4 things we learned about Justin Trudeau from Hot Ones Quebec

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in the hot seat (so to speak) on Thursday, appearing on the latest episode of Hot Ones Quebec. The show, which appears on the streaming platform of Videotron, is a French-language adaptation of Hot Ones, an American YouTube-based show in which celebrities are interviewed while eating increasingly spicy chicken wings. Here’s what we learned from Trudeau’s appearance, which was filmed on Nov. 24.

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He can handle hot wings

Host Marc-André Grondin joked that he wanted to alert the prime minister’s security team about the name of one of the sauces, called Da’ Bomb, with Trudeau kidding him not to use the name at an airport.

Da’ Bomb is rated at 135,600 on the Scoville scale (very hot!) but Trudeau didn’t look concerned as he ate the wing. “You’re very strong,” Grondin said, to which Trudeau replied with a grin: “I like it spicy.”

He added: “It burns, I feel it in my mouth, but—” There’s a pause as the heat seems to catch up with him. “It’s true the beer doesn’t help,” he continued, pointing to a pint from which he was drinking. “But it’s good.”

He worries about the next generation of Trudeaus

“For a certain portion of the population, you’ve kind of become a symbol, seen as responsible for all of the problems on the planet,” Grondin said at one point. “Was there ever a moment when you looked at all this and said: OK that’s it, I’m out?”

Trudeau noted: “I see people reacting with so much hate and I’m worried for my children because they all have the name Trudeau. So when you say ‘F–k Trudeau,’ it’s not just me you’re talking to. There’s an anger in the public space right now that worries me.”

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But he later said: “I think if I thought it was really terrible for my kids I’d no longer be in politics.”

He knows what it’s like to face next-generation anger

Trudeau told Grondin: “I was seven years old when a guy came up to me in the schoolyard to say ‘I don’t like you. My parents didn’t vote for your father and we don’t like you.’” Trudeau was born on Christmas Day, 1971, and his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, won elections in 1968, 1972 and 1974 before losing in 1979 and then being re-elected in 1980.

He added: “I was 13 when my father quit politics and he quit because he knew being a parent of teenagers was super important, especially as a divorced single parent.” His own son Xavier is now 17, daughter Ella will be 16 in a few months, “and I couldn’t leave politics to be with them. So we’re having moments, they’re teenagers, they go out with their friends, they do silly things, and it’s tough.”

Angela Merkel once surprised him with a question about Playboy

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“After Donald Trump was elected at the end of 2016, I was with Angela Merkel in Germany,” Trudeau said, referring to the then-chancellor.

“She said, ‘What do you think?’ And I said, ‘We’ll see what he’ll be like.’ Then she said, ‘Did you read the Playboy interview?’”

Trudeau asked when the interview had run in the magazine, and Merkel told him it was from the 1980s. He told Grondin that he admitted to Merkel: “If I was looking at Playboy in the 1980s it wasn’t to read articles on Donald Trump!”

She later sent him the article. “It was interesting to see that already in the 1980s he was saying that we have to put tariffs on Japanese cars, on German cars, that we have to put America first. There’s a real continuity in his political thought.

“But you should’ve seen my face when Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said, ‘So, did you read the article in Playboy?’ I was like: OK, I have to answer this in an honest way.”

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