There has rarely been such a coordinated and acerbic series of attacks by White House advisers aimed at a US ally, revealing the extent to which Trump possibly felt slighted by Trudeau as he left for his North Korea talks.
"POTUS is not gonna let a Canadian Prime Minister push him around," Trump's chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said on CNN. "He is not going to permit any show of weakness on the trip."
CNN host Jake Tapper picked up on the implication, saying this was about North Korea.
"Of course it was, in large part," Kudlow said. "Kim must not see American weakness."
Another of Trump's top advisers, Peter Navarro, intensified the attack on Trudeau in an interview on Fox News.
"There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door," Navarro said. "And that's what 'bad faith' Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference."
Trump took umbrage at remarks Trudeau made at a news conference after the G7 summit. Trudeau's comments were pointed but not surprising. He and other G7 leaders have for weeks been critical of Trump's decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum from their countries. Canada and other countries could potentially retaliate with tariffs of their own, leading to a trade war.
Trudeau spent most of his news conference trying to play down divisions between the United States and the six other members of the G7. As the host of the summit, Trudeau would not have wanted the four-decade-old G7 collapse in his country.
He said he wanted to work with US negotiators on trade deals and criticised tariffs imposed by Trump. He added, "Canadians, we're polite, we're reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around."
Those were fighting words for Trump, who on Twitter accused Trudeau of "false statements" and of being "very dishonest & weak."
He didn't specify what comments he felt were false. Trump wrote that he had ordered his aides to withdraw the United States' endorsement of a joint communique that he and the other G7 leaders had agreed to.
Trump also said he was going to pursue an investigation that could push up tariffs on foreign auto imports and appeared to tie that to what he viewed as unfair dairy tariffs imposed by Canada.
Trudeau went on Twitter himself today, declining to address the Trump ruckus explicitly and choosing instead to highlight the virtues of the agreement reached at the G7 summit: "The historic and important agreement we all reached at #G7Charlevoix will help make our economies stronger & people more prosperous, protect our democracies, safeguard our environment and protect women & girls' rights around the world," he wrote. "That's what matters."
Trump had earlier held his own news conference during the G7 summit, saying that he had strong personal relationships with Trudeau and other leaders but that he believed those countries were ripping off the United States through high tariffs. He said he would consider stopping all trade with any country that did not lower or even eliminate tariffs going forward.
A number of G7 officials tried to brush aside Trump's comments, suggesting he was trying to show bravado ahead of his talks with the North Korean leader. But things escalated dramatically once Trump saw Trudeau's comments from Air Force One.
Some foreign policy experts argued that North Korea's Kim could see the chaos at the end of the G7 as an opening to gain leverage on Trump in any Singapore negotiations, with Trump looking to avoid having two summits collapse back-to-back.
Kudlow, appearing on both CNN and CBS, repeatedly charged Trudeau with the "betrayal" of Trump and other leaders of the G-7.
"He really kind of stabbed us in the back," Kudlow said on CNN. "It's a betrayal. It's essentially double-crossing. Not just double-crossing President Trump, but other members of the G-7."
