Digging the hole deeper
Trump’s people are running around echoing his tweets bashing Trudeau, no doubt in hopes of making Trump look less deranged and backstabby.
President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Sunday accused Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of undermining the US and its allies with comments he made at the G7 summit.
“It was a betrayal,” Kudlow said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Kudlow was speaking following the G7 summit in Canada on Saturday. As Trump flew from the summit with US allies to a planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, he lashed out at Trudeau for what he said were his “false statements” at a news conference and said the US would not endorse the G7 communique, a negotiated statement on shared priorities among the group.
Although it is unclear which of Trudeau’s statements Trump was calling false, Trudeau said in the news conference Saturday that Canada will “move forward with retaliatory measures” on July 1 in response to the Trump administration’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, the European Union and Mexico.
How very dare he, right? How dare he respond to Trump’s tariffs with his own tariffs? Doesn’t he understand that Trump gets Special Treatment and he Trudeau does not?
In his interview Sunday, Kudlow accused Trudeau of making his comments for “domestic political consumption” and doing “a great disservice to the whole G7.”
“He really kind of stabbed us in the back,” Kudlow said.
While Trump’s belligerence toward Canada is completely different because
Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, directed a series of stinging comments at Trudeau on “Fox News Sunday.”
“There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door,” Navarro said. “And that’s what bad faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference. That’s what weak, dishonest Justin Trudeau did, and that comes right from Air Force One.”
Top classy thoughtful diplomacy.
Making him look less out-there may be something they would desperately like to achieve, but there’s also the benefits of at least appearing to want to do so, and of appearing to agree with him when no one sane and responsible does so. They’ve got to suck up to him all they can, because the only other people who would still employ them have the same reality-averse worldview but don’t have the same plum positions to offer.
Sean Spicer set the trend right after the inauguration. He didn’t have quite the stomach to keep doing it indefinitely – a pity for him, as he’s not much less tainted than the people who do but much less notably employed. Larry Kudlow, on the other hand, has had a career already gloriously detached from accuracy, so he’s got nothing left to lose.
And what’s this ‘weak’ business about anyway? Even on Trump’s account, these foreign leaders are lying in order to get the most for their countries. Doesn’t he expect “Canada First” from Canada? After all, he’s invited other countries, expected them, to do exactly that. That should make them “strong, smart”, like him evading taxes.
If they even were lying. As it stands, when they’re not, and he isn’t even plausibly talking about something near true – these phantom tariffs – well, being able to speak about real things and understand that your audience is in touch with reality, these are rather admired by people who can function without billions of dollars to prop them up.
No. I think Trump is very surprised to find that other countries are not interested in putting “America first”. Somehow he seems to think the entire world revolves around America (and with that, he is right in line with a critical mass of his voters).