, 04.18.2018 07:19 AM

You won’t read all about this one in the Toronto Star

Story by QP Briefing, which has been repeatedly breaking stories lately, here:

When PC Leader Doug Ford was the only party leader who declined to participate in a Toronto debate organized by Black community organizers, the Liberals criticized him as being out-of-touch.

In social media copy that was also shared by some Liberal riding accounts, the party stated: “Doug Ford says he ‘loves the blacks’ but wasn’t at the Town Hall tonight… Did Doug Ford deliberately choose to ignore the black community leaders debate? #ONBlackVote #WhereIsDoug #onpoli”

There is one problem with this statement: QP Briefing cannot find any record of Doug claiming that he “loves the Blacks,” a phrasing that would be considered offensive.

We asked the Liberal Party to provide a reference to where we could find this quotation, and they conceded it was an error.

“It appears the tweet accidentally referred to Doug when it should have said Trump,” David Clarke, executive director of the Ontario Liberal Party, said in an e-mail on Monday night. “We’ve corrected the error and are working to ensure accuracy to re-issue it.”

Best part of the story? They then went on to issue a new tweet, which contained a new error.

None of this would be happening if Warren Kinsella was still alive.

28 Comments

  1. Mario says:

    Who is the great wizard getting paid $70,000 a month to run the Liberal war room?

    Remind me not to hire him for my PR needs.

    • Matt says:

      David Herle.

      Warren refers to him as The Wizard because he has a company called Gandolf Group (Gandolf was a wizard in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings). His company has received several very lucrative sole sourced contracts from the Wynne Liberals

  2. Dork in East York says:

    This plays right into the Trump/Ford’ playbook of “fake news.” Terrible play by the OLP.

  3. Bruce M says:

    Wynne’s war room went dirty. Fast.
    This was obviously intentional, as Jane and Joe Frontporch never read or care about the apologies. The only thing that sticks is the original slight.

    Classic.

    I’m conservative and can’t stand the idiocy of the pumpkin president, so seeing the Liberals painting Ford with the same brush is particularly galling. Doing it with fabricated quotes, however, is risky for their credibility.

    • The Doctor says:

      I just don’t see this strategy by Wynne Liberals as moving the needle, that’s the strategic problem I see with it. Most people have already formed their impression of Doug Ford. He’s a known entity. If you’re partisan liberal-left, you’d never vote for him in the first place, so all of this poo being flung at Ford is wasted on you. If you’re a potential Doug Ford voter, you’re aware of his shortcomings but those shortcomings will not likely prevent you from voting for him, especially given the severe problems with Wynne’s government. So all of this poo being flung at Ford is wasted on you as well.

  4. Matt says:

    Today Wynne continued, and possibly went further on the direct Trump – Ford comparison. Called Ford bully, liar and a coward.

    Guess she really doesn’t like his promise to call in outside auditors to go over the government books if he’s elected.

    http://www.680news.com/2018/04/17/conservatives-government-spending-election/

    Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives say they’ll order an outside audit of the government’s spending if elected to office in June.

    Tory Leader Doug Ford says he doesn’t trust the governing Liberals’ spending or accounting practices and wants an independent analysis of the province’s finances, which would be released publicly.

    Ford has previously mentioned the possibility of an audit when questioned on his decision not to present a fully costed platform before the spring election.

    “We’re going to restore responsibility, accountability, and trust in government,” he said. “Ontario deserves answers about how big (Premier) Kathleen Wynne’s mess really is.”

  5. Peter says:

    I have to wonder who they think they’re addressing with these kind of swipes. It seems much too early to be trying to get their own vote out with a fear-mongering appeal. Do they not understand how this can drive potential voters away from them?

    Ford is not Trump, but even Trump seems to be benefiting from the non-stop deluge of scandals and horrors the Dems, Hollywood and much of the MSM has been screaming about 24/7 since his election. His approval ratings are rising slowly despite the constant mud being heaved heaved his way and are much higher than the ratings for Congress and both parties. I suspect there are lots of folks who don’t like Trump but are being reminded hourly that they like his patronizing, sanctimonious adversaries even less. I could understand this better if the Liberals were still popular, but they aren’t. Do they not have any sense that the the public can recognize desperation by a party that either really doesn’t know what it stands for or wants to avoid any debate on its record and platform? Are they so out of touch they have come to believe their own bullshit about deplorables, stupidity, etc.?

    • The Doctor says:

      You’re right that what Wynne is doing looks like desperation, and there are certain election campaigns where a party does that and voters can smell it.

      • The Doctor says:

        And you’re very correct that Ford is not Trump. Yes he’s a populist, yes he’s right wing, yes he courts the social conservative vote. But that’s about it. Ford has far more self-control than Trump and IMO Ford does not have a diagnosable personality disorder the way Trump does (to wit, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, for which Trump is Exhibit A). You can disagree vehemently with Ford’s positions on things but he’s not a potentially dangerous, unstable nut like Trump is. Rob Ford was the entertaining Ford, and Wynne and company are running a campaign against Rob rather than Doug. If they continue doing that, they will definitely lose big.

        • Pedant says:

          I wouldn’t say he’s right-wing. Being a populist sort of precludes one from have strict ideological leanings. Some might call it unprincipled. But all that matters is whether it’s a winning formula, and it seems to be so during the current election cycle.

        • Peter says:

          I have to quibble about your diagnosis of Trump. Of course he’s a narcissist, but even leaving aside what that means in an age of narcissism, the definition of a disorder in the DSM is a condition that prevents the patient from reaching his or her potential, which is pretty hard to argue about Trump. In fact, I’m struck by how hard it is to categorize his dysfunctions. Warren’s song title he keeps posting may be as close to a clinical diagnosis one can get.

          It reminds me a bit of the old Monty Python skit about the TV game show devoted to bigotry. Viewers were invited to submit their most insulting epithet about the Belgians. Third prize went to “The Sprouts”. Second went to “The Phlegms”. The winner was “Dirty Rotten Belgian Bastards.”

          • doconnor says:

            If he addressed his issues, I believe he could reach his portental to understand the world at the level of a 16 year old instead of a 6 year old.

  6. billg says:

    Moody’s downgraded Ontario today, I wait breathlessly for the Ontario Liberals to counter this with how they do accounting differently. Please make them go away before its too late. Good move by Ford and the PC’s to want to take a look at the books before promising anything, don’t think anyone believes the fiscal mess isn’t much bigger then we’ve all been told.

  7. zing says:

    I’ve seem some joking about ‘soldiers with guns….in our cities’ but we have to know now there will be several new versions of that from the Libs and this campaign crew…smh. Pathetic.

  8. David White says:

    So many questions.

    If the other leaders managed to attend, then why did Doug not participate in the town hall?

    What does the last line mean? Warren is dead? Like Paul is dead? or like someone in the Ontario Libs said Warren is dead to me?

    And what does the Toronto Star have to do with this? Sure, I get they seem to have become the Liberal lapdog lately (cancelled my paper in January I got so fed up with them) but some silly tweet by an unknown Lib staffer is hardly a big story. This is sort of an inside baseball story.

    Here is what bothers me, Ford expects the headwinds of change and resentment for the LIBS to carry him to victory without ever having to answer a tough question or put forth an actual platform. This is a depressing time to be a voter in Ontario if you cannot support the Libs and would never vote NDP.

    • Fred from BC says:

      “And what does the Toronto Star have to do with this? Sure, I get they seem to have become the Liberal lapdog lately”

      Lately?

      They didn’t earn the nickname ‘The Red Star” for no reason…

  9. Kevin T. says:

    Tbh, at this point, as a center-lefty, I don’t think Doug Ford will be that bad as Premier; he may surprise everyone afterall. He seems to be on his next-level game and I think the fearmongering of a frothing, vile Trump-style leader just seems desperate and self-defeating, especially if it doesn’t ring true to most eyes and ears.

  10. Dork in East York says:

    Warren, who do you like in the Toronto Centre liberal nomination?

  11. Concerned taxpayer says:

    Doug Ford had a previous campaign commitment in northern Ontario. Unfortunately that was not printed in the Toronto star. I bet if he had cancelled, to attened the “Blasks” meeting, the star would have called him out on that also.

  12. Lance says:

    Unforced errors like these…….it seems as if their war-room is just mailing it in now.

  13. Matt says:

    Won’t read about that Ontario Liberal tweet in the Star, but you will read other stories making claims Ford said things he in fact did not say:

    Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals have been trying to connect Ford to Trump, trying to make them into the same person, now the Star is joining in. In fact, Rob Benzie’s column, now altered, initially was brazen in the Trump comparison. Here is how it first opened.

    Lock her up!

    That’s Doug Ford’s Trump-ian threat about Kathleen Wynne after he accused the Liberal premier of campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime.
    Except Ford didn’t say lock her up and according to reports, neither did the crowd chant that. Instead Ford was talking about holding an outside audit of Wynne’s spending, this after the province’s auditor general used the term “bogus” to describe the Liberal accounting practices.

    “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.

    • Matt says:

      Sorry, forgot link.

      http://brianlilley.com/star-and-wynne-use-same-points-to-attack-ford/

      And the left leaning media have the nerve to scream bloody murder about a Toronto Sun memo outlining their strategy to hit the Wynne Liberals up to the June 7th election. A right leaning paper making the decision editorially to go after Wynne? SHOCKED I AM. This just in – Water is wet!

      But of course those same people raising a stink about the Sun memo are silent on the Star’s attacks on Ford and had no problem with the leadership of Unifor Local 87-M, the media union in Ontario publicly telling their 2,600 members not to vote for Hudak in 2014.

  14. Steve T says:

    There’s only one reason they run these kind of ads – they work. There is an unfortunately-large segment of the population who have soft brains, and just eat up whatever gruel they are fed. They want the tabloid-style scandal. They want the sound-byte level of detail. They don’t want to do homework or fact-check.

    On the right, that’s how Trump got elected. On the left, that’s how Horgan got elected in B.C.. It’s all the same basic strategy. And it is done because it works. We get the politicians we deserve.

    • Fred from BC says:

      Yeah, those ads do work and we do end up electing the politicians we deserve…and that makes me sad.

      I think the situation is slowly changing though, and we can thank social media for that. The Democrats and their allies spent way more money than Trump on attack ads during the last US election, but they lost anyway. Here is what I think is happening:

      In the old days, if the media was on your side you could put out an ad containing a nasty allegation or accusation about a political opponent and they would just run with it; random local newspapers, bloggers and small groups or organizations of people might object, but their reach (and thus their influence) was limited and their protests didn’t amount to much.

      Try it now, though, and Twitter/Facebook/Instagram etc will virtually *explode* if they see something that they deem worthy of spreading. It will be all over the world, in minutes. In other words, the Big Lie technique pioneered by Goebbels et al (repeat a thing over and over until it becomes The Truth) no longer works, because you no longer have control over the message or the media.

      That’s my theory, anyway. Only time will tell if it is valid…

  15. Jeff says:

    The “excuse” for the mistake was worse than the mistake. “Yeah we fucked up, but it was just because we mistook Ford for Trump which is the narrative we want you to believe in. ”

    In other words our narrative is bullshit.

  16. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    I wrote quite a while back about how Pauline Marois let someone else do her political thinking. I see that condition has now manifested itself in Toronto. But that’s ultimately her problem, not mine.

  17. James Smith says:

    Rather than dismiss Mr Ford’s Trump lite version of “Lock her up”, perhaps someone could do an “outside audit” of Mr Ford’s 1980’s income. As Globe & Mail claims Mr Ford was a drug pusher in the 1980’s and Mr Ford has not rebutted this claim in court, so one must ask: did Mr Ford declare his income from alleged illegal actives? I think the Ontario public has a right to know if the leader of the Ontario PC’s was not only engaged in what the Globe claims, but if true that Mr Ford may also be a tax cheat. As Mr Ford claims to be all about tax fairness, it would be nice to know if he paid his fair share of taxes on his alleged income from the 1980’s.

    • Warren says:

      Might’ve worked a few years ago. In 2018, with Ontario about to become the biggest dope dealer in Canada, it is no longer effective/relevant.

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