A top aide to Canada's leftwing heartthrob of a prime minister is lashing out at critics of his boss, calling those that mocked his "peoplekind" comment as Nazis.
Justin Trudeau, adored by the global left as the "anti-Trump," made international headlines last week when he interrupted a young woman asking a question at a town hall Q & A to tell her that the word was not "mankind," as she had said, but "peoplekind."
"We like to say ‘peoplekind’, not necessarily ‘mankind’, because it’s more inclusive," Trudeau said in Edmonton.
The comment gained traction on social media as Canadians ridiculed it, then it spread around the same world media that have spent the last few years fawning over him. The very Liberal-friendly Toronto Star savaged Trudeau in a column; it was covered and mocked at Britain's left wing BBC; even the ultra-left Washington Post poked fun at Trudeau and then detailed his other failings.
In the wake of these columns and countless mocking segments on TV and talk radio, Gerald Butts, the principal secretary to Trudeau and his long-time friend, took to Twitter to link anyone who criticized his boss to what he called "alt right nazis."
The lesson to take from this joke being torqued by Infowars and other alt-right nazi friends of the Rebel is they're paying attention. Game on, #TeamTrudeau. https://t.co/frhv4A4kWz
— Gerald Butts (@gmbutts) February 8, 2018
Butts sent the tweet from Chicago where he was accompanying his boss on a tour of American cities trying to press state and local politicians on the importance of NAFTA. Rather than let the ridicule die down, as had been happening, it ramped it up. British pundit Piers Morgan, who wrote a scathing column about Trudeau in The Daily Mail, tweeted back at Butts:
a) I’m not a Nazi.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) February 8, 2018
b) It wasn’t a joke.
c) If you’re one of @JustinTrudeau’s chief advisors, no wonder he’s making so many gaffes. https://t.co/ZqKo0b2F8e
While supporters of Trudeau and Butts claimed the Butts tweet only targeted outlets like InfoWars and Rebel as "alt right nazis," Morgan was not alone in thinking it included all critics. A subsequent tweet by Butts didn't help:
You have joined a lovely international club, @piersmorgan. https://t.co/lQyzK6ldrt
— Gerald Butts (@gmbutts) February 8, 2018
Morgan wasn't letting it go there.
The whole world laughed at your boss & his absurdly politically correct, virtue-signalling #peoplekind nonsense.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) February 8, 2018
If you choose to condemn everyone who did so as being a Nazi, then I politely suggest you’re a complete & utter halfwit. https://t.co/9JmuqBOQRV
Butts seems to have gone silent on the issue for now, perhaps realizing that he wasn't helping his boss.
Trudeau, accompanied by Butts and other members of his entourage, is on a three-city tour to boost support for NAFTA to overcome some reluctance to the free trade deal in the Trump administration. In another stroke of brilliance, perhaps thought up by Butts, Trudeau is trying to convince the Trump administration to stay in NAFTA by visiting Democratic cities such as Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.