Trump calls Trudeau “two-faced,” cancels press conference and leaves NATO early after mocking video
Predictably, President Trump did not respond well to the video of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mocking him at the NATO summit that went viral on social media last night. The notoriously thin-skinned egomaniac told reporters that Trudeau was “two-faced” and then canceled his remaining press conferences claiming that he had “already done so many over the past few days.”
President Donald Trump called Justin Trudeau ‘two-faced’ over comments that the Canadian prime minister appeared to have made about him at a NATO summit the day before https://t.co/F40Egg5mF5 pic.twitter.com/9KDC93focs
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 4, 2019
The president tried to pretend that this was about NATO country spending contributions and not the video, following up with “Honestly, with Trudeau, he’s a nice guy, I find him to be a very nice guy…But you know the truth is that I called him out on the fact that he’s not paying 2 per cent, and I guess he’s not very happy about it.”
But as if it wasn’t clear enough already, a sharp-eared radio pooler caught Trump bragging about his “two-faced” remark, as if he had really gotten him good.
As reporters were leaving the room during Trump's lunch with leaders from countries that meet the 2% NATO threshold, the radio pooler caught Trump saying, "That was funny when I said that guy was two-faced."
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) December 4, 2019
The president then took to Twitter to announce that he would be canceling his 3:30pm press conference and heading straight back to Washington. He was originally supposed to leave at 5:05pm, reports the Independent.
….When today’s meetings are over, I will be heading back to Washington. We won’t be doing a press conference at the close of NATO because we did so many over the past two days. Safe travels to all!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2019
Interestingly, it was Trump’s excessively lengthy press conferences that started the entire incident in the first place. The video shows Trudeau being asked why British PM Boris Johnson and France’s Emanuel Macron, Trump was late and he explains it was because he takes a “40-minute press conference off the top.” After some inaudible chatter, he jokes about how something happened that made his team’s jaws drop to the floor.
https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1202013710153388032
There have been a great many international summits that have ended ignominiously for Trump, who causes conflict with our allies and publicly insults them and their countries at the drop of a hat. But it appears that a fairly petty personal slight against him is just too much for the leader of the free world to bear.
If he thinks he can run back to Washington to dodge the reporters and their questions, he’s got another thing coming!
Original reporting by Jon Sharman at the Independent.
