Justin Trudeau Went to Jamaica and All He Got Was Another Lousy Scandal
Optics shmoptics, you peasants!
There's a famous saying, often misattributed to Albert Einstein, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Unlike the current Republican presidential frontrunner, nobody thinks Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is nuts, and the term Trudeaumania only entered the lexicon due to the '60s-era Beatlesesque buzz surrounding his dad rather than being some sort of genetically inherited form of psychosis.
So the only explanation for his indifference to the inevitable uproar that occurs after one of his many lavish vacations is he simply doesn't care anymore what people think. It’s essentially the same pile of shit over and over but with new variations. Not unlike Covid!
The Trudeau family recently returned home after a 10-day vacay at a fancy-ass Jamaican compound near Ocho Rios that normally rents out for roughly seven grand a night. It's the same place they stayed the same time last year and stuck taxpayers with the $120,000 tab (all figures in USD), most of it going towards his security detail, according to documents provided to the House of Commons. This time the jaunt was reportedly “at no cost” as the obscenely wealthy owner of Prospect Estate and Villas is an old family friend and so move along, nothing to see here.
If this sounds familiar it's because one of his very first scandals came after his family enjoyed some R&R at a private island in the Bahamas owned by Prince Shah Karim Al Husseini, aka His Highness the Aga Khan, the billionaire spiritual leader of the world's Ismaili Muslims. Trudeau defended the trip by saying the alleged direct descendant of the prophet Mohammed was simply yet another dear family friend doing him a solid, but the federal ethics commissioner said this didn't pass the smell test and rapped his knuckles over it. It didn't help Trudeau's case they'd had virtually no contact in the 30 years before he became PM, not to mention the Aga Khan Foundation had recently received millions of dollars from the federal government. It wasn't a good look for the leader of the country to appear to be for sale like a common Clarence Thomas.
The optics of once again lounging in luxury on a beach aren't great when many of his constituents are desperately struggling to make ends meet due to the out-of-control cost of living, but the dude at least deserves credit for having the balls to vacation in a Caribbean country given his well-documented history of wearing blackface. It's easy to imagine the locals who prepared his meals or drinks might not have been quite as willing to forgive and forget like his BFF Barack Obama or the 69.8 percent of the Canadian electorate who identify as white.
The guy even managed to get in trouble for going on holiday on a holiday he specifically created. The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, better known as Orange Shirt Day, is a new state holiday launched in 2021 to pay lip service to the country's longstanding tradition of screwing over its original inhabitants. If slavery is America's “original sin,” Canada's is its history of kidnapping generations of Indigenous children from their parents and sending them off to be abused by priests at special prisons residential schools in order “to kill the Indian in the child.” Which often included killing the actual child. As if stealing their land wasn't bad enough.
How did Trudeau honor the momentous occasion, you ask? He went surfing in Tofino, a picturesque tourist town in British Columbia located on unceded Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation territory. It was like if Joe Biden had spent the first official Juneteenth by going golfing in Puerto Rico. Which would still be a lot better than how Donald Trump marked the event by throwing one of his superspreader Hitler rallies in Tulsa, the site of the worst massacre of African-Americans in history.
A bit of jet fuel was added to the fire after it emerged Trudeau had not one, but two military jets waiting on the tarmac for the return. The rightwingosphere jumped to the immediate conclusion it was because his ex-wife, having just spent more than a week with him, would be unable to bear his presence for the three-hour flight home and needed her own jet like she was Celine Dion. It turns out his plane was instead having mechanical issues and a second one was sent down with a crew to fix it.
Speaking of history repeating itself, this is the second time in four months Trudeau nearly got stranded overseas because his plane was on the fritz. In September, his departure from India after a G20 summit meeting was delayed for two days, which must've been awkward AF since he'd just had a private word with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the recent assassination of a Sikh leader on Canadian soil. It was like if you'd been invited to an extravagant private house party and, on the way out the door, you asked the host to please stop murdering the residents of your house. And then the car wouldn't start.
It's probably a safe bet his next beach vacation won't be in Goa, and at this point Canadians should probably just be grateful one of the benefactors providing him free tropical excursions wasn't Jeffrey Epstein.
How has the misconception become so entrenched that the primary responsibility of elected officials is to embarrass their constituency?