I'm sure I am but one of millions who have followed the antics of Rudy Guiliani, deriving bittersweet amusement from his addled but staunch defence of his master, Donald Trump, who has reportedly now turned against his lapdog and is refusing to pay his legal bill.
Standard operating procedure in Trumpland.
But Canadians envious of the dark comic relief afforded by the hapless Giuliani need not despair. As Bob Hepburn writes, we have our own version in Canada: Conrad Black.
Not to be outdone by Giuliani, Black has in recent weeks kicked up his loud, long-held support for Trump and now ranks among the president’s most fawning loyalists.
Like Giuliani, the former Canadian business mogul and ex-U.S. convict has appeared on American talk shows spreading the same conspiracy theories and misinformation about the election, including discredited allegations of widespread voter fraud on the part of Democrats.
Stunningly, in the aftermath of last week’s riots on Capitol Hill, Black continues to heap praise on Trump.
He insists on conservative talk shows that Trump did nothing wrong in the lead-up to the Capitol Hill insurrection, that the rioters “were not Trump supporters” and that top Republicans who are now distancing themselves from Trump are “repulsive” and “disgraceful.”
For years, Black has stuck with Trump, from sex scandals to dog whistle appeals to white supremacists. He capped it with a 2018 book titled “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.”
And Black has reaped a rich reward for his sycophantic servitude.
Trump pardoned him in 2019. Black was convicted in 2007 of fraud and obstruction of justice and served 3½ years in a Florida prison before being released and deported to Canada.
In 2020, Black continued to fawn over Trump, writing last month in The Hill, a top U.S. political website, that Trump’s record in office “has been a tour de force.”
Shamelessly, and without any apparent moral or intellectual (despite his propensity for pretentious language designed to hide his paucity of real thought) compass, Black has supported the risible Trump fantasy that he lost the election, and even worse, mocks the seditious events last week at the Capitol building.
On Jan. 6, the day of the riots, Black retweeted a Twitter post that appeared to mock the damage and frightened lawmakers. “The damage to the Capitol was really quite shocking,” the retweeted comment read. “Very disturbing picture below showing that plastic water bottles were littered on floor of Capitol, rather than being properly placed in recycling. One can hardly blame congressmen for abandoning premises.”
Trump has had a series of lapdogs before and during his presidency. It is to our shame that some of them (are you listening, Brian Mulroney?) have been Canadian in origin.
