Juno News - Trudeau's excuses for wearing blackface don't add up

00:00:00.000 so it's been a few days since the Trudeau blackface stories first dropped and my jaw is still hitting

00:00:14.840 the floor from the sheer magnitude of the whole thing so we first learned when the story first

00:00:20.880 broke that there was one case of Justin Trudeau wearing blackface at this fundraiser back in 2001

00:00:27.400 and you think oh that's kind of rough that's not something you want to be caught doing now I am

00:00:32.660 no fan of those sort of gotcha moments where a person did one thing many years ago and we say

00:00:38.500 their life should be ruined for it I wrote a column to that effect just the other week I gave some

00:00:42.440 commentary to that effect because there were all these stories brewing about candidates a lot of

00:00:47.080 conservative candidates a couple liberal a couple green candidates who had said these untoward things

00:00:51.840 a number of years ago sometimes when they were teenagers on social media one remark maybe two

00:00:57.000 remarks and I said like I don't care what party it is I don't care who it is I don't want to play 0.99

00:01:02.320 this game because I think people are allowed to be teenagers and say some stupid remark and that 0.98

00:01:06.800 doesn't mean their life should be ruined but I put a caveat in that column I put a line where I said 0.99

00:01:11.300 but if we see we've got a repeat offender doing stuff more recently that is actually quite serious

00:01:17.180 okay maybe we do have a problem on our hands and look at where we sit with Justin Trudeau now it is not

00:01:23.240 just one incident one instance of blackface but at least three and judging by the fact that he refuses

00:01:30.580 to answer follow-up questions and my favorite one reporter said can you round to the nearest five

00:01:36.300 how many you've done and he couldn't answer that question I mean people are really grilling him on it

00:01:42.220 suggesting that there's quite a few more and the current time frame takes us from the first one in

00:01:47.100 1994 to the last one in 2001 this is pretty much throughout his 20s he did it multiple times and

00:01:55.960 he didn't just he didn't just do a really sort of light slapdash job you know as if he was he was kind

00:02:01.900 of drunk and he was just dumb and made the really quick decision oh why don't I go his blackface and 0.98

00:02:07.280 just quickly put something on I mean you look at these pictures and the knees are covered in one of the 0.98

00:02:12.380 videos and the other ones the hands are covered and the full ears and neck and really getting in

00:02:17.180 the ear folds he put time into this planning commitment effort he clearly went shopping for

00:02:23.660 the products in advance to make sure that he was going to do this thing you know right as if he

00:02:28.700 actually thought there was oh there was good blackface and I want to be the best blackface 1.00

00:02:33.080 performer out there tonight I mean yikes and I I'm not in for the gotcha moment I'm not in for

00:02:39.740 ruining people's careers but we are in very different territory we are in extremely different

00:02:46.000 terrain here I mean have we ever I'm racking my brains here to say have we ever seen an incident

00:02:51.400 where there's been something come out on a candidate that has been as bad as this I mean I don't know

00:02:57.200 maybe there's a story from from several decades ago that a candidate was actually found to be a

00:03:01.380 convicted murderer and nobody knew you know killing a person is a pretty bad thing I can't think of an

00:03:06.540 example of that though I I just can't think of it and you know it's funny people are saying well

00:03:11.920 now they're going to get even nastier on Andrew Scheer well what are they going to do they're going

00:03:16.220 to find that some conservative candidate you know six years ago said oh I don't like this and that

00:03:21.700 about this religion okay well you know whatever maybe that's not ideal but it's not being a repeat

00:03:26.760 offender throughout your 20s of having a history of doing blackface and these people who are coming 1.00

00:03:33.520 forward to defend the prime minister or at least rationalize it and downplay it they're saying well

00:03:38.120 it it's not back then you know we didn't know what we know now it was something that I didn't think was

00:03:45.540 racist at the time but what are you talking about I was a kid in the 90s and I'm 35 now in 1992 Aladdin

00:03:54.180 came out and I remember people really liked Aladdin it was really popular with the kids and I remember

00:03:58.360 some little girls would dress up as Jasmine the main female character in it and the kit it just 0.67

00:04:03.460 came with it came with like this little this dress like Jasmine wore and that was it and then you wore

00:04:08.340 the dress and if you were a blonde girl with you know very pale white skin you'd say I'm Jasmine 0.91

00:04:12.620 there was no face makeup that came with it I mean it wasn't that wasn't a thing that people did in the

00:04:19.440 90s and I'm talking about children I remember those Halloweens I do not remember seeing anybody doing

00:04:25.180 blackface around the time Aladdin came out even though a lot of kids were dressed as Aladdin and

00:04:30.580 Jafar at least in the costumes not the blackface and yet here's Trudeau in his 20s doing this when

00:04:37.300 kids knew not to do it it's really quite something to watch people try and excuse this try and apologize

00:04:43.780 for it I mean this is this is going beyond hypocrisy this is someone who has done something

00:04:49.300 that we all knew years before he did it was wrong and yet now he expects to get away with it

Juno News - September 24, 2019

Trudeau's excuses for wearing blackface don't add up

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