Carney’s Caught in a Bad Gangster Movie

The Don never lets up. Like a New York mafioso out to sew up new territory, he keeps levelling the smiling threat that Canada is due for a “merger” with the United States.

President Donald Trump made sure everyone saw his 51st-state flex in the lead-up to his meeting Tuesday with Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Then, as the two met in the White House to negotiate trade and other issues, Trump’s patter could have been scripted for a new sequel to The Godfather.

“We want Canada to do great,” Trump said. “But you know, there's a point at which we also want the same business.” What a pity, he implied, if Canada, like some wayward member of the Family, didn’t play ball. “We have natural conflict. We also have mutual love.”

Back home, before much solid news had emerged from the meeting, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre pounced, starting question period by decrying, “Still no deal, still no victory.”

He spoke as if Carney were engaged in negotiations with a U.S. leader who can be reasoned with, rather than a gangland boss running a racket with no scruples.

Too harsh? Consider how organized crime leaders construct their teams. Loyalty above qualifications, subservience over integrity, are what matter most.

So let’s look at the people Trump has chosen to execute his agenda in his second term as president.

Trump’s first lieutenants

Carney ideally seeks a reasonable meeting of minds about drugs, guns, criminals and immigrants crossing the shared border. But who are Trump’s first lieutenants on such matters?

There’s Kash Patel, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who tops the list of sycophants who have voyaged upwards in Trump World. Patel is the guy who fired 20 FBI agents, including those who knelt during a 2020 protest for racial justice after the murder of George Floyd.

He is also the man who once unequivocally advocated for the release of the entire Jeffrey Epstein file. Now that he could actually do that as FBI director, Patel no longer plays on Team Transparency.

Kristi Noem, Trump’s selection to lead the border-policing Department of Homeland Security, is another travesty.

Putting aside her utter lack of experience in managing an operation with over 240,000 employees and a budget of over $66 billion, there are other issues with the woman who wanted to be Trump’s vice-president.

Noem documented in her memoir No Going Back that she shot her puppy Cricket because she was untrainable. “I hated that dog,” Noem wrote.

She also owned up to shooting her goat. Why boast about it? Noem claimed that it proved she could do anything “difficult, messy, and ugly” if it had to be done. At least she got the ugly part right.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice for Health and Human Services, brought strange credentials to the table. He is an anti-vaccine advocate with no medical expertise. By profession, he is an environmental lawyer.

That is why Kennedy is widely seen as endangering rather than protecting the health of Americans, thanks to his bizarre medical theories that fly in the face of science.

But those wacky theories appear to please the boss, and why shouldn’t they? Remember, in a fit of proudly ignorant egomania, Trump advised Americans to inject disinfectant as a cure for the coronavirus. The president is now pushing the bogus theory that Tylenol causes autism in children.

But Kennedy’s addiction to junk science is only part of the book on him. After Vanity Fair ran a piece alleging that he had sexually assaulted a former babysitter, Kennedy offered a curious response. He told Reuters, “I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”

Final note. Kennedy also went hunting (see page 240 to 245) for dinosaur bones in the Dakotas with unusual companions, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

The list goes on. At one point, Trump even wanted to make Matt Gaetz U.S. attorney general, even though he was once investigated for sex trafficking and had been under scrutiny by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of sexual misconduct.

Ultimately, the job went to Pam Bondi, the pliable pick who investigates and indicts on presidential demand, as the recent charging of former FBI director James Comey shows. Bondi the Obedient is not the AG at all. She really is just the president’s lawyer.

This is how conservative lawyer George Conway characterized Trump’s selections in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. “If you were actively trying to harm the country, these are the kinds of people, if not the people, you would pick.”

Hoekstra’s duties for the Don

For the most part, the American people have been the victims of Trump’s awful choices. But there is one presidential appointee who is not only an embarrassment to his own country, but an insult to this one. And it will fall to him to keep making excuses for the Don’s menacing behaviour towards Canada.

That person is the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra.

Hoekstra assumed his office with the usual sucky accolades that shower down on such patronage appointments. Hoekstra lived in a border state and for that reason understands Canada — or so the theory goes.

And, unlike many of Trump’s other selections, Hoekstra actually had experience in the field to which he was appointed, having once served as U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.

When you scratch the surface of these claims, the praise is empty.

After becoming ambassador to the Netherlands in Trump’s first term, Hoekstra’s previous hard-right views landed him in trouble.

Speaking in the United States at a right-wing conference before he was appointed, Hoekstra claimed that Muslim youth had created “no-go” zones in the Netherlands and were “burning” cars and Dutch politicians.

A Danish journalist confronted Hoekstra with those words after he became ambassador to the Netherlands. Hoekstra initially denied making the hateful remarks, calling the story “fake news.” But when confronted with the video evidence of his own words, the ambassador “backtracked” and apologized.

Hoekstra’s dishonest bungling in the Netherlands is perfectly in keeping with his diplomatic face plant as ambassador to Canada after just a few short months in the job.

His pronouncements on this country show him to be a partisan stooge.

Hoekstra revealed more about himself than he did about Canada when he complained at an event hosted by the Halifax Chamber of Commerce that he was “disappointed” with what he called “anti-American” sentiment in this country.

“I’m disappointed that I came to Canada — a Canada that it is very, very difficult to find Canadians who are passionate about the American-Canadian relationship,” he said.

What drivel. No one is passionate about getting mugged and maligned. Canadians know when they are being told: Nice little country you have. It would be a shame if someone were to set fire to its economy.

And that is what the White House has contemptuously muttered at Canada since Donald Trump came to office.

Trump called Justin Trudeau, thrice elected prime minister by Canadians, a “far-left lunatic.”

Trump falsely said Canada wasn’t a real country and couldn’t exist without vast “subsidies” from the United States.

Trump bragged that the United States didn’t need anything Canada has to offer.

Trump levied ruinous tariffs against Canadian goods entering the U.S. market.

And, yes, Trump suggested the best solution for Canada would be to become the 51st state.

At the time, Prime Minister Trudeau put it all in a nutshell. He accused Trump of planning “the total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make it easier to annex us.”

Ambassador Hoekstra dutifully rationalized Trump’s boorish bullying, saying his persistent 51st-state comments could be taken as a “term of endearment.” Only by those who equate repeated punches in the stomach with a form of affection.

‘A dangerous place to go,’ warned US ambassador

Like his boss, Hoekstra hasn’t been shy about taking Canadians and their politicians to task, even though that is hardly in the job description of a supposed diplomat.

A case in point. Former federal finance minister François-Philippe Champagne characterized Trump’s tariffs on allies as economic “war.” He added that “obviously when someone turns its back, you have to find ways to strengthen the Canadian economy and look at new markets, look at new industries.”

Hoekstra bristled at that characterization, claiming that the minister’s words amounted to “a dangerous place to go.” He particularly objected to the use of the word “war” to describe what he thinks of as a trade debate.

Interestingly, billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett described Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico as an “act of war.” Does Hoekstra view the comments of Buffett, dubbed the Oracle of Omaha, to be anti-American?

Hoekstra also accused Canada of running an “anti-American” campaign during the recent federal election during which “Elbows Up” was a popular slogan.

Poor Ambassador Hoekstra. The last election campaign in Canada was not anti-American. It was anti-Trump, and there is a world of difference. Canadians, like a lot of Americans, have watched in horror as the United States has lurched toward authoritarianism under Trump.

The ambassador is obviously untroubled by mobs of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents making warrantless arrests of people who look like they might come from another country.

He isn’t bothered by President Trump directing a co-opted Justice Department, now the department of revenge, to investigate and charge his perceived political opponents.

He apparently approves of Trump asking for and receiving a jumbo jet from a foreign country.

He is OK with Trump effectively taking over as director of personnel at TV networks, attempting to decide who should and who should not have late-night television shows — and free speech.

Nor does it bother the ambassador that Trump made 40 false claims in just two speeches in Pennsylvania, to go along with the thousands of lies the president has told while in office, according to tracking by the Washington Post.

This movie is long

As news trickled out after Tuesday’s Carney-Trump meeting in the Oval Office, it seemed that nothing significant had changed.

Trump had his ego stroked as he gleamed his crocodile smile at the neighbouring nation he would like to rob of its sovereignty.

Carney managed not to provoke more hostility from the likely sociopath who heads the giant to our south.

And Pierre Poilievre tried to score points in the House, pretending Carney was engaged in some straightforward act of statesmanship that he, if given a chance, would have carried out far more successfully.

Cool story, Pierre. Just remember what movie we’re all actually watching. This is not international diplomacy as normally scripted. It’s a gangster flick about a big thug extorting someone smaller. The ending for Canadians, happy or sad, will take some time to be written.