President Donald Trump criticized Justin Trudeau Wednesday, calling his Canadian counterpart “two-faced” after footage emerged of world leaders appearing to mock him.
“He’s two-faced,” Trump said. “I find him to be a very nice guy but the truth is I called him out on the fact that he’s not paying 2% (on Canada’s defense budget) and I guess he’s not very happy about it.”
“He’s not paying 2% and he should be paying 2%. It’s Canada, they have money and they should be paying 2%. So I called him out on that and I’m sure he wasn’t happy about it but that’s the way it is.”
The U.S. leader made the remark while taking questions from reporters alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the 2019 NATO summit in London.
A video surfaced on social media late Tuesday purporting to show Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte discussing Trump’s press conference with NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.
In the clip, which the people involved didn’t realize was being taken, Johnson asks Macron: “Is that why you were late?” to which Trudeau steps in and says: “He was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top.”
It is not clear who exactly Trudeau was referring to in the footage, but it has been widely speculated that he was referring to Trump’s remarks alongside Stoltenberg Tuesday. Trump’s remarks with the NATO chief lasted 53 minutes, according to a White House transcript, when the itinerary had suggested that it would last 20 minutes.
