HANNAFORD: She said what? Freeland seeks friends-with-nukes to contain Trump

Somewhere in the basement of a US government building in Washington, a very junior staffer assigned to watch the Liberal leadership debate last night must have snapped awake when Chrystia Freeland started talking about nuclear weapons.'What did she just say?"It had thus far been a boring night. After nearly ten years in power, every promise of future action, was a tacit admission of past failure. Then 'this Chrystia Freeland person' said something about a 'new world order' that would organize everybody from Denmark to Japan to isolate the US, and she was saying her plans to ‘outwit’ Mr. Trump would mean working more closely with “our European NATO allies, and I would be sure that France and Britain were there to possess nuclear weapons.”.UPDATED: Trump dominates second Liberal debate, candidates push spending, AI, ‘new world order'.She really said this. Presumably she ran it past British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Macron first... (Right?)But whatever else Freeland had to say last night, the idea that somebody’s nuclear weapons — or any weapons — would have any part in a discussion over anything between historic allies engaged in a trade dispute, shows a staggering departure from reality. What does this woman read in bed before she goes to sleep?We will see soon enough what Mr. Trump makes of it. (And Starmer and Macron.)But it was a bizarre moment in an otherwise painful-to-watch two hour parade of promises to fix Canada.These people have been in (and in Mark Carney’s case, around) government for nearly ten years. Therefore promising to ‘fix’ anything, whether it be the army, the economy, productivity, the price of entry into a new home, or any of a dozen other things upon which Carney, Freeland, Baylis and Gould found themselves in violent agreement, was simply to admit that after ten years of command, control and caprice, the Canadian Liberal Party had made a complete cock of things.No surprise then, that so much attention was diverted from the Liberal record to the person of Donald Trump, bully and predator. And the rhetorical contest was which of these cutlery-drawer knife fighters was best equipped to tackle the man with the gun.Before Freeland went nuclear, Carney tried to convince us he was the man to deal with Trump, being as he is by his own account, a skilled negotiator and economic expert.As a two-time former bank governor, it would be churlish to deny him that boast. Indeed, perhaps Mr. Trudeau would have been better advised to send Carney to Mar-a Lago-than go himself, only to be patronised.However, Trump is no fan of bankers. He is also a bit of a negotiator himself. And what Mr. Trump says is that ‘the worst thing you can possibly do in a deal Is seem desperate to make it.’ (Art of the Deal, Chapter 2.)Should Mr. Carney draw the short straw, we wish him luck. But he’d look a little less desperate for a deal had he not in the name of fighting carbon emissions, encouraged Mr. Trudeau not to build pipelines that would have expanded Canada’s export options to more than one customer.Backbencher Frank Baylis (who?) says Trump is a bully, but he can ‘predict what bullies will do’ and that Canada’s weak border security is a red herring and ‘an excuse for a shakedown.’ Indeed, alone among the candidates he actually promised to cancel the Liberal government’s border crackdown — such as it is. This is to suppose Canada’s border security is fine, when it actually is not. Other than to make it look more like a race, I’m not sure what Frank Baylis was doing on the stage.Trump-fighter Karina Gould claims that she is underestimated by the US president, but she has the right skills to fight him.I’m sure she believes that.But one of the low-value perquisites of this job has been the obligation to watch Question Period when Parliament is in session. As Liberal House Leader Karina Gould was often on her feet, responding to Mr. Poilievre, I do not share her good opinion of her Trump-fighting talents.And after how Kamala Harris crashed and burned with her ‘born in the middle class’ line, one wonders why Ms. Gould chose to borrow it. The right skills…Which brings us back to a sleepy Washington staffer.For yes, you really can bet that somebody on Team Trump had been assigned to take note of what the Liberals were saying. And, once the last cliché had been launched into a reluctant firmament, they sent a brief summary further up the ladder. And they would have taken note that there was a longshot possibility the the president could find himself dealing with a crazy woman who, although Canada had no nuclear weapons itself, wanted to build a nuclear armed 'new world order' against America."Sounds nuts sir, I know. But that's what she said."

HANNAFORD: She said what? Freeland seeks friends-with-nukes to contain Trump

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