Speaker 1: Well, let's continue the conversation as our next guest has
Speaker 1: written and spoken out against the Trump tariffs. For over
Speaker 1: ten years, Steven Smith ran Republican campaigns and war rooms,
Speaker 1: including those for George W. Bush and John McCain's presidential bids.
Speaker 1: He has since left the Republican Party and has founded
Speaker 1: a sub stack called The Warning with Steve Schmidt. Steve Smith,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: My pleasure, happy to be with you.
Speaker 1: So as I said, you have written and essentially come
Speaker 1: to Canada's defense by criticizing Trump's languaging around making this
Speaker 1: country the fifty first state. Why did you decide to
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 2: It's a moral outrage and every American should feel outraged
Speaker 2: by it. Canada is a charter member of the nations
Speaker 2: that rebuilt the world from the ashes. Canadian boys landed
Speaker 2: on Juno Beach next to American and Britain and French
Speaker 2: and Poles and Dutch and all of the members of
Speaker 2: the United Nations that together came to a redwood grove
Speaker 2: in Mere Woods outside of San Francisco to remember the
Speaker 2: life of Franklin Roosevelt, and the plaque there commemorates in
Speaker 2: his life a behalf of the United Nations that he
Speaker 2: founded as an apostle of peace. Roosevelt and Mackenzie King,
Speaker 2: the Canadian Prime Minister, late at night in the nineteen
Speaker 2: forty four nineteen forty five timeframe, are imagining the world
Speaker 2: to be, and Roosevelt says to him that he hopes
Speaker 2: it will endure for as long as everybody who is
Speaker 2: alive on the day the war is one is still alive.
Speaker 2: The youngest of those people are eighty years old. Donald
Speaker 2: Trump is smashing is the Atlantic Charter, is the agreements
Speaker 2: in Quebec, in Tehran and Yalta that laid the foundation
Speaker 2: for the greatest period of prosperity in world history. And
Speaker 2: as an American, one of the great blessings we have
Speaker 2: is the great nation to our north that we are
Speaker 2: intertwined with by family, connection, by blood, connection by sacrifice.
Speaker 2: And Canada, the oldest bilingual democracy in the world, the
Speaker 2: second largest land mass in the world, is a great
Speaker 2: force for good. And America is blessed to share the
Speaker 2: longest undefended boundary in world history with Canada. And the
Speaker 2: American people and American presidents all throughout our history have
Speaker 2: recognized this relationship and its dignity, and there are a
Speaker 2: lot of American to ours out raged as Canadians are
Speaker 2: about the attack upon it.
Speaker 1: Why do you think Donald Trump is so obsessed with
Speaker 1: Canada and this languaging of aneking our country is Is
Speaker 1: there actually something he wants out of Canada or is
Speaker 1: this political distraction for what's going on in the United States.
Speaker 2: I think Donald Trump's threat should be taken very seriously.
Speaker 2: He waited for two hours on a phone for Vladimir
Speaker 2: Putin to pick up. I can't explain to you what
Speaker 2: his fetish is, what it may be. I just know
Speaker 2: that Donald Trump admires every strong man in autocrat It
Speaker 2: seems to have fantasies that day together will divide up
Speaker 2: the world. That he's some sort of Caesar, a new king,
Speaker 2: that Elon Musk is his duke, his prime minister, freed
Speaker 2: to roam the planet, spending hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 2: here and there to destabilize democracy, while delivering Hitler salutes
Speaker 2: that he says are not Hitler salutes, and so on
Speaker 2: and so forth. The reality is that Donald Trump is
Speaker 2: a predator who sees riches in Canada, does not see
Speaker 2: our shared values and ideals, He sees things. He looks
Speaker 2: at the ground, he sees gold, and he says, that's
Speaker 2: what makes us rich. Not our ideals, not our values,
Speaker 2: not what Thomas Payne talked about. A quality that is
Speaker 2: celestially priced and priced high, indeed, which is freedom. Donald
Speaker 2: Trump doesn't understand the concept, doesn't appreciate it. When you
Speaker 2: talk about pluralism, you talk about democracy, when you talk
Speaker 2: about equality, he thinks those are weak and wishy, washy words.
Speaker 2: He's a man who looks at Vladimir Putin and he
Speaker 2: sees strength, and he believes that might makes right. And
Speaker 2: he's a So he looks at Canada and he says,
Speaker 2: what can I take from our friend? Because he perceives
Speaker 2: Canada as weak and doesn't see the hidden beneath. The
Speaker 2: benign nature of the Canadian people is a great strength,
Speaker 2: and that strength is bound by the commitment to maintain freedom.
Speaker 1: Now you say, in fact, that Canada needs to be
Speaker 1: a rattlesnake and strike back against Trump. What do you
Speaker 1: mean by that? What should Canada be doing right now?
Speaker 2: Well, the rattlesnake is a great animal to use as
Speaker 2: a metaphor. The best way to avoid a snake bite
Speaker 2: is don't pick up the snake. This is a trillion
Speaker 2: dollar trading relationship. And if Canada is to be pushed
Speaker 2: into a recession by Donald Trump's madness, that what Canada
Speaker 2: needs to do is push America into recession. That the
Speaker 2: politician who seems most to understand Donald Trump in Canada
Speaker 2: is Premier Doug Ford, who appreciates that when a bully
Speaker 2: puts a finger in your chest, you break it. You
Speaker 2: don't take a step backwards. And if it comes to it,
Speaker 2: the American people need to have the lights turned out
Speaker 2: on them by the Premiere of Ontario to get their
Speaker 2: attention that Donald Trump's economic war, and it is an
Speaker 2: economic war, will not be cost free for Americans, and
Speaker 2: so Donald Trump has to be stopped. And what stops
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is a quick cratering of the economy by
Speaker 2: people escalating and not being pushed around, not being jerked around,
Speaker 2: whim from erratic whim day to day, while forty million
Speaker 2: people are made to feel anxious unsafe. Our democracies are
Speaker 2: bound together by what Roosevelt called the four freedoms freedom
Speaker 2: of speech, freedom of faith and religion, freedom from fear,
Speaker 2: and freedom from want. And Donald Trump is using fear
Speaker 2: as a weapon, and he's trying to destabilize the economy,
Speaker 2: to weaken Canada politically. And what I would say is
Speaker 2: to Canadians, do not spend a dollar in the United States.
Speaker 2: Do not go on vacation in the United States. It's
Speaker 2: a twenty billion dollar part of the American economy. Take
Speaker 2: it away. What I say to Americans who are friends
Speaker 2: of Canada, go to Canada on vacation this summer, go
Speaker 2: skiing Canada this winter. Stand by Canada as Canada is
Speaker 2: under assault, an attack by an American president who seeks
Speaker 2: to obliterate what generations of Americans and Canadians built together,
Speaker 2: which is a for human dignity across a vast frontier.
Speaker 2: And so the answer to all of this is no,
Speaker 2: thank you. We have to hold firm and we have
Speaker 2: to make clear that Donald Trump's White House understands both
Speaker 2: the American side of the border and the Canadian side
Speaker 2: of the border will not tolerate this insanity.
Speaker 1: Steve Smith, I appreciate the time, thank you for the words.
Speaker 1: This evening
Speaker 2: My pleasure