TORONTO -- NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh raised some eyebrows Thursday evening when he made a “tongue-in-cheek” comment that he hoped U.S. President Donald Trump would be impeached.
Singh was responding to a reporter who asked him what the first thing he would say to the president should he be elected prime minister.
“I hope he gets impeached before I get to speak to him,” he said during a town hall event in Nanaimo, B.C. on Thursday.
The NDP leader was referencing the current impeachment inquiry underway in the U.S. that is looking into a whistleblower’s complaint that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the son of Joe Biden, one of the president’s potential political rivals, in the summer.
Following enthusiastic applause from the crowd, Singh qualified his comment by taking aim at Trump’s controversial policies regarding the detention of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I say that a little tongue-in-cheek, but to be honest with you, I would say it’s disgusting that a president could inflame hatred against people and be so divisive,” he said.
“It’s horrible that someone in a position of power like him would allow for kids to be stripped from the arms of their parents, from their moms, to be put in cages.”
Singh went on to say that those actions should be “denounced.”
“You can’t allow someone like that to do that without any sort of repercussion, without anyone else condemning that,” he said. “I would condemn it.”
While Singh directly addressed the possibility of Trump’s impeachment, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer have been less forthright in their comments on the topic.
During a campaign stop in Delta, B.C. on Wednesday, Trudeau said he is focused on the ratification of the U.S-Mexico-Canada trade agreement in “a way that tries to go beyond the partisan differences in the Unites States right now.”
In response to reporters’ questions about Trump’s impeachment inquiry at a campaign event in Jonquiere, Que. on Wednesday, Scheer said they will let American lawmakers decide what happens in the U.S.
“We'll see what happens in the U.S., but a Conservative government will always fight to have free trade with North America,” he said.
