Trump’s New Canada Threat Is Sure to Cost Republicans Michigan

Donald Trump’s threat to block the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, which would connect Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, not only strains already tense relations with Canada, but could also hurt Republicans in the battleground state of Michigan. 

The president threw a tantrum on Truth Social Monday, saying that he would “not allow” the bridge to open “until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve. We will start negotiations, IMMEDIATELY.” 

How Trump would block the bridge from opening when major construction is already completed is unclear, although he falsely claimed that Canada owns “both the Canada and the United States side and, of course, built it with virtually no US content.” In reality, Canada has paid the full cost of over $4 billion to build the bridge, which is jointly owned by the state of Michigan and the Canadian government but fully operated and maintained by Ottawa.  

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said that the bridge will be an economic boon to the state, with her spokesperson Stacey LaRouche telling CNN in a statement Tuesday that it is “all about jobs.” 

“It’s good for Michigan workers and it’s good for Michigan’s auto industry. As a reminder, Canada financed the construction of the bridge – which was built by union construction workers from both sides of the border — and it will be operated under a joint ownership agreement between Michigan and Canada,” LaRouche said. “This project has been a tremendous example of bipartisan and international cooperation. It’s going to open one way or another, and the governor looks forward to attending the ribbon cutting.” 

The agreement, made in 2012, requires all iron and steel in its construction be produced in the U.S. or Canada, with neither country being favored. Trump either has no idea, or is deliberately lying, frustrating local officials. 

“It’s just insane,” said Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens regarding Trump’s post, noting that steel on the Michigan side of the bridge was all made in the U.S. “I really can’t believe what I’m reading.” 

Trump is going out of his way to antagonize Michigan voters, simply because he’s still mad at Canada for some imagined trade slight, raising and lowering tariffs against the U.S.’s northern neighbor on a whim. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made an emphatic speech at Davos last month, announcing that his country would seek economic independence from the U.S. 

Trump has doubled down in response, threatening to raise tariffs on Canada even further if it follows through on an expansive trade deal with China. Now, it seems Trump doesn’t care if the state of Michigan suffers over his beef with Canada, and it could backfire on him starting with November’s midterm elections. 

Representative Thomas Massie has identified Emirati businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem as the recipient of the “I loved the torture video” email from disgraced sex predator Jeffrey Epstein. The sultan’s name was initially redacted.

“A sultan seems to have sent this,” Massie said Monday evening, after viewing the unredacted files. “DOJ should make this public.”

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche quickly replied to Massie. “You looked at the document. You know it’s an email address that was redacted. The law requires redactions for personally identifiable information, including if in an email address,” he said. “And you know that the Sultan’s name is available unredacted in the files.”

Blanche’s post was hit with a community note that disputed his reasoning.

“The Epstein Files Transparency Act allows redaction of PII only in very narrow circumstances, such as an unwarranted invasion of privacy or the risk of jeopardizing a federal investigation,” it read. “It is unlikely the cited email would meet that criterion.”

As Massie concluded, Blanche “tacitly admitted that Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem was the sender of the torture video.”

Sulayem is currently the chairman and CEO of DP World, an international logistics company worth billions headquartered in Dubai.

The public version of the email, dated April 24, 2009, shows Epstein messaging someone, “where are you? Are you ok, I loved the torture video.”

That person responds back, “I am in china I will be in the US 2nd week of May.”

It is unclear what the nature of the “torture video” Epstein refers to is. But given just about everything else we know about him, it’s hard not to imagine that this is exactly what it looks like, if not worse.

The DP World executive had a rather intimate correspondence with Epstein.

“This girl is russian father Cypriot mom I met her two years ago she goes to t=e American university in Dubai,” Sulayem wrote to Epstein in September 2015, in another email that identifies him by name. “She got engaged but now she back with me. The best sex I ever had amazing body.”

There are also multiple receipts from the sultan for a 23andMe test and a 2012 dinner invitation to Epstein’s home.

Neither DP World nor Sulayem have publicly commented.

Country music rapper Kid Rock is still trying to convince the public that his bad lip-sync job was a great performance.

The MAGA musician went on Fox News Monday in a fruitless attempt to salvage the national reception of his set from the night before, when he headlined Turning Point USA’s version of the Super Bowl halftime show. During the prerecorded performance, Kid Rock’s mouth regularly did not match the booming voice coming from the speakers.

“There were a lot of questions about what happened during your first song onstage. People were talking about it. It seemed to be a little bit out of whack. What was going on there?” asked host Laura Ingraham.

“Yeah, so it was out of sync,” Rock said, apparently blaming Turning Point’s events production team for delaying his allegedly live vocals.

He then announced that, in order to prove the “haters” wrong, he was planning to do another set in his Nashville living room with a DJ not only to prove he can he sing but to showcase how a delay can happen live.

“Because number one, if it would have been a lip sync like people are trying—like the left is trying to throw me under the bus again, the mainstream media, the social media trying to amplify it—it would have been super easy to sync it up if it was prerecorded,” Rock continued. “It was very difficult for the Turning Point production crew—who, by the way, I can’t say enough good things about.

“It was just a syncing issue that they have, and I know they tried to get it right, it was very difficult,” Rock insisted. “But I’ll answer all the haters tomorrow, and we’ll put ’em back in the ‘shut up and go back trying to report the fake news.’”

Droves of viewers caught on to Rock’s bad lip sync Sunday, likening his vocal talent to famed fakers Ashlee Simpson and Millie Vanilli. Others claimed that Rock’s set was “worse” than one of Frankie Valli’s cashed-out 2024 performances, in which the “Sherry” singer hardly moved his mouth at all.

Just a fraction of the country actually watched the conservative-funded alternative to international phenomenon Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, however. Early estimates reported that while 128 million Americans tuned in to watch Bad Bunny rap in Spanish, just 6.1 million people streamed Turning Point’s option on YouTube.

Sorry, Canadians, it’s time to pack up your skates—Donald Trump says China is going to take away your ice hockey.

In a scattered tirade on Truth Social Monday evening, Trump claimed that Canada’s national pastime was coming to an end while threatening to block the opening of a newly constructed 1.5 mile-long bridge connecting Ontario to Michigan.

“I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve,” Trump wrote.

Trump seemed particularly pissed that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had distanced himself from the United States, and “wants to make a deal with China—which will eat Canada alive.”

“The first thing China will do is terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada, and permanently eliminate The Stanley Cup,” Trump wrote, implying that a new trade deal with China could have extreme—and inexplicable—cultural consequences. This kind of racist nonsense is to be expected from a president who’s built his career on taking slap shots at immigrants.

While Carney had attempted to thaw economic relations with China last month, he has also been very clear that Canada has “no intention” of pursuing a free trade deal with China, acknowledging that it would completely rupture his country’s relationship to the United States. That doesn’t mean he held back from criticizing Trump on the world stage, though.

Trump whined that Canada would no longer stock American booze, even though that decision was in retaliation for his sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs, and that it still had steep tariffs on U.S. dairy products—even though those tariffs only apply after the U.S. makes a Trump-negotiated quantity of tariff-free dairy sales to Canada.

On the subject of the new bridge, the president falsely claimed that Canada owned both sides of the new bridge and “built it with virtually no US content.”

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s spokesperson, Stacey LaRouche, pointed out that while Canada had completely financed the $4 billion bridge, it was “built by union construction workers from both sides of the border—and it will be operated under a joint ownership agreement between Michigan and Canada.”

On the other side of the bridge, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens expressed disbelief at Trump’s rant. “It’s just insane,” he said. “I really can’t believe what I’m reading.”

Nor should he—because it’s all complete nonsense.

Representative Thomas Massie got the Justice Department to unredact billionaire and former Victoria Secret CEO Les Wexner’s name in the Epstein files, all while exposing the DOJ’s complicity—or incompetence—in the process. 

Massie was one of a few members of Congress who were able to view the Justice Department’s unredacted files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Monday. 

After viewing the files, Massie asked why the name of a “well known retired CEO” was redacted.  

In response, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed that Wexner’s name was redacted because it was on the same page as the names of victims. “We have just unredacted Les Wexner’s name from this document, but his name already appears in the files thousands of times,” Blanche announced. “DOJ is hiding nothing.”

Massie responded quickly. 

“This is significant because Kash Patel testified to Congress that FBI had no evidence of other sex traffickers. This is FBI’s own 2019 document listing Wexner as coconspirator in child sex trafficking. It wasn’t unredacted until tonight,” he said, suggesting that FBI Director Patel may have very well committed perjury when he testified to Congress. “Here DOJ acts as if they were justified in redacting the men’s names simply because the document contains victims’ names. Tonight they learned you can redact victim names while still publishing the other names, per our law.”

It’s clear at this point that the DOJ is not prioritizing transparency, it’s prioritizing status and reputation. The FBI considered Wexner as a potential co-conspirator in child sex trafficking seven years ago, and for the last seven years, Wexner has walked the earth as a free—and very rich—man. And if the FBI was sitting on Wexner’s name for that long, who else is hiding under those black bars?