White House counselor Kellyanne Conway denounced Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s hot mic moment at the NATO summit as “childish.”
Appearing on Fox News on Thursday, Conway said that the two countries still have a strong relationship despite the “two-faced” remark Trudeau made about the length of a press conference that President Trump held during the summit. She claimed the remarks would not change the working relationship between the two leaders.
“I imagine the relationship will be the same because at least President Trump is honest when he’s calling out a foreign leader and the way he feels about them when they’re not paying their dues to NATO, which has been a problem in Canada and with some other allies,” Conway said. “I thought it was a very childish, churlish exchange.”
She said that the leaders were “hardly denouncing the president’s policies” and that people were looking at the incident on social media with “outsize attention.”
“What was it really about? It was about the fact that President Trump commands a room. And he does,” Conway said. “And maybe that makes a couple of people jealous.”
Conway echoed Trump’s comments about Trudeau after the incident and called the Canadian leader “two-faced.”
“When he thinks he can get a couple of high fives — I just thought it was, I’m going to say it again, childish and churlish. But it doesn’t affect the relationship between the two countries,” she emphasized.
Trudeau was caught on video joking about the lengthy impromptu press conference held by Trump. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked Trudeau if he was late because of the long-winded event.
“He was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top,” Trudeau said, smiling to Johnson, Macron, and Princess Anne. “You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor.”
Trudeau said the joke was in response to the unplanned nature of the press conference and news that next year’s G-7 would be held at Camp David.
“We had a great meeting yesterday between me and the president,” Trudeau said on Wednesday. “Last night, I made a reference to the fact there was an unscheduled press conference before my meeting with President Trump. I was happy to take part in it, but it was certainly notable.”
Just hours before Trump called him “two-faced,” Trudeau met with the president to explain the “context” of the remark but did not offer an apology.
