Will Justin Trudeau’s Resignation Lead to the MAGA-fication of Canada?

01/08/25 • 28 min

2 Listeners

After nearly a decade as Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau has resigned from office. His stepping down follows a years-long decline in popularity, which stands in sharp contrast to his meteoric rise in 2015. It now seems likely that the Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, whose far-right populist support some have likened to Trump’s MAGA movement, will attain Canada’s highest office. The New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik joins the show to discuss Trudeau’s descent, Poilievre’s ascent, expectations for the upcoming parliamentary election, and what the future of Canadian politics may hold.

This week’s reading:

“Why Justin Trudeau Had to Step Down,” by Adam Gopnik
“How Much Do Democrats Need to Change?,” by Peter Slevin
“Bourbon Street After the Terror,” by Paige Williams
“How Sheriffs Might Power Trump’s Deportation Machine,” by Jessica Pishko
“New Mexico’s Nuclear-Weapons Boom,” by Abe Streep

To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].

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This week’s reading:

“Why Justin Trudeau Had to Step Down,” by Adam Gopnik
“How Much Do Democrats Need to Change?,” by Peter Slevin
“Bourbon Street After the Terror,” by Paige Williams
“How Sheriffs Might Power Trump’s Deportation Machine,” by Jessica Pishko
“New Mexico’s Nuclear-Weapons Boom,” by Abe Streep

To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Previous Episode

From Critics at Large: The Modern-Day Fight for Ancient Rome

The Political Scene will be back next week. In the meantime, enjoy a recent episode from The New Yorker’s Critics at Large podcast. Artists owe a great debt to ancient Rome. Over the years, it’s provided a backdrop for countless films and novels, each of which has put forward its own vision of the Empire and what it stood for. The hosts Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the latest entry in that canon, Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II,” which has drawn massive audiences and made hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. The hosts also consider other texts that use the same setting, from the religious epic “Ben-Hur” to Sondheim’s farcical swords-and-sandals parody, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” Recently, figures from across the political spectrum have leapt to lay claim to antiquity, even as new translations have underscored how little we really understand about these civilizations. “Make ancient Rome strange again. Take away the analogies,” Schwartz says. “Maybe that’s the appeal of the classics: to try to keep returning and understanding, even as we can’t help holding them up as a mirror.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Gladiator II” (2024)

“I, Claudius” (1976)

“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (1966)

“The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988)

“Monty Python’s Life of Brian” (1979)

“Cleopatra” (1963)

“Spartacus” (1960)

“Ben-Hur” (1959)

“Gladiator” (2000)

“The End of History and the Last Man,” by Francis Fukuyama

“I, Claudius,” by Robert Graves

“I Hate to Say This, But Men Deserve Better Than Gladiator II,” by Alison Willmore (Vulture)

“On Creating a Usable Past,” by Van Wyck Brook (The Dial)

Emily Wilson’s translations of the Odyssey and the Iliad

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Next Episode

What the End of Meta’s Fact-Checking Program Means for the Future of Free Speech

The Washington Roundtable discusses Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to end its fact-checking program across Meta’s social-media sites. Instead, Meta will release a tool that allows readers to add context and corrections to posts, similar to the way one can leave a “community note” on X. What does this choice mean for truth online in the coming Trump Administration, and have “alternative facts,” as they were dubbed by Kellyanne Conway in 2017, won out? Plus, free speech in the era of Donald Trump, lawsuits brought against the mainstream media, and how journalists will cover President Trump’s second Administration.

This week’s reading: