Donald Trump belittled the leaders of the United States’ closest neighbours, Canada and Mexico, at a Fox awards ceremony intended to celebrate his role as America’s greatest “patriot”.
Two weeks after threatening the two countries with 25% tariffs on their imports for supposedly failing to prevent drugs and migrants from crossing the border, the president-elect took evident pleasure in an audience chant that taunted Canada as the 51st US state.
The chant of “51” came at Thursday night’s Fox Nation’s Patriot of the Year ceremony, held in New York. Trump was given the top award by Sean Hannity, one of the network’s star hosts.
It alluded to the visit by Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home last week, where Trudeau reportedly told the president-elect that carrying out the tariff threat would devastate the country’s economy. In response, Trump reportedly replied that “maybe Canada should become the 51st state”.
Canadian officials portrayed the comments as a joke, but Trump issued no such qualifier in Thursday’s speech.
“I spoke with Canada, and Justin came flying right in because we talked about 25% tariffs. That’s just the beginning,” he said.
As audience members broke into the “51” chant, Trump said: “This is a hell of a nice crowd. I like this one. This is a nice crowd. That’s an interesting statement. Thank you very much. I do appreciate all that pent-up anger and love. That’s everything at one time.”
Trump then went on to describe a phone conversation he had with Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, after the tariff threat.
“I spoke the other day to the president, the new president, of Mexico, very nice woman,” Trump said. “And we had a very nice conversation. But she said, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ I said: ‘I’m not. I’m just putting a lot of tariffs on because you’re allowing criminals to pour into our country, and we can’t allow that any more.’ And it stopped. It was so fast.”
Sheinbaum depicted the 28 November conversation differently, calling it “very kind” and saying “there will not be a potential tariff war” as a result of the encounter. She also said Mexico would not close its border with the US.
Trump’s speech was one of the few television appearances he has made following his 5 November election win. He has since spent most of his time at Mar-a-Lago nominating members of his administration.
It also represented a rapprochement of sorts with Fox News, which Trump sometimes criticised as “soft” during his election campaign. Fox Nation consists of streaming service from Fox News combined with programming from Fox’s primetime shows.
During his 10-minute address, he called migration to the US an “invasion” and praised Tom Homan, the hardline former police officer he has nominated as “border czar”, as a character from “central casting”.
“We shouldn’t have to be doing this, but we have no choice. But we’ll stop them,” Trump said.
Canadian officials have said that only a relatively small percentage of immigrants, and an even smaller percentage of fentanyl – the synthetic opioid drug that has become central to America’s addiction crisis – come to the US through Canada.
The president-elect has vowed to carry out mass deportation of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. Homan, who was deputy head of the Immigration and Customs and Enforcement in his first administration, has been tapped to spearhead the effort.
Several Democrat city mayors and state governors have promised to impede mass roundups of immigrants that they deem to be illegal or encroaching on their jurisdictions. Homan, in turn, has threatened to put one mayor, Mike Johnston of Denver, in jail if he causes an obstruction.
Source: theguardian.com
