Former National Security Advisor John Bolton said Tuesday on CNN’s “New Central” that no world leader should “equate” the opinions of the American people with those of President Donald Trump.
Bolton said, “I think Trump is ripping through decades of American effort to build up good faith, trust, reliance, counting on the United States in times of crisis. And the economic cost of the tariffs are going to be bad.”
He added, “I think you saw a little bit of that in the meeting today. The leader who was backing down in that meeting was Trump. He’d already made all these nonsensical comments about Canada becoming a 51st state. Never going to happen. That anybody could have told him about, and indeed, Republicans could give him a lot of good reasons why, with all due respect to Canada, we don’t want them to be the 51st state.”
“So he had to make those points. Carney kept his calm, made his points in response. Trump never should have said them to begin with. It’s not a way, obviously, that’s going to affect bargaining with Canada. But Carney has said some strong things, unfortunately strong, that our old relationship with the U.S. is over. I don’t believe that. And I don’t think Carney or any other world leader ought to equate Trump with the American people. But this is an example of how we’ve burned up, how we’ve just eroded trust and goodwill. And we’re going to have to work to get it back.”
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