Ontario Premier Doug Ford is slamming Donald Trump as a “dictator” and the “king of bankruptcies” after the U.S. president criticized him on social media on Monday afternoon. In a post on Truth Social, Trump referred to Ford by name as “the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford.” The post came hours after an interview with The Morning Rush with Bill Carroll in Ottawa in which Ford said that Trump could “kiss my ass.” At a news conference in Hamilton on Monday afternoon, Ford initially said that he wouldn’t respond to a “dictator” and “bully” like Trump before going on a prolonged rant about the U.S. president. “I am not going to take any advice off a guy that is the king of bankruptcies and he is actually tariffing his own people, taxing his own people,” Ford said. “I am going to be reaching out to every single governor, every single senator and every single senator and when it comes to the (U.S.) midterms I have a message to the Americans: don’t vote in a person that is going to kill your jobs.” On Truth Social, Trump said that there had been “lots o bluster” from Ford before noting that Canada “couldn’t survive” without the U.S. He then referred to Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ford as “Governor Carney and his flunky, Ford,” repeating an often-used line of attack against Justin Trudeau. “Someone should get these clowns to “fall in line” or, the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!” Trump said. Ford’s news conference in Hamilton was held to announce an expansion of an existing program to support workers and businesses impacted by the trade war. However, it unfolded just moments after Trump’s Truth Social post . At one point during the news conference Ford addressed the U.S. president directly, saying “your own people President Trump don’t even like you.” He then predicted that Americans would “speak loud and clear” during the upcoming midterm elections. “If I was allowed to I would be down there door-knocking,” he said. Ford’s comments on Monday come after Trump threatened to impose a 50 per cent tariff on Canadian vehicles by 2027. At his news conference, Ford called on the federal government to help the province “withstand the economic pain” that will accompany the renewed trade war with the U.S. through a number of concrete steps. Ford told reporters that the federal government should “eliminate federal greenhouse gas emission standards for Canadian-made vehicles and exempt tariff-impacted sectors from federal emissions performance standards.” He said that doing so would save Canadian businesses “hundreds of millions of dollars in compliance costs.” Ford also said that the federal government should drop tariff rate quotas on steel imports to zero for countries that have free trade agreements with Canada. “In response to these tariffs the federal government needs to work with us to take urgent action to strengthen the competitiveness of key Ontario industries,” he said.
