From Low Blows To Obama ‘bromance’: 11 Moments In Political Life Of Justin Trudeau

OTTAWA — For the first time in his political career, Justin Trudeau is walking away from a fight — a move that preserves the three-term prime minister and five-term lawmaker’s perfect electoral record.

Canada’s prime minister announced Monday that he plans to resign as Liberal Party leader and will step away once his replacement is chosen.

“I am not someone who backs away, ... particularly when a fight is as important as this one,” Trudeau said. “But I have always been driven by my love for Canada, by my desire to serve Canadians and by what is in the best interest of Canadians — and Canadians deserve a real choice in the next election.”

Trudeau led his party for 11 years, launching it from third-party status to majority government in 2015. When Canadians go to the polls in 2025 — a federal election now expected this spring — polls suggest they are likely to elect Canada’s Conservative Party led by Pierre Poilievre.

The prime minister once gained acclaim for besting a Canadian senator in a charity boxing match in 2012. A dozen bruising years later, he’s decided for the first time to stay out of the ring.

1. Rope-a-dope

When Justin Trudeau first got into politics, there were doubts. He brought along a boyish charm and a silver spoon, name recognition and the celebrity he inherited from his father.

But did the drama-teacher-turned-junior-lawmaker who longboarded to work at his Montreal office have the right stuff to lead the country?

Dukes up: Trudeau arrived as the underdog to a charity boxing match in 2012, the year before he was chosen to lead the Liberal Party.

His opponent: Sen. Patrick Brazeau, a built and tattooed former naval reservist with a black belt in karate.

The odds: Chances looked slim for Trudeau; with 3-1 odds, he was poised to be pummeled. When Trudeau, a practiced boxer, won the match, Canada’s political world took notice.

Backstory: In a Rolling Stone interview that proved controversial and offensive, Trudeau shared his thinking behind the stunt. “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. … I saw it as the right kind of narrative, the right story to tell.”

The upshot: The contest served as a warning to future challengers: Don’t underestimate Trudeau. The prime minister returns often to that match, journalist Paul Wells noted in a recent book: “Every time he’s in trouble, he thinks, I’ve been in trouble before and they were wrong to count me out.”

2. Autumn gold

On a gorgeous autumn day after his election, Trudeau, hand-in-hand with his then-wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau and flanked by incoming senior officials, walked down the grounds of the stately Rideau Hall, paths lined with hundreds of members of the public eager to for a glimpse of the incoming Cabinet en route to its swearing-in ceremony.

Change of air: Young. Diverse. Fresh players with impressive resumes and compelling backstories.

Made-for-TV images: Senior party officials worked tirelessly to draw a contrast between the previous government of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which had a reputation of being commanding and secretive and hostile to the media.

“The sight of Trudeau taking selfies, hugging ministers, kissing his wife and cuddling his kids was digital media gold,” political columnist John Ivison wrote in his book, “Trudeau: The Education of a Prime Minister.”

The upshot: When he asked why he’d placed as many women as men in his new Cabinet, Trudeau, standing in front of his new team, replied, “Because it’s 2015,” cementing his image globally as a feminist world leader.

3. Disorder in the House

May 2016 provided Canadians an unvarnished glimpse of their new prime minister. The closest thing like it to that point had been an outburst early in his career when he called another politician in Parliament a “piece of shit.”

Ruh roh: When Trudeau was struggling to pass measures in Parliament as his rivals delayed, he physically grabbed a lawmaker who was gumming up the works and attempted to physically drag him to the other end of the House of Commons to get things going.

In the process, he elbowed the young progressive politician Ruth Ellen Brosseau in the chest.

Self-inflicted wound: Trudeau looked hot-headed, impatient, flippant and arrogant. All anathema to his crafted image.

The upshot: At the time, it seemed like an odd interruption, out of character for someone who’d arrived in office promising to do things differently. “Elbowgate,” as it became known, marked the first in a series of gaffes that would wear away at his shining image.

4. Handshake diplomacy

Despite their differences over trade, U.S. President Barack Obama and Trudeau shared a “bromance” that made international headlines.

The “family photo” at the “Three Amigos” summit in June 2016 presented a weird three-way handshake that went from awkward to good vibes when Trudeau went to shake Obama’s hand and then reached for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s too soon.

Charmed offensive: The odd-but-fun triple shake showed off Trudeau’s goofy and dorky side — warm and fuzzy vibes that wouldn’t last.

His opponent: Trudeau soon had to contend with a Donald Trump presidency, which threatened to upend NAFTA, the free trade deal with the U.S., Canada’s largest trading partner.

The stakes: Trump was known as an aggressive handshaker. The one with Shinzo Abe, prime minister of Japan at the time, went viral when he squeezed his hand for 19 seconds in a play for dominance and humiliation.

During their first meeting, Trudeau had better results. He’d braced himself against Trump’s shoulder and at another moment gripped tightly enough to disarm it.

“The handshake between Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump the first time he went down to D.C. [after the 2016 U.S. election] were the most important 11 seconds in Trudeau’s first term as prime minister,” Dan Arnold, former pollster for the Trudeau admin, said half-jokingly on the Canadian political-insiders podcast,“On Background.”

The upshot: The PM bucked expectations, buffed up his public image as a fighter and visually cemented his legacy as a world leader who could hold his ground. The goodwill and favorable coverage would not last

5. Fully completely

It was a moment between two Canadian celebs that pulled at the heartstrings. Donning a denim jacket and jeans — a “Canadian tuxedo” — Canada’s first Gen X prime minister joined thousands of Tragically Hip fans in Kingston, Ontario, in August 2016 on the band’s final stop of its farewell tour.

A day before the tour was announced, the rock band’s frontman, Gord Downie, had gone public with his diagnosis of terminal brain cancer.

Shared moment: Trudeau described the band’s discography as “the soundtrack to my life and to so many of us in so many ways.”

When Downie in 2017 died at 53, Trudeau said Canada lost one of the best of us.

“Gord was my friend, but Gord was everyone’s friend,” he told the media on Oct. 18 that year, choking up.

The upshot: During the final concert, Downie called on Trudeau to make good on his reconciliation promise to Indigenous Canadians. And he said Trudeau was the leader to do it — both pressuring the prime minister to make good on his promises and offering an endorsement at the same time.

6. NAFTA renegotiations: Trudeau v. Trump

Trudeau and his posse are widely credited domestically for doing one thing very well: managing the first presidency of Donald Trump, who campaigned vowing to rip up NAFTA — the major free trade deal underpinning the Canadian economy.

The odds: While Trump was thundering to the Rust Belt about how unfair the deal with Canada was, the Trudeau administration was forging ties with his campaign. Trump’s win, which took official Ottawa by surprise, required all hands on deck.

The big test: Trudeau quickly remade his Cabinet, shuffling key positions in the upper ranks of government and tapping a dedicated U.S. tiger team to target people in Trump’s orbit. The goal was to have a pro-Canada donut of key players surrounding the president. The government put into play provincial politicians, including natural enemies of the Trudeau regime, and even former conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who had ties to old guard Republicans and to Trump.

Legacy moment: “When you read the history of the foreign policy of Justin Trudeau, the one bright spot will be his response to the Trump election and how he can come back,” former Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson told POLITICO. “The negotiations worked out better than I would have thought, given how we went into it.”

“We really had to scramble.”

The upshot: Trudeau and his team defused the situation, which could have gone much worse for Canada.

7. The bizarre trip to India

Trudeau’s celebrity cred and familiarity with Canadians offered him slack to make mistakes, with semi-frequent verbal flubs. He had a penchant for remedying gaffes through tearful public apologies.

But in 2018 he really stepped in it during his first official visit to India at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Mr. Dress-up: Trudeau and his then-wife Sophie took flak for overdressing in traditional garb — to the point where it became awkward for locals.

The upshot: It embarrassed Canadians back home, it was robustly mocked on “The Daily Show” and Times of India ran a social-media reaction story headlined, “Justin Trudeau mocked for his ‘Bollywood adventure’ in India.”

At the time, Shuvaloy Majumdar, who is now a Conservative lawmaker, criticized it as “a costume parade masquerading as foreign policy.”

All that, and it wasn’t even the real political problem of the trip for him.

Self-inflicted wound: Trudeau wound up at an event alongside Sikh extremist Jaspal Atwal, a former Khalistani activist convicted of attempted murder of a Punjabi Cabinet minister.

The news broke just as it seemed Trudeau was going to net praise for showing he was not soft on Sikh separatism — a constant sticking point with India’s government.

Damage exposed: The full breadth of the problems in Canada’s bilateral relationship with India wasn’t exposed until 2023, when Trudeau alleged there was an extrajudicial killing by agents of the government of India on Canadian soil against a Sikh activist.

8. The killer influence scandal

If you could pinpoint the moment it started to crumble for Trudeau (and we have), it was in 2019 with an ethics scandal that blew holes in his Cabinet and inner circle.

An ethics scandal erupted over whether his office had pressured his justice minister at the time, Jody Wilson-Raybould, on a criminal corruption and fraud case about an engineering company known as SNC-Lavalin — based out of Trudeau’s home province of Quebec. She accused the government of breaking legal conventions and brought receipts to the public debate.

Internal conflict: Wilson-Raybould, the first-ever Indigenous justice minister in Canada, quit Cabinet and fought with Trudeau’s cadre in public over the official version of events, drawing comparisons to the Watergate scandal’s “Saturday Night Massacre” to make the point that Team Trudeau was putting its thumb on the scales of justice.

Her close friend Jane Philpott, another rookie politician who rocketed to early stardom in Trudeau’s Cabinet, resigned on principle over the matter.

Quadruple threat: The scandal soon claimed a key partner in the Trudeau brain trust. Gerald Butts, lifelong friend and one of his two most senior aides, resigned. So, too, did the country’s top public servant.

Lasting scars: “Close observers believe the government never fully recovered because nobody with the same strategic skills — particularly for narrative-building — ever replaced [Butts] in a central role,” veteran journalist Stephen Maher wrote in his recent book on Trudeau, “The Prince.”

“For the rest of the Trudeau era, the government was reactive, dealing successfully with crises but never again managing to seize the agenda.”

The upshot: The events damaged Trudeau’s progressive credibility on his commitments to feminism and Indigenous people. And it exposed how centralized decision making had become in his government — despite his insistence of the contrary when he took office.

9. Blackface stunner

Teflon coating: Video and photos that surfaced mid-campaign in 2019 of Trudeau donning blackface shocked the nation. Were he any other politician, it would have ended his career.

Time magazine uncovered a photo of Trudeau donning blackface in a yearbook from his time as a teacher at a private high school on Canada’s West Coast.

Repeat offender: But it wasn’t just one picture. Trudeau, the progressive golden boy, had donned blackface makeup multiple times — enough that he acknowledged he cannot remember how many — even at one point while singing Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat (Day-O).”

Trudeau swiftly apologized and reflected publicly on his privilege that prevented him from seeing it as racist at the time.

“This is something that I deeply, deeply regret,” he said on his second day of apologies. “Darkening your face, regardless of the context of the circumstances, is always unacceptable because of the racist history of blackface.”

Had he faced tougher challengers in that electoral dust up, he likely would have lost.

His well-established convictions on correcting racial and gender inequality bailed him out and he won, as his main rival, Andrew Scheer, flailed in the waning days of the election.

The upshot: Trudeau’s gaffe-proof coating was stunning to political watchers, as he apologized his way out of the story. His opponents focused almost entirely on whether Trudeua was racist — and have been rubbing salt on the wound since that day.

10. Pandemic Trudeau

Flat-footed: When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the Canadian government was caught flat-footed and moved slowly. Trudeau called Canadians abroad to return home in March 2020 and largely closed the country’s borders. Travel back to Canada was chaos — people jammed into airports and few wore masks.

Make it rain: When it did gear up on its health response, the government launched one of the biggest bailouts for Canadians and businesses in the country’s history, shoveling hundreds of billions out the door at a speed never before seen.

Oddly reassuring: Like the rest of the nation, Trudeau was stuck in isolation. He holed up at Rideau Cottage, the temporary residence of the prime minister, giving daily news conferences at the doorstep, launching support programs and delivering national pep talks. He worked from home and let his hair get a bit crazy. He even grew a beard.

Legacy moment: The Trudeau government initially won accolades for its response, though a controversial student grant program heated into a major scandal that claimed his finance minister by year’s end. But the biggest blow was yet to come.

Easy opponent: As the pandemic wore on, Canadians grew tired of the health measures like vaccination requirements. Trudeau won a mid-pandemic election against his main rival Erin O’Toole by successfully wedging his opponent on vaccines and gun control.

Eastbound and down: Following a vaccine mandate on truckers crossing the border, activists fighting back against such civil liberties restrictions rolled a massive convoy into Ottawa early in 2022, where they occupied the streets near Parliament for several weeks.

City in crisis: The city was gridlocked, trucks lined the city core blaring their horns, businesses shuttered and aggressive protesters partied while the cops largely stepped back. Locals became fed up with a sense of lawlessness and Trudeau invoked an emergencies law that granted him extra powers allowing him to break up the occupation, freeze bank accounts and force big rigs to be towed away.

The upshot: The country exited the pandemic divided, bitter and frustrated, with a battered economy, runaway inflation and high cost of living plaguing the government. And Trudeau became a global pariah to the right, civil libertarians and populists.

11. The Trudeaus split

After 18 years of marriage, Justin and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau separated abruptly in summer 2023. The two jointly posted statements to Instagram, putting an end to years of speculation and gossip in Ottawa. But it also fueled months of speculation Trudeau might step down before facing the prospect of losing government in the next election. The pair married in 2005 at an “appropriately understated fairy-tale wedding” in Montreal, and had three children: Xavier, Ella-Grace and Hadrien. While Grégoire moved out to a condo in a posh area in Ottawa, the family remained tight-knit, although she admitted in a radio interview it sometimes “gets messy, like in all family life.

Like father, like son: Trudeau’s parents, former prime minister Pierre and Margaret Trudeau, went through a divorce during his final months in office in 1984. They had separated years earlier in 1977, after nine years of Pierre Trudeau’s run as PM. Justin Trudeau tries to buck comparisons with his father, but this was one he couldn’t shake.

The upshot: Portrayed as elite Canadian royalty and out of touch with the average Joe by his opponents, Trudeau’s career ended not long after the low moment that, if anything, made him more relatable to the general public with his human fallibility on full display.

Maher wrote in his book “The Prince” that Trudeau’s inner circle said the breakup was not a shock to anyone who knew the pair, as Grégoire found it hard to be the wife of a prime minister.

“Trudeau might have saved his marriage if he had decided to step down in 2023 and let someone else take on [his new rival, Pierre Poilievre], but he did not want to do that,” Maher writes. “His friends say he put the country ahead of his marriage.”