Майор Чистов

The audio clip, a quickie transcript of which is below, is from MacKinnon’s interview  https://www.youtube.coam/watch?v=S-waDc35bKc “Trump Edition Canada fights back - Battle Lines The Telegraph” (after 11:40). MacKinnon’s picture (posted only on Substack) is from the Globe and Mail’s site.

“QUE Can we talk a little bit about how all of this is going down in Canada [in terms of] non-political effects. <...> On Thursday the last week you had this extraordinary scene in the White House where Donald Trump was sitting down with Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, who had to quietly nod along to this stuff, which was pretty awkward. [Trump] said: [Trump's voiceover]<...> [Trump] made absolutely clear his intentions to subsume Canada into the United States. [So,] speaking as a Canadian, how that is going down?

MM You mean watching Mark Rutte say nothing? <...> Watching Keir Starmer go to - you know, we're members of the Commonwealth, we share a head of state - having him go to Washington and nod along until there is no gap between him and Mr. Trump and then invite him to Buckingham Palace to meet the Canadian head of state, to invite Trump here... There is a lot of anger in Canada as the first listener expressed because<...> we are a member of NATO, we should not be subjected to territorial threats in front of the secretary general of NATO. We should not be seeing our closest... we look at England and France as mom and dad, as the new prime minister Mark Carney made clear this week by flying to Paris and London before he went anywhere else.  To see the British prime minister - he sent an invitation and presumably King Charles [accepted] it. There is a betrayal on a lot of sides right now, and I think that Britain and the Commonwealth and the NATO are going to figure out what they are for.

QUE That's really interesting. I suppose you don't think about Commonwealth as much but...

MM Not until recently. (Both laugh)

QUE One of the things that really came out is a lot of Canadians died in the 1st and 2nd world wars fighting alongside Brits

MM We didn't declare war the first time, we just went to war 'cause they told us to.

QUE And that's really coming out. There is a sense [that] we should be together in the Commonwealth.

MM Absolutely. <...> So there is a sense that we thought we were in all of this together and then [when] our neighbor turns into a bully, all our other friends are scattering and taking cover.”

Copy of the post: https://archivist.substack.com/p/not-only-ukraine-is-tasting-the-bitter