{"id":200689,"date":"2019-02-03T20:50:09","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T01:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=200689"},"modified":"2019-02-03T20:50:09","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T01:50:09","slug":"liberal-mp-adam-vaughan-apologizes-for-whack-tweet-aimed-at-premier-doug-ford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/02\/03\/liberal-mp-adam-vaughan-apologizes-for-whack-tweet-aimed-at-premier-doug-ford\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal MP Adam Vaughan apologizes for ‘whack’ tweet aimed at Premier Doug Ford"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Vaughan has been critical of the Ford government’s policies in Ontario, continuing criticisms that go back to when the two sat on Toronto city council. (File Photo<\/a>: Adam Vaughan\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA \u2014 A Liberal MP from Toronto has apologized for a tweet sent Saturday morning that many on Twitter took as a threat against Ontario Premier Doug Ford.<\/p>\n

Adam Vaughan said sorry for tweeting that people should \u201cwhack\u201d Ford, hours after defending it as a reference to the game whack-a-mole where players hold a mallet and hit targets \u2014 or moles \u2014 as they randomly pop up from a board.<\/p>\n

Vaughan has been critical of the Ford government’s policies in Ontario, continuing criticisms that go back to when the two sat on Toronto city council.<\/p>\n

Before entering federal politics in 2014, Vaughan often took aim at the policies of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, Doug Ford’s brother who died in 2016.<\/p>\n

Vaughan’s original tweet late Saturday morning was in response to a tweet noting the Ontario Progressive Conservatives had backed away from talk about cancelling full-day kindergarten in the province.<\/p>\n

The Liberal MP suggested in a tweet that the Ford government raised the idea so residents would get \u201cupset over hurting Kindergarten students instead of being angry over the damage he’s done to University students.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNext he will go after young offenders & end \u201cfree school\u201d in detention centres … instead of playing whack-a-mole; Let’s just whack him.\u201d<\/p>\n

As responses from Twitter users rolled in questioning his use of language, Vaughan repeatedly tweeted pictures of a whack-a-mole game with a picture of Ford’s face placed on the targets in the game, and screen capture of the online Collins Dictionary entry for \u201cwhack.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone whacks you, they defeat you easily in a game or competition,\u201d the screen capture reads.<\/p>\n

The next entry on the website adds this definition: \u201cTo whack someone means to kill them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vaughan at one point tweeted that he had been contacted by a lawyer \u201crepresenting the Moles of Ontario,\u201d who resented the comparison. \u201cI’ve tried to reach out, but apparently they are an underground organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Saturday night, Vaughan apologized. In a statement posted to Twitter to anyone who was offended and \u201cmissed the original cartoon,\u201d without which \u201cthe comment lacks context.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhack was a reference to whack-a-mole,\u201d Vaughan wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was never my intent to suggest anyone, anywhere should inflict real physical harm to Premier Ford. To those who took offence, I’m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA \u2014 A Liberal MP from Toronto has apologized for a tweet sent Saturday morning that many on Twitter took …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":200690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}