Mark Slapinski - Hoekstra EMBARASSED By Canadian Journalist On Live TV

00:00:00.000 The American ambassador to Canada was asked a question he simply could not answer during an

00:00:04.620 interview on Canadian television. When a reporter asked Pete Huckstra about some of the comments

00:00:09.720 American President Donald Trump made towards Canada, he struggled to respond with a coherent

00:00:14.880 answer. Canada and America, they have officially been in a trade war since Donald Trump returned

00:00:19.560 to the White House back in late 2024. Trump announced he was putting tariffs on both Canada

00:00:24.640 and Mexico due to fentanyl, even though the majority of the substance comes from Mexico.

00:00:30.000 Now the trade deal between Canada, Mexico, and the United States is up for review.

00:00:34.100 Canadian journalist Vashti Capello has publicly questioned Trump's comments

00:00:37.600 towards Canada, causing Hoekstra to give a wordy non-answer. Let's take a look at that.

00:00:42.260 The table's almost set for immediate investment and growth and jobs and prosperity in a whole

00:00:50.460 series of areas without even looking out at where else can we cooperate. There's been talk about

00:00:57.940 the Arctic. We're waiting, OK, on this in terms of, you know, is Canada, does Canada want to do

00:01:04.660 the Arctic by itself, defend the Arctic? There have been, you know, there have been statements

00:01:08.460 to that effect. Can you understand why I think, you know, a number of years ago, what you're

00:01:14.100 laying out would have made perfect sense to Canadians, right? Deepening integration in the

00:01:18.200 areas that matter most, particularly from a continental perspective. And in fact, that's

00:01:23.300 what has occurred over so many years but in the course of the last you know year and a half

00:01:28.800 the hesitation that you are describing is likely the genesis of you know comments and actions by

00:01:36.520 the administration and by the president himself canada only works as a state we don't need

00:01:40.500 anything they have as a state it would be one of the great states anyway canada is totally dependent

00:01:44.580 on the united states without us canada can't make it if we stop buying their products canada would

00:01:48.960 cease to exist as a country. If someone spoke to the United States that way, would you be advocating

00:01:53.820 for deeper integration or would you too have some hesitance? We would take a look at our business

00:01:59.060 community, where we're doing well. We wouldn't go to our largest trading partner and say there's a

00:02:06.040 rupture and we're actually going to be looking somewhere else. You wouldn't do that if someone

00:02:12.180 Let me finish.

00:02:13.620 Pardon me, go ahead.

00:02:14.000 Yeah, okay.

00:02:14.440 We would take a look at that and we'd say, okay, let's see exactly what we can develop,

00:02:22.840 what kind of agreements we can develop.

00:02:25.660 And obviously we would take a look at going to alternative sources.

00:02:30.120 But Canadians are smart people, okay?

00:02:33.180 You have smart business people.

00:02:35.520 They have been looking at diversification for years and decades.

00:02:39.960 This is not a brilliant new idea.

00:02:42.180 that says, wow, let's sell to Europe, let's sell to Asia, okay?

00:02:47.920 That's not a great insight.

00:02:50.140 What they found, and I've spent a lot of time with your business community,

00:02:55.860 they have found that doing business in Europe is not easy.

00:03:01.500 It is hard, okay? 0.77

00:03:03.540 The French like to buy from the Germans, they like to buy from the Dutch, 0.99

00:03:06.240 and they like to buy from the Spaniards and all those types of things.

00:03:08.780 you know maybe they uh maybe they would like to buy some canadian but it's not their first

00:03:15.580 place where they go so diversification this is for your economist to figure out

00:03:23.500 how fast it can happen and those types of things but i think it's hard but i would never take your

00:03:30.020 biggest customer we would never have taken our biggest customer um and just thrown them under

00:03:34.840 the bus and say, sorry, we're out of here. But doesn't, do you understand how that's exactly

00:03:38.920 how it felt to Canadians? And I know you, you, you push back against this, but we were your

00:03:43.880 biggest customer. Let's talk about business. Okay. How are you going to create jobs and

00:03:50.180 prosperity for your people? We do business with people that don't say the nicest things about

00:03:55.440 America. All right. And, you know, we do business. We, you know, the amazing thing is a lot of

00:04:02.760 Canadian business are still looking at expanding into the US. You know what? There's a lot of

00:04:07.920 American businesses that would love to do business in Canada, even though you ban our products. You

00:04:14.440 know, we can't we can't bid on procurement and those types of things. I have questioned many

00:04:21.060 federal ministers about the efforts to diversify the challenges previously and the challenges that

00:04:28.820 presents right now. But you framed the initial comment there around taking issue with the fact

00:04:37.220 that it's being described as a rupture. But you want us to refer to the comments from the president,

00:04:43.220 for example, or the way in which he's described this country as simply noise. I'm presenting to

00:04:48.420 you just like when you're wondering why there might be some hesitation not to further integration

00:04:53.460 or make that sales pitch in the way you describe it, that that perhaps is part of it,

00:04:58.740 that part of the responsibility and the onus, the burden of that lies not just with Canada,

00:05:04.000 but specifically with the president who decided to take aim at your close friend and neighbor.

00:05:08.320 We did not take aim at Canada.

00:05:10.420 Those statements are not taking aim, with all due respect, Ambassador?

00:05:14.000 Take a look at your economic.

00:05:19.680 We put tariffs on every country in the world.

00:05:23.900 We did not take aim at Canada.

00:05:25.700 We took a policy that we were implementing on a global basis that we believed we had to put in place to keep America strong and prosperous.

00:05:35.860 So, you know, there were only two countries that responded in a strongly negative way.

00:05:41.600 okay the the rest of the world we've negotiated trade agreements we've worked we've worked on

00:05:48.000 frameworks and those types of things we did not take aim at canada really and and i ask with

00:05:56.680 great respect because yes you did apply tariffs to other countries but you initially applied 232

00:06:01.320 fentanyl associated tariffs to canada and wherein the president you know did not refer to every

00:06:07.440 other country in the way that, as I cataloged, he has referred to Canada. I understand that

00:06:12.860 you're upset with the response that Canada made. I'm not upset. I'm not upset. It doesn't bother

00:06:16.520 me. Okay, you don't view the response from Canada positively. But from where I sit,

00:06:21.180 it seems like you're frustrated with the idea that when Canada got punched, they didn't just

00:06:25.520 lay there. Pete Hoekstra has asked a question he can't answer. And he can't answer because he knows

00:06:32.020 his boss is an idiot. He keeps trying to change the conversation because he can't address Trump's 1.00

00:06:37.060 comments about making Canada the 51st state. Trump's trade policies towards Canada are

00:06:42.080 unjustified, and Trump's administration will try everything to gaslight or deflect when asked about

00:06:47.080 them. Hoekstra and these other clowns will always admit the fact that it was Trump that signed the 0.84

00:06:51.500 current trade deal with Canada. And it was Trump that arbitrarily violated that trade deal in his 0.88

00:06:56.440 second term due to the imaginary threat of fentanyl. Not only did he violate the trade deal,

00:07:01.760 Trump also talked about making Canada the 51st state. This is what you would expect from an

00:07:06.000 enemy, not your closest friend and trading partner. I believe that Canadian Prime Minister

00:07:10.720 Mark Carney is not interested in making a trade deal and is simply waiting for Trump to leave

00:07:16.020 office. Trump's poll numbers are terrible and he's likely going to lose the midterms.

00:07:21.040 Once he loses, the Democrats will likely impeach him and there will be another president in the

00:07:26.180 next year. There is no point in signing a trade deal with Trump because he has shown repeatedly

00:07:31.160 he isn't interested in making one. And even if Canada signs another trade deal with America,

00:07:35.400 trump's likely to go back on it anyway you can't make a deal with someone who's as untrustworthy

00:07:40.300 as trump it's better to wait until he's out of office canada will be better off getting everything

00:07:45.380 in order and then negotiating a new deal with a new administration a lot of right-wing podcasters

00:07:50.800 take trump's side on everything but this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the whole

00:07:56.280 situation it's also deceptive and hurtful to the conservative movement one of the reasons i moved

00:08:01.720 away from conservatives is because they have a weird fascination with trump they either worship

00:08:07.080 him or they think he's completely innocent or irrelevant when it comes to canadian politics

00:08:12.520 trump made a huge mistake by picking a fight with canada his administration knows but they'll never

00:08:18.040 admit it because they care more about their jobs than they do about being honest carney is handling

00:08:23.080 this the best he can even if you don't like him you can't deny that this is the biggest issue

00:08:28.600 canada is facing right now and carney he's the man for the moment any canadian that supports

00:08:33.880 trump at this point is either seriously misinformed or they're a grifter that is spreading lies to 0.75

00:08:38.420 make an easy buck 0.99

Mark Slapinski - July 21, 2026

Hoekstra EMBARASSED By Canadian Journalist On Live TV

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