Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Had The Loooongest Pause To Think While Giving A Speech On North Korea

So it goes without saying Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau completely locking up without a clue of what to say while birds mockingly chirp in the distance for 15 seconds during a speech on North Korea is suboptimal. Not a great look mid-speech. And it’s such a sympathetic moment for the most powerful man in the world (King of the North edition) to be in a spot that you or I have been in during a class or a serious talk at work or whatever million different situations where your brain locks up in embarrassing ways. But there’s something so uncomfortable about seeing someone standing at a podium without a single clue of what to say right in the middle of a speech. You have days maybe weeks to prepare something and your brain giving up on you midstream when you’re trying to make a powerful statement…that’s about as painful of a public speaking moment as you can have, the thing folks have nightmares about when they think about talking in front of people. North Korea’ll do that to a man but there’s something fairly unpresidential about it all.

At the same time, the one thing you have to give Justin Trudeau credit for is you can actually see his brain actually working there. Hamster wheel spinning, springs coming out of his ears, maybe a curling stone slowly being pushed across some freshly swept ice, he’s the living embodiment of this GIF:

But the fact that he actually took his time to think of the proper word choice that fit what he wanted to say rather than impulsively respond like a certain tweet first, ask questions later President might do actually deserves some credit. If only we could blend them together and land somewhere in the middle, a leader who thinks things through but in a timely fashion. What a concept, dare to dream.