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There was a lot of nervous anticipation before the first face-to-face meeting between newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and his tragic American counterpart last week. Especially given the recent Oval Office ambush of war hero Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the very real chance Canada could find itself on the receiving end of a very special military operation of our own someday soon.
Would he offer him the Order of Canada medal Wayne Gretzky never bothered to pick up as a peace offering? Would a drunk Pete Hegseth take the whole “elbows up” thing personally and challenge the older man to a fight or would it be too early in the day? Might Yale man JD Vance accuse the Harvard man of faking love for his trans daughter as a personal insult to Elon Musk?
It’s easy to imagine Trump being inspired by Jabba the Hutt and installing a trap door to drop anyone who doesn’t bend the knee into an ICE holding cell in the basement. We’re well past pretending anyone would stop him, although Mark Hamill still does his best.
Carney instead offered NATO allies and other world leaders a playbook for how to deal with Arty McDeal when the cameras are rolling. While a certain amount of soul-crushing flattery is the price of admission, it helps to spice it up with some backhanded compliments or open mockery that will sail over his head but not to anyone paying attention.
Putin has been employing this technique for years but much of the nuance gets lost in translation, according to Russia expert Fiona Hill, who you will recall from the evil motherfucker’s first impeachment.
Carney doesn’t have the same luxury, and Dear Leader apparently speaks French now as he claims to have watched both election debates, so he’ll still have to be careful moving forward in both official languages. But first he had to sit through a five-minute monologue that began by Trump taking credit for the Liberal Party’s victory at the ballot box before brainweaving into how much better the Oval Office looks with so much more gold everywhere, and maybe not bombing Houthis and the Blowsharks anymore if they promise to stop being such jerks, something something Middle East Ukraine, and there’s going to be a very tremendous announcement very soon but unfortunately he can’t give any details before remembering the VIP guest at his side and asking if he’d like to say a few words:
Thank you, Mr. President. I’m on the edge of my seat, actually. But thank you for your hospitality and above all for your leadership. You’re a transformational president with a focus on the economy, with a relentless focus on the American worker, securing your borders, ending the scourge of fentanyl and other opioids.
To be fair, the man IS a transformational president who’s turned the United States of America of into a planetary pariah in only a matter of weeks while helping to score Big Daddy Carney his new gig instead of the more MAGA-friendly Pierre Poilievre. It’s just a shame his “relentless focus on the American worker” is on screwing them over.
Like a lot of people, my introduction to Carney was his interview with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” when he was still teasing his run even though the celebrated central banker’s name has been tossed around in Canadian political circles as prime ministerial material for ages. Stewart seemed uncharacteristically star-struck by the guy who stickhandled Canada through the 2008 financial crisis, and the new PM came off as someone with a sharp sense of humor who chooses his words carefully.
Which is why so much attention is being paid to what he didn’t say, including the look on his face when the topic inevitably turned to Trump’s wet dream of annexing Canada. I know this is crazy, you know this is crazy, I know you know I know this is crazy, but here we all are, doing our best to get through the crazy. There hasn’t been a world leader to break the third wall this casually since the late Frank Underwood, and Carney manages it with just his eyes.
REPORTER: Mr. President, you have said that Canada should be the 51st state. Do you still believe that?
TRUMP: No, no. Well, I still believe that, but it takes two to tango, right? I believe it would be a massive tax cut for the Canadian citizens. You get free military, you get tremendous medical cares and other things. In there would be a lot of advantages, but it would be it would be a massive tax cut… You know, I’m a real estate developer at heart. When you get rid of that artificially drawn line, somebody drew that line many years ago with like a ruler, just a straight line right across the top of the country.
The prime minister pounced politely on the realtor comment he knew was coming to try to explain in terms the president might comprehend.
CARNEY: Well, if I may. As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale.
TRUMP: That’s true.
CARNEY: We’re sitting in one right now! You know, Buckingham Palace, that you visited as well?
TRUMP: That’s true.
CARNEY: And having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign last several months, it’s not for sale. Won’t be for sale, ever. But the opportunity is in the partnership and what we can build together. And we have done that in the past. And part of that, as the president just said, is with respect to our own security. My government is committed for a step change in our investment in Canadian security and our partnership. And I’ll say this as well, that the president has revitalized international security, revitalized NATO, and has us playing our full weight, in NATO.
You can see him beam with pride for revitalizing international security without getting the obvious subtext of why so many countries are suddenly beefing up their militaries or seeking new alliances. But the important lesson that Grampa Adjudicated Rapist can’t have something just because Grampa Adjudicated Rapist wants it seems to have gotten through for the moment. Sometimes you really do have to make do with two dolls instead of 30.
He’s far too posh but it might’ve been more effective if he compared Canada to Arnold Palmer’s cock. Trump may wish he had an enormous trouser snake instead of the mushroom peen the good Lord gave him but all the money, gold or nuclear bombs in the world can’t make it happen. Same thing goes for the 51st state.
Carney is facing some heat at home for not forcefully correcting Trump on some of his more absurd claims but it’s not as if humiliating him in public with a lecture on economics would be in Canada’s best interest right now. Better to let the bully feel like he nailed it and move on to other things to destroy. The fact he didn’t step up for former deputy PM Chrystia Freeland — who Trump called a “terrible person” who “tried to take advantage” — wasn’t a great look for the new guy but the two are actually close friends, and the new internal trade minister is fully capable of fighting her own battles.
Freeland surely knew it was coming and had the same reaction as her former boss’s father, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, did when told Richard Nixon called him an asshole in leaked recordings: “I’ve been called worse things by better people.”
