Today's News: Throwing mud

I think Poilievre and the CPC brain trust have realized that they're not going to get Trudeau to resign over ancient CSIS briefings about Chinese political donations.

So now the short-pants boys in the Leader of the Opposition office have had to come up with other ridiculous smear attempts against Trudeau. 

Whether or not Poilievre ever gets one of these anti-Trudeau smears to land, he is rapidly convincing Canadians that PP himself is not fit to be a prime minister - temperamental, hysterical, judgemental.
 

He is on a terrible roll this week. First he eluded to him being a pedophile, then he said that student setting off a firework on the TTC was his fault. Now he is saying the PM is selling drugs. I can't take this man seriously.

— laura frost (@Ljafk) June 2, 2023

God Poilievre is a thug.

— Andrew Coyne 🇺🇦 (@acoyne) May 31, 2023

Oh good,@PierrePoilievre has revived the repulsive smear that Trudeau was or is a pedophile and sexually preyed on students in his capacity as a teacher.

It's important to spell out exactly what is happening here, and shut these lies down. #cdnpoli https://t.co/xnNWJzNQSh

— Alheli Picazo (@a_picazo) May 31, 2023

This came up before, during the 2019 election campaign, and Canadaland published the definitive story on Oct. 8, 2019:

In recent weeks, rumours and innuendo have swirled suggesting that The Globe and Mail has been working on a hot scoop about Justin Trudeau’s departure from West Point Grey Academy, the Vancouver school he worked at in his late 20s.

.....The trouble with this is that it’s all bullshit.

Let’s start with the Globe: journalists there had been looking into the reasons behind Trudeau’s departure from the school. But they didn’t find anything nefarious.

Reporters at the paper have been confused, for weeks, about this rumoured story.

At a press conference late last week, Globe reporter Marieke Walsh asked Trudeau about what she described as “unfounded rumours” about why he left. “I moved on,” Trudeau said. He was also asked about whether he signed a non-disclosure agreement. His answer, simply, was “no.”

.......In his 2014 book Common Ground, Trudeau wrote that he left West Point Grey over a dispute around the student paper, of which he was in charge. A student took a pointed stance in its pages, earning reprimand from the administration — which also shut down the paper itself. “[That] convinced me that West Point Grey was not the best fit for me as a teacher, nor I for them. Shortly after, I took a teaching position in the Vancouver public school system,” Trudeau wrote.

It’s a Sorkin-esque stand on principle that sounds a bit contrived, but it’s actually backed up.

In his 2017 unauthorized biography of Trudeau, writer Alan Hustak largely reinforced the story, but in a slightly less flattering light. Turns out the offending article, which Trudeau signed off on, “savaged” an English teacher at the school. Hustak, citing former headmaster Clive Austin, wrote in Magnetic North that Trudeau himself also got reprimanded for putting the paper out. “Justin advanced the argument that his students had the right to ‘free speech.’ Austin didn’t buy it. West Point Grey released Justin from his contract.”

Austin put out a statement last week amid all this mess.

“I recall the day that Justin visited me in my office near the end of the 2000-2001 school year and told me he had enjoyed his first few years of teaching, yet was considering a return to Montreal,” the statement read. It added that “we parted company on good terms.”

Here is a tweet which includes the Austin statement from 2019:

Can Ms Walsh shut the fuck up now? Trudeau loses two significant family members and 18 years later you’re harping on him? Shameless!

We see what we want to see!

— Suburban Polly (@SuburbanPolly) October 4, 2019

The Canadaland story continues:

A 2015 Global story, which spoke to former students and faculty, reported that Trudeau left “to pursue new challenges.” The same year, CBC spoke to former students and collected social media posts, with no mention of the supposed affair. There’s a Reddit thread with some of his former students sharing stories as well, also with no mention. Publicly, at the time (as is played up by the Tories) Trudeau said he was moving on to give speeches.

There is nothing to this story. There is no evidence that Trudeau was fired for an affair. There is no gag order. There is no Globe story...

Truth, of course, doesn't stop our PeePee, does it. 

Meanwhile, CPC flying monkeys are flying to PP's support and adopting the "just asking questions!" mantra:

A better blow? An outright conspiracy theory dreamed up by Buffalo Chronicle and you are claiming that is a better blow?

— Claire D. (@3rdtimewalter) June 1, 2023

PMJT said something true. Pierre has been in politics, receiving tax funded salary, for over 18 years, never had any other job. What Pierre said about PMJT was snide and an unsubstantiated story. But Joe, I know you work for a media outlet that is tabloid journalism so 🤷‍♂️

— Hugh Sturdy 💙 (@SturdyHugh) June 1, 2023

Much of Canada's media is being played like a fiddle, and some are piling on with pointless punditry, no? #cdnpoli #Trudeau #interference #rightwingmedia #journalism https://t.co/m2mQjntWQa

— Stephen Tustin (@stustin) June 1, 2023

pic.twitter.com/vRMnKG8wbK

— Bernard Roulinski (@roulinski) May 31, 2023

There is a broader picture here, too:

Trudeau is the main target of foreign interferencehttps://t.co/a7zEja0yc6 pic.twitter.com/qvOyUEBvC1

— dave harvey🐔🍷 (@daveharvey222) June 1, 2023

And here's the nut graf:

So far, Pierre Poilievre has accused Justin Trudeau of being personally responsible for:
* fireworks on a bus in Toronto
* drugs on Vancouver streets
* wildfires in Northern Alberta
You'd be nuts not to vote for someone this powerful.

— CC (@canadiancynic) June 1, 2023