We’ve been warned: This will be an election unlike any other since Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton for the American presidency.Get ready for a rematch of sorts on local soil, pitting PC Leader Doug Ford against Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne. It’s already happening here, now — three weeks before the official campaign begins for the June 7 vote.While the outcome remains unpredictable, the ugliness looks unstoppable. The more Ford lashes out, the more Wynne vows to throw it right back at him.Reprising the role of the U.S. president, Ford played his Trump card against Wynne this week, casting the premier as a criminally inclined Hillary Clinton incarnate: a politician who must be investigated for illegalities — not least email deletions — of the kind that could land her behind bars.Read more:Wynne likens Doug Ford to Donald Trump, saying he is a ‘bully’ who ‘lies’Opinion | Emma Teitel: Four tips to help Kathleen Wynne up her populist gameFord promises ‘outside audit’ of Wynne’s Liberals if he wins June electionMaking wild accusations of improprieties — utterly unproven — Ford claimed that “if Kathleen Wynne tried to pull these kinds of shady tricks in private life” the result would be Liberals like her landing “in jail.”We’ve seen this campaign before. He might as well have mouthed Trump’s infamous chant: “Lock her up!”While Ford’s fulminations left little to the imagination, the premier’s impassioned counterattack spelled out a new campaign template: If the Progressive Conservative leader wants to play bully, the Liberal leader won’t play victim.“Doug Ford sounds like Donald Trump, and that’s because he is like Donald Trump,” Wynne told a news conference Wednesday.“He believes in an ugly, vicious brand of politics that traffics in smears and lies. He’ll say anything about anyone at any ...
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