White House says 'special place in hell' for American ally Justin Trudeau

The Trump administration continues to demonstrate an embarrassingly thin skin with its over-the-top reaction to comments by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

At a press conference to close out the G7 meeting on Saturday, Trudeau said that Canada would, indeed, follow through with retaliatory tariffs if necessary, and reiterated that Trump’s “national security” rationale for the trade war was “kind of insulting” to his country.

Trump threw a globally visible tantrum in response, and on Sunday morning, his top advisers continued the embarrassing display of petulance.

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked Trump senior trade adviser Peter Navarro if Trump’s outburst is “really how we want to deal with our second-biggest trading partner?”

“There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader who engages in bad 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.”

Navarro’s rebuke came at about the same time Trump chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow was similarly moaning about Trudeau on CNN. But in fact, Trudeau’s comments were relatively mild. They were things he has said before and came in response to a direct question about Trump’s threat to stop trading with allies.

The White House’s assault on Justin Trudeau is made all the more outrageous by the fact that Trump spent a good bit of time at his own G7 press conference lobbying on behalf of brutal Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

“This used to be the G8, not the G7,” Trump said. “And something happened a while ago, where Russia is no longer in. I think it would be an asset to have Russia back in. I think it would be good for the world. I think it would be good for Russia. I think it would be good for the United States.”

The “something happening” Trump is referencing was Russia being expelled from the G8 for invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea. Russia was subsequently responsible for shooting down a commercial airliner, killing 298 innocent people. Eighty of them were children.

Canada, by contrast, is one of the United States’ strongest allies and trading partners, and did not participate in a conspiracy to interfere in U.S. elections. If there are consequences for undermining American sovereignty, Justin Trudeau has far less to worry about than Trump and his enablers do, and that includes Vladimir Putin.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.