{"id":41576,"date":"2018-01-05T03:00:43","date_gmt":"2018-01-05T08:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=41576"},"modified":"2018-01-04T17:54:21","modified_gmt":"2018-01-04T22:54:21","slug":"justin-trudeaus-pr-team-fumbles-badly-with-boyle-photo-op","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/01\/05\/justin-trudeaus-pr-team-fumbles-badly-with-boyle-photo-op\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Trudeau’s PR team fumbles badly with Boyle photo-op"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last year, the Boyle family were “rescued” from the Taliban and the Prime Minister not only met with them, but allowed some photos to be taken that quickly made their way out onto social media. Now that Joshua Boyle has been arrested for a long list of offenses, the PM is looking very bad indeed, as Chris Selley<\/a> points out:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Boyle family in Ottawa, 18 December.<\/p><\/div>\n

The supposed geniuses surrounding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are capable of some very strange decisions. Arranging a meeting with Joshua Boyle and his family after their release from Taliban captivity, and agreeing to the Boyles photographing the smiling encounter \u2014 Joshua later tweeted out some snaps \u2014 is certainly one of them.<\/p>\n

Boyle was arrested Tuesday and charged with a raft of offences including sexual assault and unlawful confinement, concerning events beginning immediately after the family\u2019s return to Canada in early October. Trudeau met the Boyles on Dec. 18. Now photos of Trudeau beaming with the accused are all over the news. If PMO procedures somehow didn\u2019t flag the investigation, that\u2019s a serious concern. If they did and the meeting happened anyway, it\u2019s horrendous political risk management at the very least.<\/p>\n

Indeed, these were hardly the first red flags. The PMO argues it would agree to such a meeting with any released hostages \u2014 a very stupid policy if it exists, because the Boyles aren\u2019t quite any released hostages. When the Taliban nabbed Joshua and five-months-pregnant Caitlin Coleman in 2012, they were ostensibly \u201cbackpacking in Afghanistan.\u201d The phrase dances off the tongue a bit like \u201cscuba diving in Yemen\u201d or \u201cgastronomic tour of Somalia\u201d: not inconceivable, but the Boyles will not have been surprised to learn that some in the U.S. intelligence community were suspicious. They reportedly refused an American military flight home over fears \u2014 perfectly reasonable ones, surely \u2014 that they might wind up stuck at Bagram Airfield.<\/p>\n

But what the heck, let\u2019s think the best of the Boyles. Sunny ways, etc. The best still involves the unpleasant matter of Joshua\u2019s short-lived marriage to none other than Zaynab Khadr \u2014 daughter of the late Ahmed Khadr, the Egyptian-Canadian al-Qaida financier for whom Jean Chr\u00e9tien famously went to bat when he was detained in Pakistan.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Unseriousness is a serious charge against Trudeau: big hat, staff photographer, few cattle. Another non-official photo released this week shows Trudeau and his Castro-worshiping brother Sacha in matching sweaters depicting the Last Supper attended by emojis, with the words Happy Birthday strung over top. In a rather over-the-top tweet, Conservative MP Candice Bergen accused the PM of \u201cintolerance\u201d and of \u201cmocking Christianity\u201d \u2014 and no question, many Canadians might expect the prime minister to eschew such a garment lest it cause offence. (It was in private, of course, but it\u2019s public now.) But many Canadians also might expect the prime minister to eschew such a garment because he\u2019s the leader of a G7 country, a serious person with a serious job that he\u2019s taking seriously.<\/p>\n

This touchy-feely cool-dad happy-go-lucky shtick has taken Trudeau a long, long way. I very much doubt it can take him any further. And I think the backlash, when it comes, could be legendary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late last year, the Boyle family were “rescued” from the Taliban and the Prime Minister not only met with them, but allowed some photos to be taken that quickly made their way out onto social media. Now that Joshua Boyle has been arrested for a long list of offenses, the PM is looking very bad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28,53],"tags":[218,343,887,51,593,219],"class_list":["post-41576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-media","category-politics","tag-afghanistan","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-justintrudeau","tag-pr","tag-socialmedia","tag-taliban"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aOA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41576"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41578,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41576\/revisions\/41578"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}