From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Nicole Silverio

President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance duked it out with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Friday after he openly criticized the U.S. for not having stopped Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump said he is not siding with either Putin or Zelenskyy but is determined to negotiate a deal to end the war, while Vance argued that the current administration is “engaging in diplomacy.” Zelenskyy argued that the U.S. has failed to stop Putin and challenged Vance’s argument that the nation is engaging in “diplomacy.”

“During 2015, nobody stopped [Putin]. He just occupied them too. He killed people,” Zelenskyy said. “[Throughout] 2014 and 2022, the situation [was] the same. People have been dying on the content line, nobody stopped him … He broke this ceasefire. He killed our people and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners. But he didn’t do it. What kind of diplomacy, J.D., are you speaking about? What do you mean?”

“I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country,” Vance said. “Mr. President, Mr. President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict … I have actually watched and seen the stories and I know what happens, you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour, Mr. President, do you disagree that you’ve had problems bringing people into your military? And do you think it’s disrespectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country.”

WATCH:

Trump told Zelenskyy point-blank that he was “disrespecting” the U.S. and had “no position” to be critical of the nation given that he is at war.

“We’re trying to solve a problem, don’t tell us what we’re going to feel,” Trump told Zelenskyy. “Because you’re in no position to dictate that, remember that. You’re in no position to dictate what we’re going to feel. We’re going to feel very good and very strong. You’re right now not in a very good position … You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you’ll have the cards. You’re playing cards. You’re gambling with a lot of lives and millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III, you’re gambling with World War III and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to this country. It’s backed you far more than a lot people say it should have.”

“Have you said thank you once?” Vance then asked, prompting Zelenskyy to claim he had. “No, in this entire meeting, have you said thank you? You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October. Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and to the president who’s trying to save your country.”

Zelenskyy accused Vance of “speaking very loudly about the war,” and argued his nation has “stayed strong” throughout the conflict. Trump reminded the Ukrainian president that the Ukrainians have persisted against Russia since 2022 because the U.S. generously sent the nation its military equipment and spent billions of taxpayer dollars to help them fight the war.

Vance told Zelenskyy that they should “litigate [their] disagreements” rather than him traveling to the U.S. to call out the nation’s leaders.

After the explosive exchange, the scheduled joint press conference between Trump and Zelenskyy had been canceled. The White House told the Daily Caller that Trump asked Zelenskyy to leave the White House over the incident.

The president said in a Truth Social post that Zelenskyy “is not ready for peace” because U.S. involvement grants him a “big advantage in negotiations.”

“We had a very meaningful meeting in the White House today,” Trump said. “Much was learned that could never be understood without conversation under such fire and pressure. It’s amazing what comes out through emotion, and I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.”

The U.S. and Ukraine had finalized a deal for mineral extraction and had planned to sign the agreement at the White House. No deals will be signed as of Friday.

From the Fraser Institute

By Ross McKitrick

During the Superbowl, Doug Ford ran a campaign ad about fearlessly protecting Ontario workers against Trump. I suppose it’s effective as election theatre; it’s intended to make Ontarians feel lucky we’ve got a tough leader like Ford standing up to the Bad Orange Man. But my reaction was that Ford is lucky to have the Bad Orange Man creating a distraction so he doesn’t have to talk about Ontario’s high taxes, declining investment, stagnant real wages, lengthening health-care wait times and all the other problems that have gotten worse on his watch.

President Trump’s obnoxious and erratic rhetoric also seems to have put his own advisors on the defensive. Peter Navarro, Kevin Hassett and Howard Lutnick have taken pains to clarify that what we are dealing with is a “drug war not a trade war.” This is confusing since many sources say that Canada is responsible for less than one per cent of fentanyl entering the United States. But if we are going to de-escalate matters and resolve the dispute, we should start by trying to understand why they think we’re the problem.

Suppose in 2024 Trump and his team had asked for a Homeland Security briefing on fentanyl. What would they have learned? They already knew about Mexico. But they would also have learned that while Canada doesn’t rival Mexico for the volume of pills being sent into the U.S., we have become a transnational money laundering hub that keeps the Chinese and Mexican drug cartels in business. And we have ignored previous U.S. demands to deal with the problem.

Over a decade ago, Vancouver-based investigative journalist Sam Cooper unearthed shocking details of how Asian drug cartels backed by the Chinese Communist Party turned British Columbia’s casinos into billion-dollar money laundering operations, then scaled up from there through illicit real estate schemes in Vancouver and Toronto. This eventually triggered the 2022 Cullen Commission, which concluded, bluntly, that a massive amount of drug money was being laundered in B.C., that “the federal anti–money laundering [AML] regime is not effective,” that the RCMP had shut down what little AML capacity it had in 2012 just as the problem was exploding in scale, and that government officials have long known about the problem but ignored it.

In 2023 the Biden State Department under Anthony Blinken told Canada our fentanyl and money laundering control efforts were inadequate. Since then Canada’s border security forces have been shown to be so compromised and corrupt that U.S. intelligence agencies sidelined us and stopped sharing information. The corruption went to the top. A year ago Cameron Ortis, the former head of domestic intelligence at the RCMP, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being convicted of selling top secret U.S. intelligence to money launderers tied to drugs and terrorism to help them avoid capture.

In September 2024 the Biden Justice Department hit the Toronto-Dominion Bank with a $3 billion fine for facilitating $670 million in money laundering for groups tied to transnational drug trafficking and terrorism. Then-attorney general Merrick Garland said “TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish. By making its services convenient for criminals, it became one.”

Imagine the outcry if Trump had called one of our chartered banks a criminal organization.

We are making some progress in cleaning up the mess, but in the process learning that we are now a major fentanyl manufacturer. In October the RCMP raided massive fentanyl factories in B.C. and Alberta. Unfortunately there remain many gaps in our enforcement capabilities. For instance, the RCMP, which is responsible for border patrols between ports of entry, has admitted it has no airborne surveillance operations after 4 p.m. on weekdays or on weekends.

The fact that the prime minister’s promise of a new $1.3-billion border security and anti-drug plan convinced Trump to suspend the tariff threat indicates that the fentanyl angle wasn’t entirely a pretext. And we should have done these things sooner, even if Trump hadn’t made it an issue. We can only hope Ottawa now follows through on its promises. I fear, though, that if Ford’s Captain Canada act proves a hit with voters, the Liberals may distract voters with a flag-waving campaign against the Bad Orange Man rather than confront the deep economic problems we have imposed on ourselves.

A trade dispute appears inevitable now that Trump has signaled the 25 percent tariffs are back on. The problem is knowing whom to listen to since Trump is openly contradicting his own economic team. Trump’s top trade advisor, Peter Navarro, has written that the U.S. needs to pursue “reciprocity,” which he defines as other countries not charging tariffs on U.S. imports any higher than the U.S. charges. In the Americans’ view, U.S. trade barriers are very low and everyone else’s should be, too—a stance completely at odds with Trump’s most recent moves.

Whichever way this plays out Canada has no choice but to go all-in on lowering the cost of doing business here, especially in trade-exposed sectors such as steel, autos, manufacturing and technology. That starts with cutting taxes including carbon-pricing and rolling back our costly net-zero anti-energy regulatory regime. In the coming election campaign, that’s the agenda we need to see spelled out.

How much easier it will be instead for Canadian politicians to play the populist hero with vague anti-Trump posturing. But that would be poor substitute for a long overdue pro-Canadian economic growth agenda.