Other Politics

“Words! Words! Words!/ I’m so sick of words!
… Never do I ever want to hear another word./ There isn't one I haven't heard.”
– Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady”

It’s pretty clear that the estimable Ms. Doolittle never met Donald Trump.

If she had, she might have told him to hush up, to put a sock in it, to give the world a break. She might even have snipped his Twitter feed long enough to give the rest of us a chance to figure out what he is saying, what he means, and what he truly intends.

“I learned a long time ago, a bad deal is far worse than no deal at all.” – Donald Trump, May 2015.

That was Trump one month before he entered the race for the White House.

Since he got there, he may have been erratic and inconsistent in many matters, but he has been perversely consistent on one front: his disdain for most of the international agreements he inherited from previous regimes.

“Thank God, it wasn’t a Muslim.”

That, as veteran journalist and broadcaster Michael Enright told his “Sunday Edition” listeners on CBC radio yesterday, was among his first reactions as the shock and horror of the mass murder on Yonge St. in North York wore off.

By all accounts, the driver of the white rental van that jumped the curb last Monday and ran down dozens of pedestrians – killing 10 and injuring at least 16 – was a lone wolf, a mentally unstable man who may have suffered from delusions of persecution by women who had rejected his advances.

Donald Trump is the wild card – the joker, if you like – in Canadian politics this season.

In Ontario, heading to the polls on June 7, Trump is a prominent feature in Premier Kathleen Wynne’s struggle for survival. Her success or failure will rest in part on her ability to persuade Ontarians that Doug Ford, the new Progressive Conservative leader, is another Trump – ill-informed, unprincipled, ignorant in the ways of the province and harbouring a social conservative agenda that would appall moderate voters, if only they knew.

“Trade wars are good, and easy to win” – President Donald Trump, by tweet, 5:50 a.m. ET, March 2, 2018.

Excuse me, but Donald Trump is a fool – a blithering, dangerous fool.

This is the 21st century. Trade wars are never good. In today’s interdependent world, they may be impossible for any nation to win, even the United States, which is no longer the economic colossus that Trump, stuck in an isolationist time warp, believes it is.