When the new Canadian Prime Minister arrived at the Oval Office on Tuesday morning to meet the American president, he seemed to be walking into a lion’s own. But it turned out to be a house cat he found there.
“Canada is a very special place for me,” President Trump purified at the top of the meeting. “I know so many people who live in Canada. My parents had relatives who lived in Canada, especially my mother.”
This was somewhat surprising, because he had just spent months on how he would like to swallow Canada and make it the 51st state.
“I love Canada,” Mr. Trump.
It was a distinct other tone than the one he had only used a few moments in a post about Truth Social, when he shot Canadians like a bunch of freeladers who could not survive without the United States. He posted this just when the new Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, arrived in the White House.
But now the man who led the nation was where Mr. Trump on had picked right next to him – centimeters away!
“Canada loves us and we love Canada,” said Mr. Trump now.
A reporter asked him what the top “concession” was that he hoped to get from his neighbors in the north.
“Concession?” said Mr. Trump. “Uh, friendship.”
While the meeting continued, Mr. Carney stuck an uncomfortable grin on his face and fiddled with his hands. He never dropped his guard. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, had the appearance of a man who came face to face with the consequences of his own actions and did not want to deal with them completely.
In recent months, he and the people who work for him in the White House have been appealing to Canada as a ‘state’ and the predecessor of Mr Carney, Justin Trudeau, as a ‘governor’. Mr. Trump posted cards and memes of the two countries with the border between them, even while he was stood by the magazine last month: “I’m not really trolling.”
It all resulted in this meeting with his Canadian counterpart who should have been a fairly anodyne, because it would have been under a different administration, but which was now littered with anger, clumsiness and a thin scrim of removal. Mr. Trump did not seem to be in the mood to tackle the complications that had created his “not trolls”.
Usually he usually tried to skate around them, and threw away a lot of other topics that were not even tangentially connected to his tête-à-tête with the Canadians. Topics such as the building schedule of the presidential library of Barack Obama in Chicago; Gavin Newsom of California; A fast railway line in California; left weapons in Afghanistan; “A very, very big announcement,” Mr Trump claimed that he would make soon, but what was a secret for now, so he couldn’t really say what it was, only that it would “be as big, as big as it gets”; diplomacy with the Houthis in Yemen; And, As alwaysFormer President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Carney made it clear that he was not there to increase nonsense about a 51st state. “There are some places that are never for sale,” he said firmly. Mr. Trump would occasionally try to get a final word (“Never say never!”) But his heart didn’t seem to be in it. “Well, I still believe that,” he said about this idea of his who had caused so many problems. “But you know,” he continued quietly, “it costs two to Tango, right?”
Some of the usual characters playing small roles in this oval office dramaloges were sitting on the left of Mr. Trump. There was Vice President JD Vance, State Secretary Marco Rubio, and the commercial secretary, Howard Lutnick, ready to jump in if necessary.
But they never did that.
The unspoken directive of the President clearly seemed like: Everyone is cool.
“This is very friendly,” said Mr. Trump against the room. “This will not be like – we had another one Bladder That was very different with someone else. This is a very friendly conversation. “The bank chuckled, relieved.
“Regardless of everything,” said Mr. Trump at one point, “we will become friends with Canada.”
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