Kudlow on Trudeau: ‘It was a betrayal’

President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Sunday accused Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of undermining the US and its allies with comments he made at the G7 summit.

“It was a betrayal,” Kudlow said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Kudlow was speaking following the G7 summit in Canada on Saturday. As Trump flew from the summit with US allies to a planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, he lashed out at Trudeau for what he said were his “false statements” at a news conference and said the US would not endorse the G7 communique, a negotiated statement on shared priorities among the group.

Trudeau said in the news conference Saturday that Canada will “move forward with retaliatory measures” on July 1 in response to the Trump administration’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, the European Union and Mexico.

“I have made it very clear to the President that it is not something we relish doing, but it something that we absolutely will do,” Trudeau said. “Canadians, we’re polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.”

In his interview Sunday, Kudlow accused Trudeau of making his comments for “domestic political consumption” and doing “a great disservice to the whole G7.”

“He really kind of stabbed us in the back,” Kudlow said.

Kudlow said the US had spent the summit negotiating in “good faith” with Trudeau and the other assembled leaders, and that the US had planned to sign the communique until Trudeau’s news conference, which Kudlow called a “sophomoric play.”

Kudlow also said Trump’s planned meeting with Kim was part of the reason why they were taking such issue with Trudeau’s comments and that Trump was “not going to let a Canadian prime minister push him around” ahead of the North Korea summit.

“He is not going to permit any show of weakness on the trip to negotiate with North Korea,” Kudlow said.

Trump, en route to Singapore, called Trudeau’s news conference “very dishonest & weak” following his tweet ahead of the G7 summit calling Trudeau “indignant.”

In response to Trump’s tweets on Saturday, Trudeau’s office contended that the Canadian leader said nothing he had not said previously “both in public and in private conversations” with Trump.

Trump’s decision not to endorse the G7 communique brought pushback from some in the US, including Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who broke with Trump on Twitter.

“To our allies: bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-free trade, pro-globalization & supportive of alliances based on 70 years of shared values,” McCain wrote. “Americans stand with you, even if our president doesn’t.”

Asked about the criticism from McCain, Kudlow said Trump had spent much of the summit advocating trade policies McCain would support.

“President Trump is essentially doing what John McCain wanted him to do with respect to free trade,” Kudlow said. “President Trump made it clear, time and again, in those two days outside of Quebec that he wants to reinstitute a process of free trade, no tariffs, no tariff barriers, no quotas and subsidies.”

California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in a separate interview on the same CNN program, called Trump’s decision not to sign the communique a “big mistake” that distanced the US from its top allies.

“I understand the President was upset,” Feinstein said. “The President could have said that, but to walk away from our allies in this way, I think, is a mistake.”