As someone who watches Trudeau every morning, I see this as his normal mannerism. Sometimes when he translates his thoughts (he has to say most things in both F

As someone who watches Trudeau every morning, I see this as his normal mannerism. Sometimes when he translates his thoughts (he has to say most things in both French and English) he does the same thing, although for a much shorter duration. This was a bigger question, and one which he had to answer with his usual tact and mindfulness in both languages. He is always extremely careful with his words, and doesn't really hide it when he is calculating his responses. The benefit of course is that he very seldom speaks out of character or says things he didn't quite mean. Sometimes it backfires if he translates from French to English first, causing him to come up with great phrases like "speaking moistly" when describing ways Covid-19 can spread. People used to make fun of his continuous "uh," but when you realize he grew up in and around Quebec, that speech pattern makes sense as well. Quebec French has a really specific sort of "errr" (my spelling does it no justice) where English speakers would say "um" or "ah". He uses a sort of anglicized version of that sound because it is the norm where he grew up. Literally a lot of things in his mannerisms that people joke about or point out as odd in some way come from Quebec. And others are because he does the full translation in his head before speaking. The 21 second pause is, for him, only unusual because of the duration. It would be interesting to capture the thought process he was going through before breaking trance to speak. It clearly was an answer he had difficulties putting together in both languages while retaining his signature tact.