White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said there is a “special place in hell” for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for attempting to “stab” President Trump in the back after the two met in Quebec during the G-7 summit and talked trade.
“There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader who 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,” Navarro said on “Fox News Sunday.”
The two world leaders have traded barbs over the last 24 hours over disagreements pertaining to trade.
Trump pointed a finger at the Canadian leader for acting “meek and mild” during their meetings in Quebec during the G-7 summit and being “dishonest” in the way he portrayed the newly imposed U.S. tariffs. He also claimed to have informed U.S. officials not to affirm the communique signed by G-7 members.
Following Trump’s Saturday departure from the G-7 for Singapore, Trudeau held a press conference stating that all of the member nations, including the U.S., had signed a communique dedicated to lowering tariffs and other trade barriers. He also threatened retaliatory tariffs for those the U.S. “unjustly” slapped on Canada and emphasized that Canadians “will not be pushed around.”
Peter Navarro: “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…that’s what bad faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference.” pic.twitter.com/KtqKXizBEc
— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) June 10, 2018
Navarro called that press conference a “stunt” and the communique “socialist,” adding that his criticism of the Canadian leader “comes right from Air Force One.”
“I will tell you this. To my friends in Canada, that was one of the worst political miscalculations of a Canadian leader in modern Canadian history,” Navarro said, stressing that Trump has “bigger things on his plate,” like his upcoming meeting in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Trump “did him a favor and he was even willing to sign that socialist communique and what did Trudeau do? As soon as the plane took off from Canadian airspace Trudeau stuck our president in the back,” Navarro added. “That will not stand.”
Pressed to clarify if his words did in fact represent that of the president and his administration, Navarro said, “They are my words but they are the sentiment that was on Air Force One” after Trump left Canada.
“This was just wrong, what … Trudeau was doing,” Navarro added. “The Canadians are totally bungling our trade relationships and it’s due to their leadership. Take NAFTA, for example. We’d have a deal. We’d have a great deal with NAFTA by now if the Canadians would spend more time at the bargaining table and less time lobbying Capitol Hill and our press and state governments here. They just simply are not playing fair. Dishonest, weak.”
Navarro’s comments echoed the frustration and words of another Trump administration adviser, Larry Kudlow. The economic adviser told CNN that Trudeau had “stabbed us in the back” after the G-7 summit
