Trump officials are losing the troll war, too

Trade Stalemate Meets Social Media Spat: Ottawa Asks Washington to Put Down the Phone

Earthguardiansonline.com – Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spent last week walking away from bilateral trade negotiations, citing what he described as American intransigence. Now, with the two sides still locked in a tariff standoff, Carney has signaled a willingness to reopen talks — but only after his counterparts in Washington stop performing for an audience.

Speaking Tuesday, the former Bank of Canada governor laid out a simple precondition for renewed dialogue:

“When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough and start being serious about having those discussions, we can have those discussions.”

He added, with a shrug that carried the weight of genuine frustration, that the current posture was “not constructive. But that’s their democracy.”

The Tariff Reality Behind the Noise

What Carney did not dwell on in that remark is the economic machinery grinding beneath the social-media spectacle. Washington imposed 50 percent tariffs on a broad swath of Canadian imports, and Ottawa answered with dollar-for-dollar retaliatory duties of its own. Those levies remain in force, continuing to distort supply chains that have interlinked the two economies for over a century. The trade war is not a sideshow; it is the main event, and the trolling is merely the soundtrack.

Carney’s complaint lands with particular force because the Canadian side has not been idle in its own brand of political theater. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has directed pointed jabs at Trump personally, and at least one municipal council in Canada is weighing a proposal to rename a street currently bearing the former president’s name — replacing it with a deliberately mocking moniker. In other words, both capitals are engaged in a parallel campaign of online posturing, but Carney’s argument is that the American version is louder, more persistent, and more likely to derail substantive negotiation.

Eagles, Geese, and the Renaming of a Lake

The White House social-media apparatus has become a fixture of the dispute. Officials posted an image of a bald eagle appearing to pin down a Canada goose — a visual metaphor for American dominance over its northern neighbor. Canadians quickly countered with photographs showing the same goose winning the scuffle. The exchange played out in the comments sections of platforms where millions of users on both sides of the border tuned in.

Then came the lake. After Trump announced a renaming of Lake Ontario, he reportedly phoned Apple to confirm the change would appear on digital maps. In the United States, the new name shows up. In Canada, it does not. The episode generated a measurable spike in downloads of Mapquest in American app stores after that service declined to alter the lake’s name for US users, turning a cartographic footnote into a small consumer-data curiosity.

“A Country That Doesn’t Have a Military”

The belittling has not been confined to images and map labels. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, in public remarks, described Canada as “a country that doesn’t have a military.” The statement is, of course, flatly wrong. Canadian forces have fought and died alongside American troops in World War I, World War II, Korea, and numerous post-1945 operations. The Royal Canadian Air Force, Navy, and Army maintain active contingencies and contribute to NATO commitments. Reducing that apparatus to a non-entity in a press briefing is not a slip of the tongue; it is a rhetorical choice.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who lacks the reality-television pedigree or Fox News background that shapes some of his colleagues’ instincts, nonetheless attempted a dig of his own. During a Monday interview on CNBC conducted ahead of a G20 finance meeting he is hosting in Asheville, North Carolina, Bessent quipped:

“I mean, we’re not at war with Canada. How are we going to be at war with Canada? They’re going to take their two set submarines from the Edmonton Mall and sic them on us.”

The reference is to a now-defunct submarine attraction that once operated inside a shopping mall in Edmonton, Alberta. It was a throwaway joke, but it landed in a context where Canadian officials were already bracing for further humiliation.

The Cadet Photo and the Question of Form

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — a title he prefers to render as “secretary of war” — posted a photograph on X on Monday showing two women in Canadian military uniforms. He appended a Canadian flag emoji and the parenthetical note “(this is real),” apparently inviting viewers to question whether women belong in a fighting force. At least one of the women pictured may have been participating in a cadet program aimed at young Canadians considering public service.

For a senior American official to single out a young person in a developmental program for ridicule is a move that would draw criticism in any allied government. Canada and the United States remain military allies. Canadian troops deployed alongside American forces after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and the two countries share integrated command structures across NORAD and NATO. The photo did not change any of that, but it did reinforce a tone that Carney and other Canadian leaders have now formally complained about.

What the Trolling Costs Washington

Hegseth is not immune to the same kind of online mockery he directs outward. Workout videos he posts regularly — pull-ups, bench presses — have drawn sustained ridicule from internet commentators. A man in his mid-to-late forties who can perform multiple pull-ups is, by any reasonable standard, in good physical condition, and the mockery is disproportionate. Yet the parallel is instructive: the same audience that laughs at Hegseth’s gym clips is the audience his Canadian-military post is aimed at, and the exchange of barbs consumes political capital that might otherwise be directed toward the actual negotiation table.

The broader institutional cost is harder to quantify but no less real. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, shortly before resigning, reportedly went to the White House and told Trump that Hegseth’s tenure had left key leadership positions in the Army unfilled. Several of Hegseth’s nominees for top general officer posts may lack the bipartisan Senate support necessary for confirmation. Meanwhile, the United States has met its annual recruiting targets over the past two years in significant part because of pre-enlistment programs designed to bring American candidates up to fitness-test standards before they arrive at basic training. A secretary of war who mocks foreign cadets while his own service struggles to fill senior billets is courting a contradiction that will not age well.

None of this resolves the Iran conflict, which has stretched months beyond the timeline Trump initially projected and has warped global energy markets and shipping lanes. Pull-ups will not shorten that war. Nor will a renamed lake, a goose photograph, or a submarine joke move the needle on a trade agreement that both economies desperately need. Carney’s Tuesday remark, stripped of its exasperation, is essentially a request: put down the phone, pick up the phone, and talk. Whether Washington will comply before the next tariff deadline remains the open question.