By John Hayward. Media: Breitbart
Canadian news outlets and politicians quarreled over the style and substance of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday.
Some were optimistic that Carney seemed to get along well with Trump, possibly signaling a reset in U.S.-Canadian relations, while others were disappointed that Carney delivered something far less than the pugnacious cage-fighter performance he promised during last month’s election campaign.
Most observers agreed Carney’s meeting with Trump was more genial than expected given that Trump’s tariffs and comments about annexing Canada purportedly enraged the electorate enough to revive the moribund Liberal Party, keep Carney in the office he was bequeathed when unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigned, and send once-dominant Conservative challenger Pierre Poilievre packing.
In truth, the storyline that Canadians cared only about choosing a fighter for Player Two to battle Trump in a Mortal Kombat match for control of the Northern Hemisphere was always simplistic. Trudeau’s departure was a seismic event, akin to tossing a load of foul baggage from a balloon, and Poilievre immediately struggled to realign a campaign that never recovered from the loss of its major foil.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford suggested on Wednesday that Trump’s disdain for Trudeau was a major factor in the deterioration of relations between Washington and Ottawa, and he thought it was encouraging that Trump seemed to enjoy knocking around the Oval Office with Carney for a while.
“I’ll tell you, it’s very obvious that President Trump likes Prime Minister Carney a lot more than he liked prime minister Trudeau. So that’s a first start, but it’s all about building a relationship and I think this is a first step to something productive,” Ford said.
“I thought they were both respectful of each other, and I thought it was a warm greeting,” he said.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was less charitable toward Carney’s performance. She agreed that Trump does not appear to viscerally dislike the current Canadian prime minister as much as the last one, but she said that was a very low bar to clear, given how poorly Trudeau performed with Trump. She still seemed worried that Carney did not come off as a leader of stature comparable to Trump.
“I’m just as hopeful as anyone else that they’re able to have a reset on the relationship. We’ll see if Prime Minister Mark Carney can reset that,” she sighed.
Smith said on Monday that she will hold a referendum to secede from Canada if the corresponding petition gathers enough signatures and, while she was unsparing in her criticism of the Liberal government in Ottawa, she said she was personally opposed to secession. She must have winced a bit when Carney insisted Canada would never become America’s 51st state and Trump replied, “Never say never.”
Her remarks on Monday made her sound a bit less opposed to the idea of Alberta seceding than previously.
“I will in good faith work with Prime Minister Mark Carney on unwinding the mountain of destructive legislation and policies that have ravaged our provincial and national economies this past decade — until I see tangible proof of real change — Alberta will be taking steps to better protect ourselves from Ottawa,” she said.
Canada’s Globe and Mail struggled to divine the meaning of Carney’s surprisingly jocular encounter with Trump, concluding that it “yielded no measurable progress in ending Mr. Trump’s costly trade war but also avoided any sign of conflict with the mercurial U.S. President.”
The Globe and Mail noted that Trump made no concessions to Carney on trade or tariffs, and in fact stressed that he wanted to use tariffs to bring American manufacturing back from Canada rather than simply driving a hard bargain on a better trade deal.
Trump also yielded nothing in his determination to annex Canada.
“I’ve had many, many things that were not doable, and they ended up being doable,” he said, shrugging off the hurricane of Canadian ire that ostensibly blew Carney into office.
The Globe and Mail thought Carney was “treading a careful line” because he wanted to “avoid triggering an unpleasant encounter of the kind that befell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during his February White House Visit.”
Carney also seemed a little surprised that Trump gave his concerns such a patient hearing during their private meeting. He wound up praising Trump as a “transformational president” instead of delivering the combative performance his voters might have expected.
The National Post broke down the entire Trump-Carney meeting in forensic detail, concluding that Trump seemed clearly in command of the encounter.
“Trump did most of the talking, while Carney emphasized what they agree on, ignored the rest, especially the automotive industry, sat alert and patient as Trump rambled about diverse matters, and declined to rise to his insults of other politicians, notably his minister of transport and internal trade, Chrystia Freeland,” the article noted.
The National Post’s body-language experts sourly accused Trump of using “backslapping clubbiness,” “false bonhomie,” and good humor to disarm Carney — even though some of Trump’s backslaps looked more like backhands, as when he seemingly praised — but actually belittled — Carney by saying, “I have a lot of respect for this man. I watched him come up through the ranks when he wasn’t given much of a chance.”
While these experts gave Carney some credit for handling awkward moments with Trump, even their most favorable remarks made it clear Carney was not the dominant force in the encounter, and he had a good deal of trouble adapting to Trump’s alpha style.
“All of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s big talk about standing up to Donald Trump was exposed Tuesday as a bombastic sham,” National Post columnist Michael Higgins hooted on Tuesday:
When the president talked about shutting down the Canadian car industry and refusing to buy our steel and aluminum, the prime minister was silent. No push back. No standing up for Canadian interests.
Gone was Carney’s fiery rhetoric from the campaign trail and in its place was the mild-mannered, tranquil banker.
No one should expect the prime minister to be rude, dismissive, or combative when meeting the president (even if on the campaign trail that’s exactly how Carney behaved.) But neither should the prime minister be so passive and meek.
Higgins argued that Carney’s performance at the White House exposed his entire campaign for prime minister as a fearmongering fraud in which he played up anxieties that he obviously does not feel. He drew a devastating contrast between Trump winning the White House with “a vision about where he wanted to take his country,” while Carney “rode to office on the back of a nightmare.”
“So there we have it. Trump is now friends with Carney. Carney is friends with Trump and Canada is screwed,” Higgins glumly concluded.
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