Nearly nine years ago, as Barack Obama started wrapping up his final year as president, the Democrat traveled to Canada to deliver remarks to the House of Commons in Ottawa. To understate matters, Obama received an extraordinarily warm welcome.
In fact, an NBC News report from the time noted that the then-president was greeted with “rapturous” applause and an extended standing ovation, which included Canadian lawmakers chanting, “Four more years! Four more years!” for quite a while.
At the same gathering, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canadians and Americans are more than just neighbors: The two countries’ populations, he said, are “family.” Obama soon after celebrated “the extraordinary alliance” between Canadians and Americans, adding: “Americans can never say it enough: We could not ask for a better friend or ally than Canada. We could not. It’s true, and we do not take it for granted.”
Soon after, Obama went on to declare: “As president, I’ve deepened the ties between our countries. And because of the progress we’ve made in recent years, I can stand before you and say that the enduring partnership between Canada and the United States is as strong as it has ever been, and we are more closely aligned than ever before.”
Those remarks were delivered in June 2016. I remember watching the event and feeling a great sense of pride, watching foreign policymakers embrace an American leader with robust enthusiasm.
A lot can happen in nine years. The New York Times reported:
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada on Thursday vowed to defend his country’s workers, businesses and economy in response to new tariffs and threats from President Trump. He said Canada would move rapidly to trade more with other countries because it was clear that the United States was “no longer a reliable partner.”
Carney, just two weeks into his tenure, also said, “The old relationship we had with the United States, based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over.” He added, “We must fundamentally reimagine our economy. We will need to ensure that Canada can succeed in a drastically different world.”
Carney: "The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over." “We will need to dramatically reduce our reliance on the United States,” the prime minister went on to say. “We will need to pivot our trade relationships elsewhere. And we will need to do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen in generations.” Americans who voted for the Republican ticket last fall might not have realized they were throwing their support behind a U.S. foreign policy that would shatter Canadian confidence in the United States. But here we are. It’s tempting to wonder what kind of reception Trump might receive in the House of Commons, and the degree to which it would be different from the one Obama received in 2016, but my suspicion is that we’ll never know — because the incumbent American president is unlikely to receive such an invitation.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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