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Listen to this Canadian punk rock band, if you don’t believe me:

Anyway.

Here’s Adolf Twitler yesterday, speaking to a rally of mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers:

Elsewhere in the speech, Trump referred deferentially to North Korea’s dictator as “Chairman Kim.” Trump aides say the president intentionally refers to Trudeau by his first name “to be diminishing,” Maggie Haberman, a prominent New York Times reporter, wrote on Twitter.

Trump then launched into his familiar complaint about the post-G7 news conference in which Trudeau repeated his measured criticism of Trump’s new tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum. Trump baselessly suggested again that Trudeau gave the news conference because he thought Trump could not watch it while stuck on a long Air Force One flight to Asia.

“I get onto Air Force One. And he doesn’t understand that Air Force One has 22 televisions. So I come on — they have televisions in closets, they have televisions in areas that no place has — unlimited budget, Air Force One, right,” he said.

“So I get onto the plane and I see Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, saying, ‘Canada will not be bullied by the United States.’ I said, ‘What are we doing here? The fact is that Canada has a 275 per cent tariff on dairy products.’ Little thing called dairy product. Their lumber is a disaster with us. I say, ‘Why aren’t we using our own lumber?’”

The U.S. imported $5.7 billion (U.S.) in Canadian softwood lumber in 2016, according to Trump’s Commerce Department. The two countries are still embroiled in a years-old lumber dispute.

“Energy is a disaster,” Trump continued without elaboration. The White House has never explained the president’s occasional vague complaints about the energy relationship.

Trump then adopted a mocking voice to dismiss Trudeau’s argument that Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, officially imposed on “national security” grounds, are an insult to a close military ally like Canada.

When will Justin Trudeau stop taking this shit, and fight back?

Your guess is as good as mine.

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Anger is an energy.

That’s a line from Public Image’s improbable 1986 hit single, ‘Rise.’ The former Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten wails it, over and over, and it eventually makes a point worth pondering: that, sometimes, it’s advisable to get a bit angry.  It’s not always a good idea to turn the other cheek, and keep quiet.

Righteous anger is – well, righteous.

Historians will one day go in search of Justin Trudeau’s righteous anger, and they’ll probably start with June 10, 2018.  It was on that day that Donald Trump called the Canadian Prime Minister “very dishonest” and “weak.”

Trudeau wasn’t dishonest, of course, and he wasn’t weak.  He was merely doing the job he was hired to do.  But Trump’s puerile insults revealed one truth.

And that truth was this: with the TPP torn up, the Paris Accord a memory, and NAFTA heading swiftly to the morgue, Justin Trudeau’s Trump charm offensive had become an abject failure.  All of it had come to naught:  the dozens of phone calls.  The bilateral meetings.  The cordial diplomacy. The gift exchanges.  The disconcerting bromance between Trudeau’s chief advisor, Gerald Butts, and Trump’s former chief advisor, Steve Bannon.  All of it.

On June 11, 2018, Trudeau’s efforts to nudge Donald Trump towards re-ratifying NAFTA – with flattery, with blarney, with even some servility – came crashing to Earth.  And, at that point, every Canadian – from Doug Ford to Jason Kenney to even Stephen Harper, appearing on FOX – got mad.  And they wanted to see their Prime Minister get a bit mad, too.

But Trudeau mostly kept his cool.  At a press conference held to mark the end of the Parliamentary sitting, Trudeau gave the sort of verbal shrug for which his father became well-known.

“We continue to make sure that our folks are in regular contact, we continue to work on NAFTA negotiations,” Trudeau said. “I think the next time that I’ll see [Trump] will be at the NATO summit in Brussels and I look forward to continuing to have a constructive relationship with him in which I will continue to stand up for Canadian interests.”

“I believe it’s clear the way we have engaged with the president has been the right one.”

Well, actually, no.  It hasn’t been, at all.

If he is anything at all, Donald Trump is a thug.  Being a thug, he admires thuggery.  Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: those are the men whom Trump most admires.  The ones who are decent, and civil, and play by the rules – like Justin Trudeau, like Angela Merkel, like Emmanuel Macron – are door mats, on which Trump routinely wipes his feet.  He holds them in contempt.

When Trump “won” the U.S. Electoral College with three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, frantic bureaucrats and diplomats around the world scrambled to type up memoranda about what lay ahead.  The peered into the dark, dank recesses of the space where Trump’s brain is supposed to be, and they came up with a strategy that can be summarized in one word: flattery.

Suck up to Trump, they advised.  Kiss his flabby posterior, they said.  It will work.

It didn’t.

Others, like this writer, always had a different view: strongmen admire strength.  Aggressors respond to aggression.  Having cut his teeth in the take-no-prisoners world of New York City real estate – having literally become a star on a TV show whose principal purpose was humiliating people in prime time – Donald Trump was never going to abruptly change course, and adopt the Marquess of Queensberry rules.  Having achieved the presidency by being an angry, racist, pussy-grabbing creep, Donald Trump was never going to stop being angry, racist, pussy-grabbing creep.

In politics, you see, anger sometimes works.  Take, for example, CBS News anchor Dan Rather’s celebrated January 1988 interview with Vice-President George Bush, Sr. – who at that point was losing his bid to secure the Republican presidential nomination. The interview was supposed to be a presidential candidate profile, but Rather went after Bush, aggressively, about his role in the Iran-Contra Affair.  Even Bush’s critics later agreed it was a nine-minute, on-air ambush.  But the way in which Bush handled Rather helped win him the presidency.  Here’s a representative sample:

RATHER: I don’t want to be argumentative, Mr. Vice President.

BUSH: You do, Dan. I have respect for you, but I don’t have respect for what you’re doing here tonight.

 The Bush-Rather interview-cum-ambush became so pivotal, so much part of U.S. political history, that C-SPAN decided to sell recordings of the confrontation on its web site.  Bush himself came to regard it as the moment when his political fortunes turned around.

In their encounter, Bush is clearly frustrated and even angry.  He stumbles over words, he doesn’t complete sentences.  But it is because of that, not despite that, that the Republican Vice President seemed most truthful. He stammers, he loses his patience, he is anything but smooth – and, therefore, he was authentic.  No longer would he be regarded as an East Coast Ivy League wimp.  The confrontation with Rather catapulted Bush ahead in the polls, and helped to win him the presidency.

Justin Trudeau, as he ponders the darkening horizon at Harrington Lake, should heed the advice of no less than Johnny Rotten.

Anger works.  Anger is energy.

Time to get angry, Prime Minister.

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That’s my considered diplomatic advice. From next week’s Hill Times column:

At a press conference held to mark the end of the Parliamentary sitting, Trudeau gave the sort of verbal shrug for which his father became well-known. 

“We continue to make sure that our folks are in regular contact, we continue to work on NAFTA negotiations,” Trudeau said. “I think the next time that I’ll see [Trump] will be at the NATO summit in Brussels and I look forward to continuing to have a constructive relationship with him in which I will continue to stand up for Canadian interests.”

“I believe it’s clear the way we have engaged with the president has been the right one.”

Well, actually, no.  It hasn’t been, at all.

If he is anything at all, Donald Trump is a thug.  Being a thug, he admires thuggery.  Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: those are the men whom Trump most admires.  The ones who are decent, and civil, and play by the rules – like Justin Trudeau, like Angela Merkel, like Emmanuel Macron – are door mats, on which Trump routinely wipes his feet.  He holds them in contempt.

When Trump “won” the U.S. Electoral College with three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, frantic bureaucrats and diplomats around the world scrambled to type up memoranda about what lay ahead.  The peered into the dark, dank recesses of the space where Trump’s brain is supposed to be, and they came up with a strategy that can be summarized in one word: flattery.

Suck up to Trump, they advised.  Kiss his flabby posterior, they said.  It will work.

It didn’t.

Others, like this writer, always had a different view: strongmen admire strength. Aggressors respond to aggression. Having cut his teeth in the take-no-prisoners world of New York City real estate – having literally become a star on a TV show whose principal purpose was humiliating people in prime time – Donald Trump was never going to abruptly change course, and adopt the Marquess of Queensberry rules. 

Having achieved the presidency by being an angry, racist, pussy-grabbing creep, Donald Trump was never going to stop being angry, racist, pussy-grabbing creep.

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It’s the story that made Maddow cry on air.

Read it, here.

And – now – we are also being told that these children are orphans now – they will never be reunited with their parents again.

Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas, The Associated Press has learned.

Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis. The government also plans to open a fourth shelter to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston, where city leaders denounced the move Tuesday.

In recent days, some have taken me to task for likening this American regime to Nazis. For saying I hate them. I don’t care: they are like Nazis. And I do hate them.

But what I think doesn’t matter. I’m just a guy with a web site.

What matters is what people with power do and say.

And, so: when will my government – the Canadian government – will finally speak out on this?

When?

UPDATE: And Trudeau condemned it! That is such, such good news.  Proud Canadian, here.

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LONDON – A G7 truth.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, who lately knows a thing or two about unsubtle truths, offered up a perfectly English way of describing it all: “Difficult.”

The G7 summit, that is. “This was a difficult summit, with at times some very candid discussions,” May told MPs in the House of Commons. “The United Kingdom, with our allies and partners, will continue to play our part in promoting…the rules-based international order.”

Except, of course, there is no “rules-based international order” anymore. With the exception of the one that Vladimir Putin has unleashed on the West, “rules” and “order” are now decidedly oxymoronic. The new new order – characterized by chaos and disunity and the disintegration of democratic institutions – is the one that prevails, now.

Donald Trump is the embodiment of the new world disorder, and also the glowering face of it. Even the Britons most disinterested in politics knows that much. Down at the bustling Camden Market, above all of the knock-off Nike and Thrasher stuff, there is one T-shirt that is a big seller: one featuring a face, with Donald Trump on one side, and with Adolf Hitler’s on the other.

Just past the Hitler-Trump T-shirts, in an old British Rail yard, is the spot where the Clash practiced, a place called Rehearsal Rehearsals. The legendary punk group posed for their first album cover there, too, and wrote many of the political anthems found on that record.

“Yankee dollar talks, to the dictators of the world,” the Clash’s Joe Strummer howled on their song, ‘I’m So Bored Of The USA.’ “In fact it’s giving orders, and they can’t afford to miss a word!”

“I’m so bored with the U.S.A.

I’m so bored with the U.S.A.

But what can I do?”

Not much, then or now. Trump – as despotic and as deranged as he is – is indisputably in charge. Per Strummer, he’s not just talking, but giving orders.  We listen.

That was the part of the G7 summit in Québec that was the hardest to bear, for the British Prime Minister and our own: being obliged to listen to Trump. Being again forced to take seriously the rantings and ravings of the most unqualified President of the United States in history.

That, too, was the significance of that now-infamous photo, the one that was everywhere to be seen here in London, in the dispiriting day’s following the worst-ever G7 summit: the G7 leaders and advisers sombrely gathered around Germany’s Angela Merkel, as she stood like a schoolteacher above a pouting Trump, his arms crossed, the petulant child. Merkel looked to be imploring Trump about some point, and Justin Trudeau (revealingly, perhaps) was not even in the frame.

The photo’s file name – taken from Merkel’s Instagram account – was “AGMtenseboardroom.jpg.”

“Tense boardroom” is a bit of an understatement. Trump arrived late at the G7, departed early, and left frustration and consternation in his wake. On his way out of town, most notably, Trump lashed out at his host, Trudeau.

Trump said Trudeau was “dishonest.” He said Trudeau was “weak.” He said that Trudeau’s comments about the collapse of the G7 – which were bland and benign diplomatic politesse, and nothing particularly new – were going to “cost the Canadian people a lot of money.”

Trump’s advisors piled on, too. “There’s a special place in Hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door,” said Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro.

Not since John F. Kennedy raged about John Diefenbaker – not since Lyndon B. Johnson grabbed Mike Pearson by the lapels and shook him – have Canada-U.S. relations been this truly bad. Trump’s attacks on Trudeau – and, to a lesser degree, his dismissal of the G7 what May calls the rules-based international order – left the pundits and the experts in a lather.

Not this one, I confess. As I observed on Twitter, Trump’s preferred social media platform, “Justin Trudeau’s relationship with Donald Trump was always going to reach this nadir: Trump is a dishonest, disgusting thug. No campaign of servility was ever going to change that. But, now that it has, every Canadian should rally to Trudeau’s side.”

And, with the notable exception of the tin-eared Andrew Scheer, Canadians have rallied to Trudeau’s side. From Doug Ford in Ontario to Jason Kenney in Alberta, even Trudeau’s fiercest partisan critics were outraged by Trump’s attacks on a Canadian Prime Minister, and on Canada’s economy.

Meanwhile, Trudeau’s Trump charm offensive – up to and including pretending to take seriously Trump’s daughter, who was previously was only known for designing ugly handbags – was left in ruins at the G7. The thirty-plus phone calls, the many bizarre handshakes – the solicitous tilt of Trudeau’s tousled head, as he feigned interest in Trump’s inanities – all came to naught. Nothing was as important as rescuing NAFTA, a PMO senior staffer told me last year, and now NAFTA appears Canadian completely doomed.

Justin Trudeau, however, isn’t.

Despite having no major legislative success to point to – despite the India imbroglio, despite the #MeToo moments, despite falling behind an uninspiring opponent in fundraising and the polls – Trudeau was politically rescued by the G7. Trump’s extraordinary attacks on the Canadian Prime Minister have united Canadians like they have seldom been before. He may be an imperfect Prime Minister, but he is our Prime Minister, after all.

The G7 may have made for some “very candid discussions,” as the British Prime Minister said. But they also made for something else: Justin Trudeau’s inevitable re-election.

And that, too, is a G7 truth.

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London pubs and bangers and mash! Camden Town and the Clash! Paris riot and a bash!

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Justin Trudeau is the luckiest guy alive. Consider the evidence.

• He starts slipping in the polls. Along comes Donald Trump to the G7 and insults him and Canada and makes Trudeau the most popular politician on Earth. Not just Canada. Earth.
• He and his rookie government make rookie mistakes. Along comes Jagmeet Singh and Andrew Scheer, who proceed to make even more mistakes and underwhelm Canadians from coast to coast.
• He gets in trouble with India and other stuff that makes him look unserious. Along comes Trump, again, who makes Trudeau seem positively Churchillian on any given day.
• He doesn’t have big legislative wins, and he hasn’t won a new NAFTA, either. Along comes a broad-based voter consensus that the government that does less, not more, is the government that angers them the least.
• He’s in trouble on his Left flank (pipelines, electoral reform). Along comes Doug Ford, who (irrationally) freaks out Lefties and will drive them back into Trudeau’s waiting arms.
• He’s in trouble on his Right flank (deficits, taxes). Along comes John Horgan’s ilk, who (appropriately) anger Righties and who thereby make Trudeau look not so bad after all.
• He gets into difficulty on any number of fronts (#MeToo, abortion, etc.). And along comes any number of politicians (see Scheer, Singh, above) who adopt positions that make Trudeau look exceedingly moderate and sensible.

It goes on and on. The guy just can’t lose for winning.

Comments are open.

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Kathleen Wynne’s former cabinet colleague doesn’t mince words.

“Kathleen is all about Kathleen,” the former colleague says.  “That’s always her focus.”

One of her former fundraisers and advisors is similarly candid with this writer.  “I appreciate all the nice things you’ve been saying about me, but thought I should let you know I haven’t been involved with [Wynne] for months,” he says.  And he’s very happy to have nothing more to do with her, the former advisor says.

A former Liberal candidate, Jim Curran, is willing to let his name be used.  He is livid about Wynne’s ahistorical decision to concede defeat days before the vote, thereby consigning her candidates and caucus to political oblivion. Says Curran: “What Kathleen did to her candidates was pretty much the shittiest thing I’ve ever seen a leader do to her own, hardworking, selfless, dedicated candidates who have put their lives and families on hold for the party they believe in. It was absolutely selfish and totally disgusting.”

There are lots more stories like that, but suffice to say this: Kathleen Wynne lost.

She lost because her $70,000-a-month campaign Wizard ran the worst campaign in modern Canadian political history.  She lost because her war room was a joke – “the surrender room,” as someone said. She lost because she had no message to offer Ontario’s voters.  She lost because what messages she had – inter alia, “Sorry Not Sorry” – were juvenile and idiotic.  She lost because she thought she won in 2014 – when, in fact, Tim Hudak snatched defeat from the clichéd jaws of victory.

She lost because she gave up the political centre. She lost because she and her mercenary inner circle saw the Ontario Liberal Party as a vehicle for their personal ambitions – and now they have left it with massive debt, adrift, a shell.

But, mainly, Kathleen Wynne lost because of Kathleen Wynne.  She lost because something – Hubris? Self-delusion? Ego? – persuaded her to stick around longer than she should.  Something persuaded her that it was all about her.

Because, as her former senior cabinet colleague notes, to Kathleen, it is always all about Kathleen.

Now, there can be little debate that Kathleen Wynne was smart, she was driven.  No debate.  One does not become a Premier, generally, by being an idiot.  But, her intelligence notwithstanding, Wynne refused to see the writing on the wall.

It was there for all to see.  For two years leading up to the 2018 Ontario general election, Kathleen was the most unpopular Premier in Canada.  Angus Reid and other pollsters dryly reported on it at regular intervals: Wynne was deeply despised by Ontarians.  They wanted change.  They wanted her gone.

She didn’t seem to care.  Solipsism, or something, told her that she could communicate her way out of her dilemma.  She was, of course, the Premier who hustled to every Loblaws in Ontario to promote limited beer sales like it was the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize.  She could communicate anything, she told herself.

The polls told a different story.  A while ago, this writer and others commissioned a poll by a reputable national agency.  It showed that the Ontario Liberal brand was popular.  It showed that mostly McGuinty-era policies were popular.  It showed that, with former cabinet minister Sandra Pupatello at the helm, the party could win another majority.

But, under Wynne, the poll showed that the Ontario Liberal Party was heading straight for the rocks.

Last Thursday night, the Ontario Liberal Party – formerly one of the most successful political parties in the Western world – hit the rocks.  It was reduced to barely a half-dozen seats and no party status.

To the end, Kathleen Wynne made it all about her. “I have not lost the passion for continuing this work,” she said.

But  Ontario long ago lost any passion it had for her.

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The Wizard, and Wynne, have destroyed the Ontario Liberal Party.

A rump in the Legislature.  A massive party debt.  A terrible, terrible campaign – possibly the worst in Ontario political history.

So where do Ontario Liberals go from here?

I gave many years of my life to the Ontario Liberals.  They were my political home – until Kathleen Wynne arrived, that is.  When she arrived, all of the McGuinty/Chrétien Liberals were driven out.  We were maligned and shunned.  Offers of help were ignored.  Some days, Kathleen refused to even utter Dalton McGuinty’s name.

Now Kathleen and her Wizard – who was reportedly getting $70,000 a month to preside over the worst campaign some of us have ever seen – are gone, or going.  I like Kathleen, as a person, and wish her the best in her future endeavours.  But good riddance to Kathleen the politician, and her Wizard and her Board.

So where do we Ontario Liberals go from here?

Not so long ago, when it became apparent to some of us that a Wynne-led Ontario Liberal Party was headed for disaster, Daisy Group commissioned a poll by a reputable national agency.  We wanted to know what would happen if the OLP was led by the woman who should have won in 2013 – the woman who was knifed in the back after a shady backroom deal involving Messrs. Murray, Hoskins and Sousa.

Below are the key findings, never before seen publicly.  They show three things:

1. The Ontario Liberals would have won last night, big, with Sandra Pupatello.
2. The Ontario Liberals would have picked up support in precisely those places where the PCs and the NDP triumphed last night.
3. The Ontario Liberal brand was strong – but only with Pupatello as leader.

So, you may ask yourself: can Ontario Liberals come back from last night’s disaster?

Yes. But only if Sandra Pupatello is leader.

And, if she wants the job.

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