Ontario Premier Doug Ford is slamming Donald Trump as a “loser” and the “king of bankruptcies” after the U.S. president criticized him on social media on Monday afternoon.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump referred to Ford by name as “the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford.”
The post came hours after an interview with The Morning Rush with Bill Carroll in Ottawa, in which Ford said that Trump could “kiss my ass.”
At a news conference in Hamilton on Monday afternoon, Ford initially said that he wouldn’t respond to a “dictator” and “bully” like Trump before going on a prolonged rant about the U.S. president.
“I am not going to take any advice off a guy that is the king of bankruptcies and he is actually tariffing his own people, taxing his own people,” Ford said. “I am going to be reaching out to every single governor, every single senator, every single congressperson and when it comes to the (U.S.) midterms I have a message to the Americans: don’t vote in a person that is going to kill your jobs.”
On Truth Social, Trump said there had been “lots of bluster” from Ford before noting that Canada “couldn’t survive” without the U.S.
He then referred to Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ford as “Governor Carney and his flunky, Ford,” repeating an often-used line of attack against Justin Trudeau and expanding it to include the Ontario premier.
“Someone should get these clowns to “fall in line” or, the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!” Trump wrote.
News conference held moments following Trump’s post
Ford’s news conference in Hamilton was held to announce an expansion of an existing program to support workers and businesses impacted by the trade war.
However, it unfolded just moments after Trump’s Truth Social post.
At one point during the news conference Ford addressed the U.S. president directly: “Your own people, President Trump, don’t even like you,” he said.
He then predicted that Americans would “speak loud and clear” during the upcoming midterm elections and offered that he would be “door-knocking” himself if he could.
When asked about the personal nature of Trump’s criticism, Ford said “bring it on.”
“Good. I have been in this game a lot longer than he has. I got skin on me like an alligator and you think an insult from him hurts me? Well bring it on buddy, I am ready. Bring it on,” Ford said. “You know something I have dealt with guys like you my whole life and guess what, you all become losers because you are a loser.”
The premier later said he could go back-and-forth with Trump but doesn’t want to “take the bait.”
He added “let’s be clear, I don’t like the guy.”
“We’re going to fight with everything we have and, you know something, I have more courage, more brains in my baby toe than he has in his whole body,” Ford said.
Ford says premiers have ‘massive power’
Ford’s comments on Monday come after Trump threatened to impose a 50 per cent tariff on Canadian vehicles by 2027.
Speaking with reporters, Ford said he believes “everything should be on the table” amid the renewed trade war with the U.S., including a surcharge on electricity exports that Ontario introduced and then scrapped earlier in the trade war.
Carney, it should be noted, has already promised dollar-for-dollar counter tariffs in response to the 50 per cent tariff on approximately $20 billion in Canadian goods that took effect this weekend.
“I cannot speak for other premiers but a couple premiers have a lot of power to protect Canada, massive power,” Ford said. “Everyone needs to be on team Canada and throw everything and the kitchen sink at them (the U.S.) no matter if it is electricity, if it is fuel, potash or uranium. We need to have everything on the table. But we need a buy-in from cost to coast.”
Talks broke down Friday
Talks between Canada and the U.S. on a new trade deal broke down ahead of a midnight deadline on Friday, with Carney blaming “last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms” that he said were “unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”
At his news conference, Ford said Carney has his full support in walking away from a “bad deal” that would have “hurt Canadian workers and undermined Canadian sovereignty.”
But, he conceded that “economic pain” will come with a fight and called on the federal government to “take urgent action” to help tariff-impacted industries through a number of concrete steps.
Ford told reporters the federal government should “eliminate federal greenhouse gas emission standards for Canadian-made vehicles and exempt tariff-impacted sectors from federal emissions performance standards.”
He said that doing so would save Canadian businesses “hundreds of millions of dollars in compliance costs.”
Ford also said the federal government should drop tariff rate quotas on steel imports to zero for countries that have free trade agreements with Canada.
“What we are focused on is making sure we survive. This is about survival right now,” he said of his proposal to remove all greenhouse gas emission standards for Canadian-made vehicles.
Earlier on Monday, NDP Leader Marit Stiles wrote an open letter to Ford calling on him to “immediately” recall the legislature so an emergency relief bill can be passed.
Ford, however, called the request “gutter politics.”
“I am swamped right now, it is an 18-hour-a-day job with myself and my ministers. If they have suggestions call me up, everyone else does,” he said.
