Justin Trudeau’s 2001 blackface as Aladdin at West Point Grey Academy, high school talent show, and 2017 college video—described as "ape-like"—emerged after years of suppression by media like CBC ($1.5B annual funding) and Toronto Star. His press conference evasions, including a false claim about only two incidents, and refusal to resign despite calls from TrudeauMustresign.com expose hypocrisy: smearing others as racist while groping women (e.g., 2017 Kokene incident, governor general’s ass at cabinet swearing-in) and dismissing accountability with performative apologies. His pattern of entitlement and cultural domination—mirroring historical white supremacy—undermines progressive claims like feminism, risking foreign trust and potential defection from supporters to Greens or NDP. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I take you through Justin Trudeau's midnight press conference, the one he did on the airplane last night, right after Time magazine broke the photo of him posing in blackface.
Within hours another photo came out of him in high school and then a video of him when he was in college.
That is a lot.
I take his press conference and I think I break it down into 18 little clips and show you why it's all BS.
I think there is so much more here.
Watch, listen to the podcast.
And Lauren Gunter joins me today.
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All right.
Here's my analysis of Trudeau's press conference.
Tonight, Justin Trudeau shocks the world in a series of blackface stunts that went well into his adult years.
It's September 19th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Stunning story last night about Justin Trudeau from Time magazine, as in the American periodical, as in they broke a story that Canada's media party hasn't or wouldn't or couldn't do.
In the more than 10 years Justin Trudeau has been an MP.
the four years he's been prime minister.
It's Trudeau in full blackface, as in painting his face black.
Oh, and then there's the added detail of him groping a woman's chest in the same picture.
But that's not even unusual for Trudeau, is it?
It's unusual when he's in a photo with a woman he isn't groping.
Now, this wasn't a picture dug up by a private investigator or hacked out of someone's cell phone.
It was there in plain sight for decades in the yearbook of the elite Vancouver private school where Trudeau was teaching some 18 years ago.
He was 29 years old then.
He was a grown man.
It's not ancient history, and it's not in the deep south.
It's not some Confederacy thing.
He was a teacher at an elite school in Vancouver in 2001, and he thought it would be a hoot to go full blackface.
Oh, and black hands, look at them.
You really don't see people going that deep into make-believe other than true nutcases like that white girl, Rachel Dolezal, who one day declared she was black.
So this news landed like a thunderbolt last night, and then almost immediately, as soon as the Time magazine photo came out, so did another one, this time when Trudeau was himself a student.
He was younger.
It was also from a yearbook.
He had blackface on and a wig.
Now, how was it that the second photo came out from a totally different news outlet, Non-Time magazine, just hours after the first one came out?
Well, obviously, people had been holding on to it and decided to finally use it.
As in, these have been in the public domain for years.
Those yearbooks were personally seen by thousands of people, and they were able to be seen by anyone who showed an interest, and no one reported on them, though reporters obviously had them.
Why hadn't they shown those pictures before?
During Trudeau's first campaign for public office as an MP, during Trudeau's campaign for party leader, during Trudeau's campaign as party leader, becoming prime minister.
How did none of these photos come to light in any of those moments of supposed accountability?
That's a question for the political war rooms of Stephen Harper and Andrew Scheer to answer, but more to the point it's for the CBC and CTV and Global News and the Toronto Star and the rest of them to answer too, which I suppose answers the earlier question of why it took Time magazine in the United States to break the silence.
Because they're not bought off, not for $1.5 billion a year like the CBC is, not for $600 million like the newspaper companies are, not for the price of a $5 poutine like David Cochrane is.
This is for you David. This is for you.
No, no, no, no, no.
Hey, Zipo Party always supports the CDC.
Oh, who's gonna taste it?
No, who's there?
We wanna slow him down.
That's pitiful.
Now, this happens all the time, actually.
Whether it was, you know, that people-kind comment, remember that?
Maternal love is the love that's going to change the future of mankind.
So we'd like you to look.
We like to say people-kind, not necessarily mankind.
It was the U.S. media that showed us that, or even that goofy water-box bottle thing, remember that one?
We have recently switched to drinking water bottles out of water, out of when we have water bottles, out of a plastic, sorry, away from plastic towards paper, like drink box water bottles sort of thing.
Yeah, that wasn't covered by the Canadian media until it was covered by the American media.
Some of these stories are big, some are trivial.
They're not all important, but they all paint Trudeau in a negative light, which is their only commonality.
It's the only constant in all the examples I can show you.
And every single one of those stories was broken by foreign media from America, from the UK, from Australia, because Canada's media is compromised.
It's a deep problem that's getting worse.
I'm sure that several Canadian media outlets had that blackface picture, but just didn't want to embarrass their patron, Justin Trudeau, so they sat on him.
Only Time magazine ran with it, because they're not trying to suck up to Trudeau, and only that, being scooped by an American company, shamed the rest of Canada's media into following up.
So Trudeau came out last night on his campaign jet and did a little scrum.
He's done a lot of tearful apologies before over the years, fake tears, of course.
He's a dramatic actor.
He cries when asking for forgiveness for what other people have done.
He specializes in apologizing for what other politicians did in the 1800s or 1900s even.
But of course, he's not really apologizing when he does that.
He's just virtue signaling about how much more morally superior he is personally than those people in eras past.
He's so much more enlightened.
He'll cry on command for the cameras because he's crying for you.
He wants you to know that he's crying for you.
He cares deeply about you and how you were hurt by someone else.
And he's sad.
But last night, no way.
No tears.
Here, let's listen to a bit of his ironic apology.
There are some unbelievable moments in it, just total sociopathic tells.
I won't play all of it, but I'll play some and comment along the way.
So we've got about 10 clips.
Let's look at the first one.
In 2001, when I was a teacher out in Vancouver, I attended an end-of-year gala where the theme was Arabian Nights.
And I dressed up in an Aladdin costume and put makeup on.
Makeup.
I love that.
Blackface is what it's called.
But he said makeup because it sounds less awful.
Here, watch some more.
I shouldn't have done that.
I should have known better, but I didn't.
And I'm really sorry.
Yeah, he was 29.
He was a grown-up.
And it was 2001.
It wasn't the 50s.
This wasn't that show, Madman, about how politically incorrect and racist and sexist American offices allegedly were back in the 50s.
No, this was 2007.
And Trudeau says he didn't know this was wrong.
I think there are people who've made mistakes in this life, and you make decisions based on what they actually do, what they did, and on a case-by-case basis.
I think I deeply regret that I did that.
I should have known better, but I didn't.
On a case-by-case basis, guys, don't be so mean.
This is a rare thing, you know.
It's not really who he is, folks, and he deeply regrets it, or at least I think he said he thinks he deeply regrets it, and he should have known better.
So, yeah, that's it.
Can we go back to what we were doing before?
And then a reporter steps in to take the sting out for him, just to help him out a bit, by asking a question not about him and what he did, but a process question about some people somewhere who were obviously being mean to him, like at Time magazine or something.
How do you feel about this coming out right now in the campaign?
Is that really the number one question that was the first question asked of Trudeau tonight?
Not about the blackface itself, not about his misconduct, but about the timing and how it's obviously a mean trick on him.
Get that Justin journalist a poutine, people.
Surprisingly, Trudeau didn't even take that escape hatch.
Take a look.
Obviously, I regret that I did it.
It's not about timing.
It's about having done something that I shouldn't have done.
And I'm really sorry I did.
What a joke of a reporter it was who asked that first question.
Here's the second question, and it's a bit better.
Is that the only time in your life you've ever done something like that?
When I was in high school, I dressed up at a talent show and sang Deo with makeup on.
It was a good question, wasn't it?
It was a clear question.
Is that the only time you've done it?
And the answer was equally clear.
He did it one more time in high school, and he sang that song, Deo.
The question was asked and answered.
So there you have it.
Justin Trudeau did it twice.
There was another process question, someone looking to move away from what Trudeau did to damn it, who leaked the news.
Look at this.
Why is this coming out now?
Yeah, sorry, that's pitiful.
Trudeau gave the same answer as he did the first time.
Not good for him, I guess.
And then another good question was put.
Many in the United States, when they've been discovered with these sorts of things, they are asked to resign.
Have you given thought to resign?
I take responsibility for my decision to do that.
I shouldn't have done it.
I should have known better.
It was something that I didn't think was racist at the time, but now I recognize it was something racist to do, and I am deeply sorry.
Okay, now what does he mean by he takes responsibility?
I mean, I would hope so.
He was a 29-year-old man.
He was a teacher of children.
Who one else would take responsibility for what he did besides him?
What a weird answer.
But what does it mean to take responsibility for something, just to say those words?
I mean, that's how he always does it, though.
He's being convicted five times of breaking the Conflict of Interest Act.
And each time he just looks into the camera and in his sexy pickup artist voice, he says, I take responsibility.
And he moves on.
But that's actually the opposite of taking responsibility, isn't it?
And he didn't answer the question about resigning now, did he?
Another good question.
Take a look.
To Amrjit Sohi, to Harjit Sajan, if you have any words to say to some of your staff who may find this offensive.
I have made a number of calls to friends and colleagues tonight, and I will have many more colleagues, many more calls to make.
So he didn't say what he told his staff, did he?
I know what he told his staff.
You know.
Forgive me, and I will return the favor to you.
Condemn me, as the Liberals have been condemning any conservative who did anything with a whiff of intolerance, and we'll all sink in this campaign together.
I bet there was some begging by Trudeau, some promises offered, some threats made, because all it takes is one person of character, one Jody Wilson-Raybold in the caucus or anywhere amongst the 338 Liberal candidates.
All it takes is one person to speak honestly and the whole thing unravels.
That is a lot of people.
He needs to beg and plead and threaten to keep him in line.
Fortunately for him, the two principled women had already left the caucus, Jody Wilson-Raybold and Jane Philpott.
What's left are the sellouts like this guy.
I don't believe that anybody, that anybody has ever lived their lives without making an error or without making errors.
The Prime Minister last night presented his apologies.
He expressed his regrets.
I think the real measure of the man and the thing that I think that we need to be talking about, and I hope that you will be talking about, are all the amazing things which we've done for diversity, specifically for the black Canadian community across this country.
Yeah, I got to tell you, Uncle Tom's Cabin was a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.
I guess Greg Fergus there was given a carrot and a stick, and he complied.
He submitted.
Just like that young woman that Justin Trudeau was pawing back that day.
I mean, you go along with Trudeau and you smile and maybe a little bit of yourself dies inside, but you'll be taken care of.
Look, he does it to 19-year-old girls.
He did it to Bianca on her great day.
He can do it to middle-aged MPs desperate for re-election even easier.
Here's an independent question that he got.
Justin Trudeau's Repeated Mistakes00:14:57
The conservatives say you're not as advertised.
How can you look at Canadians and tell them that's not true?
I have worked all my life to try and create opportunities for people to fight against racism and intolerance.
And I can just stand here and say that I made a mistake when I was younger and I wish I hadn't.
I should have known better then, but I didn't and I did it and I am deeply sorry for it.
So again, sounds like he did it once, right?
He used the singular.
I can say I made a mistake, singular.
I'll come back to that in a minute.
There was another question.
Take a look.
Why should you be allowed to stay?
I'm going to be asking Canadians to forgive me for what I did.
I shouldn't have done that.
I take responsibility for it.
It was a dumb thing to do.
I'm disappointed in myself.
I'm pissed off at myself for having done it.
I wish I hadn't done it, but I did it.
And I apologize for it.
Oh, he's mad, people.
He's even madder than you are.
You can't be mad.
He's mad first.
He's even swearing now.
He's pissed off.
Oh, boy.
When he gets to the bottom of this, there will be heck to pay.
Someone's going to be held responsible, I tells you.
Yeah.
There was another good question here.
Look.
He's known that this happened a long time ago.
I've been forthright when this has come forward, that it is something that I regret deeply having done.
The third time, he was asked point blank, had it ever happened another time?
And he said yes when he was in high school.
And then he said it was a singular mistake.
And then he said he's been forthright and told us everything.
He's taken responsibility.
He's one of the good guys here.
And he said it again, just in case you missed it.
Let's watch it one more time.
Even though, obviously, I've made a mistake in the past.
Made a mistake in the past.
One more question that's on point.
The Liberal campaign has basically been a hurricane of smears against any racism, real or imagined, in the conservatives.
The CBC has been in perfect synchronicity with him.
This incredible article by the government journalist Katie Simpson basically repeats Liberal War Room talking points.
Scheer approves bigotry because he forgave some mean tweets written by someone years ago.
I mean, that headline there was just unbelievable.
And here's a reporter noticing the difference between how Trudeau talks about intolerance in the conservatives and his own.
Take a look.
What is the consequence for a lot of your candidates?
This would be at least calls for resignation.
This would be calls for important conversations with all those candidates and real estate taking stock in the path forward.
And I'm having conversations with my colleagues, with fellow candidates, and I'm going to be continuing to having conversations with Canadians about this and about many other things that we're hoping to work together on positively.
Hey guys, he's having an important conversation right now.
So can you just simmer down?
He's taking stock on a lot of important things.
That's not an answer, but there were a lot of buzzwords there.
Lots of important positive responsibility taking going on.
So just hush now.
Now, someone asked about the groping.
That is rare to see that kind of courage.
It's still a weak ask the way it was put to him, but at least it was asked.
Take a look.
The woman in the photograph.
You're talking about her in a very familiar way, depending on your relationship with her.
Who was she and what she was a close friend?
Sure.
Did he say she was a close friend?
She is a close friend.
I can't quite tell.
Do you really believe that the woman he groped was or is a close friend?
Do you actually believe that?
You know, he said the same thing about the Aga Khan, the Ismaili leader, to explain his free vacation on Billionaire Island.
It was a lie.
He hadn't talked to the Aga Khan in more than a decade.
I like this question.
Take a look.
Was this photo racist, in your opinion?
Yes.
Yes, it was.
I didn't consider it a racist action at the time, but now we know better.
And this was something that was unacceptable.
And yes, racist.
Why didn't you tell people sooner?
I'm talking about it now.
Is that a good enough answer?
For months, for years, really, he's been smearing people as racist.
When he's the racist one, by his own confession, you heard him there say it was racist.
Why didn't he clear the air before?
Well, it's obvious, isn't it?
because he thought he'd keep getting away with it as he did back then, as he has for the past 10 years of public life, the past 18 years since that one at the Point Gray school.
Why on earth would he bring it up when the rest of the media didn't bring it up and it took an American to bring it up?
Are you nuts?
Do you think Trudeau ever takes responsibility other than using those words when he's caught with his hand in the cookie jar?
I love this one.
You're still explaining this to your children.
I'm going to have a conversation with them tomorrow morning before they go to school about taking responsibility for mistakes you make, about living up every day to try and be a better person, recognizing that when you make mistakes, you have to take responsibility for it.
You have to own up for it.
You have to own up for it.
Is that what he's doing?
Is that what he did?
Keeping it hidden for years, only grudgingly acknowledging it after pictures prove it?
Last question.
You've mentioned the incident in high school, and we just found out about the photo tonight.
Do you want to tell Canadians about any other instances where you were concerned that you were racist or that you had Lockbrees around?
I think it's been plenty.
The fact of the matter is that I've always, and you'll know this, been more enthusiastic about costumes than is somehow sometimes appropriate.
But these are the situations that I regret deeply.
So he said he'd take responsibility just minutes ago.
But he's already sort of tired of that.
I mean, come on, guys.
It's not really racism.
He's not that bad a man.
You see, really, what does he have to apologize for other than he really likes costumes, guys?
That's all that's going on here.
He likes costumes.
And when he said like five minutes ago, it was racist.
Well, look, only if loving costumes is wrong.
Is it the only two or are there more?
These are the situations I regret to be.
So how many times did he confirm it was just the two instances?
When he was a 29-year-old teacher, when he was dressed as Aladdin, and that time he was in school with the wig?
Several times he said twice, twice, twice.
It's all out there now.
He's feeling better about his conscience.
He's taking responsibility.
He's owned up for it.
And then BAM!
Holy cow, another incident with video.
This one published by Global News.
So it's not when he was a high school teenager.
It's not when he was a 29-year-old teacher.
This video, it's somewhere in between, it seems, and it's a video.
Oh, I thought he said it was just one mistake or just the two mistakes.
But then again, he did say this.
Do you want to tell Canadians about any other instances where you were concerned that you were racist or that you had Lockheed's abroad?
I think it's been plenty.
Plenty?
Okay, so he confessed to two, like about five times he said that, but then right after that third came out, the video.
And all of this proof was before the era of ubiquitous smartphones where everyone has a camera in their pockets.
Imagine how rare it was for someone to actually have a camera on them, let alone a video camera, 10, 20, 30 years ago.
And yet, he was caught three times.
Imagine how often he did that to be captured three times.
I mean, look, once, this elapsed of judgment, he didn't know he was in high school.
Twice, okay, maybe you got a bit of a moral blind spot, but three times.
And you heard him.
He said plenty.
Plenty more.
I think we have ourselves.
I'm not sure if I'd say a racist, though.
He said so.
But like he is with women, he's a fake feminist.
He uses feminist rhetoric and virtue signaling to hide the fact that he actually is deeply sexist and a bit of a groper to boot.
I think he's that way about race too.
He talks a good game about diversity, but as you know, his inner circle is as wide as a polar bear.
He mocks minorities.
We know that, like he mocks Aboriginals in particular.
We know that.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you very much for your donation tonight.
I really appreciate the donation to the Liberal Party of Canada.
Those were the grassy narrows protesters.
But I think far worse was actually that night of the boxing match against Patrick Brazo.
He said this.
He said this.
Do you remember this?
We're both known for our long hair on the hill.
Let's say the loser gets a haircut.
He resisted back a little bit, you know, pointing out that hair has a cultural significance for First Nations peoples.
And I said, I know, that's why I proposed it.
When a warrior cuts his hair, it's a sign of shame.
So it's very apropos.
He's got a problem, a blind spot, don't you think?
That blackface hand-on-breast picture was bad.
But in some ways, this one, I think in some ways, this is worse.
He's with two men who truly appear to be Sikh, and he's just staring them down.
They might be thinking, who's this asshole?
But he's having a staring contest with them.
He's not going to blink.
He's not going to confess that what he's doing is mocking them and diminishing them.
He's going to go right after the two Sikh guys in the whole place and physically touch them and dominate them and stare them down, just like he does the women he dominates.
He'll force them to make a scene or comply.
That's the choice he gives every woman he gropes in public, comply.
Or he'll be some overreacting hysterical woman.
Comply.
Or you'll be some overreacting minority.
Now, I think wearing blackface means does it really mean that someone should resign from public office?
Look, I don't make the rules, do I?
Trudeau does.
The media party does.
We have seen many, many resignations for less, even in the past week.
I'm not sure how I'd feel if I were black.
Blackface isn't just a costume.
It has greater political cultural meaning, mainly in the context of U.S. slavery, but it's pretty universally regarded as racist, more even than wearing a turban when you're not seek.
Let me help you through this.
What if it had been Stephen Harper caught doing this?
Not once, not twice, but three times, and he had hidden it for years.
And then when he was caught, he only confessed to two, thinking he'd get away with that.
And then a third one immediately came out, proving the confession and contrition to be a lie, too.
What would I have done to Harper or Trump?
How would it go down for a foreign meeting between Trudeau and an African or Arabian or South Asian world leader?
This is like Trudeau in feminism.
He's blown himself up.
And in a way, Canada, too.
Look, I'm not sure if blackface should disqualify a man from public office.
I think we have too much of this cancel culture, this deplatforming culture.
But I think lying about it is actually disqualifying for a world leader.
Just the lie about how many times he did this and Lord knows what else he's done, but the entire lie of his public beliefs that are clearly just a sociopath's deception to project his own sins onto his enemies and to preempt any accusations against himself.
That's what I think.
Stay with us for more on this with Lorne Gunther.
Well, you know, there's people sometimes like to dress up in costumes, especially people who don't really have a very strong personal identity.
Justin Trudeau is famous for dressing up as almost anyone but himself.
I think maybe it's because he's not sure of who he is.
A lot of his costumes are ridiculous, but he never misses an opportunity to play dress-up.
It's odd for a grown man to do that.
I mean, kids love dress-up parties.
Most of the time, it's harmless.
It's just, you know, sometimes it's a little over the top, like when he went to India and turned it into an eight-day regalia.
I think a lot of Indians thought it was a bit weird.
But when you dress in black face, that's not just a costume.
You're not just pretending to be black.
You can wear an Indian headdress and fringed leather garments and pretend to play cowboys and Indians.
That's not inherently offensive, dressing up as an Aboriginal Indian, dressing up in a traditional Jewish outfit.
If I'm Jewish, if I someone saw someone dressing up as an Orthodox Jew, I wouldn't find that inherently offensive.
And I certainly wouldn't complain about cultural appropriation.
But there is something specific to wearing black face, and it is tied to the place of blacks in America, their place under slavery, and then the Jim Crow laws thereafter, and the submissive subordinate position of blacks in the minstrel shows.
When a white man blackens his face, it is part of the submission of black people.
Now, we Canadians don't know that much about that, but Justin Trudeau would have known, if not when he was in high school, surely by the time he was a 29-year-old teacher in the year 2001.
I'm not upset about Justin Trudeau because he was playing dress-up.
I'm not even upset about him because he was offensive.
Trudeau's Double Standard00:05:06
He offends me in many ways.
I'm upset by him because he is a liar who has gotten away with his lies about who he is.
And worse, he has smeared everyone else as the racist for a decade when it was him all along.
And joining us now to talk about this is our friend Lauren Gunter, who joins us now from Edmonton Lauren.
Great to see you again.
Good to see you.
Don't mind me with that opening rant.
There is something about blackface that's different than dressing up as like a cowboy or dressing up even as an Indian.
Yeah, yeah, for sure there is.
And, you know, and you could say that in 2001, we weren't as culturally sensitive to how offensive it was.
But, you know, he likes to portray himself as this new enlightened species, so much better than the rest of us, so much more attuned to the nuances of subtle prejudices, of, you know, homophobia and the patriarchy and racism that surely he would have known.
I mean, you and I, had we been asked in 2001, would have said it was inappropriate.
Whether we would have found it, you know, overtly racist or whatever, I don't know.
I can't say how I would have answered in 2001, but I would have known it was the wrong thing to do.
And so he should have known too, because he sets himself, he portrays himself as being that much more enlightened than all the rest of us.
And that, among other things, is what bothers me the most.
I mean, it bothers me that he will not hold himself to the same standard that he holds others.
He had two members of his caucus early on in his government who were accused, not convicted, but accused of sexual harassment of females in parliament.
And he didn't wait for an investigation.
He just punted them.
You know, we have way more evidence here of him engaging in racist activity because it's not just, of course, the Aladdin costume at an Arabian Knights at the West Point, West Gray Academy in West Point Gray Academy in Vancouver.
It is him as Harry Balafonte in high school.
And I think the most troubling one is the one that Global News came across of him in blackface and an Afro wig acting ape-like.
And I think that one is the most racist.
It's not all, I mean, all of that's really bad.
And I think it would have destroyed a conservative politics.
Can you imagine the liberals letting Stephen Harper off the hook?
Even now, like Harper's been out for four years.
If they found similar video or photographs of Harper, this would be all.
If they found this about Doug Ford, if they found photos of Donald Trump dressed like this, they would still try and use it against Andrew Scheer.
I mean, that's how they, that's their standard, so they need to be held accountable by the same standard.
And Trudeau's standard is even higher, so he needs to be held accountable by that too.
But you know what?
There's another troubling aspect to this, and that is, you know, the costume tour of India, I think, coupled with this Arabian Knights costume that he had in 2001, shows that he hasn't really evolved all that much.
He still thinks cultural appropriation is fine.
And I think there's an awful lot of overreaction to cultural appropriation that goes way beyond the pale.
But, you know, if you start setting yourself up as the final arbiter of morality and sensitivity and inclusiveness in the country, and he has, then you get to be judged by that.
And I think he failed.
Yeah.
You know, I'm three months younger than Justin Trudeau.
So I can sort of think, well, where was I?
What was I doing in 2001?
The last costume party, and this is a little personal story, forgive me.
The last costume party I ever attended that I can remember was in my final year of law school, which would have been 1996.
So I would have been 24.
So that was five years earlier than his big blackface Aladdin thing.
I remember that costume party.
Someone dressed up as me, which I thought was very funny.
There wasn't a blackface in the room.
There was no, in 1996, political, it wasn't even political correctness.
It was, okay, let's just be a little careful now.
We're being inclusive now.
And, you know, it was very sensitive, even in Alberta in 1996, Aboriginal people.
So there are a thousand costumes that are funny.
Costume Party Controversy00:05:06
You can be an alien.
You can be Robin Hood.
You can be whatever.
In 1996, the thought that someone would have come in with a blackface costume, The whole place would have been, what are you doing?
And that was five years, and this was in Redneck, Alberta.
I love it.
In 96.
Don't tell me that five years later in Fancy Vancouver, which was much more multiracial anyways by then.
Don't tell me it was acceptable five years later in multiracial Fancy Pants Vancouver.
I think to me, and I mentioned this in my mom, Trudeau's move is that he dares you to object because he'll be so confident, he'll be so cool, and he'll act like it's normal.
He does this with women when he gropes them.
Exactly.
And that's another thing I want to get into on this photo from the Arabian Knights fundraiser.
If you look at it, he is immediately up behind this woman at the fundraiser.
He has one hand on her waist, his left hand on her waist.
He has his right hand over her shoulder, and his hand is splayed across her sternum.
Yeah.
And I mentioned this online in a column that's active right now.
And of course, a couple of people, even including some of my editors, said, hey, do you really want to go there?
I mean, that seems like a little bit to go a little bit too far.
This photo is taken only months after the Kokene grope.
Yeah.
So he's handsy with women.
Yeah.
And is he handsy with women because he has a famous name and he's good looking?
And more importantly, and I think this gets to the point you're talking about, because he is who he is, he thinks the rules that apply to everyone else don't apply to him.
He can get away with behavior that you and I would never get away with because he is who he is.
Well, let's put that picture up again because I immediately noticed his right hand, because he painted it black, that's on her chest.
But look at the, put up the full-length shot.
That is gross enough.
Look at the left hand.
I didn't even notice that.
His left hand is on her waist and she's sort of pushing it down or something.
He looks at her left elbow in that.
Now, it's very easy for us to analyze, overanalyze this photo.
We don't know the circumstances.
No one's talked to the woman and she might just have, you know, been, oh, and not really been all that offended.
But it looks like her elbow is pushing him back.
She doesn't look very comfortable.
Again, you know, you and I have both had really bad photos taken that were not indicative of our mood at the time, but because of the angle, the light, the whatever, just makes us look bad.
I'm not going to try and say this is proof.
But you have to put this in context of what Elsie had been doing at that time.
And he went to a music festival in the Interior BC only a few months before this.
And as we now know, groped a female reporter inappropriately without her consent.
And I just think that this is sort of his playboy.
The rules don't apply to me.
I'm a Trudeau.
I've got money attitude.
But there's one more layer than that.
He does it in public on purpose.
He does it in photos.
He does it with the cameras rolling on purpose.
That emphasizes, magnifies his dare.
Because when he grabs a woman without her permission, like he grabbed the 19-year-old sports hero Bianca on stage, it happens so quickly.
If it were in a private room, those women would surely recoil.
If they were in the private room with their fathers or brothers, they would surely recoil and say, get rid of this creep.
But when he does it, when a camera is on in a public moment, that's why he does it every time there's a cabinet swearing in.
That's why he did it to the governor general, putting his hand on her ass.
He does it in a place where he's daring them.
He's saying, I'm doing something that's so edgy, but I'm doing it with a perfectly calm.
And if you want to make a scene on your big day, you go ahead and make a scene on your big day.
And you see how that works out for you, little lady.
I'm a Trudeau, and I'm pulling off this blackface, and I got my hand on your chest and on your waist.
And if you want to make a scene about it, you go ahead.
And in my view, the picture of him with the two Sikh fellas is the same sort of thing.
He's saying, I'm so brazen, I'm going to make fun of you.
And I'm going to, you're just a costume, you're just a dress-up for me.
And if you feel uncomfortable, well, I'd have a slightly different take on the one where he has his arms around the two Sikh guys, and that is that he's trying to prove that he's cool, he's with them, he understands, he's prepared to wear their garb to show some mutuality with them or whatever.
But either way, it's dumb.
Reaction to Trudeau's Bullshit00:06:21
Yeah.
Well, to me, I don't, to me personally, I'm not sure photos like these are disqualifying.
Of course, I don't set the rules of the game.
For every other political character, they would be disqualifying.
But what irks me the most is his brazen lie on the airplane last night, saying, oh, no, it's just those two I swear, which was immediately proved false.
And the fact that his whole career has been projecting unto others that which he himself has been doing.
He pretends he's the ultra-feminist.
No, no, no.
That was just projecting and preempting his own misogyny and gropiness.
He pretends that he says that everyone else is racist, neo-Nazi, whatever.
He's a guy in full-blown blackface.
I'd forgotten that they tried to tag Shear as a neo-Nazi after the yellow vest tour.
There's so many of these.
When I started to think of them this morning, all of the different things where he has said one thing and done something entirely different.
I'm going to be the most ethical prime minister yet.
He's the first one to have been found in violation of the ethics law, not once, but twice.
I went to the Aga Khan's Island because he's a close personal friend.
Yeah, you hadn't talked to him except once in 30 years.
There's on.
It just goes on and on and on.
And I don't know at what point someone who's thinking of voting liberal just gets fed up and throws their hands up because the rest of us are already fed up.
Yeah.
I think, you know, again, that McLean's magazine cover where Paul Wells in a diary style says the imposter.
It's about Paul Wells realizing he's been tricked.
Paul Wells, I don't think, well, he might vote Andrew Scheer, I doubt it.
I think he'll probably vote green.
I think you're going to see in the next round of polls a lot of green numbers.
And I think Jagmeet Singh has actually handled himself well because it hasn't been a tricky policy question.
It hasn't been a logic or a real life question.
It's been a personal, emotional reaction.
And I think his reaction, when he said he doesn't know if he's going to shake Trudeau's hands in the election debate, I think that's an honest, genuine reaction.
And it's probably the most authentic thing that Jagmeet Singh has ever said, how this actually does hurt him a bit.
And I don't think he's faking it.
Is he hamming it up?
Maybe a little, but I found it credible.
I thought it was actually Jagmeet Singh's best post-war.
He gets into the new politically correct, sensitive language about how people are going to see this and be hurt.
And a lot of people are going to have bad memories, flood back from their youth.
Yeah, I don't know whether that's the case or not.
But this does show an incredible lack of character on Trudeau's part and a habit, a serial behavior of misleading people.
And I think he misleads himself.
I mean, we have to remember that at his core, he is nothing but a motivational speaker.
Yeah.
And I've watched some of his motivational speeches.
We used to have the same speaking agent, if you can believe it.
And I watched a video of one of his speeches.
He speaks in a way that each sentence doesn't quite end and it throws to the next clause and you're waiting for the point of it and it never quite comes.
And the minutes go by and you're thinking, did he say anything or did he just sort of make eye contact and touch his heart?
Most of the speeches he gave were to public sector conventions.
Yeah.
Basically white-collar, pink-collar women who had the hearts for the memory of his father.
That's exactly what it was.
Not only that, I mean, it certainly can't get away from that.
But not only that, it was this at a time when maybe provincial and federal governments were trying to keep expenses under control or even cut expenses a bit.
He was going around talking to public sector workers about how hard they work, how essential they are, why they're the fabric of the country.
You know, most of those speeches could have been written by Hallmark.
Yeah, that's right.
I want to leave you with one last thing.
It's been 20 years since I've seen the film, but have you ever watched that movie called American Psycho?
It's a very strange movie.
Absolutely.
And I don't even, and I'd have to watch it again to remember, but it's basically, let me go a little bit more highbrow.
There's a very short book, and I bought dozen, about a dozen copies of it.
I hand it out to people.
I'm going to swear here.
The book is called On Bullshit.
And it's a scientific, scholarly, and what does it mean?
And he goes through the different kinds of bullshit.
And it's basically faking your way through things.
And one of the kinds of bullshit can actually be true.
You just don't even know it.
You're just blustering.
You're brazening it.
It's confidence with nothing underneath.
It's the grift.
It's the huckster.
It's someone who ain't got nothing, but, you know, fake it till you make it.
And it's, I think there's a combination of American psycho and this very, it's a tiny little book on bullshit.
I really recommend it.
And Trudeau is a little bit like that.
He, there's nothing, there's no there there.
He's a little bit sociopathic in that whatever his flaws are, he'll immediately project onto you.
I think he's a pickup artist at heart.
And like you say, he's always been immune.
I haven't thought about that, but I think you're right.
And he's always been immune to consequences.
I am just waiting, though, for the response, the official response, the official act of contrition in this one, where we're all sent as a nation to sensitivity training because he has been insensitive.
And so that must be a sign of a greater insensitive culture that we have.
Wait for it.
There will be in some ways this manifestation of a national orgy of sensitivity awareness.
National Sensitivity Awareness00:07:50
Oh yeah, well, he's already said on the plane that we have to have these important conversations.
Yeah, buddy, I didn't wear blackface and I didn't grope some gal.
We don't need a conversation.
And he takes himself out as the person who did the wrong and he tries to set himself up outside and above it and saying, oh yes, mistakes were made and we certainly need to do better.
Look at the coconut grope.
Look at the Coconut Grove.
He grabs a woman in a sexually harassing way and then says, yes, you know, men and women sometimes see the same events differently.
Yeah.
There's no difference in this.
But he tries always to get beyond what he's done to this perch view where he's analyzing it for all.
I don't need this analysis.
You know, today I saw Katie Simpson of the CBC asking Andrew Scheer questions.
She was grilling him question after question.
When did you know?
How long did you have the tape?
I mean, the CBC is in full damage control mode for their man.
They're sticking by their guy.
Boy, are they the last?
They will be the ultimate last ones there.
Absolutely purely loyal.
It's incredible to watch.
Well, actually, you know, I would bet you, money, that the Toronto Star is actually the last ones there.
There are at least a few voices at the CBC who've been pretty hard on them today.
But you're right.
I mean, just in general, they're now going to put a plague on all their houses.
That's the way they're going to deal with this.
It's going to say it's not just Justin.
Dear Justin is not just the one.
But the Toronto Star was at least playing it even-handed today.
And that shows you how hard it is for them because they're never even-handed.
It used to be known when I when I worked in Ottawa, we used to call them the Trudeau Star.
And David Fromm once said that the day the writs are issued, the editorial board of the Toronto Star turns over the front page to the Liberal War Room.
And that's true.
And even they had to be quite clinical about it.
Well, I'm going to politely disagree with you here.
Look at this picture of the front pages of the Toronto Sun, the National Post, the Globe and Mail, and all four papers, the Star, the Sun, the Globe and the Post.
The most interesting picture of a Canadian prime minister since Kim Campbell post shirtless.
And three papers put the most interesting picture in a generation on the front page, the blackface.
The Toronto Star had Trudeau in a suit and tie in the plane looking very contrite.
That's what they thought was a more interesting and more representative picture of the events.
Trudeau in nutritional.
And they'll give you some sort of excuse, like they gave excuses when they wouldn't run the Danish cartoons that you so bravely did run in your publication.
And that is, well, it's an offensive image and we didn't want to offend him.
Yeah.
Well, listen, Lauren, it's great to talk to you.
These are very interesting times.
This is of the same momentousness as the Judy Wilson, Jodie Wilson Raybold SNC Lab Lamp, but it's so much easier to understand.
And I saw some measurement that this was the number one trending story in the world last night.
And I just think it's going to change the election course.
I was betting on a Trudeau win until last night.
I still think I'd call him the favorite, but he's not getting a majority.
And I think you're going to see the Greens and the NDP get a five-point bump.
And we got ourselves a horse race now.
Yeah, yeah, I think so too.
I'm exactly there with you.
I won't say that they're going to lose yet, but they have had a majority taken away from them.
Yeah.
Great to see you.
Thanks for giving us so much time, my friend.
You bet.
All right, there you have it, our friend Lauren Gunter, senior columnist for the Edmonton Sun.
By the way, if you want to see what we're up to during this campaign, I invite you to visit campaign2019.com.
You'll see all our shenanigans from our billboards to our lawn signs to my best-selling book, The Labranos.
Stay with us for more.
Well, this story just gets crazier, and I know it will continue to get crazy.
I saw some news on Twitter.
I mean, let's call it gossip for now, that liberal strategists are bracing for many more pictures and videos of blackface.
I think this is like a fetish for him.
I mean, we know he likes to dress up in costumes.
And there are, I mean, if someone, I said this before, if someone dressed up as an Orthodox Jew, I wouldn't find that offensive at all.
I'd find it funny and maybe give them some tips on how to do it.
There's nothing inherently offensive, but blackface has a certain cultural meaning, a certain domination.
It's something that white masters do in the absence and in the subordination of black slaves.
It has a different meaning to it.
Trudeau chose that of all the costumes to be his favorite.
If it really comes out more, I think we're in a mess because what would the liberals do?
They're not going to change their leader in the middle of a campaign.
Who would they change it to?
There's no heir apparent in that party.
It's Justin Trudeau and the 337 dwarves.
I don't know what they can do.
I think they're going to bleed a lot of support, not necessarily to Andrew Scheer, though he'll pick up son.
I think he's going to bleed support to the Greens and the NDP.
What a strange time we're in.
Well, my friends, I want to tell you a couple of things we're up to.
As you know, we launched our own campaign, not a partisan campaign, but a journalistic campaign.
We have a few parts.
I'd like to invite you to go to Campaign 2019 to see what you can do.
You can get our new book, The Lobranos.
That book hit number two on the Amazon bestseller list.
You can sign up for a Labranos lawn sign for the front of your house.
That is fun.
Good way to meet your neighbors.
And if you have a liberal complaining, you could say, what are you talking about?
I got a lawn sign of Justin Trudeau on my front lawn.
You got something against that?
If you go to Campaign 2019, you can see other ways you can help us.
And I want to tell you that just today, we started a petition called TrudeauMustresign.com.
What do you think?
Look, I'm not one for deplatforming, and I honestly don't think that right now the three cases of blackface should cause a man to quit as prime minister.
I think a more honorable man would quit, but I don't know if that's enough to detonate the leader of a G7 country.
But listen, if there's 20 more of these, I think he's just untenable.
He's wrecked things too much.
He's too much of a liar.
And how do you do any foreign affairs with that?
But I think it's the lying and the falsity of his entire ideology.
He's a fake feminist.
He's fakely into diversity.
That's why I would sign a petition called Trudeau Must Resign.
Not because I'm becoming a politically correct snowflake myself, but because we just can't have that kind of a pathological liar as our prime minister.
What do you think?
If you agree with me, go to TrudeauMustresign.com.
All right, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, when I'm sure this story will continue.