The diagnosis was delusional on Truth Social early on Thursday.
US President Donald Trump cast himself as a doctor performing surgery in a post regarding his “Liberation Day” onslaught of trade-war escalating tariffs.
“The operation is over!” Trump wrote. “The patient lived, and is healing. The prognosis is that the patient will be far stronger, bigger, better, and more resilient than ever before. Make America great again!”
If healing can be defined as global markets plummeting after Trump’s announcement of a 10% across-the-board tariff on foreign goods (plus much more for major trade partners like China and the European Union), then congratulations, “Dr Trump.”
But we’re thinking he could use a dose of reality.
Carney, a former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada with no political experience — and no seat in the House of Commons — will take over the leadership of both his party and his country at a time of profound uncertainty prompted by US President Donald Trump’s adversarial stance toward his neighbor as a general election looms.
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Carney is expected to call snap elections shortly after being sworn into office, and voter surveys show his party within fighting distance of his main opposition: the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre.
The Conservatives had long been considered the favourites to win the next election, which needs to be held by October. Trump’s talk of annexing Canada and his tariffs against the country have reshaped the race, overshadowing issues such as inflation and immigration that appeared to originally dominate voters’ minds.
“Trump has said he’s the most important person in Canadian politics right now,” said Nick Taylor-Vaisey, Politico Ottawa bureau chief. “I think everybody in Canada would acknowledge that.”
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Mark Carney, the newly elected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, addresses supporters in a victory speech Sunday after the official announcement of the 2025 Liberal Leadership race results at Rogers Centre in Ottawa, Ontario.
Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The latest polling average, updated by The Economist on Saturday, shows the Liberals trailing the Conservatives by 7 percentage points — a far slimmer margin compared to the 25-point difference between the two parties in late December, prior to Trudeau’s resignation announcement. Voters also appear to favor Carney over Poilievre, a recent poll found.
“Momentum is with [Carney] and his party,” The Economist said in a column on Monday. “Whether that will be enough to deliver victory — and to keep Mr Trump at bay— is yet to be seen.”
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Carney, a former Goldman Sachs executive, sought to highlight his determination to protect his country from Trump in his first speech, pledging to maintain Canada’s tariffs on the US “until the Americans show us respect and and until they can join us in making credible and reliable commitments to free and fair trade.”
“The Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country,” Carney said. “Think about it: If they succeeded, they would destroy our way of life. In America, health care is a big business. In Canada, it is a right.”
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“America is not Canada, and Canada never, ever will be part of America in any way, shape or form,” he continued.
Meanwhile, some voters appear to worry that Poilievre’s style is too similar to Trump’s — a perception that’s been amplified by ads run by the Liberals that show the Conservative Party leader echoing Trump’s rhetoric, including on “fake news.”
“At a time when Trump is toxic in Canada, that image is not helping Poilievre,” David McLaughlin, a former senior official in previous Conservative governments in Canada, told The Wall Street Journal.
Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, speaks during a Liberal Party of Canada leadership announcement event Sunday in Ottawa, Ontario.
David Kawai/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Andrew Enns, the executive vice president of the Central Canada operations of Leger, a market research company, told Bloomberg that while the shift of the election’s focus on Trump poses a big challenge for Poilievre, Carney is still an unknown figure to most Canadians, meaning their perception of him could change as he assumes the top job.
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“Carney’s had an impact, I’m not going to take that away from him, but the bigger change has been this whole Trump environment,” Enns said. “Tariffs have repositioned how Canadians are viewing the Canadian government now.”
The US president told the Russian leader to stop “pounding” Ukraine or face serious sanctions last week, after weeks of not applying any pressure to Moscow.
A further 81 people were injured, 79 of whom were in territory controlled by Ukraine.
The UN also found casualty numbers in Ukraine overall for 2025 remain higher than they were in 2024.
The attacks unfolded even as Trump was telling reporters in the White House that Putin “holds all the cards” – and that Russia is “easier to deal with” than Ukraine on Friday.
It’s worth remembering that Russia invaded Ukraine in a land grab in 2022.
But, Trump said Kyiv has to “get on the ball and get the job done” when it comes to a peace agreement, adding: “I have to know that [Ukraine] want to settle – if they don’t want to settle, we’re out of there.
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“They’re bombing the hell out of Ukraine… I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine.”
And, despite the ongoing bombardments, Trump then said he thinks Putin wants peace, and “I think he’s doing what anyone else would do”.
He claimed: “I think both parties want to settle. I think we are going to get it settled.”
Speaking on Thursday, Kellogg said: “Very candidly, they brought it on themselves, the Ukrainians.
“I think the best way I can describe it is sort of like hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose. You got their attention, and it’s very significant, obviously, because of the support that we give.”
“We’re going to end this war, and this is one way to make sure you understand we’re serious about it.
“So is it hard, of course it is, but it’s not like they didn’t know this was coming. They got fair warning it was coming.”
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Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton told CNN on Friday that Putin is continuing his attacks on Ukraine because he knows the threat from Trump was “totally hollow”.
″[Trump] did it simply to show some kind of balance given the things he had said about Zelenskyy and Ukrainians,” Bolton said, alluding to the US president’s baseless attacks on the Ukrainian president.
Trump, as he aligns more closely with Moscow, has falsely called Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator”, claimed he is ungrateful for the US’s support during the war and blamed Kyiv for starting the war.
It “seems almost unavoidable at this point” that the United States is “headed for a deep, deep recession” thanks to the Trump administration’s massive government job cuts and pullback from official contracts, a former Obama-era Department of Labor economist has warned.
Jesse Rothstein, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, predicted on BlueSky this week that the employment report for March 2025 will show “bigger job losses than any month ever outside of a few in 2008-9 and 2020.” (I.e. — when America was hit by the 2008 financial crash and then, later, by the coronavirus pandemic).
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It seems almost unavoidable at this point that we are headed for a deep, deep recession. Just based on 200K+ federal firings & pullback of contracts, the March employment report (to be released April 4) seems certain to show bigger job losses than any month ever outside of a few in 2008-9 and 2020.
Rothstein also envisioned “enormous private market uncertainty” that would make companies reluctant to hire.
It’s “going to be very, very bad,” he said he feared.
President Donald Trump has tasked billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, with slashing public spending via the non-official Department of Government Efficiency.
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The current total number of federal jobs that have been cut is not clear.
But Rothstein estimated it to be more than 200,000.
The gutting of government is just one Trump policy that economists have warned could plunge America into a new financial crisis.
Others include Trump’s imposition of tariffs on imports and his vow to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz earlier this week said the tariffs could cause stagflation — or stagnant economic growth, high inflation and rising unemployment. The US is becoming “a scary place to invest” amid the ripping up of government contracts, he added.
Vice President JD Vance on Sunday defended his controversial speech from last week, during which he said the biggest threat facing Europe wasn’t from US adversaries like Russia and China, but “from within.”
Vance also raised eyebrows on Friday over his decision to meet with Alice Weidel, the co-chair of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, following his address before the Munich Security Conference which had already spread alarm and anger among European officials.
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Margaret Brennan, the moderator of CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday interviewed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asking the Trump official to explain what was accomplished by Vance’s words and actions, beside irking America’s allies on the continent.
“Why would our allies or anybody be irritated by free speech and by someone giving their opinion?” Rubio asked.
Brennan pushed back, noting that Vance delivered those remarks in Germany — “a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide,” in reference to the Holocaust. The CBS host added that Weidel represents a party with ties to extremism.
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“Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide,” Rubio replied. “The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities.”
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Vance doubled down, suggesting his embrace of the far-right amounted to exercising “free speech,” while appearing to scold Brennan’s line of questioning.
“Does the media really think the holocaust was caused by free speech?” Vance asked.
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During Friday’s speech, Vance had harsh words for Europe, while sharing no criticism of U.S. foes in Beijing and the Kremlin.
“The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor,” Vance said. “What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values — values shared with the United States of America.”
He also appeared to criticise European countries for isolating extremist parties, seeming to point the finger at Germany, even though he didn’t explicitly reference the AfD.
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“Shutting people out of the political process protects nothing,” he said.
The AfD, which has also been promoted by Trump ally Elon Musk, has been scrutinized by the country’s intelligence service for years over its ties to extremists. The party, which is now mainly running on an anti-immigration platform, is still expected to have a strong showing at Sunday’s election, with polls predicting it will finish second behind the Christian Democrats.
That is a significant development considering the US-Russia relationship completely fractured over the Ukraine war.
Even so, deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov wrote on the Foreign Ministry website that the US “must take the first step” to fix the relationship.
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According to Reuters news agency, he said the Kremlin has tried to be a partner with the west, but “no one was listening or, in theory, wanted to listen.”
He added: “And that is because the underlying aim was to weaken the geopolitical rival to the maximum.”
He said Moscow has regained “its lawful place in world geopolitics by frustrating the plans of Joe Biden’s administration”, alleging the last White House wanted to push a “strategic defeat” on Russia in a “hybrid war” via its support for Ukraine.
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Ryabkov continued: “Against the background of this failed policy and with the change of administration, it is the United States that must take the first step in normalising relations on the basis of mutual respect and equal rights.”
Despite this warning, he said Russia is “open to dialogue and ready to reach agreement through hard bargaining while taking account of realities on the ground … So it is up to D Trump and his team to make a decision.”
The US president has expressed his sympathy over Russia’s frustration the idea that Ukraine could one day join Nato, and once described Putin’s invasion as “savvy” and “genius”.
Although Trump officially returned to the office on January 21, only preliminary contact has been established between the US and Russia so far, according to Russia’s ambassador to Britain Andrei Kelin.
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Asked if Trump was seen as a friend of Russia by ITV News, the ambassador said: “No.”
“That is clearly no, because what we have heard about peace through force, about [the] necessity to impose more sanctions on Russia,” he said, adding: “We are hearing different things and a lot of speculation all around so it is too early to say what will be the outcome of that.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the tech billionaire’s official title to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday.
“A special government employee is anyone who works, or is expected to work, for the government for 130 days or less in a 365-day period.”
“Special government employees are subject to most rules, although sometimes in a less restrictive way.”
Musk is “not a volunteer but also not a full-time federal employee,” CNN explained his position on Monday.
The richest person in the world spent more than $290 million backing President Donald Trump and Republicans in the 2024 elections. He is now running the non-official Department of Government Efficiency, which is looking to significantly slash public spending.
Conspiracy theory-peddling Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (Republican, Georgia) drew criticism this weekend for a social media post about the foreign accent of a journalist ― who asked a question during a White House press briefing ― and her subsequent suggestion to “throw out all the foreign press.”
“How about that accent from that reporter? I think we need to throw out all the foreign press! American media first!”
Dridi shared Greene’s post on social media and noted: “Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks I should be thrown out of the press room because of my accent.”
While some commenters lapped up Greene’s comment, critics expressed solidarity with Dridi and accused the Georgia congresswoman of using divisive language.
Donald Trump has offered some surprising praise up to Keir Starmer despite not calling the UK PM during his first five days back in office.
The US president, who was inaugurated on Monday, is yet to follow tradition and speak to the UK prime minister since his second term.
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But Trump seemed to defy concerns that he might be holding a grudge against the Labour leader when speaking to the BBC on board Air Force One on Saturday.
“I get along with him well. I like him a lot,” the president said.
“He’s liberal, which is a bit different from me, but I think he’s a very good person and I think he’s done a very good job thus far.
“He’s represented his country in terms of philosophy.
“I may not agree with his philosophy, but I have a very good relationship with him.”
And when asked where he might go for his first international trip since returning to the White House, Trump said: “It could be Saudi Arabia, it could be UK. Traditionally it could be UK.
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“Last time I went to Saudi Arabia because they agreed to buy $450 billion of American United States merchandise.”
Trump also promised he would be talking to Starmer “over the next 24 hours”.
He has met the UK leader on multiple occasions, including when the Labour leader flew to Trump Tower in New York before the presidential election.
However, the delicate friendship they struck up at the time was quickly overshadowed by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
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Now Trump’s informal adviser, Musk has initiated a war of words against Starmer ever since the PM was elected, calling the Labour leader “evil” and questioning his record as the director of public prosecutions over grooming gangs.
Even so, foreign secretary David Lammy said Starmer would be going to visit Trump in the US “within the next few weeks” last Sunday.
There are fears they could clash, as Trump wants to impose tariffs – which could weigh down an already embattled UK economy – and reduce the amount of military aid the US sends to the UK.
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Labour’s plan to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is expected to cause further friction, because there is a UK-US military base on the archipelago, and Starmer’s pick for Washington ambassador – Peter Mandelson – has raised some eyebrows among Trump’s inner circle.
There’s also the Labour cabinet’s own very public criticisms of Trump over the years when they were in opposition which ministers have been trying to overlook.
Donald Trump once again suggested Canada give up being a sovereign nation and become America’s 51st state, and, once again, Canadians are saying no thanks — or in some cases, “eff off, eh.”
Although Canadian politicians have repeatedly called Trump’s suggestion “a joke,” the president insisted on Friday that Canadians would actually love to be part of the US because, he claims, the taxes would be lower.
He added that Canadians “wouldn’t have to worry about military, you wouldn’t have to worry about many of the things, you’d have better health coverage, you would have much better health coverage.”
You can watch Trump make his case to Canada below.
But based on the social media reactions, it doesn’t appear as if Trump is winning the hearts and minds of Canadian citizens.
Many people especially laughed at the notion that Canadians would want to give up socialised medicine for the US model of health care.
