EDITORIAL – Stamer offside with his ‘goodwill gesture’ to Trump

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

SOMETIMES POLITICIANS say things just to be the opposite of what their opponents say. Sometimes they do it because their own party wants them to.

Maybe Kamloops-North Thompson MLA Ward Stamer truly believes that putting American swill back on the shelves of our liquor stores would help get trade talks going with Donald Trump. A goodwill gesture, he calls it.

If that’s the case, he hasn’t been paying attention. Can he come up with a single example of when Donald Trump has reacted positively to a “gesture of goodwill” when it comes to trade or anything else?

Trump is a pitbull who thrives on what he sees as weakness. The only way to deal with him is to push back. Yes, there’s a certain amount of pain to that but that’s often the case when one goes into a battle, and Trump is hellbent on waging war on us.

In this case, though, we aren’t exactly suffering from not being able to buy a bottle of their awful bourbon or whatever else might normally be in the store.

All Stamer and the BC Conservatives are doing is providing David Eby with a good talking point about how they’re siding with Trump. And that’s not a good position to be in. Canadians aren’t in a mood for goodwill gestures right now.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, writes for the Kamloops Chronicle and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and was a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.