Canadian minister says Trump was joking when he said Canada could become 51st state

 President-elect Donald Trump was joking when he suggested Canada become the 51st US state during a dinner with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a Canadian minister who attended their recent dinner said Tuesday.

Fox News reported that Trump made the comment in response to Trudeau raising concerns that Trump's threatened tariffs on Canada would damage Canada's economy.

Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who attended the Friday dinner at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, said Trump's comments were in jest.

“The president was telling jokes. The president was teasing us. It was, of course, on that issue, in no way a serious comment,” LeBlanc told reporters in Ottawa.

LeBlanc described it as a three-hour social evening at the president's residence in Florida on a long weekend of American Thanksgiving. “The conversation was going to be light-hearted,” he said.

He called the relations warm and cordial and said the fact that “the president is able to joke like that for us” indicates good relations.

On Tuesday, Trump appeared to continue with the joke, posting on his Truth Social platform an AI-generated image of himself standing on a mountain with a Canadian flag next to him with the caption “Oh Canada!"

Some Canadians had fun with it.

“If I were President Trump, I'd think twice before invading Canada. The last time the US tried something like that— back in the War of 1812 —it didn't exactly end well. Canada even burned down the White House,” former Quebec Premier Jean Charest joked on X.

Earlier last week, the Republican president-elect threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the US from Canada and Mexico unless they stem the flow of migrants and drugs.

Trudeau requested the meeting in a bid to avoid the tariffs by convincing Trump that the northern border is nothing like the US southern border with Mexico.

Trudeau held a rare meeting with opposition leaders on Tuesday about U.S-Canada relations and later said that opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre shouldn't amplify the erroneous narratives that Americans are saying about the border.

“Less than one percent of migrants coming into the United States irregularly come from Canada and 0.2 percent of the fentanyl coming into the United States comes from Canada,” Trudeau said in Parliament.

Canadian officials have said there are plans to put more helicopters, drones and law enforcement officers at the border.

At the dinner, Kristen Hillman, Canada's ambassador to the US, said America's trade deficit with Canada was also raised. Hillman said the US had a USD75 billion trade deficit with Canada last year but noted a third of what Canada sells into the US is energy exports and prices have been high.

“Trade balances are something that he focuses on so it's important to engage in that conversation but to put it into context,” Hillman told The Associated Press. “We are one-tenth the size of the United States so a balanced trade deal would mean per capita we are buying 10 times more from the US than they are buying from us. If that's his metric we will certainly engage on that.”

Hillman said Canada sold USD170 billion worth of energy products last year to the US

About 60% of US crude oil imports are from Canada, and 85% of US electricity imports as well.

Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the US and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and investing for national security.

About 77% of Canada's exports go to the US

Trudeau's government successfully employed a “Team Canada” approach during Trump's first term in office when the free trade deal between Canada, the US and Mexico was renegotiated. But Trudeau's minority government is in a much weaker position politically now and faces an election within a year.

Poilievre, Canada's opposition leader, said the tariffs would harm Americans.

“The president-elect was elected on a promise to make America richer. These tariffs would make America poorer,” Poilievre said after meeting with Trudeau.

Poilievre said the US would be wise to do more free trade with its best friend and closest ally.

Canada is the top export destination for 36 US states. Nearly 3.6 billion Canadian dollars (USD2.7 billion) worth of goods and services cross the border each day.

Trudeau returned home after the dinner at Mar-a-Lago club in Florida without assurances Trump would back away from threatened tariffs on all products from the major American trading partner. Trump called the talks “productive” but signaled no retreat from a pledge that Canada says unfairly lumps it in with Mexico over the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States.

The flows of migrants and seizures of drugs are vastly different. US customs agents seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border during the last fiscal year, compared with 21,100 pounds at the Mexican border.

Most of the fentanyl reaching the US — where it causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually — is made by Mexican drug cartels using precursor chemicals smuggled from Asia.

On immigration, the US Border Patrol reported 1.53 million encounters with irregular migrants at the southwest border with Mexico between October 2023 and September 2024. That compares to 23,721 encounters at the Canadian border during that time.
[12:00 PM, 12/4/2024] sandeepchavala1996: Trump's lawyers urge judge to toss his hush money conviction
US-TRUMP-LD HUSH MONEY

04:06 AM, 04 Dec 2024   782 Words  

New York, Dec 4 (AP) President-elect Donald Trump's lawyers formally asked a judge Monday to throw out his hush money criminal conviction, arguing continuing the case would present unconstitutional “disruptions to the institution of the Presidency.“

In a filing made public Tuesday, Trump's lawyers told Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan that dismissal is warranted because of the “overwhelming national mandate granted to him by the American people on November 5, 2024.”

They also cited President Joe Biden's recent pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, who had been convicted of tax and gun charges.

“President Biden asserted that his son was selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,' and treated differently,'" Trump's legal team wrote. The Manhattan district attorney, they claimed, had engaged in the type of political theater "that President Biden condemned.”

Prosecutors will have until Dec. 9 to respond. They have said they will fight any efforts to dismiss the case but have indicated a willingness to delay the sentencing until after Trump's second term ends in 2029. In their filing Monday, Trump's attorneys dismissed the idea of holding off sentencing until Trump is out of office as a “ridiculous suggestion.”

Following Trump's election victory last month, Merchan halted proceedings and indefinitely postponed his sentencing, previously scheduled for late November, to allow the defense and prosecution to weigh in on the future of the case. He also delayed a decision on Trump's prior bid to dismiss the case on immunity grounds.

Trump has been fighting for months to reverse his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress her claim that they had sex a decade earlier. He says they did not and denies any wrongdoing.

Taking a swipe at Bragg and New York City, as Trump often did throughout the trial, the filing argues that dismissal would also benefit the public by giving him and “the numerous prosecutors assigned to this case a renewed opportunity to put an end to deteriorating conditions in the City and to protect its residents from violent crime.”

Clearing Trump, the lawyers added, would also allow him to “to devote all of his energy to protecting the Nation.”

The defense filing was signed by Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, who represented Trump during the trial and have since been selected by the president-elect to fill senior roles at the Justice Department.

A dismissal would erase Trump's historic conviction, sparing him the cloud of a criminal record and possible prison sentence. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office.

Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Merchan hasn't set a timetable for a decision.

Merchan could also decide to uphold the verdict and proceed to sentencing, delay the case until Trump leaves office, wait until a federal appeals court rules on Trump's parallel effort to get the case moved out of state court or choose some other option.

Prosecutors had cast the payout as part of a Trump-driven effort to keep voters from hearing salacious stories about him. Trump's then-lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels. Trump later reimbursed him, and Trump's company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses — concealing what they really were, prosecutors alleged.

Trump has pledged to appeal the verdict if the case is not dismissed. He and his lawyers said the payments to Cohen were properly categorized as legal expenses for legal work.

A month after the verdict, the Supreme Court ruled that ex-presidents can't be prosecuted for official acts — things they did in the course of runni…