Rob Russo

Will he listen to that advice?

You know, Steve Verhul, who was our chief negotiator in 2018, when we came to the agreement that Donald Trump negotiated and now disdains, he said that Canada is quite clearly pursuing a rag the puck strategy and that it's probably working.

And why is it working?

Well, because things are going badly for the president in Iran.

Inflation is taking its toll.

The president's political numbers are on a trajectory towards a controlled descent into the earth.

And those are all things that are going to hurt the president politically.

by the time the midterms come along.

So the strategy appears to be working now, given where we are in the situation in the Middle East, and given that inflation is probably not going to cool by the time people are going to cast ballots.

If that's the case, then the rag the puck strategy will look pretty smart.

But that's not over yet.

We still have six months to go.

My expertise is in stringing together subject and predicate as opposed to child psychology, but I'm going to try this anyway.

Clearly, he's a twitch muscle president, but is he going to take note?

Someone is going to tell him that the Prime Minister of Canada said that our reliance on the United States was a mistake.

and he is going to make a note of that at some point, and he is going to try and use it against us.

I don't think that that troubles this prime minister in any way.

He wasn't troubled at all by the thought that he might be provoking Trump at Davos.

I actually think he kind of relished it a little bit.

Is that a good strategy?