OTTAWA — Two former Canadian lawmakers are calling on former President Donald Trump to apologize for reviving and circulating a long-debunked rumor that is “vile, vulgar, and deeply offensive.”
Their move comes after Trump falsely claims that Canada’s prime minister is the son of former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in “Save America,” the former president’s new photo book that also provides commentary.
Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock call the section in the book “profoundly offensive,” interpreting it as a flagrant attempt to politically undermine Justin Trudeau.
“We just thought it's about time Canadians showed some outrage about this attempt to interfere into our affairs,” Axworthy, Canada’s former top diplomat and Liberal Party elder statesman, said in an interview with POLITICO.
“Part of the Trump or the autocratic playbook is to get people's confidence undermined, and it's clear coming out in a book like that, it would be picked up by all kinds of enablers.”
Trump writes in his new coffee-table book that Trudeau’s mother, Margaret, was “somehow associated” with Castro and notes that “a lot of people say that Justin is his son.”
The former president adds: “He swears that he isn’t but how the hell would he know! Castro had good hair, the ‘father’ didn’t, Justin has good hair, and has become a Communist just like Castro.”
Margaret Trudeau’s party lifestyle was a spectator sport during Pierre Trudeau’s days as prime minister. That included a famous spell partying with the Rolling Stones, which earned mentions in Keith Richards’ autobiography.
The Canadian government has been forced to outright deny the long-running conspiracy theories. The age-old Castro rumor has been thoroughly debunked by this point.
Trump’s musings motivated the former Cabinet colleagues to demand that Trump withdraw the book from circulation until the “offending passage” is removed.
They’ve addressed their letter to Trump at Mar-a-Lago and sent copies to U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Cohen and Canada’s envoy in the U.S., Kirsten Hillman.
Axworthy, who served in Pierre Trudeau’s Cabinet and first met Justin Trudeau when the future prime minister was just 4 or 5 years old, said he doesn’t think Trump will apologize, but he does expect the ambassadors to take up the issue.
“There is a lot of damage that can be done as this book goes out for publication and that story stays the way it is,” he said.
Canadian officials have been careful to avoid weighing in on the presidential race. In a full-court press, Trudeau’s “Team Canada” has traveled to 33 states and met with 42 governors knowing the country’s economic security hinges on a review of the USMCA trade pact that will begin after the U.S. election.
Axworthy, a former foreign minister, acknowledges he can speak much more freely than anyone on Trudeau’s team right now, although he said he’s not had contact with the office.
He says he’s speaking out because Trump is breaking an “unwritten rule” of diplomacy that leaders refrain from publicly interfering in the affairs of a foreign country in an “underhanded” way.
“I have a sense that as he grows older, he's losing any sense of restraint. We saw that in the debate the other night, where he's repeating this thing about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs.”
Another conspiracy theory that proved untrue.
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