“He is getting so embarrassing, tbh.”

That was the text I woke up to this morning from a friend who, like me, is a Canadian living in the United States. She was talking about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and yesterday’s Time magazine bombshell report that he once wore brownface to an “Arabian Nights” party while a teacher at a private school in Vancouver in 2001. (Since Time’s story broke, other instances of Mr. Trudeau in blackface and brownface have surfaced, including a video.)

My friend was referring to how Mr. Trudeau is seen on the world stage, but especially in the United States, a country that had a tendency to pretend that Canada didn’t exist until Mr. Trudeau came along. And her text encapsulated a distinction I’ve noticed in how Americans have been receiving this story compared with Canadians. For Americans, Mr. Trudeau’s downfall from liberal media darling — remember Rolling Stone’s 2017 cover, “Why can’t he be our president?” — to disgraced politician has been swift. For Canadians, it has been a long time coming.

It all started back in 2015 when Mr. Trudeau won a surprising majority victory over the longtime Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper. He cozied up to President Barack Obama, and the two young, charismatic world leaders had what the press affectionately called a “bromance.”

But south of the border, excitement over Mr. Trudeau didn’t really reach its zenith until November 2016. Before that, the prime minister, with his self-described feminism and his openness to Syrian refugees, had cast himself as Canada’s answer to the charismatic and cosmopolitan liberalism of the Obama years. Now, however, for American liberals, he was no longer cute kid brother but foil: Mr. Trudeau offered the perfect juxtaposition to the crassness of Donald Trump. Every detail, from his luxurious hair to his stylish socks, seemingly served to emphasize their differences.