The thing you need to understand about Justin Trudeau is that he doesn’t live a life like you and I do.
It’s like he’s David Bowie in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth – impossibly good-looking, fabulously rich, effortlessly charismatic. But an alien.
Gerald Butts and I used to be close. One time, he invited me to his birthday dinner. It was him and his wife, and me and mine. Trudeau swept in, late, and it was really the first time I encountered him close up. If you had said he breathed a different air than the rest of us, I would’ve believed it. Trudeau was the centre of the room, and everything was in his orbit.
Later I asked my wife about his obvious charisma.
“Every woman wants to be with him. Even the married ones,” she said. (But she used different words than “be with.”)
Being a political guy, I was always on the lookout for talent. I thought Trudeau should run.
“Not yet,” Butts said. “Wait.”
When Trudeau’s Dad died, he gave the eulogy. Butts told me he wrote it, but Justin Trudeau delivered that eulogy like every single word and dramatic pause had been forged in the crucible of his soul. It seared. It soared. It was the start of his prime ministerial campaign.
Me, I was concerned. Everyone else in Canada thought that eulogy came from the depths of Justin Trudeau’s grief. But I knew it came from Gerald Butts’ keyboard. I started to wonder if Justin Trudeau was a bit of a phony.
Now, look: I know the political species. I’ve been around it my entire adult life. They’re almost all phonies. Like the Liberal MP I ran into a few days ago at the liquor store. I remarked about him making the big and selfless decision to leave politics.
“Oh, there may be a cabinet shuffle,” he said. “I’ll stay for that.”
He did. On Friday, he got his wish. Good morning, Minister Phony.
So, they’re all actors. They don’t say that Ottawa is Hollywood for ugly people for nothing, you know.
But Justin Trudeau’s acting ability was like nothing I’d ever seen. As the country would eventually discover, he could be hooked up to a battery of lie detectors and say that he’s a fiscal conservative – or that he’d never ever worn blackface to parties with other rich white people to get a laugh, or that he’d never ever been accused of groping a woman at a beer festival in BC – and it wouldn’t register a blip. The needle wouldn’t move.
He’s one of those liars who lies so effortlessly, you can tell he believe the lies, too. He achieves that state of gracelessness by never exposing himself to contrary facts.
So – and this is the God’s truth – he doesn’t pay any attention whatsoever to the news media. He regarded news as fake news long before Donald Trump and his winged monkeys claimed to copyright the phrase.
Trudeau will do an event, hop back on his Challenger jet, and start scrolling through pictures of himself on Instagram. He doesn’t give a damn about what the commentariat says. Never has.
He’s aided and abetted in this by his Lady Macbeth, Katie Telford. I explained the Telford-Trudeau relationship to a Liberal Senator recently, describing it as akin to coaching a sumo wrestler.
“She feeds him candies and keeps him completely in the dark,” I said, causing the Liberal Senator to laugh so hard I thought he was going to pass out.
That’s the main insight I can offer about Justin Trudeau: he’s a space alien, and he doesn’t read me or Brian Lilley, ever. Or anyone. It’s never occurred to him to even try.
Until the past week or so, that is, when his universe shifted on his axis. He, the anti-racist feminist middle classist, fired Chrystia Freeland to clear the runway for another rich white guy, and she hit back with a ferocity that only spurned cultists possess. (Kinsellian Political Rule Number Two: never fire someone who knows lots of stuff about you during a crisis.)
Her Dear Justin letter notwithstanding, Freeland’s freefall was relevant not because she’s become an eleventh-hour convert to fiscal probity (she hasn’t) or that, having been a key member of a government that is itself a “costly political gimmick,” she now objects to same (she doesn’t). It was relevant because it exposed him, the alien, to the unvarnished reality down here on Earth for the first time.
With his own baby blues, Trudeau saw Freeland get a standing O when she walked into caucus this week. He saw a bigger lineup for her than him at the Liberal Christmas party. He saw Liberal MP after Liberal MP get up on their hind legs, finally, and bleat that he should go.
Will he? His capacity for self-delusion and bullshit is bottomless, but I still think he will. He’s finally seen that the jig is up. He may be a total jerk, but he’s not a total idiot.
But here’s the problem: David Bowie’s alien character in The Man Who Fell To Earth? He never did leave. Why? He waited too long to return to his home planet, because he thought he was loved by the Earthlings.
He wasn’t.