WASHINGTON—Top advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump heaped unprecedented insults on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday, bringing U.S.-Canada relations to a modern low — in an attempt, one of the advisers suggested, to impress North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.In interviews on CNN on Fox News, Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, and one of his top aides on trade, Peter Navarro, slammed Trudeau with a series of disparaging adjectives, from “amateurish” to “dishonest,” and accused him of a backstabbing “betrayal” of the president.It was unclear why Trump and his aides have suddenly begun speaking of Trudeau this way. Until Kudlow explained: Trump is attacking Trudeau because he is trying to show Kim that he is tough.Trudeau’s Saturday criticism of Trump’s trade policy, Kudlow said on CNN, had made Trump look weak just before the president departed for his talks with Kim. And Trump, Kudlow said, “is not going to permit any show of weakness on a trip to negotiate with North Korea.”“Kim must not see American weakness. It’s that short,” Kudlow said.“This is an historic event. Good things, wonderful things could come out of it. Now, POTUS (president of the United States) is not gonna let a Canadian prime minister push him around, push him, POTUS, around, President Trump, on the eve of this,” Kudlow said.Trudeau refused to respond early Sunday to the insults. As he entered G7 meetings in Quebec, he thanked residents for hosting world leaders and kept walking past reporters. On Saturday night, Trudeau spokesman Cameron Ahmad said on Twitter: “We are focused on everything we accomplished here at the G7 summit. The prime minister said nothing he hasn’t said before — both in public, and in private conversations with the president.”The Trump administration’s supposed problem with Trudeau was the Saturday news conference in w ...
|