Please Advise! Are Canadians Being Mean to Trump?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

U.S. ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has been giving interviews recently, downplaying Trump's 51st state comments and complaining about hurt feelings and Canadian boycotts of U.S. goods. Does he have a point?

Signed,

M. Bassy

Dear Mr. Bassy,

On the wall of Dr. Steve’s office there is a framed certificate marked “PhD.” You doubt its veracity? Look closer. It stands for “Pete Hoekstra is a Doofus.”

Dr. Steve made it himself, but it looks very official, with a fancy seal and everything. Dr. Steve may not have earned his own PhD but Hoekstra definitely deserves his designation. Hoekstra's bona fides were established long before he took up his current post as the MAGA mouthpiece in Canada.

Interviewed May 22 with the Hill Times about Canadian anger over tariffs, Hoekstra said he was “not very sympathetic.”

“We're hurt, too,” he protested, which seems a little like having an elephant sit on you and complain that his ass is sore. Hoekstra, meanwhile, is dutifully following the White House elephant with a shovel.

Responding to Donald Trump's repeated calls to make Canada the 51st state, Hoekstra insisted that was all over — five days before Trump said it again. Being a loyal member of Team Trump is like sitting beside a flatulent French bulldog, repeating “My dog did not fart. It must have been you.”

A former Michigan congressman, Hoekstra is now a key part of Trump's great plan for the auto industry. It makes sense — justifying international aggression is old hat for Hoekstra. During the George W. Bush administration, Hoekstra beat the drum for the invasion of Iraq by pushing bogus claims about weapons of mass destruction. Different target country, different weapons, same drum.

Hoekstra has earned his spot at the Trump trough. The administration has been a make-work program for sycophants, fringe dwellers, addle-brained dilettantes and ambitious psychopaths (being named Pete seems to help too).

Hoekstra may even be a mentor to some of the later arrivals, like JD Vance. It was the future vice-president who first seized on the racist campaign lie about immigrants eating cats and dogs, a slander later amplified by Trump himself. In this, Vance may have been stealing a page from the Hoekstra playbook.

In November 2015, Hoekstra told a European conference that the Netherlands had “no-go zones” where Muslim terrorists were setting both cars and politicians on fire.

Being set on fire is something a person tends to notice, even more so than one's pet being consumed, yet no such news reports surfaced.

Naturally, Trump later made Hoekstra his ambassador to the Netherlands. It's the land of tulips, and when Hoekstra's two lips are moving, anything is possible. A Dutch reporter asked Hoekstra about his previous anti-Muslim remarks and Hoekstra denied making them. The reporter showed Hoekstra the video in which he makes the remarks.

Hoekstra then immediately denied that he had just denied making the remarks. (Watch the clip for the reporter's reaction — it's the universal face of a sane person dealing with someone for whom truth is like an Etch A Sketch.)

Hoekstra has played the role of Johnny Racist-seed at home, too. During a failed 2012 campaign for a Michigan Senate seat, Hoekstra ran a nasty ad during the Super Bowl featuring racial stereotypes, with an actress playing a Chinese woman thanking Hoekstra's Democratic opponent for making America's economy “very weak” and China’s economy “very good.” Hoekstra lost the race. Poor man was a little ahead of his time — the race-baiting angle would really click in 2016.

Hoekstra's job now is to rewrite the truth, as his boss requires. It keeps shifting. Witness the recent Time magazine interview where Trump claimed his campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours was said “in jest.” A war that has killed hundreds of thousands, including at least 13,000 civilians — and Trump now says he was joking about it. What a kidder. As they say in the standup world, that one killed.

But the president is always guaranteed an appreciative audience. There is an inexhaustible supply of Hoekstras, Vances, Rubios, Noems, Grahams and other lickspittles ready to bark their approval.

And Canada is forced to roll out the red carpet for one of them. May his poutine be topped with cold gravy.