Article content continued

Still, if you had to say, based on the facts at hand: what is most likely to be the case? Is it likely, given the glowing assessment both her former editor and former publisher gave of her to the Post, that she was either so delusional or so dishonest as to tell each of them, separately and immediately after the fact, that the former prime minister’s son had groped her, when in fact he had not?

And if the more likely scenario is that she was telling the truth then, what do we make of his long silence now? And of the terse piece of studied vagueness the PMO has been putting about on his behalf?

The prime minister would appear to have some explaining to do

He doesn’t think he had any “negative interactions,” whatever those might be, because he didn’t? Or because he did, but doesn’t remember them? If the former, why not say so? If the latter, is that really something you could just forget? Again: it would be one thing if she had raised no objection to his behaviour in the moment, and he had only learned much later that she had taken offence. But the editorial says he apologized at the time, albeit “a day late.”

The prime minister would appear to have some explaining to do. He has to say something, and he has to say it himself — he can’t just leave it to his media relations people. Yet what can he say? If he says flat out that it never happened, any of it, he risks being accused of victim-shaming: it was, after all, this prime minister who admonished the public that we should believe all such accusations.

On the other hand, if he acknowledges even having had an unpleasant confrontation with the reporter, never mind the misconduct of which he is accused, he admits that the story his office has been repeating for the past few weeks, that he “doesn’t think” there were any “negative interactions,” is a lie — unless he only just recalled it.