“Thank you” is the most understood phrase in the English language.
As soon as we learn to talk, we are taught to say, “thank you.” Those two words are a currency in polite society. They come in many denominations: Huge thanks. Thank you so much. Many thanks. I can’t thank you enough. Thanks for your help. Thanks a million.
Until lately, “thank you” expressed gratitude. I say “thank you” 50 times a week — and that’s just to my wife when she finds something I’ve misplaced.
But if someone punched me in the back of the head and ran off with my glasses, I wouldn’t stare blindly into the middle distance and shout, “THANK YOU!”
That’s what Howard Lutnick wants Canada to do.
The U.S. commerce secretary and bagman to Tariff Man is making the media rounds. He is trying to pretend the Most Idiotic Trade War in History is actually awesome. He’d have an easier time pretending a Molotov cocktail is a bunny. We have reached the point in the timeline where America now wants the world to express gratitude for getting punched in the back of the head.
Here’s what Mr. Lutnick told CBS this week about our great country: “Think about it. The biggest trading partner in the whole world — that is vital to Canada’s existence — says, ‘I’m unhappy.’ And they respond negatively. You know why? Because for 20, 30 years they have gotten away with it.”
Gotten away with what? Psst, Howard? Canada didn’t start this trade war.
To understand just how profoundly the commerce secretary is divorced from reality, he also said egg prices are lower. They’ve never been higher. In some American cities, they are opening cartons and selling eggs individually in back alleys like they are magic mushrooms.
Lutnick spits out hyperbole like it’s chewing tobacco. I can’t tell if he’s delusional, mendacious or suffering from a bad case of hero worship. Probably all three. But this obsession with “thank you” — he compared Canada to Ukraine — is insane.
Meanwhile, everyone in Trump 2.0 operates with the respect and courtesy of a binge drinker who just missed last call. Lutnick, sounding rather mafioso, was bragging about how his boss was eager to tangle with Doug Ford: “He needed to break some guy in Ontario.”
My hunch is Lutnick will end up with $65 egg on his face before this is over.
“Just say, ‘Thank you,’” he demanded. “God knows, just say, ‘Thank you!’”
Thank you for driving up costs on both sides of the border? Thank you for the surge of unemployment that is coming? Thank you for the chaos? Thank you for betraying your closest and most reliable ally? Thank you for living in a fantasy world? Thank you for tanking the markets? Thank you for a possible recession? Thank you for sticking TNT in global trade and economic stability?
And thank you, Howard, for looking and sounding like someone who microfinances porn and believes Wordle is a fancy bourbon.
What is up with this guy’s gesticulating? Lutnick’s right arm is a perpetual motion machine. It’s like he’s playing “rock, paper, scissors” against himself. Jazz hands. Karate chops. Come hither fingers.
He should do interviews in a straitjacket. Or maybe the hand talking is intended to distract from the ridiculous words shooting out of his mouth so fast it’s amazing there isn’t a sonic boom.
Canada is supposed to grovel because Dear Leader got an ouchie after we responded with tariffs of our own? If Trump burns down someone’s house, does he expect them to buy him a condo?
Dummy, it’s called a “trade war.” It’s not called a “trade surrender and thank you for trying to destroy us for no reason at all.”
Lutnick is so unpleasant even my TV screen got hives this week.
At one point, he had the gall to blame Joe Biden for Trump’s cratering economy. I’m surprised he didn’t pin it on Jimmy Carter. Biden inherited a dumpster fire from Trump and then deftly built the strongest economy in the world. That’s what he handed back to Trump.
In two months, the doofus-in-chief has broken what was fixed. Now the entire world is ensnared in a torturous psychodrama starring one mercurial madman who doesn’t know an import tax from an Ikea pictogram.
I get that Lutnick believes we are a nation of polite pushovers who snowshoe to work and thank every maple tree we safely pass. He should look up the NHL’s all-time penalty leaders and note where most of those enforcers were born.
High-stick us and brace for an uppercut. Spittin’ chiclets has a specific meaning up here. One person started this brawl because that one person doesn’t know how anything works.
“How about a little respect?” Lutnick asked Canada, not letting it go.
Respect? Here goes. Howard, I’m silently mouthing two words.
The last one is “you.” The first one is not “thank.”
