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ANALYSIS | Top Trump White House pick has strong view on Canada's government. It's not flattering | CBC News
The man reportedly tapped for the top international role inside the Trump White House isn’t just predicting the defeat of Canada’s Trudeau government: He’s celebrating it.
Mike Waltz has a vast digital footprint on international issues in his six years as a congressman, following careers in business, defence policy, and as a decorated special-forces veteran.
He’s been selected by Donald Trump for the powerful position of national security adviser in the next White House, a multitude of U.S. media outlets reported Monday evening, though Trump did not publicly comment on any of these reports.
His online commentary emphasizes his view that U.S. allies must pull their weight on security issues, including with regards to China, which he views as a serious national-security threat.
Waltz predicts Liberals will lose next election
His unflattering opinion of the Trudeau government is manifest in a string of social media comments over the years, including one happily predicting its demise in the next election.
Earlier this year, he posted a video from Canada’s question period where opposition leader Pierre Poilievre ridiculed Trudeau’s housing policies.
“This guy is going to send Trudeau packing in 2025 (finally) and start digging Canada out of the progressive mess it’s in,” Waltz posted on the X social media platform.
“His trolling of Trudeau’s nonsense worth a watch!”
This guy is going to send Trudeau packing in 2025 (finally) and start digging Canada out of the progressive mess it’s in.
His trolling of Trudeau’s nonsense worth a watch! 🇺🇸🇨🇦 https://t.co/4umBSoxIrv
Waltz’s criticisms of Trudeau were frequently related to China.
He called Trudeau shameful for abstaining from a vote on Chinese genocide of Muslim Uyghurs. He referred in different social media posts to China interfering in Canada’s elections.
“This is a MASSIVE scandal,” he said in one post.
He lamented Trudeau’s government allowing the sale of a lithium mine to a Chinese-state owned entity. This was two years ago, and Canada has since moved to boot those Chinese state owners from certain critical-minerals sites.
Waltz also complained about Chinese donors pledging $1 million to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and reportedly wanting to erect a statue of the first Chinese communist leader outside a Montreal university.
The Florida congressman has other connections to Canada.
His other Canadian connection: pipeline business
His wife, Julia Nesheiwat, is a vice president for Calgary-based TC Energy Corp.; it’s the energy company formerly known as TransCanada, builder of the ill-fated Keystone XL oil pipeline.
Waltz’s social media posts are now a window into a substantive reality awaiting Canada on Jan. 20, when the new administration takes office.
The Trump team is expected to press, aggressively, for allies including Canada to take defence spending and security more seriously.
This will unfold amid threats from Trump to punish all countries, including allies, with trade measures including a minimum 10 per cent tariff on imports.
As Donald Trump prepares to return to office, he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin and is finalizing his inner circle, cutting out his Republican critics and working out the key campaign pledges he’ll enact upon his return to the White House.
Canada’s argument against those tariffs is expected to include the point that it is a contributor to U.S. security — as a supplier of oil, and potentially minerals, that lessen American dependence on overseas countries, including China.
It’s an argument Waltz would presumably know well — given his personal connection to TC Energy.
Waltz also delivered a shoutout to former prime minister Stephen Harper at an international gathering of conservatives in 2022.
His comments about the next Canadian election point to another dynamic looming over the coming months: The question of whether Canada-U.S. talks on sensitive issues, like tariffs and defence spending, will happen mostly before or after Canada’s election.
Waltz: NATO allies need to ‘step up’ defence spending
Waltz holds standard Republican views on some international issues.
He was passionately supportive of helping Ukraine, certainly in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion, but, as his party grew more skeptical, he echoed that sentiment.
He’s mocked NATO allies for doing the bare minimum in meeting defence spending commitments.
Waltz joked in one post about European countries meeting the two per cent spending target, saying it was like “congratulating the F student on getting a D. We need our allies to step up, instead of letting them off and making American taxpayers foot the bill!”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revives a special cabinet committee dedicated to Canada-U-S relations.
His track record of commenting on Canada dwarfs that of the rumoured next secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio.
In the past, Rubio has frequently mentioned working with Canada in a failed attempt to isolate Venezuela’s Maduro government.
That said, he did express his disgust with how warmly Trudeau eulogized Fidel Castro after the Cuban dictator’s death in 2016.
“Is this a real statement or a parody?” Rubio, a son of Cuban immigrants, tweeted at the time. “Because if this is a real statement from the PM of Canada it is shameful & embarrassing.”
Another nominee for a senior role is even better versed on Canadian issues.
Lawmaker Elise Stefanik, tapped to be Trump’s UN ambassador, serves in a border district in New York, is knowledgeable on cross-border files, and used to co-lead a congressional group focused on Canadian affairs before rising to national prominence as an aggressive Trump defender.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
The U.S. Supreme Court
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The U.S. Supreme Court refused Friday to allow Virginia to use a new congressional map that favored Democrats in all but one of the state’s U.S. House seats. The map was a key part of Democrats’ effort to counter the Republican redistricting wave set off by President Trump.
The new map was drawn by Democrats and approved by Virginia voters in an April referendum. But on May 8, the Supreme Court of Virginia in a 4-to-3 vote declared the referendum, and by extension the new map, null and void because lawmakers failed to follow the proper procedures to get the issue on the ballot, violating the state constitution.
Virginia Democrats and the state’s attorney general then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to put into effect the map approved by the voters, which yields four more likely Democratic congressional seats. In their emergency application, they argued the Virginia Supreme Court was “deeply mistaken” in its decision on “critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.” Further, they asserted the decision “overrode the will of the people” by ordering Virginia to “conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected.”
Republican legislators countered that it would be improper for the U.S. Supreme Court to wade into a purely state law controversy — especially since the Democrats had not raised any federal claims in the lower court.
Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Republicans without explanation leaving in place the state court ruling that voided the Democratic-friendly maps.
The court’s decision not to intervene was its latest in emergency requests for intervention on redistricting issues. In December, the high court OK’d Texas using a gerrymandered map that could help the GOP win five more seats in the U.S. House. In February, the court allowed California to use a voter-approved, Democratic-friendly map, adopted to offset Texas’s map. Then in March, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the redrawing of a New York map expected to flip a Republican congressional district Democratic.
And perhaps most importantly, in April, the high court ruled that a Louisiana congressional map was a racial gerrymander and must be redrawn. That decision immediately set off a flurry of redistricting efforts, particularly in the South, where Republican legislators immediately began redrawing congressional maps to eliminate long established majority Black and Hispanic districts.
An explosion and fire drew a large emergency response on Friday to a lumber mill in the Midcoast region of Maine, officials said.
The State Police and fire marshal’s investigators responded to Robbins Lumber in Searsmont, about 72 miles northeast of Portland, said Shannon Moss, a spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Mike Larrivee, the director of the Waldo County Regional Communications Center, said the number of victims was unknown, cautioning that “the information we’re getting from the scene is very vague.”
“We’ve sent every resource in the county to that area, plus surrounding counties,” he said.
Footage from the scene shared by WABI-TV showed flames burning through the roof of a large structure as heavy, dark smoke billowed skyward.
The Associated Press reported that at least five people were injured, and that county officials were considering the incident a “mass casualty event.”
Catherine Robbins-Halsted, an owner and vice president at Robbins Lumber, told reporters at the scene that all of the company’s employees had been accounted for.
Gov. Janet T. Mills of Maine said on social media that she had been briefed on the situation and urged people to avoid the area.
“I ask Maine people to join me in keeping all those affected in their thoughts,” she said.
Representative Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, said on social media that he was aware of the fire and explosion.
“As my team and I seek out more information, I am praying for the safety and well-being of first responders and everyone else on-site,” he said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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