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Hey, it's Nur Azriya, and today we're talking politics, where polls are like astrology for dudes in suits. This week, we're diagnosing what's behind carny mania. This isn't the kind of... you know, image such a person generally has. And I think that's made Carney or it's helped him become, yeah, a very useful cipher figure. And the latest on the ongoing saga of Trump's terrorists.
Trump says tariffs are coming through. We find out today what shape and form they're coming in. Stick around for that update. Plus, an update on the chat between King Charles and Justin Trudeau and the fact that Donald Trump... doesn't like Chrystia Freeland or Pierre Polyev, but especially Chrystia Freeland. She's absolutely terrible for the country, incompetent in many respects, and can only cause ill will for Canada. That's this episode after the break. This episode is brought to you by Fizz.
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It's official. As you see there, Mark Kearney is in, and he's about to have two more high-profile opponents. Frontrunner Mark Kearney. Mark Kearney. Mark Kearney is the top pick to deal with U.S. President Donald Trump. Kearney was an economic record breaker.
Former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney secured more key cabinet endorsements in his campaign to become the next liberal leader. Candidates running to replace Justin Trudeau will go head to head tonight in the English language debate. Now it's up to roughly 400,000 parties. members to choose a new leader as voting gets underway. For the first time since 2021, the federal liberals are leading against the conservatives.
Has someone checked on Pierre Polyev these days? Carney Mania is going around, folks, and I am worried it might have gotten him too. Because Carney has become the star of conservative attack ads. Trump seizes on weakness, and nobody's weaker than Mark Carney. Carbon tax Carney. He's just like Justin. If Carney wins, Canada loses. Mark Carney.
I think I need to get used to saying that name now because clearly he's got this liberal leadership race in the bag. We'll find out March 9th if Mark's officially sticking around for the long haul. And then he's going to be... the next prime minister, at least for a little while. And Carney's already hinted that if he wins, he'd be open to calling a general election.
Immediately. If it makes sense to get a strong mandate at that point, that is what will follow. But winning the liberal leadership is one thing. So far, he's been up against familiar, friendly, liberal faces. Winning over the country, that is a whole different ballgame. He'd be going up against Pierre Polyev, Jagmeet Singh, Yves-François Blanchet.
Elizabeth May and Maxime Bernier. And yes, these are all very different people with very, very different politics, but they've all got one thing in common, one thing that Mark doesn't. We know who they are. Polling in January by Abacus Data found that when shown a picture of Carney, 76% of Canadians had no idea who he was. So, who is Mark Carney? He's a banker. Sure, lived in the EU. Okay, he's good with numbers and money and math. He's an economics guy. And boy, is he ever.
We will need to build a strong economy. A strong economy. Build a strong economy. Building a strong economy. We also need to build our economy. We need to build our economy right here. Building our economy. Build our economy. Economy. Strength of our economy. Our economy. Our economy. That's why we need big changes to how we're managing this economy. Laser focus on the economy, focus on the economy.
That was almost every time he said economy in the liberal leadership debate. Almost. Some polls suggest that he could even outrun the conservatives and snag the prime ministership right out of the hands of Pierre Polyev. But if you're asking me, all of this sounds...
just a little bit familiar. The Harris-Walls campaign coming to an end Wednesday with a concession speech from Vice President Kamala Harris. Democrats are now turning to each other. Some are pointing fingers, others simply baffled by the data that shows a clear failure to win over the voters. they thought they had on their side. or seriously overblown? Is he Canada's Kamala Harris, mild, overhyped, and fated to lose?
or a serious contender. This episode, I'm talking to Luke Savage. He's been writing about politics and culture for places like the Jacobin, the Washington Post, and the Toronto Star for over a decade. And since the start of the liberal leadership bid, he has... has been trying to diagnose what is behind carny mania, how a socially conscious banker became the man of the moment, and why he's not buying it. Let's get into it.
Luke, thank you for making the time. Cheers. It's good to be here. So, Carney Mania. Is it real? Because people seem pretty interested in him. There is this general buzz in the air. For the first time since 2021, the liberals are actually beating the conservatives in one of a few polls. When I talk to people outside of work, they seem pretty interested in him, but then they also kind of admit that they have no idea who this guy really is. So how is he managing to connect with people who...
have no clue who he is. Yeah, I mean, on the question of whether it's real or not, I kind of have more questions than I do definitive answers here. Clearly, as you alluded to already, there's something happening here because the Tories have enjoyed these massive leads in the polls, double digits, 25, 30 points, whatever in the polls for the last two years or so.
And I believe it was yesterday I saw there's at least four major polling companies that now have basically a statistical tie or even, you know, have the liberals slightly ahead. So something's happening here. To some extent, it may have to do with Mark Carney. I think we can't underestimate the significance of just Justin Trudeau's departure. He'd become, anyway, very unpopular.
figure. No one is really expecting him to go. And furthermore, the liberal brand since 2013 has been really heavily invested just in the personality of Trudeau himself. So you take that away, and I think the liberal brand itself reverts to something else, which is a sort of catch-all signifier that probably a majority of the electorate, it has at least a benign, if not a positive connotation.
You also, of course, have the tariff threats from Trump and the annexationist rhetoric, Carney himself notwithstanding. That itself just, I think, undermines the narrative the conservatives have been running on because they've been planning to fight a cost-of-living election. Their electoral calculus has presumed a sort of throw the bums out sentiment was going to be the dominant one. And right now, I think the dominant sentiment is more like confusion, anxiety, fear.
craving for stability, et cetera, et cetera. And I think those conditions are much more conducive to a figure like Carney, even if, as you said, it's not clear the extent to which people actually know him, at least in any level of detail. Why so? Why does this work in his favor? Because it's interesting for me to compare this kind of boring, mild, tepid banker to the sunny ways, charismatic, weed-loving Trudeau almost a decade ago.
If he ran against Trudeau then, I'm not sure he would meet the moment then. But it seems to be working in his favor here. Why? Why is this working? I mean, I think periods of instability, uncertainty, anxiety often just create a yearning for sort of bland figures. This isn't a perfect comparison. But if we think back to the 2020 U.S. election, we had this Democratic primary. where you had a lot of younger candidates. You also had...
you know, an avowedly populist left candidate in the figure of Bernie Sanders. The figure that won was the most boring, kind of insipid, you know, this figure who first entered politics during the presidency of Richard. And I really think a lot of Joe Biden's appeal was that a lot of people just thought, I just want politics to go away. You know, I don't want to have to be on Twitter freaking out about the news all the time. I don't want.
all the people I watch on MSNBC to be scared all the time. You compare that to 2008 with the Obama thing or in a similar vein to our own election here in 2015, you know, the conditions are different. The personal appeals of different kinds of figures are different. And I think much the same thing is going on here.
There are two kinds of people, the people who know who he is and are attracted by that, and the people who don't know who he is. He's kind of this blank slate. Maybe talk to me a bit about that. Well, I think something distinct about Carney, I mean, he's been someone I've been aware of since I would say probably like 2009, 2010, which is...
kind of strange in and of itself because, you know, he's not someone who's ever had elected office, but he has been a kind of a public figure. And I think he's been pretty savvy at kind of cultivating this image as, you know, a socially conscientious. For example, in 2011, he gave an interview where he was talking about Occupy Wall Street, and he basically said, yeah, these protests are a constructive response to global inequality.
He addressed the Canadian Auto Workers Convention, I think, in 2012, 2013. And I want to discuss today what we can do to build the foundations for the right kind of globalization so that you can concentrate on creating prosperity for your families and for fellow Canadians. So this is not the...
behavior. This is not the type of visibility that somebody with his background, somebody who's brushed shoulders at Goldman Sachs and been a governor of two national central banks. This isn't the kind of image such a person generally has. And I think that's made Carney or it's helped him become, yeah, a very useful cipher figure. What's a political cipher? Just give me an example of that.
I think the ultimate political cipher and by far the most skillful one, at least in the 21st century, is Barack Obama. I reviewed the first volume of his memoirs, A Promised Land, a few years ago. I've also read his other two memoirs. And I mean, what he does in those books is absolutely extraordinary. He manages to graph virtually everything.
Cultural, historical, artistic, political, like everything he manages to graft onto his own autobiography. Every space that he describes is always this perfect cornucopia of American society. It's like every section. orientation, every racial identity, every class background, all of them are represented and all of them are kind of realized in the figure of Barack Obama.
It continues today in the list that he releases of, you know, his favorite songs. The list themselves are always perfectly balanced in kind of like the taste and the high, the low, the middle, all of it. But even sometimes just the... I think it was in 2020 where one of the things on his playlist was a version of, it was Aretha Franklin covering the bands The Weight with Dwayne Allman from the Allman Brothers.
on guitar. So just right there, it's like this perfect collage of Heartland sounds, right? This perfect multiracial rendering of this American classic. That is what it means to be a cypher, and no one does it better than... You think Mark has some of this as well? I mean, he has the infinitely more boring and less compelling version of it.
If you kind of come from his world or you're somebody of a kind of fiscal conservative proclivity or something like that, you recognize this as this is one of our own. This is not a guy who's going to rock the boat too much. He's not going to tax capital gains. I mean, we know that. We know that because he's told us. But then...
If you're, I don't know, just a middle class reader of the Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star or something, you're somebody who follows the news, probably come across his book that came out in the last couple of years, Values. Even if you didn't read it, you probably read a review of it. A lot of the sentiments in it sound kind of high-minded and progressive and that sort of thing. So even if you don't really know him very deeply...
You know, there's kind of a faintly positive association there. I mean, I'll confess, as somebody who has known about him for a long time, I didn't really know what his voice sounded like until he entered the race. Sounds pretty banker-like. Right, exactly. I think that's allowed him to, at least for the time being, occupy a space where he can sort of be, you know, in this particular moment, whatever exactly it is you want him or need to be.
I want to talk a little bit about this, like, centrist crowd, this fiscally conservative crowd. I watched the English liberal leadership debate. There weren't a lot of fireworks, but it felt like Carney was speaking directly to that fiscally conservative, that centrist crowd. And one thing you can see is that the scale of increase in spending.
And the scale of increase in the public service hasn't been matched by greater productivity in certain areas. And it feels like his game plan so far is kind of abandoning the left. We can't achieve our full potential. With the ideas of the far left. Do you feel like this is an effective tactic, like finding a home in this murky center?
I mean, I'm glad you brought up the debate because the tack he's taken there and frankly, the tack he's taken since the start of his leadership campaign has kind of surprised me. I think liberals tend to do better when they're seen at least to occupy the progressive part of the political spectrum or be anchored there as most people understand it. Do you feel like Justin Trudeau was like that?
I mean, I don't think that he authentically was, but I certainly think that he was perceived that way. And I think that was absolutely critical to the liberal victory in 2015. Carney has not staked out that ground really at all. I mean, yeah, he made those pretty bizarre comments about the far left. I wasn't even really sure what exactly he was referring to there.
And in the debate, which I'm so glad you brought it up. I mean, some of the most soporific television I think I've ever seen, although I think it was actually slightly more exciting than the French debate the night before. But I was really struck by. you know, Carney's performance, you know, I think Christia Freeland's as well, just in how narrow a constituency they seem to be speaking to. They did not actually seem to be speaking to a kind of general audience, or at least I didn't think so.
Carney and Freeland especially were drawing from a very kind of technocratic lexicon. I felt like I was sitting in a lecture. Yeah, I mean, or, you know, somewhere between a lecture and a job interview because it was all this HR stuff about, like, why...
I've run a business and I've managed an economy and this kind of stuff. Productivity. We have to increase productivity. Productivity. Productivity going forward. Productivity in government, as Frank just says, I won't go on about it. Huge productivity. I mean, productivity, I mean, this is an example of where Carney's technocratic impulses, I think, really risk tripping him up, making him vulnerable to the conservatives and to the NDP as well. Can you tell me what a technocrat is?
It's an approach to politics, which is basically like politics is just kind of management of a business, basically. It's all about spreadsheets and algorithms and administrative complexity. When he tried to raise the issue of productivity, he kind of made it sound like the problem is that people aren't working hard enough. Hannah Thibodeau, the host, asked them a question about record food bank use.
And Carney began by talking about how he wants to eliminate the GST for first time homebuyers, because, you know, as we all know, people who are lining up at food banks are just like a small sales tax cut away from being able to buy a one point five. Totally. Makes a lot of sense. Farney was talking about food prices, and I'm forgetting the exact metric. The basket of goods. Thank you. So we've had the average family of four.
their food basket has gone up by more than 25%. Their wages haven't kept pace with that. Yeah, it was very much not dealing in a language that is the way most people relate. to politics or, I don't know, their own experience of their lives or the cost of living crisis. I mean, I did think, you know, Karina Gould at one point was trying to sort of bring it back there.
You know, when my colleagues talk about households, I talk about families. When they talk about the macro picture, I talk about what it means for individuals. It really did not seem like... Carney or Freeland, like that's just not the way that they think about politics. It's not the way they discuss it. They do kind of think about it and discuss it.
at the level of these official metrics and abstractions. It's all very sort of Globe and Mail business section. And actually, watching Carney the other night was the first time I really thought... I'm not so certain after watching that that this is going to work. There's an affordability crisis. There's a housing crisis, an immigration crisis, a drug crisis. There's mass polarization. I wonder if he's really able to convince...
people that he's not just the solution to one thing, that being the economy. You know, the cost of living crisis hasn't gone away. I mean, if you can't talk to people like a human. If you're unable to signal, even superficially, that, I don't know, you are connecting to their actual experience on some level less abstract than... I don't know, the debt to GDP ratio or whatever. I don't know. I think that really creates problems for any politician, regardless of the environment.
We've seen Canadian nationalism and economic nationalism of a kind come back with a vengeance since Trump started making these threats. But the kinds of... solutions, the kind of responses that are being tossed out by most of our political mainstream. And this isn't just Carney. I'm not sure that a few months or even a few weeks from now, like I'm not sure these are the kinds of things that.
you're really going to be able to run on an election or are going to have much electoral appeal, an east-west pipeline, for example? I would convene, as part of First Minister's discussion of the projects of national interest. which would include both clean and conventional energy, would include pipelines, getting consensus around those projects. I'm not sure there's a big popular constituency outside of that, even if there is like a business constituency for it. And even if that is something.
you like and want, it's probably going to take 10 or 15 years. And because of all the jurisdictional issues and because of the complexities of Canadian federalism, it might not happen at all. After the break, I ask Luke if he thinks Mark is our Kamala Harris. This episode is brought to you by Fizz. There's a new cell phone provider in town and they like to do things a little differently. They are not going to lock you into a contract. No. They are fair, they are flexible, and dare I say...
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ex-liberals who were basically just looking for an excuse not to vote for Pierre Polyev. But do you think he could actually bring someone back that feels seriously jaded by the Liberal Party? My instinct is to say no. David Coletto at Abacus published a piece. He basically found an underlying trend in the overall one we're seeing in the polls where it looks like older voters, you know, boomers especially.
who had been planning to vote conservative are moving back to the liberals. And that certainly doesn't suggest that the liberal resurgence in the polls has much to do with bringing back, I don't know, people who are seriously jaded anyway. I think it's bringing back older voters, probably in suburbs, probably in parts of the GTA that are the big liberal conservative battlegrounds in elections.
It's too early to tell if it's going to go beyond that, but it would certainly surprise me. Part of me feels like this is all sounding a bit familiar. Isn't this what happened in the US that this late-to-the-game candidate who seems like a viable alternative, someone who isn't drastically shaking things up in a big way... who was somehow related or is semi-related to who was in power before. Is Carney our Kamala Harris?
I think his political instincts, such as they are, are maybe a little bit sharper than Kamala Harris's. I think if she'd have played things a little bit differently, she definitely could have won that election. But I also think there's a clear difference between the two of them in as much as, you know, Kamala Harris was Joe Biden's vice president, right? So she was directly attached to that administration and all that was hated about it.
Carney doesn't have that problem, right? Chrystia Freeland, however, it really seems like she does have that problem. And I mean, I think it's been really striking just in the past seven or eight weeks, how many kind of... different narratives she's cycled through going into and through her leadership campaign. When she quit cabinet, she was kind of staking out this ground as, you know, well, the government's being fiscally imprudent. I can't, you know, I can't sign on to this.
And then as soon as Carney got into the race, she started talking about how Carney is the PMO's candidate. Mark is the choice of the liberal establishment. It is certainly looking like he is the PMO's candidate. I'm an outsider and I'm running against the auto establishment, which is, you know, which is just as rich as Carney calling himself an outsider when he's like, you know, comes from the world of hedge funds and, you know, central banks and that kind of stuff.
doesn't really have the same albatross on his neck. Not only was he not really associated with Justin Trudeau, you know, there aren't like a zillion photos of them together as there were with Christie Freeland. The rise of her whole public image has been...
has run parallel to her relationship with Justin Trudeau. I mean, Carney not only doesn't have to deal with that, but prior to, you know, like January or maybe December, to be generous, there's just blank space in terms of what people know about him. We kind of were talking earlier about how Carney's positioning himself in this murky center, this almost like conservative light, Karina Gold.
said that multiple times on that liberal leadership debate stage. And the way that we're going to bring young people back to the party is not by being conservative light and not by being unambitious for Canada. We will only win the next election. by being liberals, proudly, not conservative light. Isn't that kind of what Kamala Harris was doing, abandoning the left, positioning herself somewhere kind of in the middle? Isn't that what he's doing as well, though?
I think there are some stylistic differences. I mean, one thing that Kamala Harris was doing, and I mean, you know, we're saying here that. You know, the United States in 2024 is a different environment politically, electorally, culturally than Canada is. A lot of the stuff she was doing.
It was really ineffective was, I mean, she was surrounding herself with celebrities. She was doing a lot of stuff that was incredibly weird, like, you know, campaigning with Liz Cheney, trying to bring over that whole never Trump constituency. Multiple interviews where Kamala Harris was talking about how much she loves guns and that kind of thing. What kind of gun do you own and when and why did you get it? I have a Glock and I've had it for quite some time.
You know, Democrats were, you know, they were getting in on, you know, deportation stuff. I mean, they're still doing that talking about how. Well, actually, Biden deported way more people than Trump did in his first, you know, few weeks in office. And actually, that's good. It's like, OK, but.
Carney, I think, is doing something a little different. I think he's absolutely trying to occupy this sort of, you know, mushy, catch-all center ground. We don't even know where he stands on a lot of these, like...
what you would consider, like, social progressive issues. Like, he hasn't really talked much about that. I think, again, this comes back to what you were saying, that, like, the fact that we don't know much, that he's a blank slate, he's this political cipher is working in his favor here. Yeah. And I mean, I guess the test for Carney and for people like him is how long can you sustain that? And is there more eyeballs on you?
as you're in contexts that are more adversarial, you know, which these two liberal debates most certainly were not. I mean, it's actually worth another comment on that. I mean, I thought it was striking how after in the press scrum...
reporters kept asking Karina Gould about, you know, you're really confrontational. And it's like, having just watched the bit, I thought, like, not really. I mean, she was confrontational in the sense that, like, it's a debate. And in a debate, you're supposed to disagree and draw contrast with.
other people. I mean, she just name dropped him. Like, that's kind of all. Yeah, it was very interesting. Yeah. And, you know, mild disagreements about, you know, the pace of military spending over the next few years. Mark, you talked about reaching NATO. targets, but of all of us on stage, you plan to reach those not until 2030, but the imperative to do that is now. They're not exactly firebrand stuff. Tell me, after watching that debate...
After seeing over a year of Pierre Polyev trying to run for prime minister, his campaign, how do you think he'll hold up Mark Carney against Pierre Polyev? You know, it's difficult to answer that question. I think the reason is that I'm actually still not really sure what the conservatives are doing here. They had this...
supposedly big rally. There was certainly a lot of hype around it. You know, this was kind of supposed to be their reorientation, their big nationalist pivot. Heard a lot about that in the lead up to it. I didn't really hear a lot about it at all after it happened. And I think they're still very much recalibrating. In theory, it should be pretty easy for them and it should be...
pretty easy for the NDP as well to go after Carney for his. I mean, he is he is a Davos guy, right? If you're someone who's on the left, there are obvious problems with that. And if you're, you know, a PolyEvra supporter, I mean, that's, you know. that's the World Economic Forum, right? That's globalism. That's all the stuff that you don't like. I just remember something last night. I was scrolling through TikTok and I saw this.
This guy, he had all the pictures of the liberal leadership candidates, and it was like Mark Carney, Christian Freeland, Karina Gold, and Frank Bayless. These are the Liberal Party candidates if they were American politicians. Christian Freeland is basically Canadian Kamala.
Her number one guy was doing terribly. She was there the whole time. Now she's like, oh, no, I'm not that. I'm different. Karina Gold, which is like AOC, if she was Canadian, means well. Too young to really make a difference. Frank Bayless, who's like a Kevin O'Leary type, but just not as popular. I think he's just trying to get on Dragon's Den. You have Ruby Dalla, who is basically Caitlyn Jenner if she ran as a Democrat and equally always have the wrong amount of eyeshadow on.
who's not been kicked out. And there's Mark Carney, who's probably going to win this, who's just like a guy. He's a guy. I don't even know who this guy is. This guy's just a dude. And I think it's just like a perfect encapsulation of like how a lot of people feel about him. He has a blank slate. And I think it's going to be very interesting to see how that's.
slate is filled in, how that blank space is filled in in people's minds over the next few weeks and months. I think that is really what's going to determine Mark Carney's future. Luke, thank you so much for making the time. Thanks for having me. Every Tuesday, we dive into one story that we think matters. But there's always so much more that we think you should know about. Sam's off on vacation, so I'll be updating you on all that's happening this week in Canadian politics.
This week in Canadian politics. If we're going to learn anything from the last month of looming tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump, it's that threats from the White House either need to be taken seriously or disregarded entirely. Oh my god, is it exhausting. I have rewritten this part of my script over five times trying to keep up. But... As of Monday evening, as I sit here and talk to you, we are being promised that this time it is real. Donald Trump...
said 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods and 10% on energy will indeed go into effect today. He says there is no room left for a deal with either us or Mexico. These aren't new tariffs. These were the tariffs he announced on February 1st. But right now, we've run out of time on the one month reprieve. It's officially over. White House officials are still blaming the tariff go-ahead on drug trafficking.
The U.S. Commerce Secretary told CNN yesterday that yes, while Canada and Mexico have tightened their borders, the flow of fentanyl remains an issue. So, what's Canada going to do? Well, fire back. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced plans to slap on a 25% counter tariff on $155 billion worth of American goods. Take that.
Like the American tariffs, our response will also be far-reaching and include everyday items such as American beer, wine, bourbon, fruits and fruit juices, including orange juice. along with vegetables, perfume, clothing, and shoes. It'll include major consumer products like household appliances, furniture, and sports equipment, and materials like lumber and plastics.
along with much, much more. If President Trump wants to usher in a new golden age for the United States, the better path is to partner with Canada. Not to punish us. But this isn't Canada's only tariff woe. There's also the impending tariff on steel and aluminum, which Trump vows to impose on March 12th.
On top of all of that, Trump says he'll hit countries with reciprocal tariffs on April 7th. The rates of reciprocal tariffs for Canada are yet to be seen. We haven't even seen our own counter tariffs go into effect yet. So we'll keep you posted. as we learn more. But in the backdrop of these tariff threats, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided to have a chat with King Charles on Monday, where I think Trudeau may have asked the king to step in and scold Trump for his annexation threats.
At a press conference in London a day before the meeting, Trudeau suggested that he would bring up the threats from Trump along with other, quote, matters of importance for Canadians when meeting with the king. I look forward to sitting down with His Majesty tomorrow. Nothing seems more important to Canadians right now than standing up for our sovereignty and our independence as a nation.
Why does King Charles weighing in on the situation matter? Well, he's still the big boss, of course. Canada's a commonwealth nation, so the king is our head of state. And so far... The king hasn't said anything in response to Trump's recent threats to annex Canada, despite calls to say anything to resolve the conflict.
All of this is coming after a press conference in the White House last week with President Trump and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. During the scrum, Starmer dodged a question asked to him about Trump's threats to annex Canada. You mentioned Canada. I think you're trying to find a divide between us that doesn't exist. We're the closest of nations and we had very good discussions. OK, cold, very cold.
After that footage dropped, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Jolie was asked about Starmer's dodge. Jolie said that it is in our DNA to be close to the UK, so she stayed away from bad-mouthing the Brits. But she did quip about warning her... European counterparts of potential threats from Trump. When I was talking to them and with the foreign ministers of France, of Germany, of
of the EU and also of the UK what we were going through and saying, hey, we're the cannery in the coal mine, guys. This is coming to you. You're next. They were believing me. And taking lots of notes, but this week Trump said, EU, the EU was created against the US and 25% tariffs against the EU. To all of them, I said, I told you. And they were like, yeah, thanks, Mel. Nothing burns more than an I told you so. But...
I don't know. All of this just seems so indicative of what kind of political firestorm Trump has set off across the globe. My God, it has been, like, what, less than two months since he was inaugurated.
And this is the reality we're living in. Annexation isn't the only way Canada is living rent-free in Donald Trump's head, folks. The U.S. president joins me, Luke Savage, and everybody else listening in obsessing over who is going to be the next... leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and by extension, the next prime minister. Trump weighed in this week on the leadership race during a nearly hour-long interview with Ben Dominich, editor at the UK magazine The Spectator.
Trump has the most to say about former deputy prime minister and hopeful liberal leader Chrystia Freeland. She's absolutely terrible for the country. She's incompetent in many respects. and can only cause ill will for Canada. In fact, Governor Trudeau understood that, and he actually fired her because of a meeting he had with me. I said, she is so bad.
She's bad for the country. If she were talented, I know people that are sort of bad people, but they do a good job running a country. Who seems to be, who's going to get the nomination here then? I don't know. After that debate, they all seemed, she was the nuttiest, but they all seemed pretty nutty to me. She's a whack. Freeland has responded to these comments. She says...
There is a reason Trump calls me a whack. There is a reason he complained about my negotiating skills. I don't back down. I am ready to fight for Canada and win. The back and forth between Trump and Freeland honestly isn't really surprising. They aren't the best of friends. During Trump's first term as president, he had this to say about Freeland to the press. Canada. We don't like their representative very much. And that ended up being a feather in Freeland's cap for her liberal leadership bid.
Donald Trump doesn't like me very much. I'm a tough negotiator. If you listen to the interview, Trump actually claims Freeland was fired at his request. Let's be clear here, though. There is no reporting to indicate that. She resigned from cabinet in December. And in her resignation letter, she claimed that Trudeau told her he wanted to replace her as finance minister.
Back to the interview, though. Trump and his interviewer didn't say much about Freeland's rivals for the liberal leadership, but they ended up taking shots at another Canadian politician. The conservatives obviously have taken a hit in the polls since some of the comments that you've...
made that the liberals have leaned into. Do you think that they're still going to be able to pull it out up there? Well, I think his biggest problem is he's not a mega guy. You know, he's really not. He's not a Trump guy at all. He's more of a throwback Republican. He's different, making a big mistake. They all make that mistake. They think they're going to be the tough guy and they're going to knock out Trump.
And they end up getting the hell beat out of them. So I don't know. I mean, I can't tell you, Pierre. I don't like what he's saying about... It's just not positive about me. And we've done a great job. Pierre-Paul Yev also responded to this on Twitter saying, Mr. President, it is true. I am not MAGA. I am for Canada first. Always. And it was also paired with this campaign-style video with clips from his Canada First-themed rallies.
Let me be clear. We will never be the 51st state. We will bear any burden and pay any price to protect the sovereignty and independence of our country. Canadian politics these days is never boring. Even Donald Trump is obsessed with us, folks. That's been This Week in Canadian Politics. you
And much like the Kesha song that I was listening to at the gym the other day, I'll see you next Tuesday. I've gotten emails and comments from you. The Junko told us, as someone from the North, I resonated a lot with what Gavin... was saying too many times a southerner comes north and says that i'll solve all your problems before fucking off south and leaving something broken behind junko i'm glad the episode resonated with you daniel says they
I love the Arctic episode and it bears multiple listenings. I mean, sure, if you want to listen to it multiple times, I encourage you. Steph emailed me and says that she's been enjoying the show and feels way more in touch with what's going on in the country and is curious to hear more about what is going wrong with health care in this country. If you're a nurse. or a doctor, and you want to talk to us on this show,
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