U.S. trade adviser apologizes for insulting Trudeau
WASHINGTON— A senior adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump has apologized for saying there is a “special place in hell” for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Peter Navarro, one of Trump’s top advisers on trade, drew condemnation across U.S. and Canadian party lines for a series of disparaging remarks about Trudeau in a Sunday interview on Fox News.
The vitriol toward the leader of an allied democracy was unprecedented coming from an unelected aide to the president.
“My job, my mission, was to send a very strong signal of strength. And this was particularly important on the eve of a far more important summit, in Korea. And the problem is, in conveying that message I used language that was inappropriate and basically lost the power of that message,” Navarro said at a Tuesday conference in Washington hosted by the Wall Street Journal. “I own that, that was my mistake, those were my words.
“When you make a mistake, you should admit it, learn from it, don’t repeat it,” Navarro said. Asked if he was apologizing to Trudeau, Navarro said, “Yeah, absolutely.”
He did not mention Trudeau’s name himself or directly address the prime minister.
Navarro said on Fox that his words came “straight from Air Force One.” He delivered them the day after Trump himself criticized Trudeau and shortly after Trump’s top economic ad- viser, Larry Kudlow, insulted Trudeau himself.
The insults were supposedly a response to the post-G7 news conference in which Trudeau repeated his diplomatic criticism of Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs and said he would stand up for Canadians. Kudlow explained on CNN that the administration was lashing out at Trudeau to show Kim that Trump was not weak.
Navarro said on Fox: “There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door.
“And that’s what bad-faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference. That’s what weak, dishonest Justin Trudeau did.”
Republican senators sharply criticized Navarro on Monday.
“I thought he should have kept his big mouth shut, because I don’t think that helps us in foreign policy. And frankly, I think that’s out of line,” Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, told reporters.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Sunday that “Canada does not believe that ad hominem attacks are a particularly appropriate or useful way to conduct our relations with other countries.”