Jesus Christ, the bottom feeders are in charge

Top advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump heaped unprecedented insults on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday, bringing U.S.-Canada relations to a five-decade low — in an attempt, one of the advisers suggested, to impress North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

  Canadian Star

Or Trump. Same thing, maybe.

In interviews on CNN on Fox News, Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, and one of his top aides on trade, Peter Navarro, slammed Trudeau with a series of disparaging adjectives, from “amateurish” to “dishonest” to “sophomoric,” and accused him of a backstabbing “betrayal” of the president and other allies.

Those are exactly Trump's faults. I've noticed since Karl Rove this is a ubiquitous GOP tactic. Take your worst traits and claim they describe your opponents.

“There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door. And that’s what bad-faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference. That’s what weak, dishonest Justin Trudeau did,” Navarro said.

[...]

“You just don’t behave that way. It’s a betrayal. Essentially double-crossing,” he said.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Trudeau plans to retaliate to Trump’s 25 per cent tariff on Canadian steel and 10 per cent tariff on Canadian aluminum with an equivalent dollar amount worth of tariffs on dozens of U.S. products, from coffee to boats to bourbon. Navarro claimed that this retaliation is “nothing short of an attack on our political system.”

Who is this idiot fuckhead? He belongs on Fox News, not in a top government position.  But that certainly doesn't make him stand out from the White House crowd.

Taking a side trip...

It wasn’t that long ago that Peter Navarro was the butt of jokes in Washington.

Now, or at least for the moment in the topsy-turvy world of the Trump White House, it looks like he just got the last laugh.

Navarro, a trade deficit hawk, has long advocated for President Donald Trump to impose trade restrictions on national security grounds and to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

  Market Watch

I'm guessing he's still the butt of jokes. And not just in Washington.  (This article was written just before Gary Cohn resigned and Navarro took his place.)

A trade publication recently suggested that Navarro is set for a promotion into Trump’s inner circle.

Simon Johnson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, said the concern is that Navarro will push Trump to “step outside” the multilateral trade system.

[...]

“The irony is not that we built and were central to the creation of the multilateral trade system but that it was deliberately, 100% built entirely with the goal of America first,” Johnson said.

“It was in the interest of the U.S. to set up market economies with relatively free and open trade as a counterweight to the Soviet Union,” he said.

So, Putin wouldn't have liked it, would he? Another reason to consider conspiracy by the Trump administration in collusion with Russia.

“Reports used to depict Mr. Navarro as stalking the halls near the Oval Office waiting for opportune moments to slip in and bend the President’s ear. Apparently, he succeeded,” wrote Lawrence Martin, writing in Canada’s Globe and Mail, who called him “Ottawa’s worst nightmare.”

Back to Trump's Trudeau feud...

Kudlow explained: Trump is attacking Trudeau because he is trying to show Kim that he is tough.

  Canadian Star

Or that he's an asshole, but Kim already knows this.  What would Trump have done to show Kim how tough he is if Trudeau hadn't said anything at all?

Trudeau’s Saturday criticism of Trump’s trade policy, Kudlow said on CNN, had made Trump look weak just before the president departed for his talks with Kim.

If the shoe fits.

And Trump, Kudlow said, “is not going to permit any show of weakness on a trip to negotiate with North Korea.”

“Kim must not see American weakness. It’s that short,” Kudlow said.

He's already seen it! He's getting his Singapore trip and luxury lodging paid for through the Americans. Apparently Trump still thinks talking shit about Kim on Twitter is what made Kim agree to meet.

Speaking to reporters in Ottawa, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said, “Canada does not believe that ad hominem attacks are a particularly appropriate or useful way to conduct our relations with other countries.” She added: “And perhaps we refrain particularly from ad hominem attacks when it comes to our relationships with our allies.”

“We use fact-based arguments,” she said.

She'll be getting a nickname shortly.

UPDATE:

Wait.  It's worse.



Did Trudeau a favor by showing up?

Jesus, this clown takes the cake, and that's saying a lot, considering the Trump circus.