When Justin Trudeau granted an interview to an American comedian, he probably expected a half-hour of laughs, love, free publicity and a break from scandal.

Instead, he was batted around like a cheap Wiffle ball.

When I was a kid, this one time we were driving through Pennsylvania late at night when a fawn suddenly appeared in the headlights of our station wagon. Since my father maddeningly drove under the speed limit — and there was no traffic on the interstate — he was able to brake without incident. But that adorable creature just stood there for a good 30 seconds, motionless, unsure of what to do next.

Article Continued Below

It seemed so helpless and lost in the chaos.

I was reminded of it while watching Netflix’s Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj on Sunday. Trudeau might as well buy himself a pair of antlers and a bushy tail before Halloween. Just based on the moments of awkward silence and the reaction shots in which he looked absolutely paralyzed with fear, he was that fawn.

The episode title — “The Two Sides of Canada” — sounded ominous even before you clicked “play.” Two sides? You mean like Ted Bundy or Frankenstein? Whenever you hear “two sides,” that is never good. “Two sides” telegraphs illusion and deceit. “Two sides” suggests what you think you know about someone is, at best, incomplete.

“Two sides” is a reputational kiss of death.

Article Continued Below

And this weekend, Netflix puckered up and planted a wet one on Trudeau.

Click to expand

You got a sense of where this was going early on when Minhaj opened his interview with a backhanded compliment, claiming much of Trudeau’s global appeal boils down to “looks.” Minhaj then asked Trudeau to play a game called, “Is this a world leader or is this my friend’s dad?”

So he holds up a photograph and Trudeau has to say if the man in the image is a world leader or the dad of one of Minhaj’s friends. Ugh. I guarantee you, there is no way White House handlers would ever allow Donald Trump to partake in such a goofy free fall of potential shame. The first picture Minhaj shows Trudeau is of Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani. Trudeau squints at it for what seems like an eternity and then says, “I think that might be a world leader.”

Think? In other words, he’s not sure. Brutal.

Then after correctly dismissing the next image — “I think that’s your friend’s dad” — Trudeau fails to recognize Lenin Moreno, president of Ecuador. My wife and I had a heated debate about this. She thinks this was a grossly unfair “gotcha” segment designed to embarrass Trudeau. I don’t know. I think if you showed pictures of NHL coaches to an NHL coach, he should be able to pick them out. I mean, there aren’t that many world leaders. This is Trudeau’s line of work, for crying out loud. He should easily recognize his peers. But that’s just my opinion.

As it turns out, the name game was the least of it. What Trudeau’s inner circle probably didn’t realize when it thought this interview — and global exposure via Netflix — was a great idea was that much of the really damning material would come from taped segments. In between clips of Minhaj’s sit-down with Trudeau, the comedian also blitzed his in-studio audience with facts, observations and timelines that portrayed Trudeau as a scandal-ridden leader who speaks out of both sides of his mouth. The show went after Trudeau over the SNC-Lavalin scandal. It raised the issue of ethics violations. It more or less called Trudeau a fraud on the environment. It condemned him over Canada’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

This didn’t feel like a comedy. It felt like a cross-border indictment of a Canadian leader most Americans still have warm and fuzzy feelings toward. As Minhaj quipped: “I might as well have done a 20-minute takedown of Tom Hanks.”

But what should be most alarming to Trudeau and his team is that he has now lost America’s titanium pop-culture machine. Since becoming Prime Minister, Trudeau has been called everything from “the internet’s boyfriend” to “a progressive messiah” to “all that is right in the world.” He’s popped up on magazine covers with throws such as “That New Suave Canadian Dude” (GQ) and “Why Can’t He Be Our President?” (Rolling Stone). To Americans and, by extension, much of the world, Trudeau could do no wrong. He represented everything other nations yearned to be.

This global love-in officially ended this weekend.

Hasan Minhaj didn’t interview Trudeau. He took him to the woodshed.

Years from now, when Trudeau is on his deathbed, no clips from this episode will make the highlight reel of his life. This was a PR disaster, pure and simple. Without explicably using the words, the show portrayed Trudeau as a fraud. It called out the hypocrisy and incompetence. The picture painted was completely at odds with what much of America believes to be true, something that was confirmed when the audience gasped after seeing side-by-side approval ratings this summer for Trudeau (32 per cent) and Trump (41 per cent).

You know what happened this weekend? Justin Trudeau lost America, forever.

And holding on to Canada for the election this fall just became much harder.