A tense interview in which Pierre Poilievre calmly challenges a reporter’s questions while chomping down on an apple has gone viral across the border.
The Conservative leader was speaking with fruit growers in B.C.’s Okanagan region on the weekend, discussing his plans for housing, inflation, and drug supply.
Afterwards, Poilievre did an interview with Don Uqruhart, the editor of Castanet, a local paper in Oliver and Osoyoos, B.C.
“In terms of your strategy currently, you’re obviously taking the populist pathway,” Urqhuart asked.
“What does that mean?”, Poilievre replied, setting the tone for the entire exchange.
Urquhart, who seemed to have difficulty making eye contact with the Conservative leader, followed Pollievre’s question by saying, “certainly you tap very strong ideological language quite frequently,” and similarly, Pollievre responded with, “like what?”
Urquhart could not provide any examples, instead meandering back to his line of questioning.
He then said Pollievre was taking a page out of former U.S. president Donald Trump’s book, but again, failed to say who felt that way exactly or just what page he may be taking.
The response resulted in a slight unraveling, which prompted Uqurhart to drop his lead-in questions and address Poilievre with a more general question.
“Okay, then forget that, why should Canadians trust you with their vote?”
“Common sense. Common sense, for a change,” replied Pollievre, continuing to enjoy his apple.
“We don’t have any common sense in this current government. The guy prints $600 billion dollars and grows our money supply 32% in three years. That’s growing the money eight times faster than the economy. No wonder we have the worst inflation in four decades. I’m going to cap spending, cut waste so that we can balance the budget and bring down inflation and interest rates.”
An article from Urquhart about the interview called Poilievre’s tone “acerbic.”
“When asked why Canadians should trust him with their votes given his demonstrable track record of flip-flopping on key issues and what some consider his use of polarizing ideologically-infused rhetoric suggesting he simply takes pages out of the Donald Trump populist playbook, Poilievre became acerbic,” he wrote.
The exchange caught the attention of many X users, even making its way up to the owner of the platform Elon Musk, who commented, “Never heard of him before but this interview is (fire emoji),” and then later, “Guess he likes them apples.”
The interview also got the attention of the large conservative platform Townhall and SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly.
“Can we get him in our country?” wrote Kelly.
“The guy tries to ask a question by throwing out several accusations of the very thing he is doing before just asking a question. Couldn’t even look him in the eye because he knew what he was doing was wrong,” wrote on X user.
Another X user wrote, “If I were Canadian, I would vote for this guy.”
