Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Trump also unleashed his trade advisor to make truly vicious and sneering comments about Canada, to boot. Meanwhile, Republicans themselves are admitting that the trade war with Canada is a big problem for them in the midterms, and getting worse.
Virginia Heffernan: So good to see you, Greg.
Virginia, I’m not a trade expert, but I know enough to understand that Trump completely pulled this whole thing out of his ass to assuage his feelings of impotence and failure. Your thoughts about that?
And this is not playing well with Americans who already are beginning to hold Trump in not just disapproval, but outright contempt. You may have seen that he’s gotten under 30 percent. So one poll showed him at 29 percent. Nate Silver, it seems not long ago, said there was a floor of 40. Now we’ve crashed through, potentially, the floor of 30, which is just amazing.
I mean, when you go to the pump, you see the normal gas prices, and then at the bottom, usually an eye-popping number now for diesel. It’s broken through all records. It’s doubled since Biden was in office. And that group immediately puts the blame on Trump. They put the blame on the trade war with Canada, and they especially put the blame on his war with Iran.
Heffernan: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, when we’ve been doing import and export with Canada, because we are connected by land—who do you think are driving over that border, from Maine, from the states that are adjacent to it, from the Great Lakes states? They are these long-haul truckers that Trump has made a big effort to court.
Sargent: Right. And Trump just has contempt for the people who we rely on. So let’s listen to Trump talk about Canada this week. Here he’s asked whether a trade deal with Canada is still possible. Check this out.
Sargent: Virginia, let’s break this up into two pieces. First, note how casually he slips in the idea that we get along with China, suggesting it’s better than with Canada. I mean, I know he’s trying to own the libs, but he really did own me there. I’m sure he owned you as well. I mean, I don’t feel like that should pass by unremarked on, do you? It’s really disgusting conduct from the president.
Sargent:And the remark about Canada feeling entitled—that’s not how trade works. Trade is mutually beneficial.
Heffernan: I don’t know if you saw Mark Carney and Emmanuel Macron, you know, make their romance Instagram official a few days ago—maybe nine or ten days ago. But they were talking about stuff like shutting Trump out of crude oil imports from Canada. They were also talking about their mutual interests in democracy and the rule of law.
Sargent: Yeah, it does seem like this is a big component in the world just kind of moving on without Trump’s America, and just sort of shrugging and saying, well, I guess it’s over, Trump’s destroyed the place, so see you later.
Virginia, this is like the perfect example of how Trump world and MAGA’s malicious nationalism works. Abusing Canada and Canadians is supposed to thrill MAGA in some way, but as you point out, it’s a total misread of where a big chunk of ordinary rank-and-file Republican voters, and even some MAGA voters, really are.
I mean, we saw at least the Canadian diesel class was very much on the right, and very much—you know, Trump was very excited about them then. And now he is not.
One former chair of the Michigan Republican Party said, “it doesn’t make things easier. It’s not helping.” A Maine Republican media strategist said that the trade war with Canada puts, “another log on the fire of the affordability issue.”
So swing voters are seeing that Trump’s zero-sum economics is a dead end, and that trade is positive-sum and good for everybody. And I think that’s good.
Even in the early days where he was so critical of NATO for not paying their dues—you can usually get some Americans to get mad at Europe, think that they’re so fancy, think that they’re kind of weak and they depend on us and we saved their bacon in World War II. There’s a history of that discourse with France in particular.
Sargent: I was talking to the Democratic candidate in the House district in Macomb County a while ago, and she was basically telling me that people in that part of Michigan just see themselves as being part of a network that includes Canada, which of course is right across the river in Detroit.
And so I really do think that something kind of profound is happening here, where, positive-sum relationships with Canadians are getting a second look, in a way, from people who have been told that they should be nationalists, MAGA nationalists.
Heffernan: I think that’s absolutely right. And it’s sort of what Canada’s Mark Carney has said, which is that once Trump started threatening to colonize Canada, he said something like, you can’t unsee it. So he said, basically, once that happened, it was like you’re in a partnership, even a marriage, and suddenly someone flexes that they’ve got all the money, the house belongs to them, they could, beat you up at any time.
And I think that that is a way that the voters are feeling, which is like, this thing that we thought was so stable can come apart with the wrong president. It can come apart. And this threat that prices may never go back down, and that they’re expected to jump more—this thing can be destroyed if someone’s determined to do it. And I think Carney’s right. We all can’t unsee that.
Heffernan: Yeah. I mean, are you missing—do you ever miss the old World Cup days? That was just last summer, that we had that romance where even Canadians said, these people are so friendly. And the French said everyone’s so friendly, and we love your Buc-ee’s and your Big Gulps.
Sargent: Well, and also we seem perilously low on respect for our longtime allies and friends. And we seem perilously low on, you know, decency.
To imagine that America would become protectionist like this, to this extent, with tariffs of all things, predicated on—you brought up Peter Navarro—just the harebrained craziness. Do you remember, like, when they rolled out the tariffs and they’d been made by ChatGPT, and there was no rhyme or reason to it? It’s just some kind of caprice with these guys.
Sargent: Well, let me ask you this, Virginia, just to close this out. Is it possible that a decisive victory for Democrats in the midterms sends a renewed message to the rest of the world that we’re trying to get onto the right side of decency and really trying to shrug off this catastrophe that Trump has become for us? I’m not sure if the rest of the world is ready to give us a pass next time.
And if people are—their emotions—to get out of the war, or at least stop supplying Trump with endless weapons to prosecute that war, they will applaud those efforts. But I don’t know they’re going to trust us again anytime soon.
Heffernan: Thank you so much, Greg.
Hence then, the article about transcript trump fury at canada takes dark turn as gopers sound alarm was published today ( ) and is available on The New Republic ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Transcript: Trump Fury at Canada Takes Dark Turn as GOPers Sound Alarm )
Also on site :
- ‘The View’ Host Sunny Hostin Faces Backlash After Calling Cornell Fraternity Sexual Assault Coverage ‘Unfair’
- R.J. Decker's Real Killer Unpacks The Big Reveal: 'It Was Me, I Did It!' Plus, Have We Seen The Last Of [Spoiler]?
- La Fundación Bulat Utemuratov y GAAC abrirán un centro regional de autismo para Asia Central y el Cáucaso Sur