Juno News - December 04, 2019Canada’s back？ Trudeau embarrasses Canada at NATO summit
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
172.89406
Summary
Justin Trudeau was called "Two-faced" by President Donald Trump at the NATO summit, and then he said, "Everything's fine, I'm committed to NATO, we've had many conversations, and this was, you know, nothing and no big deal."
Transcript
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Move along folks, there's nothing to see here, everything's fine, nothing happened.
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That's effectively how Justin Trudeau has characterized what looks from my perspective
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to be a colossally bad week at the NATO summit in London in the United Kingdom.
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A week so bad that he was called very publicly two-faced by President Donald Trump.
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It all started when Justin Trudeau was at first pushed on what Canada's defense spending
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This was in a bilateral press conference with Donald Trump.
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Trump put the question to Trudeau very candidly, what is Canada spending right now?
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Trudeau tried to talk about this multi-year plan of increasing and eventually had to get
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prompted by an off-camera aide to get the number, which he said was 1.4%, which actually overstates
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the percentage of GDP that Canada spends on defense.
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Keep in mind the NATO commitment Canada has made is 2%.
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Hours later at a private meeting, or what was supposed to be private, between various world
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leaders at Buckingham Palace, a pool camera picked up on Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron,
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and Boris Johnson chit-chatting, in which Trudeau was doing much of the heavy lifting in the conversation,
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blocking the length of Donald Trump's press conference, and at one point saying that his
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staffer's jaws had dropped because of something that Trump had done.
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And this is something that I find very interesting, because Trudeau was the one driving this.
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He was the one driving this conversation, and unsurprisingly, the next day, Donald Trump
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says, well, Trudeau's a nice guy, but he's kind of two-faced.
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He thought that this whole thing came up because Trudeau might not have liked that Trump pushed
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So one way or another, whether you agree or disagree with what Trudeau said, there exists
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a perception in the mind of the leader of Canada's largest trading partner, of Donald Trump, President
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So for Trudeau to get up at a press conference a couple hours later and say, well, you know,
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everything's fine, I'm committed to NATO, we've had many conversations, and this was,
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you know, nothing and no big deal, is actually missing the mark profoundly.
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Remember, this government has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the United States.
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Chrystia Freeland, you'll recall, took the stage at an event that had the headline up
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Trudeau himself has in one case said things to Donald Trump, and then once Trump's on the
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plane and gone, says a very different story to the media.
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And we are, whether you like or dislike Trump, whether you respect him or not, we are in
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We have many projects that are ongoing with the United States, from things that are on
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the table at NATO, to the renegotiation of NAFTA.
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And for Trudeau to just be so flippant and dismissive about these concerns shows that he
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was lying or way off the mark when he got up and said right after being re-elected that
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Remember, that was his whole approach to governance, that Canadians could finally be proud of how
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And now when he's not prancing around like a Bollywood bridesmaid, he is thumbing his
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nose at the president of our greatest ally, and then saying that nothing happened, there's
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This is wrong, it's short-sighted, and it's bad diplomacy.