By now, you’ve probably seen the video of Trudeau’s epic meltdown in response to the persistent protesters who disrupted his town hall last Friday in Nanaimo, B.C.
After trying repeatedly to quell the noisy hecklers who were determined to ruin his love-in, Trudeau finally lost his patience and flipped out.
“Ach, come on! COME on! Really? Really?” he erupted.
“Will you please respect the people in this room?” he asked his antagonist, three times. “No? Then please leave.”
The crowd roared its approval.
“If you’re not going to respect the people in this room, you need to leave. That’s the rule. Sorry, go ahead,” he snapped, with a dismissive wave of his hand, as the cops moved in to remove his offender.
As I sat watching the live-streamed spectacle unfold, I couldn’t help but think that those words and that exchange will live in infamy.
Potentially, they will serve as Trudeau’s political epitaph.
Many Canadians—especially in British Columbia—are growing increasingly exasperated by his actions, at the behest of Big Oil, to ram through the $7.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. It would triple the flow of diluted bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands to Kinder Morgan’s marine terminal in Burnaby, B.C.
It seems eminently Canadian to describe that as an “epic meltdown,” jussayin’.
On the other hand, there is something wildly ironic about Trudeau saying, to applause, that “Winston Churchill pointed out that democracy is messy, and it is messy, but it’s the best possible forum of engagement because we do get to hear from everyone in this,” as the camera focuses on a woman being literally dragged out by police for dissenting too stridently.
These kinds of responses are my FAVORITE. Some examples to answers to this question I have heard:
1.
“Okay, and who’s the president?”
“Obama, no wait, shit *vehemently* fuck, I hate him… what’s his name…”
“It’s okay, you know who he is.”
2.
“Who’s the president?”
“*drunkenly angry and confused* ..uhhhhhhh…Orange… damn it what’s the fuck’s name….
“Yup, good enough.”
3.
“And who’s the president,”
“Not fuckin’ Obama!”
“I feel ya.”
4.
“Who’s the president- wait, nevermind you’re from Korea you said, right? So who’s-“
“Everybody knows that Trump-bitch.”
“Oh, well, alright then.”
5. (My personal favorite)
“Who’s the president?”
“Ew.”
“Good enough.”
My roommate is a neurologist and has to do this check all the time. Her all-time favorite so far has been “ay dios mio” during which the woman was vigorously crossing herself.
who’s gonna tell trump supporters obama wasn’t president during hurricane katrina……..
My favorite part of this is people mentioned Barack Obama in these tweets! So who’s going to tell them? I hope Obama does! I mean, it was three years after Hurricane Katrina when Obama was elected president. Three years. Almost all of George W. Bush’s second term happened during and after Katrina. Where were these people that they don’t even know who was president? There was so much news about the hurricane and W’s terrible response to it. They’ll probably blame him for the Kennedy assassination next.
This is what I mean about how a worrying number of Trump supporters seem to have a limited grasp on reality in order to preserve their belief that electing him was the right thing.
Also Obama was there even though he wasn’t yet president.
The opposite side of things was this picture of Bush that backfired on him spectacularly:
Further fact check: Obama had only been a senator for nine months when Katrina hit. He gave a speech at a Harvard Black alumni event where he discussed Katrina:
Later in his speech, Obama speculated that “corruption and cronyism” were involved in the appointment of former FEMA director Michael D. Brown. But while he told the crowd of prominent lawyers, academics, and business leaders that he shared Democrats’ anger towards the government, he said there is also a danger of “smugness and self-satisfaction.”
Obama added that the nation’s most significant deficit is its lack of empathy. “We’ve been lulled into a certain apathy,” he said.
In the question-and-answer session, Obama discussed his nine months in office as the only African-American in the Senate and his experience with colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
Here’s your dose of ‘What the Fuck is Going On’ News (1/25/2017 edition)
Trump signed an executive order to begin the construction of “a large physical barrier” along the border. The executive order also included the boosting of border patrol forcers and increasing the number if immigration enforcement officers who can carry out deportations. There is still currently no mention of how this wall will be funded. (source)
Trump also signed an executive order to crackdown on “sanctuary cities.“ Punishment to this cities will mean that there will be ineligible from receiving federal grants. The same executive order also called for an additional 10,000 immigration officers to be deployed across the U.S. (source)
Trump is expected to sign an executive order soon that would block the entry of refugees from war-torn Syria and suspend the entry of any immigrants from Muslim-majority Middle Eastern and African countries such as Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Yemen. (source)
Trump is still falsely claiming that millions of voters voted illegally and has announced that there will be an investigation into voter fraud. Stating his true intentions – to "strengthen up voting procedures” which will likely go after voter rights and implement stricter voting laws. Laws that disenfranchise millions of voters, specifically people of color, lower income people, and people with disabilities. (source)
Trump is also preparing to sign an executive order that would reduce the US funding of the United Nations and other international organizations that don’t meet a certain criteria. The executive order will also repeal certain multilateral treaties, likely treaties on climate change. (source)
In Texas, State Rep. Tony Tinderholt proposed House Bill 948, also called the Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act. The proposal does not exclude those who become pregnant from rape or incest. Tinderholt also denies that the bill is about making abortion illegal, instead it’s about changing the criminal penal code to extend to those who seek abortion. It would extend the homicide laws to include abortion and Tinderholt seeks to punish all those involved, meaning both sexual partners could face charges if they both were involved in the decision to get an abortion. “The reality is that if the father is in any way involved in the conspiracy to end the life of a human being — communication with an abortion doctor, transportation, facilitation — he will be held accountable.” (source)
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort doubled it’s initiation fees to $200,000 now that Trump has been elected president. Trump plans to spend much of his time as president at the resort calling it his “Winter White House.” The Trump Organization owns the resort, now in control by Donald Trump Jr., and is very blatantly exploiting Trump’s position as president for profit. (source)
Here’s your dose of ‘What the Fuck is Going On’ News (1/24/2017 edition)
Two more Breitbart staffers have joined the Trump administration, joining Steve Bannon. Julia Hahn specifically covered immigration on the website and is aggressively anti-immigration. Sebastian Gorka was the website’s national security editor and served as a policy consultant on Trump’s campaign. VDare, a white nationalist website who is listed on the SLCP extremist list, has praised Hahn’s anti-immigration work in the past. (source)
A day after reinstating the global gag rule, which removes all US funding from foreign aid groups if they counsel patients on abortion (source), the House of Representatives passed a funding ban on abortion. The bill will ban anyone in the US from receiving federal financial assistance for abortion. This means programs like Medicaid and those who purchased insurance through the Affordable Care Act, meaning that abortions will be even harder to get for lower income women. (source)
Badlands National Park’s official Twitter posted a ton of tweets about climate change. This went against the current social media blackout order that the Trump administration has enforced on the EPA, Department of Interior, and the Department of Agriculture meaning no news releases, blog posts, or social media updates allowed. The tweets have “mysteriously” been deleted, no further information known. (source)
In preparation to “drastically reshape” the Environmental Protection Agency, the Trump administration has put a freeze on all EPA grants to local and state communities. The EPA has received no notice on how long the freeze will last, and this goes beyond the hiring freeze that all federal government (minus new political appointees) is facing. (source)
Trump signed two executive orders to revive the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and Keystone Pipeline. Trump also signed an executive order to expedite environmental project reviews, meaning they won’t have to go through the same regulatory process as before. (source)
Trump announced that his Supreme Court Justice pick will be announced next week, the shortlist includes Neil Gorsuch, Thomas Hardiman, and William Pryor. Gorsuch is against abortion, opposes the ACA’s birth control mandate and calls it “unconstitutional.” Hardiman does not believe citizens should have the right to tape police wrongdoing. And Pryor has called Roe v. Wade the “worst abomination in the history of constitutional law.” Pryor also urged the Supreme Court to uphold laws banning sodomy – linking consensual activity between men to bestiality, incest, and pedophilia. (source)
Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, will not have to go through a second hearing. The senate committee will vote on her nomination on January 31st. (source)
Trump is (again) claiming that millions of people voted illegally, and that he would have also won the popular vote if not for this. This is still a baseless claim, and WH press secretary, Sean Spicer told the press today that Trump believes “people voting illegally during the campaign and continues to maintain that belief based on studies and evidence people have brought to him.” They still have provided no evidence (and refuse to) and so far no evidence coming from elsewhere supporting this exists. (source)
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