Trudeau Is Playing The Same Hand Trump Played... Only It's Working (for now).
How the Trudeau government is using Trump tactics in the Winnipeg virology lab investigation.
Trudeau has piggybacked off of what happened in the U.S. well, using not only the Jan. 6th uprising and it’s connections to white supremacist groups to gaslight any opposition from the CPC, but also the entire political mood in parts of the U.S., that it’s time for an end to conservatism. While our conservative party is very different from the Republican party down south, the parallels are still obviously there. That’s why O’Toole is desperately trying to lead the party away from things like ignoring climate change and pushing conversion therapy, because public opinion has changed. There is something else Trudeau has picked up from south of the border as well: Trump conspiracy theories.
Trump had legitimate concerns that there was bias within the FBI and the news, but he took it a step further, openly flirting with QAnon, which is a bunch of cryptic messages on a 4Chan message board that seemed to come from within Trump’s own staff, but that also usually turned out to be a bunch of nothing. He also went well beyond the usual “They cheated” when he lost. Other than his legitimate concerns, he also created concerns out of thin air, calling everything against him a conspiracy from the left and “fake news”. Some of it was true, some of it was not, but at the end of the day, this gave him a Teflon coating to his supporters, until he lost the support of his party and many within the news who were favourable to him before. All in all, Trump mostly pointed out things that were obvious parts of politics, while also partaking in the games at the same time.
This is a tactic that Trudeau has leaned on heavily in response to COVID, but also in previous years. Whenever the CPC has raised legitimate concerns about moves his party makes, he brushes it off as racism, or the CPC wasting the government’s time on partisan investigations and conspiracy theories, even when they are backed by other parties. Sound familiar? Now this strategy seems to be faltering a little bit in recent months, but its still been fairly effective. With Trudeau’s use of the Trump playbook, I wonder if he’s taking another page out of it: the vindication page.
Trump fought hard to dismiss any concerns about several investigations into them, and without any proof coming out he did anything actually illegal, he claimed vindication, and his supporters did too. Trudeau did this as well with the WE charity scandal. Even though the investigation proved he lied several times about his involvement with the sole sourced contract, and his close connections with the Kielburgers, he was technically not able to be prosecuted under the conflict of interest act along with his former finance minister Bill Morneau. This is the exact same story as the Trump/Russia collusion investigation. He technically could not be charged, but a lot of what came out of it was pretty damning. This lack of acceptance of culpability because they weren’t charged shows a deep disrespect for the voters and the position they hold. This is a classic trait of narcissists, which both are a clear textbook example of.
Now fast forward to today, where the Trudeau government is fighting tooth and nail to not have the unredacted files surrounding the ejection of two Chinese scientists from Canada who were working in a virology lab in Winnipeg. We see the same MO being used, and I fear it will have the same result. Right now they are trying to get the court to overrule the cabinet, which is illegal (sound like a Trump move?) to stop these records from coming out. My fear is that after all is said and done, Trudeau will use his Teflon coating and say “well none of it was directly connected to me”, throw a subordinate under the bus, and his polling will remain the same. The only hope that I have is that moderates will eventually see the pattern, and that this may be the final nail in the coffin for his popularity, since he never takes responsibility for what goes on while he is in power.