After President Donald Trump drove the U.S. into an all-out trade war with Canada on Saturday with his Twitter outburst threatening to hit America’s northern neighbor with even more punitive tariffs, Trump’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro placed blame for soaring tensions entirely on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in an interview on Sunday and warned “there’s a special place in hell” for those who cross the president.
“There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door,” Navarro said in an interview on Fox News, referring to Trudeau’s decision to move ahead with retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. after Trump refused to back down from his recently announced steel and aluminum penalties.
Watch:
W.H. trade adviser Peter Navarro: "There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with Pres. Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out … that’s what bad faith Justin Trudeau did." pic.twitter.com/4AVR8lRPNZ
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 10, 2018
Navarro wasn’t the only top Trump adviser to use his appearance on a Sunday talk show to take pot-shots at Trudeau for daring to respond to the president’s tariffs.
White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow, a former television personality who was described by one commentator as an “insufferable Wall Street hack,” echoed Navarro’s vitriolic rhetoric in an interview with CNN‘s Jake Tapper on Sunday, calling Trudeau “amateurish” and “sophomoric.”
Kudlow went on to assert that Trump’s continued tariff threats against Canada on Saturday were a show of toughness ahead of the president’s meeting in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Watch:
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau "went rogue" at the G7 summit and is "pouring collateral damage on this whole Korean trip," says White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow #CNNSOTU https://t.co/aTWIJsWtqS https://t.co/RMKSXPFWIC
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) June 10, 2018
Responding to Kudlow’s remarks on Sunday—which came just as Trump touched down in Singapore after ducking out of the G7 summit early—Huffington Post reporter Matt Fuller wrote: “It’s amazing that Larry Kudlow thinks he’s helping the U.S.-Canada relationship, trade negotiations, and the Singapore talks by trashing an ally. I, for one, would definitely cut a deal with the United States after that.”
Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs express similar disbelief at Kudlow’s behavior in a tweet on Sunday.
“You can’t make this stuff up,” Sachs concluded. “The collapse of U.S. governance before our eyes.”
Top Photo | President Donald Trump walks with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau along the Colonnade to the Oval Office at the White House on Oct. 11, 2017. (AP Photo)
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