September 26, 2018

Why Does Donald Trump Hate Justin Trudeau?

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I’m not going to pretend to be shocked by this, but…seriously?

President Trump said he rejected a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada during the United Nations General Assembly this week and threatened on Wednesday to punish Canada by taxing the cars it exports into America, signaling a new low in relations between the two nations.

….Mr. Trump said he turned down a meeting with Mr. Trudeau because Canada had treated the United States “very badly” and because of its high dairy tariffs, which are preventing the United States from selling milk into Canada. A spokesman for Mr. Trudeau said the prime minister never requested such a meeting. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump appeared to snub Mr. Trudeau when he did not stand to shake the Canadian prime minister’s hand during a lunch at the United Nations summit meeting.

Unless someone is slipping my mind, Justin Trudeau is literally Donald Trump’s most hated foreign adversary. Justin Trudeau! The prime minister of Canada!

But why? Because Trudeau is movie-star handsome? Because the Trump Tower in Toronto removed his name? Because…oh hell, I can’t even think of anything else. I mean, it can’t really be over milk tariffs. Who the hell cares about that? Is it because Trump is still stewing over Trudeau’s comment that Canada “will not be pushed around” after he retaliated against Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs? I guess it could be, though other world leaders have said worse things.

I wonder if there’s something else going on? One thing’s for sure, it’s not because we’re running a big trade deficit with Canada.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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