He’s happy to derail the entire political system to distract from his own political trainwreck
Love him or hate him, you’ve got to give Justin Trudeau credit. He is the political equivalent of a cockroach. You can spray him with invective, stomp on him with slogans, drown him in bad polls, and still he scuttles along, fighting to survive. And not only survive, but attack, accusing his opponents of the greatest sin in politics: being traitors to their country.
For the next five minutes, Trudeau lambasted Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s refusal to take a security briefing on these allegations: “The decision of the leader of the Conservative party to not receive the necessary clearance to get those names and to protect the integrity of his party is bewildering to me … It also means there is nobody there to stand up for those individuals if the intelligence is shoddy or incomplete or just allegations from a single source.”
It was a classic setup: insinuation, accusation and implication that Poilievre isn’t fit to lead. And for a moment, it opened a tantalizing possibility: has Trudeau been hanging in there all this time because he had shade to throw at the Conservative leader? Some serious, career-ending shade that was kept in reserve for the moment close to election-time, when it could inflict maximum damage?
Like many pundits, I assumed Trudeau’s days were numbered. His path to victory seemed all but closed. Unless … he knew something we didn’t. Or had something in his back pocket. Such as proof that the Conservatives are doing the bidding of a foreign power, in this case the now allegedly murderous government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The only thing that would convince them to stay would be a reversal of fortunes — and the only way to get one now is not to build the Liberals up, but to tear the Conservatives down.
Trudeau’s gambit is thus not about sparing Canada from foreign interference. It’s the act of a desperate leader pulling the emergency cord on his own political trainwreck — even if it means derailing the entire political system to survive.
National Post