Prime Minister Justin Trudeau praised for interaction with 'confused' PPC supporter

A video posted on Reddit is showing a different side of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as he patiently speaks to a young man who tries to confront him about several political issues, including health care, religion and abortion.

Trudeau was visiting the University of Manitoba on Wednesday, where he was confronted by a young man, recording him with an iPhone, who said he was most closely aligned with the People's Party of Canada.

The video starts with Trudeau asking the man if he would support a dental program that helps low-income families visit the dentist. The young man admits he’s not “fully into it” but doesn’t know. When Trudeau gently pushes back, the man responds “I guess they should.”

Trudeau then informs him that Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative party voted against that proposal. The young man then admits he’s more for the PPC than the Conservatives.

When asked why, the man goes on to say that it’s “mostly Christian,” and that he’s against “Liberal abortion.”

“OK, do you think women should have the right to choose what happens to their own bodies?” Trudeau asks the man filming him.

“Personally no,” he responds.

Trudeau asks if he thinks that he has a right to choose what happens to women’s bodies.

“Well, I think if they’re sleeping around they shouldn’t be allowed to abort the baby, personally,” he says, calling himself pro-choice before correcting himself and asserting that he’s pro-life.

When pressed further by the prime minister as to why he thinks women shouldn’t have rights over their own body, the young man says that it’s “their fault they chose to sleep around.”

When Trudeau asks about women who are raped, the man stops recording on his iPhone and tells him that’s where it gets complicated, protesting that it’s a “super specific example.”

“It’s an all too common example,” Trudeau responds. “Women get raped all the time and it’s something we have to take seriously.”

When Trudeau asks the young man again if a woman who gets raped should have access to abortion, he says he’s split on it.

After some further back and forth on the topic of abortion, the video ends with Trudeau telling his confronter: “Well, it sounds like you need to do a little more thinking and a little more praying on that as well.”

On social media, many praised Trudeau for taking a patient approach with the man, who didn’t appear to have carefully thought through his points.

Others wished Trudeau kept this kind of honest approach to all aspects of his leadership.

“This gives me flashes of the person I was excited about in 2016,” one user wrote on Reddit.

“It's crazy how he can debate and speak so well 1 on 1 with randoms but when speaking to a camera or in a televised debate he can be so robotic. He really needs to fire all his speech writers or handlers. This is the most human I have seen him in years. Absolutely makes this clown look like a clown.”