00:04:56.180Not a lot of people are paying attention.
00:04:58.280But there's no doubt that the liberal leader has just experienced his first major policy and political failure.
00:05:04.640So on Friday afternoon, Trump posted on his Truth social platform that we're very difficult to trade with.
00:05:11.560And we've gone after his farmers and dairy products, and then the real focus, the digital services tax, on our American technology companies, as he put it.
00:05:23.720He called it a direct and blatant attack on our country.
00:05:27.320And he took a swipe at the European Union, but he called the tax egregious.
00:05:31.980I'm quite impressed that he actually knew how to spell that.
00:05:34.040And so we are hereby terminating all, all caps, discussions on trade with Canada Effective immediately.
00:05:41.640And then he's going to hit us with tariffs again.
00:05:44.600And then he signs off with the usual, thank you for your attention to this matter.
00:10:43.140Ryan Lilly, who is presently in one of the most beautiful Canadian provinces, not as beautiful as Alberta, but pretty close.
00:10:52.600He's in Saskatchewan, and he's on his way to Calgary for his first stampede, he tells me.
00:10:59.100And that means he's going to be surrounded by Tories, bending his ear and seeking his wise counsel, and lots of discussion about Pierre Polyev and his future.
00:12:24.300Yes, you know, he hasn't necessarily done anything, but the tone's different, and people are hopeful that he'll do the right thing.
00:12:34.140And so you look at all the polling, and he's getting the benefit of the debt.
00:12:39.000So where does that leave room for Pierre Polyev, and how does he come back?
00:12:44.840You know, my latest piece that I've posted on Substack, I go through a bunch of scenarios about leadership for Pierre, and get into this idea that, you know, is Doug Ford really looking to take over as leader of the federal conservatives, which is mischief?
00:13:01.420And, you know, at one point I wrote, if, if, if, if.
00:13:44.500There were three different occasions, I think you're familiar with this, where Conservative Writing Association sought me out to speak at their gathering,
00:13:52.660not as a partisan Conservative, but as a writer, got permission from our editor, Adrian Batra.
00:13:59.700Leader's office dipped in and shut it down.
00:14:03.180And now what I'm getting from across the country, you know, all the bad polling, all the seat projections showing Mark Carney,
00:14:10.040if an election held today, get 220 seats.
00:14:13.260I'm not getting that stuff from Liberals.
00:14:15.320I'm getting that stuff from Conservatives.
00:14:17.200It's starting to feel like there's a real quiet anger out there that hasn't manifested itself publicly.
00:14:24.740Pissed off about the treatment they've received, and even guys like Kinsella received, who was prepared to give them a fair shake.
00:14:32.540The arrogance, I think it's catching up to them.
00:14:34.880Yeah, he's got to figure out what to do this summer.
00:14:38.580I mean, the Nanos polls are really bad for him.
00:14:42.680Abacus says they haven't noticed a difference, and there's not enough others out there to look for the trend, as we always say.
00:15:43.060And, look, there's no, I've seen no organized movement to try and oust Pierre come January, but there's a lot of time to organize.
00:15:54.820There's more than six months, and we didn't see the movements to organize Scheer and O'Toole until they made themselves known.
00:16:02.720As you always point out, those revolutions took a little while to happen.
00:16:09.180However, this week, there I was at my favorite bookstore in Picton, Ontario, and there grinning back at me on the cover of Toronto Life was one Douglas Ford, Premier of Ontario, otherwise occupied, otherwise employed, apparently thinking about being conservative leader federally.
00:16:27.920I didn't even open it, I rolled my eyes.
00:16:30.900But then this guy named Brian Lilly wrote a piece on Substack, which I encourage everybody to go check out and subscribe to, wrote about it and said, well, maybe this isn't so crazy.
00:17:41.660He couldn't even order a steamy all-dressed in Montreal.
00:17:45.740Yeah, I mean, he was asked that they quote him in the Toronto Life piece, as Karina Onstead wrote the profile, and she asked him, well, how's your French?
00:18:22.120Now, the last time any party, especially the Conservatives, did well in Quebec with a leader who spoke horrible French was John Diefenbaker.
00:18:33.220And I never heard John Diefenbaker speak French until I listened to Tristan Hopper's podcast called Canada Did What with an episode on Dief the Chief.
00:18:43.580And they found archival clips of him, and it's brutal.
00:18:54.900The piece, they say, well, you know, he could do well in Alberta.
00:18:58.580I'm not sure that that's going to happen.
00:19:01.980The anger that I hear when I'm in, I haven't been in Alberta in several years, but when I'm in Sask, when I'm speaking to people from out west, there's a lot of anger at that court.
00:19:29.780Although, although in the three by-elections that took place in my home province this week, the separatists, the Republicans, whatever they call themselves, all finished like a distant third and got clobbered.
00:19:43.660So, notwithstanding Danielle Smith's attempts to use it as a lever, I don't think it's working just yet.
00:19:50.820Mark Carney was attempting to do something.
00:19:54.260You know, I keep thinking back to Mark Carney at the end of March, giving that stirring speech.
00:19:58.860Our old relationship with the United States of America is over, and we have to move on to new economic and security arrangements with the rest of the world.
00:20:07.460And the country rallied behind that during the election campaign.
00:20:11.000And then we find out that he's been secretly negotiating with the Trump White House for a new USMCA, which then blew apart this week.
00:20:20.380Mark, you were the guy who broke the story about the secret negotiations.
00:20:25.080Tell us about this latest development.
00:20:27.480And is it something that's going to hurt Carney?
00:20:47.400And this is all over the digital services tax, which is a new tax that the Americans have been warning us about since we started talking about it.
00:23:42.040And number two, he's now gone ahead and had negotiations in a circumstance, as you pointed out, where it was destined to fail because he had this digital service tax hanging over the head.
00:24:13.060But what it's doing in this scenario is it's keeping the existing tariffs on, on auto, on manufacturing, on steel, on aluminum, and potentially imposing more.
00:24:26.060So to show that we are sovereign and that we'll decide our own tax system and to own Trump and the Americans, you know, all the arguments that I keep hearing from the people who say this is a great move, you're putting existing jobs on the line and creating none with this.
00:24:47.220These are real regular Canadians living at home, trying to pay the bills, whose ability to do that is now threatened over pride and idiocy.
00:24:58.840Well, there is a considerable amount of idiocy and pride kicking around this Canada Day weekend, almost Canada Day weekend.
00:25:06.680But I hope you enjoy yourself out there in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
00:25:12.320It's raining today and everyone's happy about that.
00:29:26.620And we're back, we're back with John Rast. John, I think I'm getting a cold I got from my partner, so I'm going to sue her.
00:29:35.380And I'm in a cranky mood, but not as cranky as Donald Trump was this week, when he actually said the word fuck on the record to a bunch of reporters.
00:29:48.120So can you give us a bit of background on how this came to be and whether his reaction was merited?
00:29:56.620Well, fuck, it would be a little fucking ranch for fucks like us to take issue with somebody using the word fuck. Let's start there.
00:30:04.940Second of all, why did he say it? When did he say it? He had announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel.
00:30:10.320They apparently were not notified of said ceasefire. There'd been all sorts of theater of the absurd.
00:30:17.120Him claiming he's destroyed the nuclear program in Iran, maybe. Don't know what to believe. Nobody seems to know what to believe.
00:30:23.080I'm not going to take a risk and guess. And then, of course, Iran responds, attacks U.S. bases and other countries in the region.
00:30:30.860Doesn't actually kill anybody. That's theater of the observe as well. And he's now pissed because he doesn't have the great ceasefire.
00:30:38.700Everybody's breaking it. The Israelis broke it. The Iranians broke it. For good or bad reasons.
00:30:43.620And so he's frustrated. And here's the problem. I loathe Donald Trump. I do swear a fair amount, more than I should.
00:30:50.480My mother is still disappointed from regretting me in that respect.
00:30:54.060But what he said in frustration to the queries of the scrum as he got on, I think it was the helicopter, was he said something to the effect.
00:31:03.160These people have been fighting so long, they don't know what to fucking do.
00:31:07.420And I thought to myself, it didn't come from Donald Trump's mouth, I would say, 100% right.
00:31:15.620Both sides are intransigent. Neither side knows how to back off.
00:31:19.180They have been fighting for my entire lifetime and for 30 years before that.
00:31:22.720But, but, was Israel not justified in preventing this outlaw nation from getting a nuclear warhead to put atop one of their ballistic missiles they've been firing at Israel?
00:31:39.160Like, is that not, like, I'm no fan of Netanyahu either, or Trump, but was that not a good thing to do?
00:31:46.660I mean, Trump himself sent B-2 bombers there to bomb Iran, and then he turns around and says, oh, and by the way, nobody else is allowed to do what I just did.
00:31:55.700I think he was right. I think we talked about this last week.
00:31:58.460I don't want to see the Ayatollah, who, by the way, has reappeared miraculously after a two-week disappearance into a bunker somewhere in the last two days.
00:32:07.720I do not want to see Iran, a theocratic tyranny led by lunatics who don't mind sending their children to war to blow themselves up in an intifada that's endless.
00:32:19.860I don't, I think what he did was absolutely necessary.
00:32:23.120And I think the rest of the world owes Israel a favor for that.
00:32:26.820But I do understand Trump and the world, whether it's Vladimir Putin or Xi or Europe, its leaders or ours, frustration with the actors in that arena because they are intransigent.
00:32:42.260Many Israelis now think they should have all of Gaza and the West Bank and Iran and its governments around them, its proxy governments and its allies in the Arab League, although they're not Arabs.
00:32:53.300Let's be clear on that. They're Persons. They believe Israel shouldn't exist and destabilize its region.
00:32:58.900And there is no negotiation going on. So I can understand his frustration.
00:33:03.220I mean, he set himself up by saying he could solve the problem that no one had since 47.
00:33:09.060But I understand his frustration. And the use of the word fuck has not been limited, by the way, you and I, to Trump as a politician.
00:33:17.420Most of my clients over the years, even the ones at the national or mayoral level, swear off the record.
00:33:23.300And certainly he's not the first president to swear. Barack Obama had a predilection for occasionally busting out some blue language.
00:33:33.640Well, there you go, folks. There's the eschatology of the word fuck and politics.
00:33:41.420But let's talk more seriously about this ceasefire that is now theoretically in place.
00:33:50.220It looks to me like the Israelis feel they've got unfinished business.
00:33:55.400It looks like the Iranians are straining at the leash to lash back out at the Zionist entity, as they call Israel.
00:34:02.960The proxies that Iran once had, well, still has, Hamas and Hezbollah, are not what they were.
00:34:12.220So, you know, the powder keg is the cliche gets applied to the Middle East quite often.
00:43:59.780And to your point, Carl, it does put Mark Carney in the weirdest of political spots right now.
00:44:03.780But do you think there is something to be said about perhaps not overreacting or playing into Trump's kind of rhetoric right now and kind of just trying to get everything back to the negotiating table?
00:44:14.300Or does Canada kind of need to react in some kind of way, counter tariffs or something else?
00:44:21.660Well, you have to go through the motions for sure.
00:44:24.420But the reality is that Canada needs to move on from its previous relationship with the United States.
00:44:31.520Like, we need to figure out a way out of this dependency.
00:44:35.680And meanwhile, you go through the motions.
00:44:38.160And if you have to act with tariffs and counter tariffs and so on and so forth, you do it.
00:44:43.500But the prime minister campaigned on being, you know, all elbows up.
00:45:44.760It's not an out-of-nowhere tactic at all.
00:45:48.200It also comes on the heels of Carney's visit to the EU where he said we are the most European, non-European, European country that there is.
00:45:57.640Which maybe that pricked up his ears, Trump's ears.
00:46:24.720It is seemingly out of nowhere, but it's not out of nowhere.
00:46:28.700He's trying to see if he can squeeze us out of this tax.
00:46:30.820And last week, Sean Pine said that, you know, we were going to go ahead with it.
00:46:35.260When Carney was asked about negotiations now, after this happened yesterday or the day before, rather, he said, you know, he didn't mention the digital services tax.
00:47:53.820And so who knows where we'll be a week from now.
00:47:58.600But the one reality, the one thing that I think is immutable is I don't understand why Mark Carney put himself in this position to start with.
00:48:07.820Like, you know, we actually have a USMCA already.
00:48:13.180Trump himself signed it, and then he tore it up with his fabrications about fentanyl and illegal aliens and so on.
00:48:23.420And so, you know, the prime minister said as a candidate, not as the elected prime minister at the end of March,
00:48:31.300our relationship, our old relationship to the United States of America is over.
00:48:34.880And we have to forge new relationships.
00:48:37.940And everybody agreed with that, and they gave him a big mandate in the election campaign.
00:48:42.100Then we find out that his government has been secretly negotiating a new deal with the United States.
00:48:49.240And, you know, quite apart from the fact that that was kind of sneaky, the problem with that was why do people keep thinking that Donald Trump's behavior is going to change?
00:48:59.600Like, you know, I've campaigned against him three times in the States.
00:49:17.780Just keep doing what you said you were going to do at the end of March.
00:49:20.700Forge new relationships with Europe and Asia and beyond.
00:49:23.580But, you know, they just couldn't help themselves, and they decided, well, we'll be clever, and we'll have a new deal with Trump, and we'll, you know, wave back from the mountaintops.
00:49:33.120Well, it kind of blew up in their face, didn't it?
00:49:35.600Remember during the first Trump term when everybody kept saying he was going to grow into the position?
00:49:40.660Yeah, it kind of feels like the same way, but in kind of on the counter side of that as well, when you're talking about kind of how big and important the U.S. is on the global scale, Warren, can you effectively shut out the U.S. in some of these talks?
00:49:57.500Well, no, and, you know, but nor can they effectively shut us out.
00:50:02.260You know, without our potash, their agricultural industry collapses, so it cuts both ways, and for sure, you know, there are going to be carve-outs, and there's going to be things that they need from us and we need from them.
00:50:18.020But at the end of the day, Donald Trump's going to be president of the United States for the next three years, and why do people keep thinking that something's going to change?
00:50:28.760We're going to continue to have this kind of stuff.
00:50:30.860So, you know, sending Hillman down and everybody else to conduct these negotiations with the Americans for a new deal to replace the deal that's in place and that Trump himself signed, like, I just don't understand why they expended so much energy on that and now profess to be surprised by his behavior on Thursday.
00:50:54.780We do have three and a half more years of this.
00:50:57.240But just while we're sticking with the White House and while I'm asking you, Warren, I'll ask you about this too because we've been talking about the lack of perhaps consistency coming out of the White House here.
00:51:06.900The shifting narrative on the Iran strike, we've heard this.
00:51:10.040A couple of bizarre press conferences this week from Pete Hegseth as well.
00:51:13.240We know that there's always information during wartime is always difficult to kind of nail down in some of these points here.
00:51:19.020But we are seeing a shifting U.S. tone on this, Warren.
00:51:21.940What do you make of the kind of changes that we are seeing and the messaging we're seeing coming from the White House?
00:51:27.040Well, we've got a drunk who abuses women who's telling us one thing, complete obliteration, I think was their phrase.
00:51:37.820And then on the other side of the divide, we've got a terrorist Islamist regime saying that there was minimal damage.
00:51:45.740So it's hard to figure out what the truth is because none of us are inspecting those facilities.
00:51:51.260But the IAEA has done so previously, and they've taken a look at what was done with this American B-2 bomber attack.
00:52:03.080And their view is, yes, there was substantial damage.
00:52:08.880But no, there has not been a complete obliteration, quote unquote, of the Iranian capability to produce a nuclear warhead that they would put atop one of the ballistic missiles they've been firing at Israel.
00:52:38.380That's their signature achievement is they've elevated lies to, like, state policy.
00:52:44.760And I just don't believe anything that they say.
00:52:48.240I think the truth is what the IAEA is saying.
00:52:50.820And Tasha, you know, countries around the world like Canada are watching because they want to know how to prepare, how to respond, and things like that.
00:52:57.080And want to know basically the score of what's going on in the Middle East or the situation on the ground.
00:53:02.340I guess what's your read of this shifting U.S. narrative?
00:53:04.360Is it concerning, I guess, to say the least, that we don't really have a big handle on what's going on?
00:53:56.960But it also makes the case that things are not over and that we shouldn't let up.
00:54:01.800And, you know, recently, when it comes to Canada's position on Iran, there was a call by hundreds of Canadians actually who signed a letter from the Allies for a Strong Canada calling for greater sanctions on Iranian officials, a tougher line on Iran from Canada, not letting Iranian, you know, people fleeing the regime who were in charge of the regime to come here, these kinds of things.
00:54:22.000So as a country, you know, we can sit here and worry and go wonder, like, what really happened?
00:54:28.080We need to look at what we do know and things that can protect us as a country because, yeah, there's no way to know fully what went down there.
00:54:37.640And we're also not dropping those bombs.
00:54:40.640So, you know, rather than sit here and wonder what is true, what is not, I prefer to actually figure out what we can do to protect ourselves from threats.
00:54:50.400And, Carl, just what do you take of the kind of shifting U.S. narrative?