Picture a schoolyard.
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Donald Trump is there. He’s the schoolyard bully. He calls the other kids names, he threatens them, he pushes them around. Sometimes, he even hits them, for no apparent reason.
Other kids are in the playground. They’re from all over. There’s Justin Trudeau from Ottawa, and Francois Legault from Quebec, and Danielle Smith from Alberta. And the newer kid, Doug Ford, from Ontario.
One day, Donald again threatens the other kids. He says he’s going to take away the stuff that belongs to them. He says he’s going to hurt them and their families. He says he’s going to do all these things because the other kids are bad. Not him.
Danielle and Francois immediately cozy up to Donald.
“You’re right, Donald,” they say, in small voices. “We’re bad. We’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt us.”
Justin, who also has a rich dad and thinks he’s always right, tries a slightly different approach.
“I’m going to come to your place and bring pizza and your favourite drink, Donald,” he says. “And you can make fun of me as much as you want.”
The newer kid, Doug Ford, watches all of this. He shakes his head. He then walks over to Donald Trump, eye to eye, and says: “Stop bullying us.”
And then he slugs Donald Trump in the nose.
Now, all of the woke manuals about bullying say the bullied shouldn’t ever hit the bully. Reassure your kid, they say. Emphasize it’s the bully behaving badly. Monitor the situation. Seek help. All that.
But really, every parent knows: sometimes, when your kid – or, say, your family and friends and neighbours and country – are being bullied for no good reason, talking a lot about it isn’t going to change a damn thing. Sometimes, like in the movies – Karate Kid, Back To The Future, and about a million others – you just have to give the bully a taste of their own medicine.
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This week, finally, someone did that.
After Donald Trump threatened to slap 25% tariffs on everything we sell to the Americans – which will destroy our economy, make no mistake, and put as many as five million Canadians out of work – Doug Ford popped Donald Trump in his mango-coloured nose. Hard.
“We will go to the full extent depending how far this goes. We will go to the extent of cutting off their energy, going down to Michigan, going down to New York State and over to Wisconsin,” said Ford, looking like he meant every word. “I don’t want this to happen, but my number one job is to protect Ontarians and Canadians as a whole.”
To justify his thuggery, Trump falsely said Canada is sending lots of fentanyl into his country. He falsely said we are sending huge numbers of illegal aliens into his country.
Fentanyl? Well, in the last fiscal year, the Americans seized a few dozen pounds of the finished product coming from Canada. Nearly 30,000 pounds of it came from other countries. Meanwhile, several thousands of people were stopped crossing from Canada to the U.S. last year. Over a million came from Mexico – alone.
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Sound fair? Sound reasonable? Of course not. It’s not. But it certainly provides a study in leadership contrasts, doesn’t it?
Danielle Smith, for example, promised she wouldn’t hit back. She said Trump was right.
“We’re taking a diplomatic approach,” she said, kind of sounding a bit like Neville Chamberlain in a skirt.
Francois Legault was similarly craven.
“I won’t threaten Donald,” he joked at a news conference.
Ha ha, yep, that’ll work. Sucking up to bullies always works, doesn’t it?
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Justin Trudeau sure thinks so. Tail between his legs, he hustled down to Mar-a-Lago, where Trump mocked him in front of a table full of witnesses, saying Canada should join the United States.
Trudeau’s response? Sounding more like a busboy than a prime minister, he posted this on X: “Thanks for dinner last night, President Trump. I look forward to the work we can do together, again.”
Trump immediately renewed his tariff threat.
Donald Trump is like all bullies. He only understands strength. So, when Doug Ford showed guts and said what he said, here’s what the President-elect responded with: “That’s OK if he does that, that’s fine … we have a great relationship. I have so many friends in Canada.”
Spoken like a schoolyard bully who just got popped in the nose.