Two weeks ago, four days after Donald Trump shook the world economic board by announcing that, once in the White House, the president-elect of the United States and the prime minister of Canada would apply a Justin Trudeaugathered around a table during a dinner organized at Mar-a-Lago, the Republican magnate’s mansion in Florida. It was a matter of ironing out differences between the two, however, from that meeting a dialectical battle has emerged between the two, which has escalated both in disqualifications and in the number of contenders. The last one, and it is at the command of a denier: Elon Musk.
Donald Trump’s dinner with Justin Trudeau, which included the Canadian Minister of Public Security, Dominic LeBlanc, as well as Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, lasted around three hours and, according to several American media, there were time to address issues about trade, border security, fentanyl, the war in Ukraine, NATO, China, oil pipeline projects or the crisis in the Middle East. On some issues, such as the management of the border between the US and Canada or fentanyl, there was a rapprochement between both countries, but on the issue of tariffs, nothing more.
“I just had a very productive meeting in which we discussed many issues that will require both countries to work together to address them,” Trump wrote on his social network profile, Truth Socialafter dinner at his Florida mansion. “In Canada we are open and willing to do what we can together,” responded hours later the Canadian ambassador in Washington, Kirsten Hillman. But as happens in many of the negotiations in which the Republican magnate participates, there is a thin and fine line between good intentions and disagreement between the parties.
“The governor of the great state of Canada”
And that border began to be crossed at the same dinner at the Mar-a-Lago mansion when, according to Fox News, Donald Trump suggested to Justin Trudeau that Canada join the United States -dividing into two states: one liberal and the other conservative- in order to avoid the negative effects that the increase in tariffs that the Republican wants to impose will have when he reaches the White House in January. According to the conservative network, Trudeau and the rest of the dinner guests “laughed nervously” after hearing the suggestion and seeing how the Republican magnate began to treat the Canadian prime minister as “the governor of the great state of Canada.” .
Since this detail was made public, Donald Trump has begun to exploit “the joke” and, in another of his publications on the platform Truth Social, He addressed the Prime Minister of Canada as if the neighboring country had already become the 51st state of the United States. “It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the great state of Canada. I look forward to meeting with the governor again soon to continue our detailed discussions on Tariffs and Trade, the results of which will be spectacular for everyone,” wrote the future Republican president.
And Justin Trudeau said enough. The Prime Minister of Canada responded to the Republican magnate’s provocation during a speech given at an event organized by a feminist group in Ottawa, where related to the decline of women’s rights: “It is assumed that, although it is a difficult path, we had begun a non-stop journey towards progress. And yet, a few weeks ago, the United States decided, for the second time, not to elect its first female president.”
Elon Musk, third in the contention
The third leg of the bench in this controversy, the billionaire Elon Musk, who for a month has entered the ring as the third boxer in a fight in which, probably, the bell that marks the end of the fight will not ring. And the person in charge of “shaking the system” from the White House has entered the battle faithful to his style: in the social network ‘X’ – which before taking over was known by the name Twitter- and with insults.
This time, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX has described the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, as “unbearable stupid”. The publication, which has left no one indifferent, comes after Trudeau gave the speech in which he linked Donald Trump to ultra-conservative policies and the rollback of women’s rights.
Musk posted his message in response to a Canadian conservative academic’s post calling Justin Trudeau “grotesque” after watching a video showing the Canadian prime minister counterattacking Trump. In the same message in which the South African billionaire insults the Canadian president, he accompanies his comment with a prediction: “He will not be in power for much longer.”
The criticism from Donald Trump and Elon Musk comes at a delicate time for Trudeau. In Canada, electoral polls place the Conservative Party, in the opposition, 20 points ahead in voting intention. The Canadian Conservatives have tabled three motions of no confidence in recent weeks to try to bring forward the elections scheduled for October 20, 2025, but have failed to topple the Liberal Party.
Justin Trudeau’s confrontation with Donald Trump and the possibility that the Canadian Conservatives will win the general election with a political agenda similar to that of the Republican on issues of women’s rights and other minorities could improve the prime minister’s political prospects.
