KINSELLA: Waiting for Poilievre to denounce bad people

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When a bad person supports you, what should you do?

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Well, if you’re a normal human, you say you don’t want or need the support of the bad person, and you denounce and renounce them.

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If you’re a politician, apparently, it’s more complicated. Apparently.

When Barack Obama’s pastor was caught saying that America was a terrorist state, and that the Sept. 11 attacks were self-inflicted, Obama dithered. The future president took weeks to renounce and denounce the pastor. When it became apparent the controversy wasn’t going away, Obama finally quit the pastor’s Chicago church, calling his words an “outrage.” He went on to become president.

A few years later, the one-time Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions. At first, Trump told media he’d repudiate Duke “if it made you feel better” – and that he “knows nothing about white supremacists.” As with Obama, when the controversy grew too big to ignore, Trump repeatedly and angrily disavowed Duke. He went on to become president, too.

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Up here in Canada, there are similar examples. In 2004, former Conservative MP Randy White complained that the Charter of Rights was being “used as a crutch” by certain people – assumedly, non-whites, women and gays – and that a Conservative government would put up “checks and balances” to stop that. “To heck with the courts,” White said.

White’s comments happened just days before that year’s election, and Harper did not denounce them quickly or clearly enough. The Paul Martin Liberals would win, and Harper would not go on to be Prime Minister until much later – and after White was no longer a Conservative candidate.

In 2018, Justin Trudeau had his National Lampoon-like trip to India, which was a total fiasco. Among other things, Trudeau brought along a man who had been previously convicted of attempting to assassinate an Indian cabinet minister. When the Indian media started shouting questions at him about it at cartoonish photo-ops, Trudeau eventually realized the extent of the damage, and said “this person should never have been invited in the first place.”

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But the damage was done. Trudeau would go on to lose his Parliamentary majority, and the disastrous India trip would be widely cited as one of the reasons.

Which brings us, in a circuitous route, to Pierre Poilievre.

Like many other politicians (see above), the newly-minted Conservative leader has been endorsed by – or gotten too close to – bad people. Unlike those politicians, however, Poilievre has been slow to renounce and denounce. In some cases, he’s adamantly refused.

So, there was James Topp, a Canadian Armed Forces member who – in uniform – urged his fellow soldiers to disobey orders, and never get vaccinated against COVID-19. Topp would go on to lend support to Diagolon, a white supremacist group whose members are among those arrested in February for allegedly conspiring to murder police at the Coutts, Alta. border crossing.

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Not only did Poilievre not renounce and denounce Topp, he marched with him in Ottawa at the end of June, in full view of media cameras.

Shortly after that, a smiling Poilievre was photographed with a happy-looking Jeremy MacKenzie, the leader of the aforementioned white supremacist group, Diagolon. MacKenzie, who is a racist and thug, would later be arrested on a Canada-wide warrant for weapons and assault charges.

Poilievre didn’t denounce MacKenzie for the Diagolon stuff – he actually claimed he didn’t know what Diagolon was, even though the media had been asking him about it for months. Instead, he (appropriately) denounced MacKenzie for making a disgusting, despicable comment about his wife.

Then, this week, Poilievre was embraced by Alex Jones of InfoWars. On his Sept. 30 broadcast, Jones said: “We got the new Canadian leader who’s set to beat Trudeau – who is totally anti-New World Order. You look all over the world, we are rising right now.”

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Jones is a bit better known. He has done so many evil, hateful things, we literally don’t have room to catalogue them all. Recently, however, he has been in the news for saying that the mass murder of children in Sandy Hook, Conn. in 2012 was “staged,” and urging his deranged followers to attack the parents of the dead children. A jury in Texas said Jones needed to pay $45 million in damages for that.

And now, Jones is singing the praises of Poilievre.

I don’t believe, not for a moment, that Poilievre supports Jones in any way. I believe he will denounce and renounce these bad people. Eventually.

The question for Pierre Poilievre isn’t what he believes, or what he thinks about these bad people, or about renouncing or denouncing the bad people.

The question is this: Why do the bad people keep coming back?