Obama endorses Trudeau:
Barack Obama is urging Canadians to reelect Prime Minster Justin Trudeau, an apparently unprecedented endorsement of a candidate in a Canadian election by a former American president.
Obama tweeted Wednesday that he was proud to work with Trudeau and described him as a hard-working, effective leader who takes on big issues like climate change.
“The world needs his progressive leadership now, and I hope our neighbors to the north support him for another term,” Obama wrote.
Trudeau later responded with his own tweet: “Thanks my friend, we’re working hard to keep our progress going.”
Trudeau is in a tough re-election fight ahead of Monday’s parliamentary elections. Robert Bothwell, a professor of Canadian history and international relations at the University of Toronto, said that might have something to do with Obama’s intervention.
“Trudeau is in real danger,” Bothwell said. “If I were a Liberal (Party) campaigner I would quietly point with pride to Obama’s endorsement. I don’t know if I’d run around toting it as a major political issue.”
Bothwell said you would have to go back more than 100 years to find an American president intervening in a Canadian federal election.
He said former US President Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, visited Toronto in 1917 when Canada was having an election about conscription and spoke in favor of it. But Bothwell said he didn’t know how explicit he was. (AP)