So says the New York Times. Their sources? Trudeau’s very own senior staff:

President Donald J. Trump’s personal style and policies are widely disliked by Canadians, including, according to Mr. Trudeau’s inner circle, Mr. Trudeau himself. But sometimes gall must be swallowed. Mr. Trudeau swiftly turned the machinery of Canada’s government toward finding a way to get along with Mr. Trump.

Does that little paragraph matter? Does it change things? 

I can assure you it does. There are only three things that the Unpresident reads: the Washington Post, the New York Post, and – always, religiously, every morning – the New York Times. 

So, as of right about now, Donald Trump has had it confirmed by Justin Trudeau’s “inner circle” that Justin Trudeau (understandably) doesn’t like him or his policies. I guarantee you there will be no correction, because it is true. Also guaranteed: leaderless U.S. Embassy staff have by now had three conference calls about it. 

Bottom line: the cat’s out of the bag, boys and girls. The bully knows you really, really don’t like him. 

So, why don’t you stop sucking and blowing, and show some spine?

Canadians, along with the world, would appreciate it. 

(PS – Thanks to Ian Austen for pulling back the veil on this malarkey. Canadians appreciate that, too.)

The ones I’m related to, do.  The Unpresident, meanwhile, looks like a scummy Vegas pimp.  On his good days.

On the other hand, I love the smell of a big fat libel award in the morning.

Various folks have asked me what I thought, or have tried to pull me into the contretemps. 

As a public service, I offer the following, gratis. 

• Kellie: Met her when we both worked on John Tory’s first mayoral run in 2003. Urban, urbane, scary-smart. I don’t think – I know – she doesn’t believe a single syllable of the warmed-over Trump bumper sticker bullshit she’s been regurgitating. With Nick, she had a real shot at winning. Without Nick, I think she is doomed.
• The “constitutional scholar”: He trolled me, relentlessly, for ages. Total jerk. Spends more time on Twitter than the Kardashians, but with far less insight. Blocked me when I posted what many of his students had to say about his, um, effectiveness as a professor. Google it and understand.
• Nick: We were on opposite sides in the last couple Toronto municipal races. In the last one, his candidate was loyal to him, mine wasn’t to me. He won, I didn’t. After I quit that dishonest woman’s campaign, he said somewhere I’d been fired, which was categorically, totally, completely false. It got ugly; it spiralled downward into a lawsuit. I dropped that, however, when I later saw how open – and, frankly, how courageous – he’d been about his alcoholism.  I’m Mr. Straight Edge, and it impressed me. We got together to bury the hatchet.  I learned that (a) Nick has multiple members of his immediate family who are practicing Muslims, (b) Nick is married to an immigrant, (c) Nick is the son of immigrants and (d) Nick belongs to a family that is presently expending no small effort to sponsor Syrian refugees.  Oh, and he didn’t go to any fancy school.  He’s previously worked on the auto line in Windsor, and I admired that plenty, too.

How do these quite different people come together? Well, Kellie was a nobody, and nowhere, when she decided to run for the Conservative Party leadership.  She hired Nick, because she desperately needed to attract some attention, and to get some traction.  He did both for her, big time.

Nick and guys like me share one personality trait: we’re all-in kind of campaigners.  We aren’t into half-measures.  We also value loyalty. He’s acknowledged (to me personally and to the world at large) that calling the “constitutional scholar” a “cuck” was a dumb mistake.  It was.

In this business, you get called stuff all the time by anonymous Internet warriors who live in their Mom’s basement, wearing Pokemon jammies.  Last week, for instance, some Trumpkin loser said he wanted my wife and kids to be killed. I raised it with Twitter, and they took care of it. Sometimes, the trolls get under your skin, sometimes they don’t.  Professor Kardashian did, and is probably telling everyone how he took down the legendary Nick Kouvalis.

He didn’t. Nick will be back.  He knows how to win, big time: I’ve seen it up-close.  Kellie, I think, will now lose.  She’s lost Nick, and she’s completely lost any ability to distinguish between what sells in Canada and what sells in Jim Crow-era Mississippi.

And the “constitutional scholar”? He’s hovering over Twitter, right now, plotting his revenge against anyone who isn’t paying attention to him.

Which, ideally, should be everyone.

Designer will remain a secret, for now. And, yes, that is a Bad Religion song. Apt for the era. 

In the meantime, vote!

This was just released by QP Briefing. And, yikes. If true, the Brown PCs have half the vote. 

Those who were at that top secret OLP meeting last night have to ask themselves: was what they were fed the truth? Or is this closer to the real picture?

If it’s the latter, watch out. We’re heading into Mulroney 1993 territory, here.