Attribution to Manning Centre c/o: Jake Wright

Federal Party leaders usually make themselves available to the media, where they defend and explain their policies in back and forth scrums with reporters. For example, last week at the weekly caucus meeting, all the federal leaders took questions while entering the meetings or at later press conferences. All except one, Pierre Poilievre. In fact, Poilievre has not had a news conference since his disastrous first conference, in September, where he only took two questions.

The press gallery has 302 members from 48 outlets and agencies, not counting freelance journalists. The only interviews that Poilievre has conducted has been with Ottawa radio outlets.

There may be a method to Pierre’s silence. He has stated that he will not go through “Liberal Media” Instead he will contact Canadians directly through social media outlets. Poilievre does have 465,000 followers on Twitter and 588,000 followers on FaceBook. He is following a page from the Trump playbook, where Trump avoided the media, except for Fox Propaganda (also known as Fox News) yet had 89 million followers on Twitter, before he was banned. Now with Elon Musk owning Twitter, Tump will soon be allowed back into Twitter.

It is a disturbing trend. Avoid media that will challenge you. Might work, unfortunately.