Trump drove a lap past his $14.7M DC makeover mistake — then went looking for a fight with Canada

The presidential limousine known as “The Beast” is relatively quick for a vehicle tipping the scales at more than nine tons, but it’s not nearly as fast as an IndyCar.

That didn’t stop Donald Trump from insisting on a televised “lap of honor” around the Freedom250 Grand Prix course that ran though the heart of Washington, D.C., Sunday. The route went down Pennsylvania Avenue and past the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool- the renovation boondoggle that his administration has now spent $14.7 million to fix.

He then waved the green flag to kick off the race, the first in the nation’s capital since the Cadillac Grand Prix saw Formula One cars racing through the streets nearly a quarter-century ago. Trump’s appearance was accompanied by other ostentatious martial displays including military flyovers and participation by Medal of Honor recipients, just like the UFC fight he’d ordered up on the White House lawn to mark his birthday earlier this summer.

It was a Trumpian spectacle ostensibly meant to close out the MAGA-infused semiquincentennial celebrations in Washington — the rain-soaked July 4 fireworks, the shambolic Great American State Fair, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship event held on the president’s birthday.

But with the exception of the fireworks display (an annual event that was up-sized and MAGA-fied at Trump’s insistence) none of the Grand Prix was something that most of DC, let alone America, clamored for. Instead, the automotive event was the latest example of how Trump appears intent on pushing ahead with the things he likes — things the public hates — regardless of their impact on the public mood or his party’s midterm prospects.

Like starting a trade war with Canada.

Trump is 19 months into the most aggressive physical reworking of central Washington any president has attempted, and every measure of its popularity, and of his, has moved one way. His approval is running near 38 percent against 59 percent disapproval, and sits at 34 percent among independents — below the level that preceded his party’s 41-seat loss in 2018. Polling on the construction program itself has found it unpopular since at least July.

None of that produced a pause in Trump’s makeover ambitions. The East Wing is gone, demolished for a ballroom costing around $400 million. The South Lawn has a granite helipad, and the Rose Garden is a patio with furniture matching the president’s Florida social club.

But the president hasn’t been content to plow ahead on the symbolic legacy projects he wants to use to ensure he is remembered when he leaves Washington.

He’s also continuing his quixotic quest to upend decades of economic integration in North America by re-escalating his trade war with Canada, despite announcing a deal to avert further problems just six days earlier.

At the time, he said 50 percent tariffs due to take effect on many Canadian goods had been held back three days, with the deal he touted including a claim that tariffs on American farm exports would go “down to zero,” calling it “a very good deal for both parties.”

The deal collapsed. Carney walked away from talks late Friday. On Saturday, 50 percent tariffs went on roughly $28 billion of Canadian exports. Trump has now threatened to extend them on New Year’s Day to “all Cars, Trucks, both large and small, Automotive Parts, and Steel.” Ottawa is expected to announce retaliation on Tuesday.

Speaking Monday in Quebec, Carney called the tariffs “a miscalculation” and said the American demands had been “uneconomic” and “unfair.” Canada, he said, “could not accept what the U.S. had offered, nor could we give what they asked. They asked too much, and they offered too little.” He has promised to match the tariffs “dollar-for-dollar” after Labor Day.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford was less measured. Trump, he told CTV, “can kiss my a**.” He said Canada should “throw everything and the kitchen sink at him,” invoked Reagan on bullies, and told the Associated Press that Reagan himself would be “throwing up on” Trump over the tariffs. On critical minerals: “I’ll cut them off. You won’t get a grain of sand out of Ontario.”

Trump’s answer, posted to Truth Social just after 2 p.m., was about Ford’s late brother.

“Lots of ‘bluster’ from Doug Ford,” he wrote, “who is the Premier of the Canadian Province of Ontario, but who is better known as the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford.” He described the Canadian prime minister as “Governor Carney,” a demotion he has used for a year, and Ford as “his Flunky.” He warned that “much of the Electricity, Oil, and Gas that Canada gets is transported through the U.S.A.,” and that someone should get “these clowns” to “fall in line” or “the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!”

He closed with a claim that Canada’s unemployment rate is “now at 10%, and rapidly rising.”

Trump still claims tariffs are paid by foreign countries — a lie he’s peddled for his entire decade atop the American political scene.

It’s all part of his worldview which holds that the U.S. has somehow been taken advantage of because other countries have been successful in recent years.

He also doesn’t seem to grasp that the taxes he is imposing by fiat are inflationary by design — they raise the price of imported goods, which is the precise thing voters say they are angriest about, and which is the largest single component of the president’s polling problem.

But Trump doesn’t care about that political reality, just like he doesn’t care about the optics of attending yet another ostentatious event in Washington at a time when Americans can hardly afford to fuel their cars.

What both projects have in common is not that they poll well. It is that they are his.

He cannot bring grocery prices down before November. He cannot end the war he started in Iran.

What he can do is pour granite, close Pennsylvania Avenue, put 25 racing cars on it, and pick a fight with a neighboring head of government in which he is unambiguously the main character — and be seen doing all of it.

The 250th anniversary celebration is finished now — the UFC card on the lawn, the Patriot Games, the fireworks, the Grand Prix. What remains on the calendar is a ballroom under a court order, an airport renovation, a tariff schedule that takes effect on New Year’s Day, and a midterm election in ten weeks.

The cars have gone. The barriers come down this week. Now, his trade war begins.