Is Justin Trudeau our first — and last — 'influencer' prime minister?

Following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's announcement that he'll be stepping down after 10 years in office, Commotion is looking back at his arc as a political fixture in pop culture.

Early into his tenure, there were headlines around the world touting his handsome appearance. Then, throughout his time in office there were various organic moments that became memes — but in hindsight, it's clear the appeal that Trudeau's online personality had for some is precisely the thing that turned others off of his leadership style.

Today on the show, Riley Yesno, Justin Ling and Jen Gerson join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about the power — and the shortcomings — of Trudeau's particular brand as our first influencer prime minister.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: He had a particular knack for creating social media conversations — these really memeable moments. Like, he would come out and he would say, "Yes, my cabinet is 50 per cent women." And then he would be asked why is that, and the answer is, "Because it's 2015." And that becomes this internet shareable moment. He was conversant, to me, in the internet in a way that very few other politicians in this country have been. I don't know if that feels true to you, the idea that he started off being in that place?

Justin: Yeah, and, let's be real, there is probably nobody else in the world who could quite hit the zeitgeist like he did. And it was a pretty short-lived zeitgeist, you know, the amount of time the general public wanted this super Twitter-literate, really memeable, uber-online, viral moment kind of prime minister; the number of people around the world who want that today, I think, is shrinking violently. 

But he very much was of that moment, 2015 to 2018, and I don't think anyone else really captured that. Barack Obama, I think, did that, but with an air of presidentiality to it…. But Trudeau managed to hit that moment right on the nose, and I think we're going to look back at it as a deeply weird, strange and sort of liminal space-time that I don't think we'll ever really want to go back to.

Elamin: He had a gift for connecting with people, both I think in person and on social media for a period of time. He had that Vogue spread. In 2017, Rolling Stone asked if he's "the free world's best hope?" He became the shirtless meme. He had his face printed on t-shirts and stuff like that. To what extent was that facet of his early success, do you think, also the thing that led to his downfall now?

Jen: Politicians are not so dissimilar from the rest of us…. You know, you become bound and blinded by both your success and your failures, right? If you do something that works well for you at a very particular moment in time, you'll have a tendency to double down on it again and again. And politicians, I think, are particularly vulnerable to that problem because when they actually are elevated to positions of power, they kind of get trapped in information bubbles and loyalty bubbles — people who are telling them the things that they want to hear quite a lot, and people who are reflecting the values that they surround themselves with. And when you have power, you often aren't forced to confront people outside of the sphere that makes you comfortable.

So I think what happens to a lot of politicians is that they come to power on a particular message, a tone, a set of techniques, and then they get kind of trapped in amber in that theme even as the world radically changes around them. To draw an analogy here, I think the Conservatives are running into the same trap. They're still going "carbon tax election," "axe the tax," because it's worked for them. It's put them to 20 points ahead in the polls. It's going to be really hard for them to pivot from that when the world pivots around them. Trudeau has had a similar version of that with his entire tone, his personality, his speeches, the fashions he's adopted, the people he's put around him. Suddenly, in hindsight, we look back at a lot of that stuff and it feels very cringe. It feels very Myspace, right?... He came to power in 2015. The world changed dramatically for the first time in 2016, and I think that he's been struggling to find the zeitgeist ever since.

Elamin: Riley, his time as this influencer prime minister started out with these unanimous likes and hearts. But then by the time last May rolled around, we got posts like a cringe video of Justin Trudeau taking a call from Hayden Christensen, a Canadian actor who was, of course, in Star Wars…. Riley, you're in your 20's, the target demo for this kind of content in theory, but not in practice. When did the shine wear off for that kind of approach to presenting yourself as a politician?

Riley: Yeah, I mean, it faded pretty quick. When Justin Trudeau was elected in 2015, I was 16 years old. And so not only has the world changed, certainly since then, but the internet has changed…. There was no TikTok. That was when everyone was using those sepia filters on Instagram. Pepe memes were at their height. It was a different time to be an internet person. I think that these days, the currency in the online world is authenticity — and I don't mean unplanned or nonstrategic…. Those are the things that I think Justin Trudeau has failed to realize, for a very long time, that people can tell.

Another victim of this inauthentic sort of online presence is Jagmeet Singh. No, I don't believe that you go around skateboarding, doing these things. I believe your Gen Z intern told you to do that so that you could post a reel. And so there is clearly this consciousness that, yes, the internet is this powerful tool. It's important for politicians to be there, and it can be done well. But there are so many of them that are missing the mark. And Justin Trudeau, I think, just happens to be — especially in this moment — the very emblematic victim of that trend.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low.