Canadian Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre on Wednesday claimed U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed the Liberal candidate for prime minister, Mark Carney, because he wants a “weak and conflicted” Canadian leader who would be “easier” to deal with.
Trump made the remarks which Poilievre highlighted in an interview with Laura Ingraham of Fox News on Tuesday night. Trump actually said he did not care who wins the upcoming election to succeed Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau, but he thought it might be “easier” to handle a Liberal. He also took some shots at Poilievre, who has been talking tough against Trump to goose his own bid for leadership of Canada.
“I think it’s easier to deal actually with a Liberal, and maybe they’re going to win, but I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter to me at all,” Trump told Ingraham.
“The Conservative that’s running is stupidly no friend of mine. I don’t know him, but he said negative things. So when he says negative things, I couldn’t care less,” he added.
Poilievre claimed Trump was denigrating him and boosting Carney because the American president knows Poilievre would be “a tough negotiator and always put Canada First.”
“Carney is weak and would cave to Trump’s demands, just like he did when he moved his company headquarters from Canada to New York City,” Poilievre said.
“Canadians don’t want a weak and conflicted leader. They want a strong Prime Minister who will put Canada First,” he asserted.
“Canada First,” the current Conservative Party platform and slogan, was clearly inspired by Trump’s “America First” platform, although the phrase “Canada First” has a much older pedigree.
The Conservative platform heading into the upcoming federal election is almost identical to Trump’s, with a few extra flourishes specific to Canada, such as a vow to restart the home-building industry by cutting red tape.
Poilievre was once hailed, and criticized, as Canada’s version of Trump. He was adept at handling stupid questions from reporters, he shared Trump’s devotion to national sovereignty, he criticized Trudeau in many of the same terms Trump used against former President Joe Biden, and he even shared Trump’s habit of giving amusing nicknames to his adversaries.
Viral videos of Poilievre’s masterful handling of Canadian media made him popular with many American conservatives, and with billionaire Elon Musk, who endorsed Poilievre as Canada’s best choice for prime minister after Trudeau announced his resignation in January. One reason Poilievre gained such a tremendous footprint on worldwide social media was Musk enthusiastically reposting and upvoting his videos.
The Conservative leader was running 20 points ahead of his prospective Liberal rivals at the time of Trudeau’s resignation, and there was talk of the Liberals actually slipping into third place in Parliament behind the other major left-wing party, the NDP. Trump’s trade and border dispute with Canada, combined with the departure of the unpopular Trudeau, reshuffled the deck and made the upcoming election a toss-up.
The Liberal candidate will be former central banker Mark Carney, who has never actually won an election. Carney became Liberal leader at a party conference last week, and was sworn in as Trudeau’s interim successor upon his resignation last Friday.
One reason the Liberal Party chose Carney was that he seemed more distant from Trudeau and his damaging policies than the other candidates. Carney is working hard to play up that impression by reshuffling his cabinet, touting a policy reset, and talking himself up as a much tougher opponent for Trump than the departed Trudeau – even though he kept some of the key figures in Trudeau’s U.S.-Canada relationship team.
Poilievre’s jibe about Carney letting Trump bully him into relocating his corporate headquarters to New York City was a controversy that blew up last month as Carney’s work for Brookfield Asset Management came under scrutiny.
Carney was an executive with Brookfield from August 2020 until he resigned his position in January to run for Liberal Party leader. In November, Brookfield announced it would move its headquarters from Toronto to New York City as part of a corporate restructuring plan. One of the stated reasons for the move was to make it easier for the firm to attract big investors from Wall Street.
Carney claimed he had nothing to do with Brookfield’s decision to relocate its headquarters out of Canada, but Conservatives quickly produced documentation that showed him urging shareholders to approve the relocation plan in December. They also noted Carney was the chair of Brookfield’s board when it unanimously voted to approve relocation, despite his claim to have resigned his chairmanship before the decision was made.
Carney’s campaign responded that Poilievre and the Conservatives were picking on “technical” details and trying to build a controversy around a routine corporate decision because they were “scared” of running against Carney and his “serious experience in business.”
Canada’s National Post noted on Tuesday that Trump has mildly criticized Poilievre in the past, teasing him for not being a “MAGA guy,” to which Poilievre responded: “Mr. President, it is true. I am not MAGA. I am for Canada First. Always.”
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