"In flight snack en route to DC. The original is crunchy, messy and delicious enough for everyone," tweeted the Premier of Ontario, atop a rather blurry picture of her, sitting in her airplane seat, about to bite into a traditional Dorito.
Wait a minute- a political figurehead wades into a divisive cultural debate with a polarizing tweet? Gosh, where have we seen that before?
Yes, after grabbing headlines for calling Trump "dangerous for Canada" in the middle of the election that Trump won, and spending a good portion of 2017 slamming ex-PC Party leader Patrick Brown for "Trump-style politics" after he refused to apologize for comments he made, Kathleen Wynne has come full circle to lamely here comes that awful phrase again borrowing from the Trump playbook.
Granted, it's very hard for an Ontario politician's tweet to reach Trump levels (only 111 RT's and 790 likes as of this writing), so they must not have decoded that portion of the playbook yet. But give it time! It worked well enough when Wynne appropriated Trump's style last month when she took a position on the Tim Horton's minimum wage fight and left her critics sputtering.
It should be noted that while Wynne has broken the Trump Troll Tweet formula down to its component parts, what she's giving us is not an exact copy an exact copy would be noticed and called out. There are no exclamation marks, no capitalizations, no random mispellings, no diminutive nicknames.
But there is calling out Ontarians by name, such as when Wynne referred to Tim Horton's founder Ron Joyce Jr. in her Tim Horton's tweet. There is praising candidates by name, over and above the cries of the opposition. The message is clear: If Wynne likes you, you get a pat on the head.
And to those who have displeased the Premier, or failed in some way? Just look at what happened to Patricia "Steve Bannon" Sorbara, who was informed that she would not be returning as part of the re-election team. Wouldn't you know it Sorbara responded the same way Bannon did, praising the Premier and accepting her decision.
Unlike the inscrutable Dalton McGuinty, who saved his passion for savaging the opposition, you know exactly who the Premier likes and who she doesn't. Lynne comes by this naturally as someone who seems to genuinely want to be liked and is bothered by attacks on her in the way that Trump is.
Some of this is awkward, stilted, and calculated, and you would expect that coming from centrist Liberals playing at populism. Trump's subordinates are often befuddled by his reversals and language, and while this may be damaging politically, it shows that Trump is an entity unto himself.
But, as I mentioned in my piece some months back about the Tao of Trolling the successful troll is measured by the magnitude of the effect on its intended target, not by how deft or witty it is. And oh, how clear and present and obvious that effect is.
You see, Wynne knows she is hated. And she knows that when she uses Trump's language and style, after spending so much time bashing Trump and putting the PC Party on the defensive for slightly resembling Trump, it will drive her opponents crazy in the way that Trump's opponents lose their cool.
In this way, all of Wynne's fans the ones who despise Trump and support her despite her worse-than-Trump unpopularity prove themselves to be no different from Trump supporters, who get a kick out of how he triggers the left even when the state of his Presidency is at its most chaotic.
You have to feel for politicians like Andrea Horwath, who try to make a virtue out of staying out of the PC-Liberal donnybrook, and who try to avoid tossing any red meat to her base, and end up pushed aside by this kind of Trump-triangulation. Horwath no doubt believes there is no benefit to engaging in this manner, and that there is no place for this rhetoric in Canada.
Unfortunately for her, you can't stump Trump, and you can't outspin Wynne.
Photo Credit: Macleans
Written by Josh Lieblein
