Only Trump can save Trudeau

How the Liberals can capitalize on Trump playing the American bully role, and how Conservatives should respond.

Dumb: going to a pro-Israel protest to tell the participants that a “final solution” is coming.

Dumber: being the owner of a Second Cup coffee shop (the Can-Con Starbucks, more or less) franchise and going to a pro-Israel protest to tell the participants that a “final solution” is coming.

Dumbest: being the owner of a Second Cup coffee shop franchise at the Jewish General Hospital and going to a pro-Israel protest to tell the participants that a “final solution” is coming.

Second Cup Canada is moving to shut down a franchisee’s cafés located in Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital after they claim the franchisee was filmed apparently chanting the “Final Solution is coming your way” referencing Nazi Germany’s slaughter of millions of Jewish people during the Holocaust.

Footage that appears to have been recorded at a Thursday protest at Concordia University…

Concordia University! Take a drink!

…also shows a woman performing the Nazi salute.

Second Cup Canada president Peter Mammas told Global News the company verified the woman in the video is Mai Abdulhadi, who owns two Second Cup locations inside the hospital.

A GoFundMe to help her get back on her feet hopes to earn $1,488.

Good news for Abdulhadi, though: now that Concordia has seen her in action, she’s a lock to run the coffee shop at the student union centre.

---

In 2015, Justin Trudeau took the Liberal Party of Canada from third place to first. In 2025, if he’s still leading the Liberals and these polling numbers hold, he’ll take the Liberals from first place to fourth:

They’re tied with the left-wing NDP, but their support is more widely dispersed across the country and would likely result in fewer seats in Parliament. The BQ fields candidates only in Quebec and is expected to win most of that province’s seats.

In other words, Trudeau might leave the Liberals in worse shape than when he was elected the party leader. They won’t be reduced to two seats like the PC Party in 1993, but it’s worth noting their level of support is just slightly higher.

Another poll is slightly less dire for the Liberals, but still pretty bad:

How bad is it? Put it this way: the Prime Minister and his party might be even less popular in Canada than Donald Trump, who in the lead-up to the 2024 US Presidential election had around one-fifth of Canadians on his side.

Canada is not MAGA country, needless to say, but in my experience the Canadians who do support Trump are really enthusiastic about him.

---

But let’s see how many Canadian Trump supporters stick with him if he makes good on this threat:

Donald Trump says he will sign an executive order imposing a 25 per cent tariff on all products coming in to the United States from Canada and Mexico.

The president-elect posted to Truth Social on Monday that the duties will be among his actions on his first day back in the White House on Jan. 20 — Inauguration Day.

Trump’s announcement of the tariff plan described border security concerns with the two countries.

“As everyone is aware, thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before,” the Republican posted.

Trump said the tariff will remain in place until both countries stop drugs, in particular fentanyl, and people from illegally crossing the borders. He said until those issues are solved Canada and Mexico will “pay a very big price!”

Actually, Canadians who’ve bought Trump Train tickets will rationalize it away, even as they’re laid off from businesses which export to the US market.

The eighty percent of us who aren’t Trump fans will come out of this hating him even more, and anti-Americanism - always a force in Canadian society and politics, as one would expect when you’re right next door to an economically and culturally dominant superpower - will skyrocket.

And when Canadians are in an anti-American mood - think the free trade debates of the late eighties and early nineties, or during the George W. Bush presidency - it’s the Liberal Party of Canada which sees the opening and goes for it (and later, when tempers have cooled, take credit for the free-trade and security policies against which they once railed).