When the new Canadian prime minister arrived at the Oval office on Tuesday morning to meet with the US president, he seemed to be entering the lair of a lion. But it turned out to be a house cat that he found there.
“Canada is a very special place for me,” said President Trump at the top of the meeting. “I know so many people living in Canada. My parents had relationships that lived in Canada, my mother in particular.”
This was something surprising, since it had just spent months growing by how he would like to engulf Canada and turn it into state 51.
“I love Canada,” Trump added.
It was a decidedly different tone from that he had used moments before in a publication about Truth Social, when he criticized Canadians as a group of independent workers who could not survive without the United States. He published this just when the new Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, arrived at the White House.
But now the man who led the nation that Trump had the leg fight was sitting beside him, centimeters!
“Canada loves us and loves Canada,” Trump said now.
A journalist asked him what was the main “concession” he hoped to extract from his neighbors to the north.
“Concession?” Trump said. “Uh, friendship.”
When the meeting advanced, Mr. Carney maintained a restless smile stuck on his face and restless with his hands. He never the queen dropped her guard. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, had the expression of a man who faced face to face with the consequences of his own actions and not quite bleaching to deal with them.
He and the people who work for him in the White House fun thesis refer to Canada as a “state” and are directed to Mr. Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, as a “governor.” Trump published maps and memes from the two countries with the border among them deleted, as he insisted on Time magazine last month, “I’m not trolling.”
Everything resulted in this meeting with his Canadian counterpart that should be quite bland, since he would have a leg under any other administration, but now he was loaded with anger, discomfort and a thin evil recrimination. Trump did not seem to be in humor to deal with any of the complications that his “no trolling” had created.
For the most part, he tried to skate around him, throwing a lot of other issues that were not even tangentially connected to his tête-à-tête with the Canadians. Topics such as the construction calendar of the Barack Obama presidential library in Chicago; Governor Gavin Newsom or California; A high -speed rail line in California; Weapons left in Afghanistan; “A very, very big announcement,” Mr. Trump said he would soon be, but that it was for now to remain a secret, so he could really say what it was, only that it was going to be “as, for what it is so”; Diplomacy with the hutis in Yemen; And, as always, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Carney made it clear that he was not there to counteract more nonsense about a state 51. “There are some places that are never for sale,” he said firmly. Mr. Trump occasionally tried to put himself in a last word (“Never say!”) But his heart did not seem to be in that. “Well, I still believe that,” he said or his idea that had caused so many problems. “But, you know,” he continued, placilly, “two are needed for tango, right?”
Some of the usual characters that play minor roles in these dramalogues of the Oval office sat on the sofa to Trump’s left. There was vice president JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, ready to participate if necessary.
But they never did.
The president’s tacit directive seemed clear: They are all great.
“This is very friendly,” Trump told the room. “This is not going to be like, we had another small explosion with another person, that was very different. This is a very friendly conversation.” The sofa lay, relieved.
“Regardless of anything,” Trump said in a moment, “we are going to be friends with Canada.”
