bars after his planned post-election “outside audit” of the books if he is premier.

“If Kathleen Wynne tried to pull these kinds of shady tricks in private life, then there would be a few more Liberals joining David Livingston in jail,” Ford said in Brockville.

That was a reference to the former Dalton McGuinty’s exchief of staff, who was sentenced to four months in jail for deleting documents.

“He all but chanted: ‘lock her up,’ talking about me,” fumed Wynne, recalling Trump’s line of attack against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“Doug Ford stands for nothing other than Doug Ford. Just like Donald Trump, there is only one way to deal with this kind of behaviour. You have to stand up to him and you have to name the behaviour for what it is, because that is how you deal with a bully,” she said. “Not here, not in Ontario. He may be Donald Trump, but I’m not Hillary Clinton … and Ontario is not the United States of America.”

Tory MPP Lisa MacLeod was incredulous at Wynne’s “bizarre” and “desperate” attack on Ford three weeks before the May 9 writ drop.