Let's Take A Closer Look At Vance's Election Post-Mortem

There's been a lot of reaction to J D Vance's election post nortem, given in an X post Wednesday, much of it negative. Here's the key passage:

Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:

1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel

. . . The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.

If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.

In general, US presidents of both parties from Truman onward haven't done badly by supporting Israel, or at least appearing to do so, whatever they were actually doing behind the scenes. If we allow them the wiggle room they've always had, I don't see how it serves anyone to make any visible major change, which it seems to me Vance is expressing here. In my view, it's a bad idea to go against scripture, and in the view of the Catholic Church, to which Vance subscribes, the Abrahamic Covenant is still in force (Genesis 12:2-3):

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will find blessing in you.

I like Eric Florack's answer at PJ Media, Vance Wants an ‘Honest Conversation'? Fine, Here’s One.

Look, Vance is correct that the war was in fact a major voting issue. But let’s also acknowledge most of that is being driven by the Left still scrambling to tack anything they can onto President Trump. However, protection of the country, and frankly the whole of the West, transcends politics. Someone wanting to sit behind the Resolute Desk should understand that as a matter of instinct. Vance's comments are a clear indication that he doesn't and that his priorities are backward.

. . . You don't judge a war to keep a nuclear weapon out of the hands of men who chant "Death to America" by how it moved one midterm. You judge it by what happens if you lose it, or if you never fight it.

Vance dared someone to argue the war was worth the cost. Challenge accepted, and his boss beat me to it. Asked whether he'd do it again, Trump didn't flinch: "Because long term, it's the only answer. You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon."

. . . Here's the irony Vance walked right past. His own pollster's list includes "put America first." Keeping a nuke away from a regime that has spent 47 years calling us the Great Satan is about as America First as policy gets. You can't put America first while letting its sworn enemy build the bomb.

Leadership sometimes means taking a beating for doing the right thing. History has a long list of men who did, and they are among our most celebrated figures, though in their day, they took an electoral beating for their positions.

Scott Pinsker, who is frequently insightful, and who like me has a backgound in crisis management, has a take in a different direction:

Vance’s statement directly undermined the White House’s communicative goals. Instead of putting the “defeat” storyline to bed and flipping the page to something unifying and positive, he gave it a shot of adrenaline: The Iran War is now a MAGA litmus test. If you supported the war, you’re why we lost. And going forward, “changing our relationship with Israel” will be a pillar of the new MAGA mission.

Neither was necessary. Neither will mend fences, foster unity, or rally the troops.

. . . Vance’s wording — “change our relationship with Israel” — was awfully interesting, because it’s a suspiciously open-ended phrase: Moving closer to Israel would also be a change, yet somehow, I doubt that’s what Vance intended.

Fox News’ politics editor, Katelyn Caralle, also doubts it. She wrote, “A source familiar with post-election schedules said the Vice President’s X post today was made after a White House meeting on aligning messaging following Tuesday’s Republican bloodbath. Instead, [Vance] took control of his own response. One Trump official described Vance’s post as a rallying cry to the “new right” — a coalition of Republicans that align with Trump’s “America First” movement but believe the president is too aligned with Israel on foreign policy.” [emphasis added]

JD Vance’s 2028 strategy is clear: He’s not looking to inherit Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. That’s why he’s not even trying to reunite it.

He’s building a brand-new movement — the “new right” — and it’s significantly closer to Tucker Carlson’s worldview than to Ted Cruz's or Ron DeSantis's.

The unashamedly Jewish commentator in the Global Jewish Channel YouTube post embedded above has a pragmatic take at 6:50:

I just want to pick up on that "change our relationship to Israel". What exactly do you mean by that? What about the relationship bothers you? He knows that there are these people who are saying Israel bascially dictates American foreign policy, which is so absurd. It was literally Trump that said to Israel last year, in summer of 2025, "Stop it!" after the 12-day war. By the way, had Israel kept going, you might have had a lot of the aims of Trump's new war with Iran achieved by Israel.

So, what exactly bothers him about the relationship? I know whsat the Jew-haters are saying about the relationship, but what bothers him? Let's be clear. America gains far more, actually, from its relationship with Israel, both from a security standpoint -- what they would have to spend compared to what they actually do with Israel there -- by Israel providing them with the military edge, security edge, intelligence -- understand, if Israel was not there, all these Islamists, the regimes, wouldn't just say, "OK, we're happy now, we'll get on with our lives," they would set their sights on America and the West next.

I think the issue is actually what I raised Wednesday, that re-confonting Islam will likely be a task for some generations to come in the West. Trump seems to have had a pretty comprehensive to-do list for his second term, and major items there appear to have been Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba, not to mention Greenland and Canada. So far, Trump's reaction to the midterms has been to see them as a minor bump in the road, and compared to his agenda and the fact that he still has over two years to work on it, that probably reflects his vision and determination.

By the way, I noted that Bp Barron in his new book on Christian persecution is tacitly taking up the issue of Islam as well, even if that word doesn't even appear once in the text. I've ordered a copy and will have more to say when I've had a chance to read it over.

Given bhis overall agenda, it's likely Trump sees the midterms as simply a justifiable cost. I can't really disagree. But then, he's pretty much the one guy who doesn't have to think about 2028.

So Is The Sky Falling?

If nothing else, Tuesday's results reflect well on current Democrat leadership, who selected and supported candidates who did surprisingly well. So naturally, those same candidates have been demanding the replacement of those leaders:

Now, less than 24 hours after the elections, various Democrats, including some of the newest ones, are calling for Schumer to be replaced. Some members of the party were already talking about this before the midterms.

. . . Schumer will be seen as an obstacle by many of the candidates he supported in the midterms and they will all turn on him if they think it will be better for them. There will be no loyalty at all.

Schumer should celebrate now, while he still can.

In the House,

Disney’s Marvel movie star Mark Ruffalo is crashing the Democrats’ midterm party, pushing a petition meant to put pressure on U.S. House Democrats to not vote House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as House Speaker.

The Brooklyn, New York-born Jeffries has long been a staunch supporter of Israel and its right to exist as a democratic Jewish state.

. . . Ruffalo finds this unacceptable.

The Disney Avengers star is now promoting a petition to call for Jeffries to be removed from consideration and denied the Speaker of the House position, an opportunity that has arisen courtesy of the Democrats overturning the majority in a blue wave in the Nov. 3 midterms.

Then there's the Abdul El-Sayed​ problem. He's loud and confrontational, and he's a concrete manifestation of the theoretical problem that now confronts Democrats, expressed in the question someone wished could have been put to James Talarico: is Allah non-binary? Let's recognize that Nancy Pelosi spent her political career building a Democrat coalition that embraced sexual deviants, feminists, blacks, Hispanics, Jews, labor, and rich white leftists.

Adding militant Muslims to this mix runs the serious risk of throwing sexual deviants, feminists, and Jews out of the coalition, along with labor-oriented centrists uncomfortable with the general post-Pelosi drift of the party. Jonathan Turley gets this only partly right:

Like a nation of Madame Defarges, activists are eagerly knitting the names of targets into the lists of the walking dead, starting with Haley Stevens, who decided to test the “big tent” claims by splitting her ticket to vote against Abdul El-Sayed.

Various sites are running lists of targets as influencers such as Hasan Piker is posting on “WE’RE GONNA PUT YOUR ASS IN JAIL EVERYONE GET MORE WOKE RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The conditions on the Hill are only likely to make such rage politics more appealing with the new Congress.

. . . The most immediate likely target will be Stevens, with many demanding her expulsion from the Democratic caucus. She will certainly be denied plum Committee appointments. She is now an object lesson to others not to stand in the way of the mob.

But here's where I think he gets things wrong:

The Democrats ran on fighting corruption and will now work to prove the point. They will have to fulfill the narrative and parade a line of targets before these Committees. Pundits like Jennifer Welch have even demanded calling in Barron and Tiffany Trump in this cathartic crackdown.

What is clear is that a tsunami of subpoenas will follow, and it will be a bonanza for lawyers in Washington.

These aren't the Democrats of 2018. Impeachment is a feckless option in any case, and it's a waste of everyone's time. Traditionally, newly minted senators and representatives were taken under more senior mentors' wings and told they had to "go along to get along". I suspect the new crop of Democrats will be far more confrontational and unwilling to work within a traditional system, and they'll reject leaders who've risen under the Pelosi regime. Thus current DSA-oriented Democrats now reject AOC as too moderate:

The Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) Liberation Caucus is rejecting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., as a potential candidate for Democrats in the 2028 presidential election, arguing she is too far removed from the socialist agenda.

"Liberation condemns Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's continued retreat from socialist politics and rejects any effort to present her as the future presidential standard-bearer for DSA, or for the broader socialist movement," the DSA Liberation Caucus wrote in the statement.

DSA slammed Ocasio-Cortez as an "opportunist" and condemned her vote to defend Israel’s right to exist and for not holding firm as an anti-Zionist.

The biggest problem is that current Democrat leadership, as Pelosi ages out, has neither the charisma nor the vision to hold a post-Pelosi coalition together, and a great deal of time and energy is going to be spent on intra-party disputes.

Quick Takes On The Midterms

@LeaderJohnThune Hello Senator Thune... https://t.co/lPMAETqwcn

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) November 4, 2026

There are several countertrend results from last night:

• Republicans won both the Senate seat and the governor's race in Florida
• Ditto for Arkansas
• Republican Kelly Ayotte won reelection as New Hampshire governor.

The immediate takeaway is that DeSantis's presidential prospects aren't dead, while if Vance proposes to be more of Trump, that may not be a winning formula.

The conventional wisdom is that the Iran war was responsible for the Republican defeat.

President Donald Trump says the Iran war will end “soon,” a promise he’s been making most of this year.

Eventually he will be right, but it hasn’t happened in time for the midterm elections — and his party is bearing the brunt.

If Republicans get thumped Tuesday, all the polling suggests that prices will be one of the main reasons, with the Iran war’s contribution to higher costs looming large.

I'm not sure about this. As a public policy matter, Islam looks to become a major problem for the West. Sooner or later, it will be necessary to re-confront it, as European powers did from the Crusades to the Siege of Vienna. Iran is one of its worst modern manifestations. Trump is visionary enough to recognize this, although I'm not sure if he pursued the Iran war in the best way -- I think he underestimated the willingness of the hardliners to go against their own interests to stay in absolute power, and the result has been the same counterproductive pauses we saw in Viet Nam.

But isn't Islam the subtext of the dispute between Bp Robert Barron and Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco? Vesco's seat is in Algeria, a largely Muslim country, and his position is that the Church in Algeria should not seek conversions, but rather become part of Algerian society through coexistence and fraternity.

But the problem is that Muslims simply don't believe in coexistence and fraternity. Cdl Vesco is seeking to temporize with people who don't temporize. Bp Barron has already taken this issue on:

Bishop Robert Barron, bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester (MN) and founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, today [April 14] announced the release of his latest book, What Do Their Deaths Demand?: Christian Persecution Today.

. . . “The global persecution of Christians is not a matter of distant statistics, but an unconscionable violation of human rights that transcends political divisions,” said Bishop Barron. “This is not a partisan or peripheral concern. It is a defining measure of any just society. Every person possesses an inviolable dignity, and with it the right to seek the truth and to worship God according to conscience.”

Reflecting this call for unity, the book has received formal endorsements from both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. Bishop Barron, who serves on the President’s Religious Liberty Commission, offers the work as a resource to help awaken the public conscience and encourage solidarity with those who suffer for their faith.

Re-confronting Islam is simply a major agenda item for the West. Trump is one of the few people in leadership positions who recognize this clearly, even if his ideas on how to do this are inchoate -- as, I suppose, are Bp Barron's as well. It's also worth considering that re-confonting Islam will likely be a task for some generations to come, and neither Trump nor even Bp Barron will be the ons to lead it. So it's worth focusing on other explanations for last night's performance:

There are a lot of things to say about how poorly the Republicans did last night, and no doubt every single one of them — perspicacious or not — will be said in every way possible and far too many times for comfort.

But I want to keep my focus on one big point: Donald Trump's political instincts, at least when it comes to choosing candidates to run for office, are absolutely atrocious. He seems to have an almost uncanny ability to choose the wrong person to back.

This election cycle, Trump's biggest whiff was Darlene Graham, who managed to lose a Senate seat in South Carolina, which you have to admit takes an unbelievable amount of negative charisma. Or maybe you think Ken Paxton was the worst choice, and you could be right about that one too.

On the other hand, Trump had little choice but to endorse Darlene Graham after her brother's sudden demise, but Lindsey was an old-fashioned Republican who'd reluctantly aligned himself with Trump. Susan Collins was a similar case; neither is the future of the party, but Trump would naver have been able to force them out and find more attractive replacements for them no matter his instincts.

I think the most productive result of the midterms will be to rethink candidates and strategy for 2028. I suspect Rubio's and DeSantis's prospects are up, while Vance's are down; it will be a bad idea to run on a platform simply of more Trump.

UPDATE: Analysis from Vance:

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up. So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us." Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026. There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true. But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.) In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

— JD Vance (@JDVance) November 4, 2026

The UK Henry Nowak Case Resurfaces

Last June, I posted about the conviction of a UK Sikh, Vickrum Digwa, for stabbing a university student, Henry Nowak, who died at the scene from his injuries. The case becanme highly controversial due to what appeared to be police misconduct in arresting Nowak instead of Digwa and delaying medical care for Nowak. The government was extremely slow to respond to the controversy, but by July, it was announced that there would be an investigation.

Four months later, any investigation has yet to begin, but they sure are making big plans:

An independent review into the circumstances surrounding the tragic murder of Henry Nowak has been announced by the Home Secretary.

At the heart of the review is a commitment that any lessons that arise from the case are learned so that everything can be done to prevent any other family suffering in the way that the Nowak family has.

The review will be in 2 parts. Phase 1 will investigate whether opportunities were missed to prevent Henry’s murder, examining what was known about the perpetrator, Vickrum Digwa, in the 5 years before the attack.

This will cover the police, health services, local authorities and educational institutions, and faith organisations, including any concerns relating to weapon possession and violent, threatening and erratic behaviour.

Phase 1 will also consider how the Nowak family were treated by agencies across the criminal justice system following Henry’s death – including the police, CPS, HM Courts and Tribunals Service, and the HM Prison and Probation Service.

Phase 2 will follow once the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has concluded its investigation into the actions of police officers who attended the scene, and will consider the actions of the IOPC and, if necessary, the police.

Based on reporting from July, the IOPC investigation has been under way since the stabbing took place on December 3, 2025, nearly a year, and it apparently will still be ongoing for some time, based on the link, but once it's done, the blue-ribbon panel's gonna get straight to the bottom of it! (For comparison, the UK investigation into the Titanic disaster of April 15, 1912, lasted from May 2 to July 3, 1912. A sense of urgency can make a difference, it would seem.)

It does appear that there's quite a bit to investigate, once they get around to it:

The family of the murdered teenager Henry Nowak, who was arrested as he pleaded for medical help after being stabbed, have said they were failed by the authorities and fear they were manipulated in their darkest hour.

His parents described how police wrongly told them Nowak, 18, had been the aggressor, and that officers had immediately administered first aid. They said the police watchdog had initially said there was no evidence of misconduct by officers.

“The story was evolving every time we had an interaction,” Henry’s father, Mark Nowak, told ITV News. “What started off as: ‘When the police arrived, we administered first aid,’ moved through a stage where: ‘When the police arrived, they detained everyone’ … to: ‘We actually only detained Henry,’ to then: ‘We handcuffed Henry,’ and then: ‘We placed Henry under arrest.’

“That evolution of what actually happened that night really shocked us, and we felt we were being hoodwinked. We felt we were being not told the truth.”

. . . In police bodyworn camera footage that prompted a public outcry, Nowak was heard repeatedly saying: “I’ve been stabbed,” to which an officer replied: “Don’t think you have, mate.”

The report at the link reinforces the impression that the IOPC is slow-walking any investigation:

Nowak’s family revealed that the IOPC had said in April: “No [Hampshire police] officers would be subject to conduct or criminal investigation. This was because there were no concerns identified in relation to officer actions.” Less than two months later, Hampshire and Isle of Wight constabulary was forced to apologise for its actions.

The police watchdog’s director of engagement, Derrick Campbell, told ITV News: “The IOPC is committed to establishing the full circumstances of this case, including whether any of the officers involved should face disciplinary proceedings, and providing Henry’s family with answers to the questions they rightly have about how the police treated Henry in the way they did on that terrible night, and why.”

According to The Times,

The IOPC investigation into potential police failures is expected to conclude early next year. In July, two officers were served gross misconduct notices following a full review.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "What does it mean when a UK police officer is served a gross misconduct notice?" It answered,

When a UK police officer is served a gross misconduct notice (often referred to as a Regulation 17 notice), it means they are officially under investigation for a severe breach of the Standards of Professional Behaviour that is serious enough to justify dismissal.

Being served a notice does not mean the officer is guilty. Instead, it marks the formal start of a disciplinary investigation by the force's Professional Standards Department or the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

So maybe by early next year, the IOPC will finish its investigation, and maybe then it will hold a hearing on whether the officers should be held accountable, or maybe not. Reports from last summer suggeat the officers haven't been suspended, but they're on soft duty to protect them from threats. I asked Chrome AI mode to compare how the Nowak case would be handled in the US vis-a-vis the UK. It answered in part,

In the United States, the officers would almost certainly have been placed on immediate administrative leave or suspension following the public release of the bodycam footage, if not immediately after the incident itself. While police disciplinary actions vary widely across the thousands of independent law enforcement agencies in the US, an incident involving a failure to render aid, mocking a dying victim, and handcuffing them based on an unverified accusation would typically trigger specific procedural steps under American policing standards.

In a US context, dismissing a victim's statements of "I've been stabbed" and "I can't breathe" while delaying medical care for eight minutes would be treated as a egregious violation of department policy and a failure to protect a person in custody.

In the US, due to intense local political pressure and direct accountability of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs to mayors or local electorates, departments typically act much faster publicly. Facing bodycam footage of this nature, a US Police Chief would typically move to suspend or fire the officers quickly to mitigate civil liability, public protests, and political fallout.

In the US, officers acting with such extreme negligence can face state-level criminal charges, such as reckless endangerment, official misconduct, or involuntary manslaughter. If criminal charges are brought by a local District Attorney or state Attorney General, the administrative suspension is immediately upgraded to an unpaid suspension pending the outcome of the trial.

Something is deeply wrong in the UK. Somehow, our founding fathers figured this one out in the 1700s.

Carney Changes His Tune

Good conversation with President @realDonaldTrump on the future of Canada-U.S. trade. This builds on our recent constructive discussions on the outlines of a mutually beneficial trade deal that would create jobs for our workers, boost affordability for families, and fully respect Canada’s languages, culture, and sovereignty. Our teams will now be working in the coming weeks to deliver that outcome.

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) November 1, 2026

There's been little mention anywhere of Mark Carney's abrupt about-face on negotiating with the US over trade. As of Friday, as I noted in yesterday's post, he told Politico that "if his government could not successfully negotiate a suitable trade pact with the Trump administration, he was prepared to wait for a new American president to close the deal". As of yestrerday, it was "never mind".

Actually, there had been signs that something was in the works. As of October 26:

A trade agreement between the United States and Canada would be reached "pretty soon," President Donald Trump told a campaign rally on Sunday [October 25], nine days ahead of crucial US midterm elections.

Tensions between the North American neighbors have been high since trade talks broke down in August, with Trump imposing a slew of new tariffs in response.

"We'll have that settled pretty soon. They're willing to give us anything at this moment," the president said of an agreement during the rally in Port Huron, a Michigan town on the US-Canada border hit hard by his tariff war.

Carney himself had been making similar noises over the week:

Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters Monday [October 26] that there has been some intensification in trade talks with the United States, but the prospect of a deal will depend on the Americans warming to Canada’s perspective.

“To the extent any progress has been made, it’s because the U.S. is coming closer to our position,” said Carney, during a press conference in Ottawa.

. . . Last Wednesday [October 21], Carney spoke with Trump at length about geopolitical and trade issues.

“Canada is ready to sign an agreement that is in the interests of Canadians, all Canadians, with very clear bottom lines, red lines, which meant that we were not willing to sign what was offered in in August,” said Carney. “To the extent to which the U.S. is moving towards accepting those aspects, then there’s a greater prospect of a deal.”

However, as of October 23, Trump was saying the US "holds all the cards" in negotiations. He gave a few details of what's being negotiated in an impromptu press conference yesterday:

At 4:30

We have the concept of a very good deal with Canada. You know, we've been losing money for many years with Canada, many, many years, 75 years, so we are now very, very close to having a deal. I spoke with the prime minister the other day. I spoke with him again yesterday, and we have the concept of a deal that's going to be great for our farmers, great for our country, and it'll be fine for Canada, too.

Q: Is the Keystone Pipeline part of the deal?

They're gonnma build, which I think is great. . . They're gonna pay for it. They're gonna pay for all of it. We're gonna give them the route, and it's largely been determined, but they're gonna build the Keystone Pipeline. . . . One thing we didn't talk about is our farmers were paying tremendous tariffs to send things to Canada. All those tariffs will be gone. There will be no tariff. . . . They were paying as much as 400% for milk products and other things. So part of the agreement is that our farmers will have to pay no tariffs.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse thinks Carney's change of mind followed the EU-Canada summit:

[M]uch to the chagrin of Prime Minister Mark Carney and EU head Ursula Fond-of-Lyin, last Friday the major economies within the EU, specifically Germany, rejected any possibility of an “Associate Member” status for Canada. Simultaneously, Canadian media realized a trade deal with Europe would subject Canada to carbon taxes that are larger and more economically intrusive than Trump’s tariffs.

However, Carney and Trump talked on the phone October 21 and seem to have been aware of what was being negotiated, but for whatever reason, it was being kept very quiet. They seem to have agreed over the weekend to disclose the talks. The Montreal summit probably had nothing to do with this, and Carney's hard-line remarks to Politico were a pose. (But how much of anything Carney does isn't a pose?) While we still know very little about what's being discussed, Trump did mention the tariffs on US dairy products, which are apparently a complex issue:

“[Canada] has a large dairy producing constituency that it wants to protect, so they put a cap on imports that can be accessed at a competitive rate. That's what we call a ‘TRQ’ (tariff rate quota),” says Becky Rasdall Vargas, senior vice president of trade and workforce policy at the International Dairy Foods Association. Under the TRQ, Canada accepts a certain amount of dairy products duty-free, without tariffs.

“Above and beyond that cap, you are charged a tariff in the realm of 250-270%. That's the simplest way to think about it. Our complaint is we're not able to get anywhere near that cap, even though we have buyers who tell us they would like to bring in our product,” she says, noting the specific tariff rate depends on the product.

. . . Just on principle, a 250%-plus tariff seems outrageous, [s]he says. And when considered “in isolation, people are shocked.” Retaliation seems reasonable. “But it’s not a realistic picture. First of all, [dairy] is one of the outliers for out-of-quota tariffs. Secondly, just because there's a quota” doesn’t mean it’s filled. Neither the cap amount or percentage are the issue at hand, and there isn’t a lack of Canadian demand."

“We have, both from the U.S. government and from our members, some market intelligence that suggests there are Canadian consumers who would really like to have U.S. yogurts in their markets,” Rasdall Vargas says. “The quotas are in place to cap the amount of product going into the country so that we don't flood the market.”

Rather, Rasdall Vargas blames the dispute on “a systemic set of failures” by Canadian administrators that intentionally prevent American dairy exports from reaching the import cap. These protectionist measures are intended to support Canadian dairy farmers. One rule, for example, requires that Canadian dairy processors be the primary recipients of American dairy products.

. . . “Almost immediately, we felt like Canada's administrative rules were not consistent with their obligations in the agreement,” says Rasdall Vargas. “Very quickly after that, the U.S. government engaged in consultations, which are discussions with the government of Canada, as precursor to a dispute.”

The discussions were at a standstill by early 2021, prompting the U.S. to launch a formal dispute aligned with the USMCA arbitration mechanism. The U.S. won, and Canada “immediately changed its rules in a manner that kind of made the problem worse,” Rasdall Vargas explains. “So, the U.S. government took another dispute.”

Again, to no avail. With tensions ratcheting up, the stakes are rising for dairy farmers on both sides of the border.

But the dairy caps and tariffs are only a small part of what's apparently being negotiated, and we basically know nothing else. What we do know is that Carney seems to making a big effort to control the optics of the situation. He's apparently under a lot of pressure to avoid looking like he's giving in, but he has little choice but to do so.

Carney Keeps Thinking He And Trump Are On The Same Ballot

In a Friday interview with Politico, despite spending two days in talks with Ursula von der Leyen, Donald Trump seems still to be foremost in Mark Carney's mind:

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday that if his government could not successfully negotiate a suitable trade pact with the Trump administration, he was prepared to wait for a new American president to close the deal.

In an interview with POLITICO in Montreal, Carney also said Canadians were fed up with diplomatic provocations from the United States and described President Donald Trump’s wavering policy toward the Russia-Ukraine war as “unhelpful.”

I asked Chrome AI mode to help me parse out Carney's use of the word "unhelpful" as he applied it to Trump. It replied,

When spoken by someone in a position of authority (a manager, a teacher, or a judge), calling an employee's or subordinate's input "unhelpful" can reinforce a power gap.

The person with higher status acts as the sole arbiter of value.

It can function as a polite way to shut down dissent, dismiss a lower-status person's perspective, or police their tone without having to engage with the substance of their argument.

Except, of course, that in the actual power dynamic, Carney is the lower-status individual. He reinforces this himself later in his remarks:

Carney, who recently received four Brooks Brothers shirts as a gift from Trump, said he had not yet worn any of them but was prepared to do so in the event the countries reach terms.

“I haven’t had occasion to put on the shirts, because we don’t have a mutually advantageous trade deal,” he said.

For the moment, Carney added, “They’re sitting in my closet.”

Now, there's a threat! If we can't negotiate a trade deal, I'm not gonna wear the shirts you sent me! Take that, you big bully! This reinforces the impression I had yesterday that the two B-listers, Carney and Leyen, got together in Montreal and convinced each other they're world leaders, except it's maybe not that simple: Leyen is playing Carney. She's dangling "associate member" of the EU at him, and he's jumping at it, primarily as a way to get even with Trump:

He also brushed off Trump’s threats to retaliate if Canada and the EU forge a new diplomatic bond that would be disadvantageous to the United States. Asked if he had handled the summit differently out of sensitivity to Trump, Carney rejected the idea out of hand.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “That way lies madness.”

Carney is in a position to give Leyen whatever she wants; he has a parliamentary majority, and parliament is supreme. If she wants Canada to be greener, for instance, Canada will be greener -- anything to annoy Trump at tnis point. She's probably fully aware that key members of the EC will never allow "associate member" for Canada, but she can extract whatever conditions from "Dear Mark" she wants anyhow, because they'll annoy Trump.

This continues to suggest to me that Carney is living in some sort of fantasy -- he's a major world leader, he's gonna make history.

Without mentioning Elon Musk by name, the prime minister alluded to the recent slowdown in Starlink satellite service to Ukraine — reportedly ordered by Musk himself — as an example of the vulnerability derived from excessive dependence on technology belonging to other countries or a single private company.

“If you’re connected to a satellite system that a billionaire, almost trillionaire, decides to turn off at one moment or not, that’s not a good idea,” Carney said.

Carney acknowledged that there was no quick way to displace Canadian and European reliance on American technology, but argued that “pooling our space assets” with Europe could help build Canadian independence more quickly.

With the accelerating global race for AI development as a backdrop, Carney and his European counterparts have been grappling with the comparatively limited resources of their homegrown tech companies.

But this misses the much bigger point that Sundance makes at Conservative Treehouse:

Canada, the U.K and Europe are all facing the same problem…. MONEY! Where are they going to come up with the funds to pay for a military investment they have declined to make for the past 50+ years?

It’s not just an issue of finding funds for a standing military, hardware, ships, submarines, aircraft, tanks, heavy and light artillery, missiles and drones etc., they also have to fund the technological capabilities to use and deploy modern weapons.

They also need advanced manufacturing, steel works, technological guidance systems, large numbers of strategically placed satellites, a space program that includes rockets to put them into orbit, and much, much more.

At scale this is multiple trillions, and that doesn’t include the baseline manufacturing systems needed to create all this independent infrastructure.

The photo above is from one of Carney's political missteps, an appearance at a pride parade in Vancouver in August 2025 where he embraced a man in a thong, to the amusement of much of the country. This is Carney the politican, who somehow imagines he's on a par with Trump -- or even a bit above him.

The Grandiosity Of The Leyen-Carney Romance

I've got to say that I've never seen B-listers quiite like Ursula von der Leyen and Mark Carney. Completely uncharismatic, they try to make up for it with public displays of affection and grandiose mutual pronouncements of their importance in B-list places like Strasbourg and Montreal.

The Arctic is one place where the tectonic plates of geopolitics are colliding. And it's not someone else's frontier, it's part of the European Union. Three of our member states are arctic countries. . .

This was part of yesterday's statement in Montreal, carried in the video embedded above. She refers majestically to "the tectonic plates of geopolitics" as part of the EU, but she glosses over that two European Arctic countries, Norway and Iceland, aren't part of the EU by choice, while the US and Russia are far more influential, and the US manages the Canadian Arctic defense on Canada's behalf. Beyond that, earlier this year, Denmark ceded military control of Greenland to the US as well.

It seem to me that she and Carney are trying to build a vibe that Canada has thrown in its lot with the EU, when nobody has any idea what the actual arrangement will be, and any defense agreement will still rely almost exclusively on NATO. Canada's contribution to NATO is nugatory, while the European NATO countries would not be able to undertake serious military operations without direct US logistical and intelligence support.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse tries to parse out what Carney may have in mind, without much success:

Canada is in a really weird place and I’ve all but given up trying to understand it. At a certain point you just have to accept that Prime Minister Mark Carney is operating on an agenda for that country that is disconnected from all traditional perspectives around national best interest.

For example, the Canadian trade relationship with the single state of Texas, USA, is larger than the total Canadian trade relationship with the European Union, yet Carney is spending an inordinate amount of time chasing a trade deal with the EU that is never going to amount to anything. Seriously, it’s a literal dead-end.

First, there’s not a scintilla of alignment between the USMCA (Canada says CUSMA) and the European Union. There’s two entirely different sets of economic baselines, standards, rules and regulations between trading with the United States and trading with the EU. If Canada wants a trade relationship with the USA, they have to give up trying to structure their economy to align with the EU; both systems are entirely different.

Canada cannot have a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU that contains structural regulations on the flow of goods that substantively restricts Canadian products from entering the USA. The same issue exists with China.

Now, if Canada wants to separate from the North American trade agreement, then by all means – go for the deal with the EU and/or China. However, as long as Canada wants to retain their USA dependencies and benefits, there’s no mechanism that permits an FTA of substance with Europe or China. Mark Carney cannot have it both ways.

In other words, both Carney and Leyen live in a world of vibes, atmosphere, and impressions. It's entirely appropriate that both seem to think they're the Holy Roman Emperor. Meanwhile, in Fortune, How Canada decided to hurt its own economy, raise its inflation—and most Canadians approved because they’re so angry at Trump:

In a report published after Canada announced the tariffs on Aug. 25, Oxford Economics analysts warned that while the retaliatory tariffs may help protect some domestic manufacturers, it will also force Canadian businesses to absorb added business costs and increase consumer prices.

Canada depends on the U.S. buyers for about 70% of its exports, and the U.S. economy is about 13-times larger than Canada's.

Oxford projected that Canada's GDP will likely grow by 0.8% in 2026, but tariffs will reduce growth in 2027 by 0.2% to 0.3% relative to its August baseline calculations. It predicted inflation to increase by about 0.3% compared to the August 2027 baseline.

. . . Then there's the practical matter of Canada being able to sustain its efforts to combat Trump's trade policy. While the popularity of Carney's trade tactics are popular now, political analysts suggest support for the Canadian government's tariff payback could wane should the economy take a downturn.

"Carney's leverage will start to diminish if this escalating trade war starts to show up in palpable increases in unemployment, factory shutdowns and declining income," Julian Karaguesian, a former adviser at Canada's Finance ​Ministry and economics professor at McGill University, told Reuters last month. "Canada cannot win an economic war of attrition with the U.S."

For now, Carney is trading on being a world-class B-lister and a technocratic cool kid, insofar as technocrats can be cool, but let's face it, Scott Bessent is way cooler than either one. Carney's shown no urgency in resuming the trade talks, apparently banking on continuing support for standing up to Trump. Does he really believe Trump will blink first?