Being Liberal means never having to say you’re sorry.

Even if you call for a provincial premier to be assassinated.

Distroscale

Even as Justin Trudeau promises a positive campaign.

Over the weekend, Liberal MP Adam Vaughan suggested that someone should do a mob-style hit on Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford.

Asked in the House of Commons to fire his parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, Trudeau balked at showing Adam Vaughan the door.

In a tweet that misspelled Ford’s name so that it rhymed with fraud, not a mistake, and that invented policies that Ford had not put forward but would make him seem harsh, Vaughan ended with a simple line.

“Let’s just whack him,” Vaughan tweeted,

Now where I come from, in Hamilton, saying you will “whack” someone means that you will kill them. It’s a mob hit.

Even if you don’t think that is what Vaughan means, there is no doubt that he was invoking violence against the Premier of Ontario.

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A less violent version of “whack” still means to strike, to hit.

In fact, as Vaughan faced backlash over the weekend for suggesting that Ontario’s premier be assassinated, or at the least hit hard, he responded in the strangest way.

Vaughan replied to those that took issue with his statement on Twitter by posting photos of children playing “whack-a-mole” with Ford’s face in the pace of actual moles.

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So even that is invoking violence against the premier.

Vaughan actually responded to me with weird tweet when I called him out for his incitement to violence.



“‘Sunny ways’ ?!? I thought it was Funny Ways… my bad LOL… cheer up February is almost over!” Vaughan tweeted.

He wrote that on Feb. 2.

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So on Monday, the Conservatives asked Trudeau, the man who had just days earlier claimed that he would only engage in positive politics, how he could stand by Vaughan, his parliamentary secretary.

At first Trudeau refused to answer the question and instead spoke of the passing of Canada’s Auditor General Michael Ferguson.

Ferguson died of cancer over the weekend and all parties paid homage to him in the House, as they should have; Trudeau simply didn’t want to answer.

Pressed again, Trudeau claimed Vaughan had already apologized.

“To all who are offended and missed the original cartoon. Whack was in reference to whack-a-mole,” Vaughan tweeted.

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“Not everyone has seen the cartoon and without it the comment lacks context. It was never my intent to suggest anyone, anywhere should inflict real physical harm to Premier Ford. To those who took offense, I’m sorry.”

Of course, by what I saw, and it appears Vaughan has deleted some tweets, the original tweet came out before any reference to “whack-a-mole.”

That was good enough for Trudeau.

“The member in question has apologized for his tweet,” Trudeau said. “It is important that we have civil debate in this house and elsewhere when we have disagreement over public policy.”

This from the man that has called one opponent a piece of “excrement” not the word used in the House.

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His staff or cabinet ministers have called opponents, Nazis, racists, neanderthals, unCanadian and more.

But don’t worry, Trudeau will do positive politics.

At the end of the day, Trudeau decided it was better to defend Vaughan than to punt him from his role as a junior cabinet minister.

This isn’t the first time that Vaughan has acted like a bully or had an outburst on Twitter– and it will not be the last.

He is a man who attacks first and thinks later, which may not be unusual on social media, but most of those commenters aren’t elected officials, most of us are not junior cabinet ministers.

Vaughan is a loose canon and if Trudeau doesn’t deal with him soon, then he may end up shooting inside the Liberal ship and help sink it.