Poilievre's master class in arrogance

You may well have seen Pierre Poilievre's apple-eating interview with a hapless Times Chronicle journalist. It has certainly gone viral, as the kids used to say. The right wing media has been lapping it up, both here and abroad, with the likes of Fox News, Real Clear Politics [sic] and the Daily Mail singing the praises of this unknown (to them) conservative who treats "lefty" and "woke" interviewers with the disdain they deserve.

Clearly,  the interviewer, from a small newspaper in British Columbia, was in way out of his depth. But the undisguised contempt and hauteur that Poilievre displayed, and that his supporters seem to love so much, is hard to watch. The opposition leader took the first couple of minutes seriously, but then seemed to snap and decide to take the poor guy for a ride, all the while crunching on that damned apple, without the common courtesy to stop eating while being interviewed. 

But maybe that was the point for Poilievre. His rhetorical talents are not in doubt, but his social media chops are rapidly improving (for better or worse). He clearly saw this as an opportunity to provide his base with a rallying point, a social media master class in aggressive Trump-style politics. "See how clever I am. See how I can shut down this woke journo with rapid-fire come-backs. See what a consummate politician I am, and how I can easily avoid having to answer awkward questions by circumlocutions and sophistry."

The phrase "dog-whistle politics" springs to mind, as he plays to his home crowd, entirely indifferent to the arrogant and unsympathic image he conveys to anyone else. It shows us a man completely self-possessed and confident of his own abilities and of his place in the world. This will appeal to conservatives of a certain type, but also to the less politically inclined who just like to see the establishment taken apart (the same demographic Trump appealed to in 2016, and still does today to sone extent).

To others, it was an abhorrent display of arrogance and scorn. But those people were never going to vote for him anyway. 

It's interesting to note how many other journalists are sympathetic to the plight of the unfortunate columnist in question, and are quick to see through Poilievre's oratorical technique to the contemptuous politicking and the question avoidance ("debate club fisticuffs", as one journalist described the performance) beneath. They, of course, have seen it all before, including frequently from Pierre Poilievre, who sometimes seems too clever for his own good (and for the good of the country that may end up saddled with him as leader).