Transcript: Trump’s Fury at Canada Is Already Backfiring Badly for Him

As Trump’s deranged trade war creates fresh problems for the GOP, a Democratic strategist who works on midterms explains how her party can better exploit this fiasco in the fall.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 26 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump’s war on Canada is escalating. He just posted some juvenile threats that were designed to titillate MAGA. But a funny thing happened. Canada just released its list of American products that it will target with retaliatory tariffs, and they’re aimed right at weakening Republicans in the midterms. Republicans are caught in a trap, even though they themselves know Trump’s trade war with Canada is utter madness that will hurt their own constituents.

They must be extraordinarily careful about how they distance themselves from the despot, if they’re willing to do it at all. So how can Democrats fully exploit this developing fiasco? We’re working through it all with one of our go-to people on midterm elections, Democratic strategist Christina Reynolds. Good to have you on, Christina.

Christina Reynolds: Great to be with you.

Sargent: So over the weekend, Trump’s trade talks with Canada collapsed, unleashing 50 percent American tariffs on a whole range of Canadian goods. Canada’s now retaliating—we’ll get to that in a sec—but first, Trump is in a fury. He posted this:

“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer.”

Christina, this is meant to make MAGA think what? He’s owning Canada? What do you make of it?

Reynolds: I guess. I have long given up trying to put some logic behind some of Donald Trump’s moves. I will tell you, if I was a Republican candidate right now, I would be panicking, because this is a hundred percent a self-inflicted wound that Donald Trump is bringing in on this. This is something that will impact consumers. This is something that will, in particular, impact states where Republicans have to win in the midterms.

And Donald Trump has done this to those states, to all consumers, and to these candidates. And so they’re going to be in a tough spot of probably owning this economic trouble that we’re in, and having to decide: do I risk ticking off the despot, as you put it? Do I risk inflaming him and having him come after me? Do I risk standing with him if he decides to come campaign, knowing that he owns this?

Sargent: Right. And Canada is following this very closely. Canada released its list of American products that it’s now going to hit with retaliatory tariffs. Among these are things like dairy products, cheese, farm equipment. Now, I talked to some Democrats in the Midwest for a piece I did at NewRepublic.com, especially Democrats in Iowa, and they told me that Canadian tariffs on things like farm equipment will be a serious problem for manufacturers who export their products to Canada.

So the Iowa Senate race is very contested. There are several House seats in Iowa that are up for grabs as well. It sure looks like Canada’s directly aiming these retaliatory tariffs right at the midterm map, doesn’t it?

Reynolds: Well, if they’re not, they’re lucking into it. I mean, you have not just Iowa, where you also have a governor’s race that is within striking distance for Democrats. You have Ohio, you have Maine, and you have Alaska. All of those states have Senate races that are potentially within Democrats’ grasp. All of those states could be the ones that flip the Senate for Democrats. You have House races that Democrats would love to either hold or flip.

And all of this—you mentioned farm equipment—that matters in Wisconsin, where we’ve got House seats and a governor’s race that Republicans would love to flip. That’s half of the battleground this cycle. It’s a huge number of seats, to say nothing, again, of the fact that this will impact consumers across the country. And people have a pretty good understanding of who’s in charge when they pay more at the grocery store. You know, for all of the things they’re aware of, they’re aware of whose fault it is.

Sargent: So the Midwest is sort of this place that we kind of think of in our political mythology as being the place that Donald Trump really used his economic populism to transform. And it’s true that he transformed it. But........

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