Why Canadian leader's speech revealed Trump's weakness

By Ezra Klein / The New York Times

“Dear Prime Minister Carney,” President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. “Please let this Letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Everything Trump has done over the last week has made him look tawdry, addled and small. He began his latest play for Greenland by complaining about being passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize and ended it by disinviting Mark Carney from his “Board of Peace.” For Trump, nothing — not even peace — transcends his brutish transactionalism.

Coolly assessing that transactionalism is what landed Carney in Trump’s sights. Two things stood out to me about the speech that Carney gave at Davos last week. First, Carney’s speech used the word “hegemon” four times. He said the word “America” only once, and then only to specify “American hegemony.” This is who we are now to our northern neighbors: Not the America they once knew, or thought they knew, but “the hegemon.”

Second, Carney invoked Vaclav Havel’s story of how communism perpetuated itself. In his essay “The Power of the Powerless,” Havel imagined a grocer who hangs a “Workers of the World, Unite!” sign in his window. Why does he do this, Havel asked? He does it because to do otherwise would invite ruin.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/klein-why-canadian-leaders-speech-revealed-trumps-weakness/