Former city councillor Doug Ford says that despite comparisons between his late brother former Toronto mayor Rob Ford and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, the two men are “two different people.”
Trump, who won a surprising and decisive victory over Hillary Clinton in the U.S. election Tuesday, has often been likened in the past to Toronto’s colourful former mayor.
Both men positioned themselves as outsiders who wanted to fix a broken system and appealed to ordinary voters who found their messages of change refreshing. And both men surprised the political establishment by gaining much larger bases of support than rivals thought possible.
However speaking with CP24hoursafter Trump’s win, Doug Ford said his brother was a different man from Trump.
“Totally two different people, night and day, totally two different people,” Ford said when asked about the comparison. “The movement was very similar but again Rob worked for the people for 14, 15 years and I guess Trump just tapped into something down there and I was shocked to see the results.”
Still, he acknowledged that both men shared a tendency for making unscripted comments that flaunted conventional political wisdom.
“I found myself screaming at the television when Donald Trump – he kind of reminded me of Rob when he’d say something different – when he kind of went off the rails and I couldn’t comprehend why he just couldn’t stay on message,” Ford said. “That’s one thing Rob could do, stay on message. But he’d say some wild things sometimes.”
Ford also said that he sees Trump’s election as being part of a wider movement of dissatisfaction with leaders around the world.
“There’s a movement out there. No matter if it’s the vote out in the U.K., Poland, Iceland, The Phillipines, (Bernie) Sanders – people are ticked off down there, they’re ticked off right across the world right now,” he said.
Asked whether he might himself be interested in another run at elected office provincially or federally, Ford simply said “Maybe.”
In the short term, he said he’s focused on the upcoming launch of his new book, “Ford Nation,” which promises to tell the story of his brother’s time in office from the family’s perspective.
Ford has said in the past that politicians and journalists should fear the revelations in the book, which will be released later this month.
