The Trump administration on Tuesday congratulated Prime Minister Mark Carney for his victory in Canada’s federal election, touting the “extensive” relationship between the two countries that has been strained under U.S. President Donald Trump.
Global News is projecting Carney’s Liberals will form a minority government, giving the party its fourth straight mandate after an election that was dominated by Trump’s attacks on Canada’s economy and sovereignty.
“The United States extends its congratulations to Prime Minister Mark Carney and his party on their win in Canada’s recent federal elections,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement read to reporters after she was asked for a reaction to the election results.
“The U.S.-Canada relationship remains one of the most extensive in the world. We look forward to working with Prime Minister Carney’s government, particularly on key issues such as trade fairness, combatting illegal immigration, halting the flow of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs, and countering the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in our hemisphere.”
The statement marked the first public acknowledgement of Carney’s win since Monday’s vote by the Trump administration, which was focused Tuesday on marking Trump’s first 100 days of his second presidential term.
Trump himself has not spoken about the results, and ignored a question about the election after briefly scrumming with reporters outside the White House on his way to a rally in Michigan to mark his milestone.
During a briefing with “new media” on Tuesday that was held after her regular media briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked if Trump’s repeated call to make Canada the 51st U.S. state was “Trump trolling or Trump truthing.”
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“Trump truthing, all the way, and the Canadians would benefit greatly,” Leavitt responded. The people in the room, all online influencers sympathetic to Trump, laughed in response.
Trump repeated his assertion that Canada should be a U.S. state on the morning of election day Monday, as well as in an interview with Time magazine released last week, after staying largely quiet on the issue during the Canadian election campaign.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended Trump’s comments again in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, while acknowledging the administration was not taking steps to annex Canada.
“They’ll have their elections this week, they’ll have a new leader, and we’ll deal with the new leadership of Canada,” Rubio said. “There’s many things we will work cooperatively with Canada on, but we actually don’t like the way they’ve treated us on trade.
“I think the president has stated repeatedly, he thinks Canada would be better off as a state, and he has said that based on what he was told by the previous prime minister (Justin Trudeau), who said Canada can’t survive unless it treats the U.S. unfairly on trade.”
Those comments were based on what Trump has said Trudeau told him at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in December, which Trudeau has not verified.
Liberals centered their campaign around the threats Trump posed to Canada, an issue voters overwhelmingly saw the Liberals as the best party to deal with, according to Ipsos election polling.
Carney focused part of his victory speech early Tuesday morning on the upcoming negotiations his government is set to have with the Trump administration on issues like trade and security, which Carney and Trump agreed to hold after the election during a phone call last month.
“We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” Carney told his supporters in Ottawa. “We have to look out for ourselves, and above all we have to take care of each other.
“When I sit down with President Trump, it will be to discuss the future economic and security relationship between two sovereign nations. And it will be with our full knowledge that we have many, many other options than the United States to build prosperity for all Canadians.”
Re-elected Liberals told Global News that Trump’s renewed threats may have helped secure the party’s victory Monday night.
“Mr. Trump is continuing, frankly, a discourse that is insulting to Canadians,” said Dominic LeBlanc, who served in key positions in both Trudeau and Carney’s cabinets, most recently as international trade minister before the election.
Melanie Joly, who has been foreign affairs minister under both Trudeau and Carney, said she heard concerns about Trump and the U.S. directly from voters as she campaigned in her Montreal riding of Ahuntsic-Cartierville.
“I really think that at the end of the day, what we need is a strong mandate,” she said. “And I really emphasize that because fundamentally, Trump respects strength, and we need to make sure that we have the right prime minister, and we will.”
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