How Much Crack Would a Crack Mayor Smoke If a Crack Mayor Could Admit He Smoked Crack?

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Crack-addled Toronto mayor Rob Ford can't keep straight his statements about when he smoked crack, or how many times he has smoked crack.

Initially, Ford admitted smoking crack "probably in one of my drunken stupors." Not definitely, only probably. There's a chance Ford has hit a pipe sober. Since then, Ford's comments and clarifications have evolved in the ensuing media storm. Tuesday, Ford told NBC's Today Show he "barely" remembers the night the crack video was filmed. In another interview with Canada's CP24, Ford said he smoked crack "maybe once," and claimed he hasn't done drugs in a year. Again, Ford doesn't claim definitively that he smoked crack cocaine only once. Maybe Ford did drugs once. Again, nothing definitive. To commit to a denial would trap Ford the next time new, damaging details are revealed, which is inevitable, if we've learned anything about this particular scandal.

Oh, and Toronto police tell a different story. According to an official police document, first reported by the Toronto Star, the cops have concluded Ford's infamous crack video was shot in February. That's about three months shy of the last time Ford says he did drugs. "The video appears to show the Mayor of Toronto consuming what appears to be a narcotic," the document claims.

The claims coming from the mayor's mouth have varied wildly, and are drowning in cautionary modifiers. At this point the possibility mayor Ford has smoked crack cocaine more than once must be seriously considered.

To add insult to injury, especially now that he has no real power at city hall, Ford's brief television career came to a swift conclusion Monday. Last night Ford and his city councillor brother, Doug Ford, debuted Ford Nation on Sun News, a right-wing news network often heralded as Canada's answer to Fox News, to record ratings. But Sun News cancelled the show less than 24 hours after it aired its first and only episode because of an expensive shooting and editing process:

While Ford Nation pulled about 155,000 viewers, according to overnight ratings, it is a victim of the brutal economics of cable TV and the Fords’ relative inexperience with the medium: Monday’s episode took five hours to record, and another eight hours to edit, making it an unusually expensive endeavour for a niche network that is in only about 40 per cent of Canadian households.

Ford mostly used the show to spout the same talking points he always does. Ford Nation was, largely, unremarkable television, though it earned some fans.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

About the Author

Connor Simpson is a former staff writer for The Wire. His work has appeared in Business Insider and City Lab.

The president’s attempt to intimidate James Comey didn’t merely backfire—it may also embolden hostile regimes to conclude his other threats are equally empty.

This is a first for the Trump presidency: the first formal presidential retraction of a presidential untruth.

President Trump tweeted a warning to James Comey: The fired FBI director had better hope that no “tapes” existed that could contradict his account of what happened between the two men. Trump has now confessed that he had no basis for this warning. There were no such tapes, and the president knew it all along.

The tweet was intended to intimidate. It failed, spectacularly: Instead of silencing Comey, it set in motion the special counsel investigation that now haunts Donald Trump’s waking imagination.

But the failed intimidation does have important real world consequences.

First, it confirms America’s adversaries in their intensifying suspicion that the president’s tough words are hollow talk. The rulers of North Korea will remember the menacing April 4 statement from the Department of State that the United States had spoken enough about missile tests, implying that decisive actions lay ahead—and the lack of actions and deluge of further statements that actually followed.