faced so much pressure from the president to unrecuse himself in the mueller probe they were all on hand to honor the former senate colleague, john mccain. the president spent the day dealing with new fallout in his trade war with canada after his disparaging remarks about the united states ally leaked out. the toronto star s daniel dale, who will join us later this hour, reported in an off the record-portion of the president s interview with bloomberg, donald trump said he s not making any compromises at all in the talks with canada but he cannot say this publicly because it s going to be so insulting that they are not going to be able to make a deal. end quote. canadian officials saw that as proof that the president is not negotiating in good faith as he threatens to exclude canada from a new trade deal. they reportedly confronted the u.s. delegation over that report today. here was the president s response at an event in charlotte. when you say off the record, that s a very
pact, then into the free trade agreement. it is a serious threat. it may not be economically viable for the united states but it s serious. it s a very serious threat. you know, we had this big uproar over the steel and aluminum anymore tariffs. automotive tariffs would dwarf the economic impact of that. it may not cripple the canadian economy, but it is many times the size and it would damage states and provinces on both sides of the border. trump seems to be inclined to impose tariffs. he seems to enjoy his ability to impose tariffs at his will. and he s not letting up on this threat. so canada, in addition to wanting to safeguard this trade deal overall, it really, really wants to avoid automotive tariffs. daniel, strong reporting, thank you, daniel dale with the toronto star. this just in. president trump still has a smartphone. he tweeted rasmussen has his approval at 48%, and he tweets about the washington post /abc poll that shows him at 60% disapproval. quote i call it
that disparaging off the record comments he made about the nation of canada were reported this morning. contrary to what was said, they say they did not violate the record about those statements. the toronto star obtained the president s comments independently and were not bound by the same off the record agreement. the result of all of this is those comments are now part of the public record. because of that we know that despite the president s claim that he loves canada and its national anthem, trump was prepared to concede absolutely nothing to canada during the ongoing nafta negotiations. the president told bloomberg if canada knew what his position was, it would be so insulting they re not going to be able to make a deal. those comments appeared to have sullied the president s efforts to renegotiate nafta. according to the toronto star, canadian officials confronted trump s negotiators with those comments at a meeting today and then talks broke down. canada and the u.s. have off
bring canada into the preliminary agreement trump made with mexico. negotiations between the two countries will continue into next week. for more on what this means for both the united states and canada, i turn to the reporter who broke this story of fellow toronto, daniel dale, forge bureau chief at the toronto star. this was a remarkable story. nobody really thought the negotiations were going particularly well, but it s a real turn from the relationship that canada and the united states have had over the long term and what it looked like might be working out between donald trump and justin trudeau at the beginning of his administration. they started off on warm terms for whatever reason. the president liked the liberal, very different, multi-lateralist, charismatic, inclusive prime minister, very different from him. but things soured. and they seem to sour in the wake of trump s decision to impose steel tariffs.