Transcript: Trump Seethes at Canada With “the Eyes of a Predator”
Saletan: Yeah, and one of the things that Laura Ingraham raised with Trump is the idea that, Dude, you mess around with…. Canada was our friend. Canada was favorably disposed. Trump has done everything possible for about four months running to insult Canada, to antagonize Canada, to threaten Canada, to scare Canada. This went way beyond a joke. And the result is, she tells him, You know, you’re messing with internal Canadian politics at this point; in their election, they may well galvanize a political coalition in defense of Canadian autonomy and against the threat from America. And Greg, that phenomenon is not going to be isolated to Canada. The more Trump threatens every single nation that used to be our friend, the more we’re going to see trade relationships and military alliances that are built not just to protect these countries against Russia and China but also against us.
Sargent: Well, maybe the way to think about this is that it’s a fundamental rejection of what you might call Putinism as executed through the Trump vessel. I want to read a line from your piece, which is a very good one, about Trump, “He sees Ukraine through Putin’s eyes. They’re the same eyes through which Trump stares hungrily at Canada, Greenland, Gaza, and the Panama Canal. They’re the eyes of a predator.” This, I think, is now becoming clear to people.
Saletan: Yeah. And Greg, I think it’s very healthy for people to see this. Look, I’m as distraught as you and many others are that the U.S. government has come to this—that we’ve become the bad guys, that we’re openly threatening our allies, that we’re threatening military conquest, that we’re not even pretending anymore to be going abroad in the name of values. We’re just doing it to take things. We’re just going to Ukraine and saying, How much of your mineral wealth can we confiscate while giving you nothing? Trump’s talking in the last 24 hours about, Hey, we could get a better deal with Russia in terms of minerals than with Ukraine.
