Juno News - Anti-Trump politics backfires as Conservatives score landslide B.C. election win

00:00:00.000 As you've no doubt heard by now, it was a big win for the Conservatives in the BC election

00:00:09.120 on the weekend. Outgoing NDP Premier David Eby used Trump as an excuse to call an early election.

00:00:17.780 That turned out to be a disaster for the NDP. Is it a sign that Canadians have had enough of

00:00:23.700 politicians trying to use anti-Trumpism as a political strategy to win elections?

00:00:30.000 The National Review has published a column suggesting anti-Trumpism, for lack of a better word, might be a spent force in Canadian politics.

00:00:38.740 This quote from the article,

00:00:41.360 Evie said Trump was threatening our sovereignty and he needed a mandate to build a firebreak against U.S. economic pressure.

00:00:51.440 He urged voters to join us in saying hell no to Trump and to his politics.

00:00:56.960 but EB, rather, badly miscalculated.

00:01:02.200 That might be especially true now with a trade deal

00:01:04.580 said to be imminent between Canada and the United States.

00:01:07.180 Our guest today is John Fund, columnist with the National Review,

00:01:11.220 coming to us from Washington.

00:01:12.300 Welcome, sir.

00:01:13.560 Thank you so much.

00:01:14.640 What made you want to write about this, John?

00:01:18.040 Well, I'm in the unusual position of being an American journalist

00:01:21.300 who actually follows Canada.

00:01:22.900 I believe that you're not just an American suburb to our North. You have your own country,

00:01:31.100 your own identity, your own problems, your own challenges, and your own wondrous people.

00:01:38.640 So back in the 1990s, for example, I was the journalist at the Wall Street Journal who wrote

00:01:44.140 the famous Northern Peso editorial, which crashed the Canadian dollar because we were piling up debt

00:01:50.200 too fast. And I got into a sparring match with the Jean Chrétien government at the time.

00:01:56.260 In fact, when he came to New York to speak at the New York Economic Club, I had a competing

00:02:01.420 press conference for his because he was attacking the Wall Street Journal and me, and I was

00:02:06.740 countering him. And I had more reporters at my press conference than he did. So ever since,

00:02:12.400 I've become an unofficial ugly American to much of the Canadian media. And whenever they want to 0.79

00:02:17.740 have someone come on to give bad news or snarky comments about Canada's policies, it's usually me.

00:02:26.620 But I've receded from that because, unfortunately, Donald Trump has given American criticism of

00:02:31.360 Canada a bad name. He goes too far. Well, Trump is certainly aware of what took place in BC. I

00:02:37.680 believe he tweeted about it or posted something about that as a loss for Prime Minister Carney.

00:02:44.880 funny i can remember the days when canada was a non-issue in the united states i

00:02:49.700 fully expect that you would recall that too we were just kind of a footnote we were up there

00:02:54.600 somewhere nobody cared but now it seems that even a provincial election can become something that's

00:02:59.800 on the radar screen uh in the united states uh well canada's election in british columbia

00:03:06.380 was big news i mean this is a province that is more or less been governed by the left for

00:03:13.460 most of the last century. It's a province that has one of the most multicultural cities in the

00:03:19.820 world, Vancouver, but it's underperformed economically. And I think what Eby miscalculated

00:03:27.280 was he was reading the Globe and Mail and listening to CBC and CTV too much, and their news was all

00:03:34.460 Trump all the time, but the kitchen table issues in British Columbia were clearly the economy,

00:03:40.200 wokeness, crime, homelessness, and housing costs and other issues. And Eby called the election

00:03:49.320 using exactly the wrong rhetoric, that it was an election about Trump. But first of all,

00:03:55.080 voters resented having to go to the polls only two years after they'd been there.

00:03:58.640 And why are we having an election about Trump? What I'm concerned about is the price of food

00:04:02.820 and gasoline. Yeah, absolutely. And that was the same strategy used by Mark Carney,

00:04:08.440 you recall a year and a half ago when when he won it works better on the national level

00:04:12.920 on the national level where there's a national trade dispute and of course that it was fresh

00:04:18.120 in everyone's minds trump's insults and all that that worked but that was that was last year this

00:04:24.040 is now this year okay and do you think there will be a a deal a trade deal that eventually

00:04:29.580 just takes all of this stuff away well there's optimistic noises but you know the bible tells

00:04:37.760 us many a slip between the cup and the lip. And of course, there's Peter Navarro lurking in the

00:04:42.420 background, plus Howard Lutnick, who has already soured the potential U.S.-Mexico trade deal.

00:04:50.800 I'm optimistic, but I'm also skeptical because this is a window here for a deal. And the reason

00:05:01.660 is the American midterm election.

00:05:04.000 Trump would love to have some good news

00:05:06.360 before the midterm election,

00:05:08.200 especially in states like Maine and Michigan.

00:05:11.520 Carney has a budget coming up next month.

00:05:14.480 And the budget numbers I hear are pretty bad

00:05:17.120 that he may not have any room

00:05:19.020 for any kind of new programs

00:05:21.600 and he may have to contemplate raising taxes.

00:05:24.800 So this would help temporarily both Carney and Trump,

00:05:28.280 which is why there's this deadline.

00:05:29.960 So if it happens, it's because of those two deadlines.

00:05:33.640 Let's be real. Crime is up. Repeat offenders are released on bail. Police responses are slower

00:05:39.900 than ever. And in many places, law-abiding citizens are expected to just hope nothing

00:05:45.320 bad happens. That's not good enough. And that's why I'm very pleased today to be telling you

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00:06:41.060 better to be safe than sorry. You mentioned the midterms. I mean, you have Susan Collins out in

00:06:46.040 Maine. She was trumpeting the dropping of some tariffs on Canadian goods. And so it was obviously

00:06:53.060 a factor that she was encountering at the door and i imagine it's also something in michigan so is

00:06:58.500 that why trump did what he did uh coming up to the midterm elections is you know let's get the base

00:07:05.300 out and maybe we'll give them another reason to vote because of course without maga coming out

00:07:10.900 and voting uh then there's quite a possibility that that he may he may lose the senate or or the

00:07:18.340 House. So how big of an issue do you think this is in terms of what's going on in the United States?

00:07:26.160 Well, in states that border Canada, it is an issue because so much of their trade is dependent

00:07:31.180 on Canada in some areas. For the rest of the country, it's still important because

00:07:36.600 people have equated tariffs with increases in food prices. And food prices are stubbornly high

00:07:45.400 still especially when compared to what they were before covid now it's true that joe biden's

00:07:50.440 inflation was worse and it's true that trump has brought that inflation down but people are always

00:07:55.000 concerned about what have you done for me today not what happened yesterday they're not historians

00:07:59.640 they're people living their daily lives so tariffs are unpopular now and they're unpopular and by the

00:08:05.480 way they've you know arguments that they have created a renaissance in american manufacturing

00:08:10.760 jobs turn out to be a chimera. They haven't really done that. Tariffs are a tax, and Trump

00:08:17.980 came to office in part because many people wanted a tax cut, and Trump has done that,

00:08:23.620 but he's also delivered a tax increase that people feel every single day they shop.

00:08:30.000 Okay, which way do you think it's going to go? I mean, we heard for the longest time that this was

00:08:35.520 you know, going to be easy for the Democrats. They're going to waltz in and control both

00:08:40.700 houses of Congress. But lately, the polls suggest that it's a much tighter race,

00:08:47.040 that in fact, Tallarico may end up losing in Texas, that Al-Sayed might end up losing Michigan.

00:08:55.320 What's your sense of where things are headed? Well, I think the narrative,

00:08:59.820 from my point of view, is a little different. The House is lost. The number of seats the

00:09:05.700 Republicans have to defend keeps expanding. The Senate was very close until recently.

00:09:10.960 Then the Democrats started finding places like Kansas and Iowa, which of course are affected

00:09:16.000 by tariffs and the price of diesel because of their agricultural bent. And they started closing

00:09:21.920 the gap in those states. I think that the pattern in U.S. midterm elections are, the closer you get

00:09:28.760 to an election, the more party faithful come home, the more that issues are discussed rather

00:09:33.860 than personalities, i.e. Donald Trump's, the more issues are discussed, the more the differences

00:09:39.140 of the parties sort out, that more Americans tend to be center-right than center-left,

00:09:43.940 the race usually tightens. And I think that's happening now. The House will go Democratic.

00:09:49.280 The Democrats only need to pick up three seats. And I think they're going to easily get that.

00:09:54.500 the Senate is going to be very competitive and it could come down to two senators holding the

00:10:00.040 balance of power. On the Democratic side, John Fetterman is alienated from his party. He could

00:10:05.360 become an independent and caucus with the Republicans. On the other side, Lisa Murkowski

00:10:10.000 is a Republican from Alaska, but she's been very independent and very anti-Trump. She could either 0.98

00:10:15.720 become an independent or even join the Democrats. So you may have a 50-50 Senate where J.D. Vance

00:10:22.560 you know has to stay in washington rather than campaign for president in his own right

00:10:26.340 it's going to be a fascinating race to watch on election night do you want to weigh in on brazil

00:10:33.220 i mean what's happened there is stunning i mean we spoke about it just ahead of the interview

00:10:40.100 where you had well go ahead i mean i know you want to we we uh we don't have proof

00:10:46.920 but we have suspicions um look leaving aside the fact that observers were locked out of certain

00:10:54.760 counting rooms and there were irregularities at polling places and things like that leaving that

00:11:00.140 aside uh what happened in brazil yesterday is unprecedented here you had an election 127 million

00:11:08.300 people voted uh the polls are set to close at five o'clock at 4 22 a request comes into the

00:11:15.320 Brazilian Supreme Court, which is a bizarre system of 11 justices, but only one justice can sometimes

00:11:21.640 make a decision. He doesn't have to consult anyone else. 4.22 p.m., a request to extend the polling

00:11:28.960 hours nationwide for two hours, because buses are tied up in traffic in Sao Paulo and some other

00:11:35.440 cities, comes in to the Supreme Court. It's assigned to a justice named Cristiano Zito,

00:11:42.280 who's been on the court since 2023, appointed by Lula, the leftist incumbent. And it turns out

00:11:49.580 that he's the one judge who makes the decision. He doesn't consult anyone else. He issues a decree

00:11:54.720 at 5.01 p.m., one minute after the polls closed. And he says polling is going to continue for two

00:12:01.360 hours. Well, Brazil votes completely in electronic voting machines. And at five o'clock, they're

00:12:07.540 supposed to be closed. They can't reopen them. They're literally packed up. And most Bolsonaro

00:12:14.280 precincts in the South are closed at five o'clock. The order comes in at 501. News filters through

00:12:22.260 a few minutes later. But many of the Lula precincts still have their electronic polling

00:12:29.420 books open. People could vote. People lined up. People were told, come down to the polls. You

00:12:34.520 have two hours this is unprecedented uh and because because brazil has a nationwide centralized

00:12:41.760 system uh it's a black box once it gets to the central counting house you can't separate

00:12:46.580 the votes of people from one precinct who voted late versus people from another precinct who

00:12:52.440 weren't able to vote you don't know who couldn't vote and you don't know who voted so what makes

00:12:58.100 this all the weirder justice was lula's personal defense lawyer in the criminal case that sent him

00:13:04.900 to prison for 10 years i mean a personal your personal attorney you appoint to the supreme

00:13:11.060 court and he happens to be the judge who issues the order that extends polling hours for two

00:13:16.340 hours and you win because of that in part i i mean one gobbles the mind but boggles the mind

00:13:24.660 Yeah. Steve Bannon was saying that he wants Rubio and Trump to go nuclear on Brazil. I don't know

00:13:32.260 what that means, presumably. I don't think Steve Bannon should ever use that kind of language.

00:13:39.340 Listen, if he were president, I think we'd really be worried.

00:13:43.120 John, thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.

00:13:46.940 Thank you and good luck with all of your podcasts. And I know people who follow you

00:13:50.800 in Canada religiously. Thank you very much, John. Appreciate that. John Fund.

00:13:54.660 Okay, if you enjoyed this show and appreciate independent journalism, please consider becoming

00:14:00.140 a premier member of Juno News by going to junonews.com backslash straight up. There it is.

00:14:05.920 It helps us do what we do. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

Juno News - October 27, 2026

Anti-Trump politics backfires as Conservatives score landslide B.C. election win

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