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Supposed Trudeau Liberal mantra: believe the victims.

Actual Trudeau Liberal motto: humiliate victims.

That truth was revealed, yet again, this week on Parliament Hill. A House of Commons committee was conducting a rare Summertime hearing. The subject: violence against women.

It’s an important issue. Canadian women are five times more likely to be targeted with sexual assault. In their lifetimes, four in ten Canadian women have experienced some form of violence from a partner. In 2022, almost 200 Canadian women were murdered, mostly by men – that’s one every two days.

So, the Status of Women committee scheduled a meeting this week to hear from police officers and victims themselves.

The Liberals on the committee, it appears, were in a bad mood. They didn’t want their Summer vacations interrupted. They adjourned early, back in June, and won’t be back until the middle of September: that’s three months on the golf course and away from legislative business.

So, the Grits were grouchy.

Cait Alexander, a young woman who heads an advocacy group called End Violence Everywhere, was there to give evidence. Her family sat behind her as she spoke. “I’m supposed to be dead,” Alexander said. She showed the assembled MPs harrowing photographs of three years ago, when her then-boyfriend beat her and left her for dead.”If you haven’t met a survivor and a victim’s family, well, now you have.”

After Alexander finished her opening statement, Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld spoke. You could be forgiven for thinking that Vandenbeld is a nobody who couldn’t get picked out of a one-person police lineup. She’s worked for the United Nations (naturally), and she’s been investigated by the Ethics Commissioner (practically a Trudeau Liberals job requirement). That’s about it.

Vandenbeld spoke. She made a few vanilla comments about the issue before the committee, and then she went after Conservative MPs for “politicizing” the issue. Which she, herself, then did. She wanted to talk about abortion.

The witnesses who had been invited to speak were dumbfounded. So were the Tory and NDP MPs present. Cait Alexander couldn’t believe what was happening. She held up the photos of her battered body again. She was crying. An advocate of battered women, Megan Walker, spoke: ”This is the problem. Did [Vandenbeld] listen to anything that was said this morning?”

The meeting descended into chaos, while the female victims of violence looked on, appalled. MPs started raising points of order. NDP MP Leah Gazan said: “I’m disgusted because I wasn’t given a chance to put forward witnesses when I’m representing ground zero for murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls.”

At that point, Cait Alexander got up and left, in tears. Walker got up and followed her.

Some of the MPs apologized to Cait Alexander’s Mom, who was still in the committee room. Her mother was unmoved. “Sorry isn’t good enough,” she said. “We’ve heard ‘sorry’.”

And that, really, was the best and only response to a disgusting, appalling display by Anita Vandenbeld her ilk: saying “sorry” isn’t enough. It doesn’t cut it.

But Vandenbeld is a Trudeau Liberal, isn’t she? She’s a card-carrying member of the cult that professes to be feminist, and then sticks by the boss when it’s revealed that he groped a female reporter at a beer festival in 2000.

They’re the ones who regularly chastise Conservatives (and others) for being insufficiently on the side of women – and then look the other way when their boss kicks two impressive women, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, out of cabinet. For talking back to him.

They’re the ones who insist that they want to ensure women have the right to choose – when they could have passed a law enshrining abortion rights at any time in the past decade. But didn’t.

By their words and their deeds, we know who the Trudeau Liberals are. Non-entities like Anita Vandenbeld show us, all the time.

They’re liars and hypocrites.

And, this week, they again reminded us that they don’t give a sweet damn about female victims of violence.

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If you had the impression this week that Benjamin Netanyahu was running for office, you’d be right. He is.

But the Prime Minister of Israel wasn’t running where he was this week, which was at a podium in Washington, D.C., speaking to members of the U.S. Congress. Bathing in the standing ovations he received – reportedly more than any foreign leader has ever received when addressing congresspeople – Netanyahu could be forgiven for wishing he was running for re-election in America, and not Israel.

Back in Israel, you see, he is really, really unpopular. Presently, he is facing three separate corruption prosecutions; he is met with protesters wherever he goes in Israel, including hundreds who have camped outside his residence, for months; and he is deeply unloved by as many as 70 per cent of Israelis, who want him out. They disapprove of his inability to get all the hostages home, they disapprove of how he is conducting the war against Hamas, they disapprove of him.

But, mostly, they disapprove of something that is little-known in places like America, but is very well-known in Israel. Namely, what Netanyahu and his government knew about Hamas’ savage attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 – and what, if anything, he did about it.

Because, on balance, it doesn’t look he did much. It doesn’t look like he did anything meaningful to prevent the worst progrom in the 76-year history of the Jewish state – a vicious, sadistic, Satanic attack that left 1,200 men, women and children dead, over 200 taken hostage, and an untold number of women and girls subjected to sexual violence that is beyond comprehension. For that, Benjamin Netanyahu is now facing a near-impossible task: re-election.

The damning facts are well-known in Israel – and, in some cases, are actually still to be found on the Internet. They can be seen in videos created by Hamas and their evil cabal, and which were uploaded to assorted platforms.

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Jean Chretien and Joe Biden.

This isn’t the first time I’ve talked about how they were similar. Their similarities, in fact, were such that I was persuaded to support the latter because of my many years of work for the former.

Consider: both politicians were older than most of their competition, and were often dismissed as ‘yesterday’s men’ as a result.

Both regularly mangled grammar and syntax – Biden because he had a childhood stammer which he overcame, and Chretien because he reportedly does not speak either official language.

Both men came from large and poor families in small towns. Biden, from Scranton in Pennsylvania – and Chretien from Shawinigan in Quebec.

Both men spent many decades in government before getting the top job. Both were regularly underestimated by their opponents, and they greatly benefited from that. Both had disdain for the elites in their respective parties.

And, this: both were fighters. Meaning, if you pushed them, they would push back.

When Paul Martin’s thugs commenced trying to push Chretien out, he dug in his heels, and ran again – winning an unprecedented and massive third majority government in 2000. And when the Martinites kept pushing, Chretien said he would leave – 18 months later. Team Martin went on to lose the majority, and then lose government.

For weeks we have been witnessing something similar with Joe Biden.

Full disclosure: I volunteered for Joe Biden in 2020, getting out the vote in a dozen different states. I was proud to do so. But after I saw his performance in the first (and almost certainly only) presidential debate with Donald Trump, I knew – as someone who has great affection for him – that Joe Biden should not run for a second term. It wouldn’t be good for him, for America, or for the free world.

Lots of Democrats immediately had the same view. And, in the intervening weeks, they went public with their desire to push Joe Biden out. Veteran members of the US Senate and the House of Representatives said Joe should go. More mutineers were stepping up to the microphones every day.

A Covid-stricken Biden responded by retreating to his beachfront home, and refusing to engage with his critics. His staff told the media that he wasn’t going anywhere, and likened the naysayers to bedwetters. He was going to run again as the Democratic presidential candidate, they insisted.

This is where the Biden and Chretien similarities end.

Chretien left with a 60 per cent approval rating. He left on the date of his choosing. He left his party in good shape, and he left the country with a balanced budget. He left the way he wanted to.

Biden, meanwhile, has been unpopular with American voters, and he was getting more unpopular by the day. He was dragging his heels and dragging his party down. He was putting himself, and his ego, before the interests of his party and his country – something he promised never, ever do.

The writing was on the wall, as they say. But Joe Biden seemed to be the only person in America who couldn’t read it – or refused to look.

I have worked for older veteran politicians who sometimes talk funny and are underestimated. I know the species. If you take a swipe at them, you’ve got to be prepared to get it back, twice as hard. They really, really don’t like to be pushed around.

But in the end, Jean Chretien knew when to leave, and he left on his own terms. Joe Biden didn’t know it was time to leave.

Until today.

 

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Too soon?

That was the question being asked, online, 24 hours after the assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump.

People – not always anonymous, and some of them not necessarily Democrats – were posting funny and not-so-funny memes about Trump and the foiled assassination. One showed Trump depicted as artist Vincent van Gogh, who of course famously removed his own ear. Another, a bit later, showed the white rectangular bandage on the former president’s injured ear, with the line: “What happens when you order a pillow from Temu.”

A couple of the memes were funny. Some, not so much.

But in every case, a question arose: is it too soon to be joking about an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate? Shouldn’t attempts at humor wait a bit longer?

In the case of the conspiracy theorists, of course, there was no wait. Minutes after reports about the shooting went out to a shocked world, the word “staged” was trending on X, formerly Twitter. Lots of other conspiracy theories, too, to the effect that what had happened hadn’t really happened.

But that’s the conspiracy nutbars. They’re too stupid to ever believe that reality is, you know, real.

The people who were making fun of Trump’s near-death experience, however, were a different matter. In the past, making jokes about political assassinations, and attempted ones, was unheard of. In the United States, it might get you a visit from the Secret Service. Elsewhere, it was a good way to swiftly lose your job and your reputation.

Not these days. The assassination had become fodder for jokes within hours of it happening. (Not two Canadian university professors, in Ontario and in BC, however – they expressed chagrin that the assassin missed his target. Those fools did not seem to be joking.)

Comedians can get away with joking about taboo subjects because that is their job: to joke about taboo subjects. But making light of an assassination attempt? Why were so many taking the risk?

There are three possible reasons.

One, in the social media age, restraint has gone by the wayside. People can say outrageous things, and do, within seconds on social media platforms. Reflecting on a post before it is posted seems almost quaint and old-fashioned.

There’s a second reason why inappropriate things were being said about Donald Trump online – and even before the dust had even settled at his Pennsylvania rally. It’s Trump himself. If the Republican presidential nominee is known for anything, it is for saying outrageous and offensive things online, 24/7. He’s licensed Internet-based extremes.

That, perhaps, is why Trump and his winged monkeys did not urge restraint: because they never show restraint themselves.

The third reason is the likeliest one.

The cliché used to be that a week was a lifetime in politics. These days, a single day is a lifetime. Events move so quickly, and the news-cycle has become so compressed, that an actual attempt to assassinate an actual former president had lost its shock value – almost immediately. Among Trump’s MAGA core, of course, it was an event with biblical significance.

But for everyone else, it was simply another terrible thing happening in the terrible year that is 2024. In this era, nothing can shock anymore, because all of us – principally because of the devices we all carry in our pockets – have mostly seen it all. Political scandals, natural disasters, pogroms – none of it really registers, anymore, because we’ve seen and heard it all. Too many times.

For the luckless Democrats, this is arguably a good thing. Even after Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate performance with Trump, national polls were not showing a dramatic shift. That surprised everybody. And, now, an attempt on his main opponent’s life isn’t yet a big deal, say the national polls. This week, surveys even showed that Biden and Trump are only a point apart.

Whatever the reason, whatever the cause, what once shocked us isn’t so shocking anymore. What was once historic doesn’t feel so very history-making.

I’m no fan of Donald Trump. But I would greatly prefer to see him defeated at the ballot box. Not ever with a bullet.

And, call me old-fashioned, but it still feels a little early to be making jokes about someone – even Donald J. Trump – being assassinated.

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Okay, I’ll take the wheel, here. Just for a bit.

Why? Well, you guys don’t come here to get my analysis of how well the Secret Service do their job. Although, if you ask me, I think the Secret Service will be considered a full-fledged member of the Deep State before the sun goes down tonight. If they aren’t already.

I’m not an expert on the Secret Service or how to protect Presidents, Premiers and Prime Ministers. I’ve gotten lots of credible death threats over the years, too, so I’ve interacted with police and security experts. And I learned, long ago, to defer to their expertise and judgment. But man oh man, are the Secret Service in for a rough Summer.

And you don’t come here for my take on U.S. gun laws, either. I consciously stopped commenting on mass shootings in the United States years ago. I figured that, if the mass murder of twenty five-year-old kids at Sandy Hook didn’t change them, nothing would. Not the shooting of presidents or presidential candidates, either.

They’ll continue to kill each other, because they are a nation at war with itself. Where a twenty-year-old who hasn’t even voted yet can get his hands on an assault rifle.

So, you don’t come here for any of that. You come here to get my political take, because I’ve been involved with political stuff for a long time. So, here it is. Five things.

One, it’s 113 days until Americans line up to vote. Donald Trump was already ahead, and he’ll be even more ahead now. But – but, but – it’s 113 days, which is several lifetimes in politics. So he’ll say or do something outrageous, and it’ll tighten up again, a bit.

But, as Brian Lilley and Charles Adler and Tasha Kheririddin said this morning, it’ll make Trump’s base even more convinced that he is the literal messiah. It’ll firm up his vote, big time. And he’s going to enter the Republican convention this week even stronger than he was before. Which is to say, strong. The vote may be 113 days away, but he’s the one to beat, right now.

Two, Joe Biden – who I worked for last time – has pulled his ads, changed his schedule, and is laying low. He was already going to lay low during the GOP convention. Sure. But, now, Democrats are going to be agonizing over every damn thing they do. Their internal debates – which had already spilled out into the open, after Biden’s disastrous presidential debate – are going to get a lot more challenging.

Abortion and Trump will continue to work for them as a strategy. That hasn’t changed. But the other attack? The one about the importance of democracy? That one is now a lot harder. Republicans will say American democracy is ruined and, after an attempted assassination of their candidate last night, lots of people will agree with them.

Three, I think NATO, the EU, America’s allies and American governmental institutions will start treating Trump like he’s already president. You can see that in their post-shooting comments last night. They think he’s won, now. They’re going to start changing their approach to Trump. They didn’t want Trump, but they think Trump is what they’re going to get. So, light’s out, NATO, Ukraine, Taiwan and free trade. Those are gone when and if he wins, and they all know it.

Four, Justin Trudeau. Canada’s Prime Minister is running out of time, and he has run out of moves. All that he had left was a possible Trump win. Because – sorry, Team Tory – many Canadians won’t want Pierre Poilievre in the Prime Minister’s Office when Donald Trump is in the Oval Office. They’ll want an alternative to the craziness they believe, correctly, is coming our way.

Is it enough to narrow a twenty-point gap? No, not right now. But it’ll make a difference. Canadians are big believers in alternation – Team Red at one level, Team Blue at the other level. Hell, even Calgarians do that – they’ve been electing Tory Premiers and Liberal mayors for decades.

Trump coming back will spook Canadian voters. And Trudeau will make full and frequent use of a second Trump presidency. Believe it.

Five: we live in a dangerous world – a world more dangerous than I can ever remember. As someone said to me when we went out for dinner last night, we are seeing things in 2024 that we all thought we’d never see again.

And an assassin’s bullet made everything more dangerous.

We are heading into a dark, dark place, my friends, and no one has the wheel.

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Rats, feces, drugs and used needles.

That’s the proud legacy of the “pro-Palestinian” youngsters who occupied the main entrance to McGill University for the past months.

Said McGill: “The encampment [was] the site of profound health and safety risks that continued to grow in scope and severity…due to the presence of human waste, a rat infestation, discarded syringes, a large amount of rotting food and garbage, and other potentially dangerous and unsanitary conditions within the site, it was necessary to use heavy machinery to remove parts of the camp for the safety of all involved…For the same reasons, it will be necessary to excavate and replace a layer of contaminated soil on the site.”

That’s not all, of course. The McGill tenti-fada was characterized by drug overdoses, vandalism, mini-riots, assaults, and regular attacks on Jewish students. When this writer was there, just a few days ago, signs were up telling Jews (“Zionists”) to stay away. It was an ongoing, malodorous, fetid hate fest.

And that’s truly how bad it became: the university has had to excavate it, to remove contaminated soil.

Contaminated, too, is a word that can be applied to what happened at the University of Windsor, albeit in a different context. There, the illegal occupation hadn’t gone on as long as McGill’s. As law student Sydney Greenspoon wrote in the Times of Israel, the University of Windsor is now “an unsafe place” for Jews. Greenspoon wrote that she has been targeted with antisemitic comments by students and professors – including Holocaust denial.

Wrote Greenspoon: “It is a campus that fosters hate and allows antisemitism to flourish, forcing the few Jewish students to hide any sign of our Jewish identity, in fear for our physical and psychological safety.”

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