Connect with us

News

Trump Surprises Canada and Carney With New Message: We Love You

Published

on

Trump Surprises Canada and Carney With New Message: We Love You

When the new Canadian prime minister arrived at the Oval Office on Tuesday morning to meet with the American president, he appeared to be walking into a lion’s den. But it turned out to be a house cat he found there.

“Canada is a very special place to me,” President Trump purred at the top of the meeting. “I know so many people that live in Canada. My parents had relatives that lived in Canada, my mother in particular.”

This was somewhat surprising, since he had just spent months growling about how he would like to gobble up Canada and turn it into the 51st state.

“I love Canada,” Mr. Trump added.

It was a decidedly different tone from the one he had used just moments earlier in a post on Truth Social, when he blasted Canadians as a bunch of freeloaders who couldn’t survive without the United States. He posted this just as the new Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, was arriving at the White House.

Advertisement

But now the man leading the nation that Mr. Trump had been picking on was sitting right beside him — inches away!

“Canada loves us and we love Canada,” Mr. Trump said now.

A reporter asked him what was the top “concession” he hoped to extract from his neighbors to the north.

“Concession?” said Mr. Trump. “Uh, friendship.”

As the meeting banged along, Mr. Carney kept an uneasy grin pasted on his face and fidgeted with his hands. He never quite dropped his guard. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, had the look of a man coming face to face with the consequences of his own actions and not quite wanting to deal with them.

Advertisement

He and the people who work for him in the White House got great amusement these last few months from referring to Canada as a “state” and addressing Mr. Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, as a “governor.” Mr. Trump posted maps and memes of the two countries with the border between them erased, even as he insisted to Time magazine last month, “I’m really not trolling.”

It all resulted in this meeting with his Canadian counterpart that should have been fairly anodyne, as it would have been under any other administration, but which was now freighted with anger, awkwardness and a thin scrim of recrimination. Mr. Trump did not appear to be in the mood to deal with any of the complications that his “not trolling” had created.

Mostly he mostly tried to skate around them, tossing out a ton of other topics that were not even tangentially connected to his tête-à-tête with the Canadians. Topics such as the construction schedule of Barack Obama’s presidential library in Chicago; Gov. Gavin Newsom of California; a high-speed rail line in California; weapons left behind in Afghanistan; “a very, very big announcement” Mr. Trump claimed he would soon be making but which was for now to remain a secret, so he couldn’t really say what it was yet, only that it was going to be “like, as big as it gets”; diplomacy with the Houthis in Yemen; and, as always, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Mr. Carney made clear he was not there to countenance any more nonsense about a 51st state. “There are some places that are never for sale,” he said, firmly. Mr. Trump would occasionally try to get in a last word (“never say never!”) but his heart did not seem to be in it. “Well, I still believe that,” he said of this idea of his that had caused so much trouble. “But, you know,” he continued, placidly, “it takes two to tango, right?”

Some of the usual characters who play minor roles in these Oval Office dramalogues sat on the couch to Mr. Trump’s left. There was Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, ready to jump in if needed.

Advertisement

But they never did.

The unspoken directive from the president seemed clear: Everybody be cool.

“This is very friendly,” Mr. Trump said to the room. “This is not going to be like — we had another little blowup with somebody else, that was much different. This is a very friendly conversation.” The couch chuckled, relieved.

“Regardless of anything,” Mr. Trump declared at one point, “we’re going to be friends with Canada.”

Advertisement

News

Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

Published

on

Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

Donald Trump has terminated the remaining members of the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials nationwide just a few months before the midterm elections, multiple outlets reported Thursday.

The remaining three commissioners of the four-member bipartisan commission ⁠were forced out on Thursday in different ways. The one Republican appointee resigned and the other ⁠two, Democratic appointees were notified of their terminations via email from ​the White House presidential personnel office.

“On ‌behalf of President ‌Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position ‌as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the email, seen by Reuters, said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Election Assistance Commission serves as a “national clearinghouse of information on election ‌administration”, accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, and maintains the national mail-voter registration form developed by the National ​Voter Registration Act of 1993, according to the commission’s website. The terminations follow Trump and top administration officials’ advocacy to change vote-by-mail requirements and investigations into the 2020 election outcome, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Advertisement

“It is ⁠irresponsible and dangerous that this Administration remains dead set on ​causing chaos for ​our election officials across this ​country,” Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes said in a ​Thursday statement. “This ‌move undermines the integrity ​of nonpartisan ​election administration.”

The 2002 law that established the commission, the Help America Vote Act, states the president can appoint replacements to the commission.

It is unclear how Trump will move ahead with the commission.

Reuters contributed reporting

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges

Published

on

Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges

Former U.S. Olympian David Hearn (left) walks with his attorney Norman Eisen to speak to reporters and protesters gathered after his arraignment at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

Finn Gomez/Getty Images


hide caption



toggle caption

Advertisement

Finn Gomez/Getty Images

Former U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn pleaded not guilty to damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in D.C. Superior Court Thursday morning.

Federal prosecutors charged Hearn with a single count of destruction of property causing more than $1,000 in damage to the pool.

Hearn has previously claimed, which his attorneys repeated during a short press conference outside the court, that he simply touched the water in the pool out of curiosity.

Advertisement

The Trump administration had just completed a $14 million renovation of the pool.

But shortly after the work finished, peeling paint and algae gathered in the water. The remodel has been largely criticized as a massive failure and waste of taxpayer dollars.

Superior Court Judge Carmen McLean released Hearn on his own recognizance. His next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 5.

Norm Eisen, one of Hearn’s attorneys, spoke to reporters outside of court following the hearing. He said the administration is using Hearn as a “scapegoat … for their own failures.”

“It is not a crime to touch the reflecting pool, to touch water in the United States of America,” he said.

Advertisement

Prosecutors say there is a host of evidence against Hearn.

This is a developing story.

Continue Reading

News

Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Published

on

Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

Advertisement

Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

Advertisement

The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending