Justin Trudeau's awkward response to a reporter's question about China's treatment of the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region of Xinjiang Province of China was so awkward, it was almost physically painful to watch it. The Prime Minister just can t seem to overcome his compulsion to embarrass us whenever he's overseas.
00:00:00.000The Prime Minister just can't seem to overcome his compulsion to embarrass us whenever he's overseas.
00:00:06.140If he isn't pulling bizarre attention-seeking stunts, he still embarrasses us at international summits
00:00:11.140as we're always treated to footage of international leaders ignoring or even purposely snubbing him at meetings.
00:00:16.560They don't take him seriously, and they make it clear they haven't time to indulge him when they're having important conversations.
00:00:23.120Trudeau's latest stunt, though, wasn't due to his trying to grab attention,
00:00:25.580nor was it another video of his standing on the outside looking in during a gathering.
00:00:29.720This time, Trudeau managed to put his full intellect on display when he was asked a question he wasn't ready for when he did a presser in Cambodia.
00:00:37.500CTV reporter Anne Bergeron-Oliver asked him,
00:00:40.600The Canadian Parliament has already called China's treatment of the Uyghurs a genocide. Why haven't you?
00:00:45.980Straightforward question. Trudeau's response was so awkward, it was almost physically painful to watch him.
00:00:51.900His eyes widened in sudden terror as he knew he'd been caught flat-footed.
00:00:55.560He looked down in a panic as his notes was surely praying that somebody had written some talking points for him.
00:01:01.200Then he looked back towards the camera with a true deer-in-the-headlights look.
00:01:04.920The pause, I mean, it seemed like an eternity, and one could almost hear the little hamsters on wheels in his head,
00:01:09.480desperately trying to compose an answer for him.
00:01:12.420Finally, Trudeau uttered an odd, disjointed word salad as he babbled about defining genocide and left the question unanswered.
00:01:20.140Trudeau is utterly incapable of thinking on his feet. He clearly has been directed to not ad-lib,
00:01:26.340and in this case he was probably wise that he didn't try to wing it with an answer.
00:01:30.460But the leader of a country really should be able to answer questions without scripted answers, though.
00:01:34.900The other troubling thing with Trudeau's non-response was the clear terror of saying anything negative about China.
00:01:40.120The world has condemned the Chinese acts of genocide against the Uyghurs.
00:01:44.840The Canadian Parliament demonstrated rare unity when they voted 266-0 to declare a genocide.
00:01:51.960Look at that blank stare on him there. That's because he was playing a clip from it.
00:01:55.260Missing from the vote, though, was Trudeau and his cabinet.