Doug Ford says he wasn’t told to tone down ‘loser’ rhetoric about Donald Trump

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says neither his team nor the prime minister asked him to tone down a war of words with U.S. President Donald Trump that saw him tell the president he was a “loser” who could “kiss my ass.”

Trade talks between Canada and the United States fell apart late on Friday night, leading to 50 per cent tariffs on billions of dollars of Canadian goods and plans for massive counter levies from Ottawa set to come in next month.

Since talks failed, Trump has posted regularly on his Truth Social platform about Canada, including one post that described Ontario’s premier as “the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford.”

Monday saw Ford hold a fiery news conference where he repeatedly attacked the president as a “loser,” the “king of bankruptcies” and a “dictator.”

“I’m not going to take the bait,” Ford told reporters. “This guy’s a loser. He’s going to be a loser, simple as that. We’re going to fight with everything we have. And, you know something? I have more courage, more brains in my baby toe than he has in his whole body.”

Since Monday, the Ontario premier has dramatically lowered the rhetoric.

Speaking on CNN in the United States on Tuesday, he acknowledged that “it got a little heated” with the president, but Ford told reporters on Wednesday nobody had asked him to pull back.

“I had a call, but (Prime Minister Mark Carney) never said that at all. He knows I have his back, the country knows I have their back,” Ford told reporters.

“Does it get heated? When Donald Trump wants to take the livelihood and try to hurt our country and hurt our province, I have a job for the people of Ontario.”

Asked later during the news conference if his staff had raised concerns, Ford again denied the idea.

“Not at all, a total opposite, you know? Those words resonated,” the premier said. “I usually don’t use those words, but when your country is under attack, and your province is under attack, and this guy is just nothing but a bully, it resonated around the world.”

Elsewhere, Ford said he and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith continue to disagree about whether or not to use oil as leverage in trade talks.

Ford said he and Smith spoke on Monday after he called on all provinces to take a “Team Canada” approach to the latest tariff developments and use their resources such as oil to “put pain on the U.S.”

Smith strongly disagreed, saying in a statement Monday after their call that cutting off Alberta’s energy exports to the United States would be extremely harmful to Canadians and is not a viable option.