A few days ago, I noted on social media:
This is exactly the sort of suave, diplomatic polish that will smooth over all the damage in the Canada-India relationship. This is a quote from PM Trudeau’s right-hand man in John Ivison’s new book:
“We walked into a buzzsaw — (Narendra) Modi and his government were out to screw us and were throwing tacks under our tires to help Canadian conservatives, who did a good job of embarrassing us,”
http://thepostmillennial.com/out-to-screw-us-butts-blames-indian-pm-for-trudeaus-disastrous-trip/ #JustinTrudeau #India #fiasco #books #GeraldButts #NarendraModi #diplomacy
I figured this had to be some kind of new variant of the old “modifed limited hangout“, but it’s so potentially damaging to an already badly frayed relationship that there had to be more to it … possibly a lot more to it. No rational senior official would say something like that unless there was a much worse revelation that it was intended to camouflage. But whatever it was would have to be “recall the High Commissioner” bad to justify that kind of self-inflicted diplomatic wound.
Justin Trudeau and family during India visit
Image via NDTV, originally tweeted by @vijayrupanibjp
Brian Lilley is similarly puzzled, but he has a simpler explanation: it’s that familiar combination of the Trudeau unwillingness to take responsibility, an over-developed blame-casting habit, and Trudeau’s own frequently demonstrated love of wearing costumes:
It’s one thing for Butts to think those things, another to voice them in a way that he knows will be made public. It’s also the most tone-deaf assessment of the trip I’ve seen since Sophie Trudeau went on TV and blamed the staff for those outfits.
I mean think about that trip, the two things that got Trudeau in trouble were the invite of the terrorist to dinner and the outrageous outfits. Both of those amount to self-inflicted wounds.
At least Butts admits the photos of Trudeau and his family were a problem.
“Nobody would remember any of that had it not been for the photographs. We should have known this better than anybody — in many ways we’d used this to get elected. The picture will overwhelm words. We did the count — we did forty-eight meetings and he was dressed in a suit for forty-five of them. But give people that picture and it’s the only one they’ll remember,” Butts told Ivison.
[…]
The simple fact of the matter is that the trip to India was a disaster, the kind Trudeau and his team weren’t used to dealing with. So now a year and half later they are still looking to lay the blame anywhere but where it belongs.
With themselves.
