It is easy to forget it was only last year, during an Ontario election campaign focused on the threat of U.S. tariffs, that Premier Doug Ford let slip he wanted Donald Trump to win the presidency.
“On election day, was I happy this guy won? One hundred per cent I was,” said Ford, caught on a hot mic at his Etobicoke campaign office.
“Then the guy pulled out the knife and f—-ing yanked it in me,” he said, motioning his arm as if stabbing someone.
The Feb. 3, 2025 gaffe likely cost his Progressive Conservatives a few points in public opinion polls because it undermined their “Protect Ontario” platform, but they were still easily re-elected to a third term later that month.
Still, it was a stark reminder that before he was premier, Ford had told Toronto Life in November 2016 he would have cast a ballot for Trump over Hillary Clinton in that month’s U.S. presidential election.
“Not a doubt in my mind,” he said at the time.
Despite the mercurial U.S. president restricting shipments to Canada of key supplies of personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which Ford strongly criticized, the premier had somehow returned to the Trump fold in 2024.
“I thought it would be a little different, a little change, but obviously he decided to pull the knife out and stab us,” a visibly uncomfortable Ford said last year when pressed by reporters on why he was “happy” Trump was back in the White House.
But that was then and this is now.
Ford has emerged as an anti-Trump mainstay on U.S. cable news channels over the past 18 months.
The premier made headlines around the world Monday by saying Trump could “kiss my ass” for threatening 50 per cent tariffs on Canadian-made vehicles going stateside after trade talks broke down.
And, perhaps more surprisingly, he captured the attention of the terminally online U.S. president.
“Lots of ‘bluster’ from Doug Ford, who is the Premier of the Canadian Province of Ontario, but who is better known as the overall unimpressive brother of the late, great Rob Ford,” wrote Trump on his Truth Social website, referring to the former Toronto mayor.
In a meandering post, the president attacked Canada’s “current bad leadership, primarily Governor Carney, and his Flunky, Ford” and claimed “America has been carrying Canada for decades, but no longer.”
“Remember, much of the Electricity, Oil, and Gas that Canada gets is transported through the U.S.A. Someone should get these clowns to ‘fall in line’ or, the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!”
Ford dismissed Trump as “arrogant” and “cocky” and a “tyrant” and a “dictator.”
“I’m not going to take the bait. This guy’s a loser. I have more courage, more brains in my baby toe than he has in his whole body, so there you go,” the premier said in Hamilton on Monday.
“I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he has a lot of room to kiss my ass. I just do. I’m a big dude, what can I say?” he chuckled.
That triggered a series of bizarre social media posts the next day, in which the president mused about changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” because “we don’t expect to (be) doing much business with Ontario any longer.”
Trump posted an imaginary map of the renamed lake with an American flag above Toronto, and on Thursday he even signed an executive order theatrically rechristening it.
The official White House account on X also displayed a Lego map of the United States featuring “Lake America” and the “Gulf of America,” which is what the president calls the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite all the turmoil, Ford insisted he has no regrets for escalating the situation.
“Not at all. Total opposite. You know those words resonated, and I usually don’t use those words,” the premier said Wednesday, adding he received messages of praise from the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and India hailing his candour.
“It resonated around the world.”
While his stance might hinder any return to the negotiating table and not avert further tariffs, Ford’s anti-Trump rhetoric should help the Tories in Sept. 3 byelections in Scarborough Southwest, York—Simcoe and Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. Indeed, the slogan “Stand Up To Trump” appears on PC candidates’ brochures.
As Abacus Data president David Coletto, who conducts monthly Ontario tracking surveys for the Star, has repeatedly noted, Ford’s poll numbers surge when he is countering Trump’s trade protectionism.
In part that’s because there is almost universal dislike of the president in Canada. Pollara Strategic Insights found earlier this month found only nine per cent of respondents had “positive feelings” about Trump and 80 per cent were negative toward him.
Some 52 per cent said they were “angry” with Trump and 28 per cent said “frustrated” while seven per cent were “comfortable” with him, two per cent “excited” and 10 per cent had no view.
For a politician like Ford, who pores over public-opinion polls, that may go a long way to explaining his aggressive name-calling.
“I just said (what) every leader in the country wanted to say to President Trump and couldn’t say it.”
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