Lake Ontario

The first troll is at it again. After placing a 50% tariff on Canadian goods, to which Canada responded with their own 50% tariffs while also rejecting Trump's demand that all American packaging for Quebec be in English, Taco trolled Canada Tuesday morning with a post on Shit Social saying that his administration was “giving serious consideration” to renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”

Trump's base of yee-haw fuckers love this petty shit, like his executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, but it doubles down on the fact that he is the bad guy in the situation. But then again, assholes love being assholes.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who seems to relish a good fight, dismissed Trump's threat and said, “I think it’s a lot of rhetoric.”

Trump also said in his post that he did not “expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer.” Ford pointed out that Canada is the “number one customer” for more than a dozen U.S. states.

Ford said, “We’re strong believers in being a sovereign country, and when President Trump wants to attack our sovereignty and attack our businesses and people in Ontario, I can’t roll over,” he said. “My job is to protect Ontario and Canada, and ironically, protecting the American people.”

On Monday, Ford made his own threats to Trump, and said he could cut Ontario’s power exports to U.S. states. Ontario’s power grid directly connects to Michigan, New York and Minnesota. Of course, those are blue states, so Trump may not care. Trump does not understand that it's his job to protect the American people.

“We power 1.5 million homes and businesses. Everything’s on the table. I’ll do whatever it takes,” said Ford.

Ford called on both sides of the fight to bring down the temperature on Tuesday, acknowledging in an interview with CNN that “things got a little heated” between him and Trump. “Let’s negotiate a fair deal because it’s hurting the U.S. It’s hurting Canada, and we just want to make sure that we have a fair deal,” he said.

Ford said, “I do not understand why he wants to attack Canada nonstop. We’re the closest friends and allies, and make no mistake about it, Canadians still love the American people. They love the U.S.”

I’m not so sure about that.

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten said on Tuesday that Canadians “hate, hate, hate the United States of America.”

Trump has "managed to pull a wonderful magic trick, that is take a longtime ally like Canada and all of a sudden, Canadians, they hate, hate, hate the United States of America," Enten said on Tuesday's broadcast of "OutFront."

Enten noted polling that showed that Canadians' net favorability rating of the United States stood at +13 points before Trump returned to office. But now, it has plunged to -33 points — a shift Enten described as "unbelievable" and "unprecedented."

During Joe Biden’s presidency, 52% of Canadians expressed confidence in the American president, compared with 46% who did not. Under Trump, only 20% of Canadians say they are confident in the American president, while 79% are not.

Fact: most Canadians would call Donald Trump a “hoser,” and wouldn't be caught dead sharing a donut and a cup of coffee with him at Tim Hortons. Only aboot 20% of them would give him the time of day.

Harry said, “Four in five Canadians are not confident in the president of the United States, and that is what is driving this dislike, dare I say hatred, that Canadians have in the United States overall.”

Three years ago, my cartoonist organization had its yearly convention in San Francisco, and we were joined by a bunch of our Canadian brethren. We like our Canadian brothers and sisters so much that we piggybacked off their convention the next year in Montreal, and had ours simultaneously. But last year, despite inviting them, not one Canadian cartoonist came to our convention in Bethesda because they were boycotting the United States because of Donald Trump. I have not heard anything yet, but I would not be surprised if none show up at our convention next month in Sacramento. We miss our Canadian friends and look forward to a future convention when Donald Trump is not in the White House so we can see them again. None of the American cartoonists blame our Canadian friends for their boycott.

Donald Trump is ruining America's friendships. He won't be happy until no one wants to talk to us. He reinforces the international stereotype that Americans are stupid, arrogant, uncultured bullies. And the thing is, a lot of Americans agree with that stereotype of Donald Trump and his supporters. And then we had the World Cup, and every international visitor went to Buc-ee’s, and yeah…we are never shedding that stereotype now.

There are 69 days left until the midterms.

Creative note: So yesterday I did a 180 and drew a lovely cartoon that was a tribute to Dolly Parton, after drawing a cartoon that literally says “Go fuck your mother.” I just sent this cartoon to Laura and Hillary to proofread when I got the breaking news that Dolly Parton had just passed away. I knew immediately that this would have to go on the back burner.

Last year, a reader in Paris, Andrea, reached out to me to talk about my work. Yesterday, I sent Andrea an email to make sure that I had the wording, spelling, and definition correct in this cartoon. I didn't tell her what I was up to, as I mostly wanted to see what her reaction would be. I really wanted to talk to someone from Quebec, but I couldn't think of anyone. Even though they both speak French, I know that dialects, spelling, and wording change from region to region. It's not like a lot of Americans speak the same English as they do in Liverpool. Actually, a lot of people in London will tell you that they don't speak the same English that they speak in Liverpool.

I guess it helped out that this cartoon was shelved for a day because Andrea did not get back to me until this morning, and she informed me immediately that the French I had sent her was “crass.”

She wrote, “It is a very crass thing to say - but grammatically it is perfect. The imperative of aller (to go) when you are telling someone (familiarly with 'tu') is 'va'. But if you want to be respectful while saying the crass phrase, you would use 'Allez' for vous. I think 'va' is best... like who would you cuss out that you would be simultaneously respectful to...?!”

Thank you for the assist, Andrea. You rock!

Drawn in 30 seconds:

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