(Trudeau’s Replacement Immediately Takes It to Trump)

People have always wondered what it is about now former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Donald Trump just cannot stand. His politics aren’t demonstrably different from any other center-left leader Trump has dealt with around the world and the U.S.-Canadian relationship, until now, had been the most congenial, peaceful and cooperative relationship in the history of both countries. I happen to think it’s personal, as is so much of Trump’s behavior toward his global counterparts.

Just as he admires Russian President Vladimir Putin for his strongman image or North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for his (plainly insincere) obsequiousness, he likewise loathed German Chancellor Angela Merkel for being a plain, dumpy woman and currently hates Volodymyr Zelenskyy for being, in Trump’s mind, the instrument of the humiliation of his first impeachment. With Trudeau I think it’s always been simple: juvenile jealousy of his youthful good looks. Trump is not a complicated man when it comes to his judgments of other people. He is, after all, a person who commonly hires people because they are “out of central casting.”