Mark Slapinski - February 12, 2026


BREAKINGļ¼š Republicans Make Unexpected Decision On Tariffs


Episode Stats

Length

9 minutes

Words per Minute

200.97908

Word Count

1,998

Sentence Count

3

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 i have some great news tonight patriots a host of representatives in the united states
00:00:04.240 has voted against donald trump's tariffs on canada last year donald trump declared a national
00:00:08.880 emergency over fentanyl which allowed him to place tariffs on canadian products in case you're
00:00:14.080 unfamiliar and a quick refresher tariffs are essentially an import tax so what that means is
00:00:19.600 that when a product crosses into the united states from canada it becomes more expensive trump has
00:00:24.400 been consistent on his terror stance despite the fact that it actually hurts the american economy
00:00:29.120 a lot of canadians are boycotting american products and canadians even those that have a lot of money
00:00:34.880 are choosing not to travel to the united states and they're going other places so thanks to help from
00:00:39.520 republicans the resolution to end the national emergency over fentanyl was passed in my opinion
00:00:44.320 donald trump never should have imposed tariffs on canada in the first place canada is not a major
00:00:49.600 supplier of fentanyl to the united states and anyone that says otherwise is lying the majority of fentanyl
00:00:55.200 that ends up in the united states from a foreign country comes from mexico not canada so the good
00:01:00.160 news is that this shows that republicans are willing to turn on trump over his economic policies
00:01:05.680 the bad news is that trump still has a veto and he can still impose tariffs on canada if he wants to
00:01:11.440 now contrary to what you may have heard and there's a lot of misinformation out there so let me just
00:01:15.440 correct it contrary to what you may have heard the canadian government and the provincial governments
00:01:21.040 did come to the table to increase border security daniel smith the premier of alberta outlined this
00:01:26.640 during an interview last year with cnbc this year alberta sold more than 160 billion dollars of goods
00:01:32.640 to the united states including more than 130 billion of energy which does get tariffed but only 10
00:01:39.520 not 25 thank you for joining us what what is your reaction from what you just heard from trudeau so
00:01:46.000 disappointing uh we we've been doing everything we can not only our federal government but all of the
00:01:51.200 sub-national governments to try to avoid this outcome we as you heard we've been working on the
00:01:56.640 border and we've been putting up drones putting up uh helicopters putting up more personnel we've been
00:02:02.960 very successful in in in stopping people from coming across the border from the united states we've
00:02:08.240 been stopping drugs from coming across the border from the united states we've brought those numbers
00:02:12.480 down we thought that that was what the us president wanted and to see this escalation is so disappointing
00:02:18.640 so damaging initially to american consumers and american businesses who buy canadian goods and raw
00:02:24.080 materials but then now with the counter tariffs uh it's going to be it's also going to be harmful to
00:02:29.120 canadian uh consumers no no one wins a toy a tariff war and so we we want to go back to looking at
00:02:35.440 the agreement that we signed the usmca that has served us well for a number of years and uh i don't
00:02:40.480 know why the the president is behaving this way because it's illegal we're going to challenge it
00:02:44.960 and we would like to get back to negotiating some of the pressure points on that
00:02:49.600 how bad is it going to be for alberta economically i'm i must say like i've talked about the the 10
00:02:56.320 tariff with our producers and those who uh who sell the goods and then everyone's going to take a
00:03:00.720 little bit of a bite on that our producers are the refiners in the united states are going to have
00:03:06.160 higher costs american uh consumers are going to have a higher cost you're going to see it the price
00:03:11.040 of the pump more so in the areas where uh good burn where refineries are 100 reliant on on canadian
00:03:18.080 oil so it's and as you know as you if you increase the cost of energy you increase the cost of
00:03:22.480 everything so it's going to have an inflationary effect in the us we're already seeing the effect
00:03:26.320 on the stock market today investors don't like the decisions that have been made today and the best
00:03:31.760 move would be to try to de-escalate as quickly as possible let's get down to talking about what
00:03:35.920 the real issues are as opposed to a pretext and then solve those irritants so that we can get on
00:03:41.200 with having the the best terror-free relationship that i think any two nations have in the world
00:03:46.960 premier do you think this is truly about fentanyl i think it was but i think we've demonstrated i have
00:03:53.520 to tell you like when i'm looking at the bus that we have at the border it's cocaine and
00:03:56.960 and crystal meth coming up from america so these are these are issues that are two-way issues
00:04:01.680 that america has cartels and organized crime that are causing problems for us and we recognize that
00:04:07.200 it is a two-way street they should too we want to be able to address those those issues collaboratively
00:04:12.160 share the intelligence but to act as if this is only a one-way problem remember there's a lot of
00:04:17.040 distance between canada and mexico there's a big country in the middle and so we we are not the root
00:04:23.360 of a lot of the problems we we in fact are are having some spillover effect of those problems as we've
00:04:28.400 we've noticed as we started doing a lot more work and stoppages at the borders you're going to see
00:04:33.440 more of that now now that we found so many drugs coming up from the united states we're going to
00:04:37.760 have to do more stops of american trucks coming across the border so that we can stop that too
00:04:42.400 we're doing our part to to be able to bust uh the fentanyl operations that are happening in our
00:04:47.040 country as well but i i think that this is a problem we should be working on collectively
00:04:51.840 rather than pointing fingers suggesting it's just a one-way street it's not
00:04:54.640 uh yesterday we heard from doug ford of ontario with this threat about raising uh taxes let's say
00:05:02.400 on electricity that is shipped to the u.s today the journal headline lays out exactly that are there
00:05:08.800 varying levels of appetite to retaliate uh within some of the premieres in canada i've already said
00:05:15.120 that we're not going to to retaliate on energy that that is such an essential product for american
00:05:21.040 consumers and american businesses we want to make sure that we've got some you know 4.3 million
00:05:25.840 barrels a day going into the united states we want to make sure that that flow continues albeit it's
00:05:30.640 going to be a little bit more expensive because of the 10 percent tariffs but i i would say that we
00:05:35.840 would rather uh be talking about ways in which we can remove tariffs altogether what you'll see
00:05:40.960 with the tariffs that have been imposed today 30 billion with another 125 billion to come in 21 days
00:05:46.800 is focused on things that we can easily replace that we can find other sources whether it's canadian
00:05:52.640 sources whether it's sources from mexico whether it's sources internationally and the problem that
00:05:58.080 american producers are going to face is that as we start changing those supply chains those can get
00:06:03.120 stuck and it's hard to go back to to relying on an unreliable uh trading partner so i would say the
00:06:09.600 sooner this gets resolved the better because there are one of the things that americans need to
00:06:14.240 understand is that we are your best customer we buy more goods and services from you than anyone else
00:06:21.600 in the world and so if you're when you put these these tariffs in place it means that we're just
00:06:26.720 going to buy less look at it like this as far as canadian politicians are concerned daniel smith is
00:06:31.440 about as right-wing as you can get she's even more right-wing arguably than peer polyev and she makes
00:06:38.080 some great points and i agree with her donald trump's tariffs were unjustified unnecessary and completely
00:06:44.000 illegal she also fairly points out that a lot of crystal meth and cocaine cross into canada from
00:06:50.560 the united states so it's not a one-way street it's definitely a two-way street and considering
00:06:56.400 all the drugs and contraband that cross into canada from the united states maybe it's us that should be
00:07:02.480 terrifying them but seriously donald trump decided to destroy a great trading relationship with america's
00:07:07.840 closest ally and over what all he's done is make things more expensive for americans and signal to
00:07:14.160 the rest of the world that the united states is not a reliable trading partner and this is hurting america
00:07:19.280 in the short term but it's also going to hurt america in the long term a lot of my fellow political
00:07:24.240 commentators and they use the term fellow loosely were quick to carry trump's water they take donald trump's
00:07:30.400 statements at face value they don't fact check them and they present them as fact and i think that's
00:07:36.240 incredibly irresponsible quite frankly i think most of these people are idiots and hopefully one day you
00:07:41.360 understand that there's a complete lack of talent in the right-wing media ecosystem what really gets me
00:07:47.120 is that a lot of polyev supporters they like trump but people don't seem to realize that it's because
00:07:52.240 of trump that polyev lost the last election if donald trump kept his mouth shut and took a more
00:07:57.440 cooperative tone we'd have polyev in office right now both countries would be working together
00:08:03.680 we'd be increasing trade increasing security we'd be doing a lot of great things but unfortunately
00:08:09.520 that's not happening and now both countries are fighting each other now some people blame trudeau
00:08:14.880 they blame carney i don't i blame the person who's actually responsible for this and that person's name
00:08:20.480 is donald trump as far as i'm concerned donald trump is a hundred percent responsible for the mess
00:08:25.520 that we're in right now and i don't care what anyone says i stand by that the way i see it you
00:08:29.600 can't claim to be a canadian conservative and a patriot and support donald trump because donald trump
00:08:35.360 is the reason we don't have conservatives in power and he's also the one who's economically attacking
00:08:40.320 our country so you can't look me in the eyes and tell me you're a patriot because a patriot would
00:08:46.720 defend their country from outside attacks so when donald trump attacks our country anyone who supports
00:08:52.480 them is not a patriot and that's just the way it is there's there's no argument there the people that
00:08:57.120 try to make that argument are either being disingenuous or else they're misinformed the funny
00:09:02.160 thing is that as long as trump's in office polyev is going to have a really hard time winning a federal
00:09:06.560 election i'm actually hoping that the next time we have a federal election in canada both trump and
00:09:12.160 the alberta separation movement are off the table now i can't say with 100 certainty that trump will
00:09:17.120 lose the midterms we don't know what's going to happen but i can say with a high degree of certainty
00:09:22.640 that the alberta separation movement will fail when i look at polls they simply don't have anywhere
00:09:27.600 close to the support they need to separate now i've always said i want to see a blue summer and
00:09:31.760 i've been saying that for a bit however considering the current political climate i'm starting to have
00:09:36.720 my doubts i do believe that polyev will win and become the next prime minister of canada
00:09:41.600 unfortunately we might have to wait a little bit longer but anyway thanks for tuning in i love you all
00:09:46.800 have a great night patriots