People who enjoy making themselves appear big by making others appear small are best avoided in life, if possible.

Admittedly, that’s hard to do when they’re the Prime Minister.

Three times since July 1 alone -- twice in foreign media -- Justin Trudeau has gratuitously aggrandized himself at the expense of other Canadians.

Each time, it’s been in interviews with friendly reporters. He wasn’t harangued into it.

The latest incident, for which Trudeau has apologized after his remarks angered indigenous leaders, occurred in his recent Rolling Stone interview.

Asked by Stephen Rodrick how much of his 2012 charity boxing match with Tory Senator Patrick Brazeau was planned in advance, the author reported Trudeau, “mischievously" smiled before telling him:

“‘It wasn't random. I wanted someone who would be a good foil, and we stumbled upon the scrappy tough-guy senator from an indigenous community. He fit the bill, and it was a very nice counterpoint.’ Trudeau says this with the calculation of a CFO in a company-budget markup session. ‘I saw it as the right kind of narrative, the right story to tell.’”

So, a PM who insists he’s all about reconciliation with indigenous people now calls it “a very nice counterpoint” and “the right kind of narrative” to mock an indigenous senator with well-known personal troubles over an incident five years ago.

Why, other than vanity, especially since it isn’t even true?

As respected Ottawa journalist Susan Delacourt writes in her iPolitics column, she knew from interviewing Trudeau in 2011 that at least two other Tories -- Peter MacKay and Rob Anders -- had turned down Trudeau’s offer of a boxing match, before he approached Brazeau.

Last month, asked during the G20 by a friendly editor from the German newspaper BILD: “Just very briefly – what is your view on Germany?” Trudeau responded:

“You are perhaps a little more … I’m looking for the right word – predictable? No, you’re more organized, maybe, than Canadians can be. We’ve got enough French and Latin blood in us to be less organized.”

Widely interpreted as a shot at francophone Quebecers -- and ironic given that Trudeau was born in Quebec and is of French Canadian (and Scottish) descent -- his comment again raises the question of what was the point of this remark?

Other than for Trudeau to stroke his own ego by resorting to the wanton stereotyping he routinely condemns in others, while posing as an all-knowing, dispassionate analyst of Quebec francophones.

Finally, there was Trudeau’s Canada Day interview with CTV, with another friendly reporter.

When she told the PM her parents emigrated from Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to Canada because of a speech his father, Pierre Trudeau, gave there, Trudeau instantly made it all about himself, saying he’s “jealous” of immigrants who choose Canada because they care more about the country than those who are “Canadian by default.”

“Which is why I always laugh,” Trudeau continued, “whenever you see people, not many of them, but intolerant, or think, ‘Oh, yeah, go back to your own country’. Well no, you chose this country, this is your country more than it is for others because we take it for granted, we default into this place. ”

So, invited by a friendly reporter to make the unifying point on Canada Day that we’re all equal as Canadians, no matter where we come from, Trudeau instead turned it into a virtue-signalling mini-lecture aimed at bigoted “Canadians by default”.

That’s Trudeau. The ego who walks like a man.