The Daily Beast Podcast - I Know Why You Must Never Surrender to TACO Trump

Episode Date: October 22, 2026

Chrystia Freeland, former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, speaks to Joanna Coles about what she learned negotiating face to face with Donald Trump and why she believes world leaders make a costly mistake when they give in to him. Trump called her “the killer,” then attacked her when Canada retaliated against his tariffs. Freeland explains how his personal charm can disarm an opponent, why Canada answered his tariffs dollar for dollar and how allies could use the same playbook now. She also weighs in on Mark Carney’s leadership, warns that Trump is siding with Vladimir Putin against Ukraine and argues that Elon Musk’s power over critical technology should alarm every democracy. Drawing on her years reporting from the Soviet Union and dealing with Trump from inside government, Freeland offers a blunt assessment of what America’s allies have learned about depending on the United States. #ad If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can start your claim in just a click without having to leave your couch: https://ForThePeople.com/DAILYBEAST #ad Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/beast to get personalized, affordable care for weight loss, hair loss, sex, testosterone, and more. #ad Write your own money story with Monarch. Get 50% off your first year of Monarch Core at https://monarch.com with code BEAST. #ad Go to https://san.com/dailybeast to get the unbiased truth on the stories that matter, only on the Straight Arrow app. Let’s exit the echo chamber. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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A great nickname from Donald Trump. You can't not be influenced by that. He is good at seducing people. And it's important to kind of recognize that. I think one of the reasons that Canada is united today in standing up to Donald Trump is it's not our first rodeo. We had a line that we repeated many, many times. which was we do not escalate, but we do not back down. We see that when you meet him and respond, he backs down.

Remember, Taco, Trump always chickens out. But you have to stand up to him for that. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. Today we have someone whose expertise could not be more timely. She's written about plutocrats. She's written and spent a huge amount of time in Ukraine. And she's also sat right across the table from Donne. Trump negotiating with him when she was finance minister of Canada.

And he called her a killer. He called her a nasty woman. And he called her a whack job. Today's conversation is with Christia Freeland, whose new book, Unreliable Boyfriend, lays out the problem for the Western world dealing with, well, you know the unreliable boyfriend is. It's Donald Trump. So she's got ideas on how to deal with him.

She's also got ideas on how to deal with the increasing plutocracy. That was the subject of her former book, just called plutocrats, and the enormous amount of influence that Elon Musk has now accumulated. Before we get into it, just please a reminder to like, share and subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast. You can join the Daily Beast community, become a friend of the Beast, become a Bee Beast tier member. or you get lots of benefits, including access to extra content and exclusive content. So, no more time to waste. Let's get into it with Christia Freeland. If your plumber arrived with a wrench and said,

I've always been curious about pipes. You'd probably show him the door, because when something really matters, experience isn't a bonus, it's the whole point. That's why so many people turn to mortgage. and Morgan, making it America's largest injury law firm. Morgan and Morgan has a proven track record of fighting for the people for over 35 years. With over 35 billion recovered for their clients, Morgan and Morgan knows a thing or two

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unreliable boyfriend, an insider's view of dealing with a chaotic superpower, plutocrats, and other complicated people. Excellent. It reads like a thriller. I couldn't believe how you turned something as dry in theory as Canada's trade

negotiations, which you oversaw for a period of time as finance minister and then Deputy Prime Minister of Canada into such a racy reed. There are even dirty jokes. There are dirty jokes. You compare Angela Merkel to Gandalf. It's a rip-roaring read. It really is. And it surprised me because I wasn't expecting it. I guess, though, we should start with the fact that you grew up in Canada on a farm with a Ukrainian mother. You went to Ukraine as part of your studies at Harvard. And you maintained

a relationship with Ukraine. Earlier this year, you became an unpaid economic advisor to Zelensky. And it would be remiss of us not to start with the extreme situation that is developing in Ukraine right now. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and the subject, obviously of your previous book, Plutocrats. I mean, it's like all your world's coming together, the richest man in the world deciding what will happen and whether or not he can and can't switch off Ukraine's defenses. Give us your point of view on what is happening as someone who spent a lot of time in Ukraine. So I'm really glad to start there because I really believe that the most important fight happening in the world right now is the fight happening in Ukraine. I think, Joanna, there is

today a huge fight in the world between democracy and dictatorship. And I worry sometimes that the dictators are more aware that this fight is happening and they are more sort of comprehensively focused on it than we Democrats and democracies are. The front lines of the fight has a lot of separate battles going on. I was interested by the way that Andy Burnham, the newish prime minister of the United Kingdom, said that Russia did interfere in the Brexit vote. That's another example of where that fight is happening. But really, the most important, bloodiest battle is in Ukraine, where quite literally Russia is trying to show that the sanctity of international borders that was one of the great achievements of the post-World War II generation no longer exists.

And that if you have a bigger army, you're allowed to invade whoever you feel like. And that democracies, you know, are not allowed to assert their sovereignty if they They have a neighbor who doesn't respect it. Terrible. Absolutely terrible. And, you know, it is a clear and present threat to Europe. And I think, you know, European countries need to recognize they are in jeopardy in a way that they have not been since the Second World War. Now, what is really horrifying and I know it to be true, but at some emotional level, I find it hard.

to fully kind of acknowledge it is Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is on Vladimir Putin's side openly, explicitly, and is explicitly seeking to undermine Ukraine. And Elon Musk is right there beside him. I think Europeans need to be clear, and I admire President Zelensky so much for his clarity on this. this is a betrayal of Ukraine. This is a betrayal of America's European NATO allies. And this is a betrayal of, you know, the things that America's finest ideals, the things that I, as someone who is not American but has lived in America and studied in America, the things that I've admired about America. The one thing that gives me hope is that some Americans, many Americans, including some Republicans, are finally starting to speak out and are starting to say this is appalling.

There need to be more people who say that. So let me ask you something because there is also an answer to this in terms of the election. We are two weeks off from the midterms, which may, you know, according to the polls, deliver a resounding pushback to Donald Trump. There is no pushback, however, to Elon Musk. Elon Musk has Starlink an incredibly powerful satellite network that is, in fact, Ukraine's first line of defense. Who holds back the plutocrats like this? Polls show that Americans, including Republicans, support Ukraine and oppose Putin. I hope that will be one of the issues that they vote on. It certainly should be.

You are absolutely right about Elon Musk and the unchecked power of the plutocrats. One of the things that America should be worried about is that what is happening in Ukraine is teaching all of America's traditional allies, the folly of being dependent on the United States, particularly when it comes to defense technology. And, you know, this is really bad news for America's big defense companies. They are going to struggle not just today, but in the years to come, to do deals with NATO allies. And that has been something that has been very important to them. So I hope that they recognize that. And I hope that they are calling up the White House and saying, you are hurting our shareholders. You know, I mean, what country now wants to buy an F-35 plane when the software is controlled by the United States? As for Musk, for me, this is one of the battlefields between democracy and dictatorship. And it's one of the of the reasons that democracies, I really, really hope, can again form a united front.

Because you're right. Like, we're in a world now where a single guy, unchecked by anyone, can actually decide matters, international matters of war and peace. That is not right. And I do think that, you know, something that the world's democracies need to do is find a way to reign in the plutocrats. The big challenge, Joanna, is it will be hard to do without the United States being on the same team citizens, team democracy. And that's why the midterms matter for the, no, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, and also difficult when Elon Musk is pouring money. into the midterm elections. He's pouring money over $200 million into Texas, which is where he has the headquarters of his business, SpaceX, Tesla.

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Hymns.com slash beast to get personalized, affordable care for weight loss, hair loss, sex, testosterone, and more. That's H-I-M-S.com slash beast. HIMS.com slash beast. Individual results may vary and stopping treatment may result in weight regain. Weight loss by HIMS is not available in all 50 states and Wigovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk A slash S. to get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wagovi Clinical Study Information Restrictions, visit hymns.com. It's also really strange, Krista, and I wanted to ask you about this, that we assumed that the Cold War was over, that the West had won the Cold War,

that democratic values were going to be essentially the way of the world. Do you actually think it's possible there could be a rollback? I mean, part of the early part of your book, very interesting description of you spending time in Ukraine as a student, you go into Russia at one point and you report back and you do this consistently in the book about how awful actually it is to live in countries where you don't have freedom of speech, where you have to line up for basic foods, where, you know, people live in homes just like everybody else. And when people are frightened, people are frightened. And is it possible that in the West we've somehow forgotten this, that there seems to be a romantic view of what actually it might be like to live in Russia? Yeah, I think that's exactly right, Joanna. And, you know, I am so glad to have had an experience when I was young to actually live in the Soviet Union. And like it was a privileged experience, right?

Like, I could always leave. and I had hard currency and I could shop in the hard currency shops. So it wasn't nearly as bad as it was to actually be a citizen, but I got a taste of it. And, you know, I think that is one of the reasons that I am so passionately a believer that we have to fight for liberal democracy. and I can lose patience with people in our own societies who somehow devalue that and who maybe, you know, people sometimes speculate like, you know, oh, maybe like we're post-liberal democracy. The only people who think that are people who have never experienced what it is to be in an authoritarian regime. So, yeah, I totally agree with you. And what's interesting is the kind of the neo-authoritarians, the ones who are coming back, actually don't turn out to be that effective either.

So I think the fate of Victor Orban is really, really interesting. And we saw, you know, Hungarians tried it. They tried out what it was like to have, you know, a proudly illiberal state didn't work. work out that well. I just hope that the rest of us don't have to go through that experience, too. It was a traumatic experience for Hungarians, and they had the restraining force of the EU that I think stopped Orban from indulging, you know, his most terrible impulses. So one of the things I think Americans very naive about is the power of social media coming in from Russia and coming in from China. You refer in the book to the enemies

already within the US. And your point about, you know, it's people in the West that criticize the West and attack it. But there's a lot of that being fueled by Russia and China and, you know, bots. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I do think it's something that people don't fully understand. You know, it was interesting how when Ukraine started hitting the Russian data centers, suddenly so many people reported, wow, the bots are gone. All these people criticizing democratic ideas, ideas of liberal democracy, you know, on my news site or in my political campaign, suddenly vanished.

And, you know, I absolutely think that, you know, Pukin, he is fighting a physical kinetic war on the front lines with Ukraine. And he is trying to undermine us with his propaganda. And it's sophisticated propaganda because it's disguise. And we're right that China is part of it too. And the thing is it's an asymmetric fight in that, you know, for the dictators to win, they don't even need necessarily a specific outcome in our countries. All that they need is to divide us and to cause us to lose faith in the ability of liberal democracy to deliver a good life for people.

And I think they've been pretty good at that. And I think we need to find ways to be more sophisticated at countering what is going on. And also I think I couldn't agree more. And also I think to sow confusion and doubt in the election process. So people then think, well, did he win? Didn't he win? And you already saw that with Trump's sowing doubt over 2020. And, you know, a lot of people predict we're going to see that at the midterms that Trump is already interfering with the election process itself at a state level. But also the relentless drumbeat on social media that there's something broken about the electoral process, which in fact we know isn't true. What better way to sow doubt in democracy than to actually so doubt in the whole idea

of voting? I do think, though, that just the fact that we're having this conversation is important. And there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of conversations like this happening in the United States right now. There are some remarkable NGOs that are getting ready. to support both the voting process and the validation process after voting. You know, the best way to counter this kind of an effort is, you know, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

And so talking about it, being conscious of it, being aware is really, really important. And, you know, I, you know, this is really bad what is happening. has been pretty effective at making, you know, people, arguably, you know, like the richest generation in the history of the world, you know, in many ways. No one has lived better lives ever in the history of humans. There's never been a better time to be an American. Right. Like, and probably to be a person in a liberal democracy. You know what I mean? Like, you know, we have so much. Of course it would be better to have more and there are people who don't have enough. But overall, we're doing great. And yet, you know, we've been persuaded that things are awful and we are divided. I do, though, really believe that we can sort ourselves out. I'm not saying we will for sure. But I think that. that that is absolutely possible.

And, you know, Joanna, you are European. And I see Europe as an example of how you can go from total destruction and devastation to something pretty remarkable. You know, think of Europe in the 1930s. And then in the, you know, great war that followed. No one in that time could have imagined that within a generation you would have France and Germany forming an economic union, that you would have Germany and Japan being military allies of the United States, and that you would have us together, you know, the world coming together in a way that was. unimaginable in the 19th century. So, you know, I think even we have to be realistic about how bad things are. We have to be realistic about the challenge, but we also have to plan for something better because if you don't plan for it, you're for sure not going to get it.

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people losing their lives. And this is a regular occurrence. He's blaming the Pentagon saying, oh, it was the Pentagon. Donald Trump is saying, no, no, no, is Elon Musk is nothing to do with him. I didn't know anything about it, his usual obfuscation. I get the election part of it, and I'm glad that you're optimistic that we can do something about the overreach by politicians. What do you think can happen with the pollutocrats, particularly where not only are they incredibly wealthy, but they own these enormous social media platforms.

You've got Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders at Google frequently at Donald Trump's dinner table. You've got Elon Musk who owns X. You've got Mark Zuckerberg who owns WhatsApp and Facebook and Instagram and threads now. It's remarkable what these very wealthy men have managed to accumulate in terms of power and influence. I mean, that does seem unprecedented. If not unprecedented, it is close to unprecedented. You know, I think there is probably a parallel with the Gilded Age. And for me, I certainly experienced a parallel with the rise of the Russian oligarchs. That is an uncomfortable parallel because that did not end well.

It didn't end well for some of the oligarchs either, right? Well, that's the point really. And the oligarchs thought that first, you know, they decided it was better for them to be in charge than to have democracy. They decided they could control the state. Then they decided they would install someone who they thought would be a puppet president, Vladimir Putin. He sort of decided that he was going to be their boss, not the other way around. and some of them ended up in jail and some of them ended up dead. If I were a plutocrat, an American plutocrat, I would read that as a cautionary tale.

And I would remember that a rule of law society actually protects plutocrats as well. But look, I agree with you. I agree with your critiquing your anxiety. It's something that I write about. It's something that I wrote in a book called plutocrats. I think we need to think about two things. You know, America is very different from many other democracies in the extent to which money is allowed to play a role in politics. I think that is very corrupting of American politics and very actually harmful for the American economy.

As soon as you create a system where the best way to be rich is by influencing the political system, rather than by just inventing and producing great stuff, you're creating some unhealthy distortions. So I think that's a problem for America. And what's a problem for America is a problem for the world. But the second thing is, I think we do need to reign in the plutocrats. We need to rein in their political influence. And we also need to reign in their economic influence. You know, I think we are at a moment when we need a trust-busting era. Now, the complication in all of that, Joanna, is really the only way to effectively rein in

the world's plutocrats is for the world's democracies, including the United States, to decide it's something they want to do together. And a challenge for those of us who are not American is, unless America is part of the effort, it's going to be pretty hard to do, which is a reason why the political stakes in America are high not only for Americans, but are high for the rest of the world. Okay. So one of the ways that Canada has dealt with Donald Trump, particularly when it comes to tariffs, is something that you were responsible for, which is standing up to Donald Trump. And I want you to take us through the book. But literally, I was on the edge of my seat, even though I knew how it resolved. You take a very firm stand. You, you take a very firm stand. You. You. You. You. You. You.

You have an amazing scene in the book where you go to bed at 10 o'clock at night because your husband is a, likes an early night. But you've set your alarm to wake up at midnight, which is the day that the Canadian tariffs come into play against America. And it really reads like a thriller. I want to know what it's like to sit across the table from Donald Trump, who called you a nasty woman. He went after you, he called you a whack job,

because you dared to stand up to him. And I want your lessons for dealing with a bully like Donald Trump. Okay, well, first of all, I'm going to say something that probably some of your listeners won't like to hear, which is he actually is quite charming and charismatic. You know, there's a reason that so many people find Donald Trump appealing in person is. is he's funny. If he wants you to like him, he can be good at making you like him. And, you know, when you add to that, the power of the presidency, it can be pretty heady.

He focuses in on people. You know, I was a mere minister. I wasn't a leader. But he knew who I was. He gave me a nickname. He called me the killer. And that was meant as a compliment. A great nickname from John.

Donald Trump. Yeah, yeah. And like, like, you can't not be influenced by that. You're like, oh, you know, he has a nickname for me. Like, wow. So he is good at seducing people. And it's important to kind of recognize that. We did. Yeah, I think one of the reasons that Canada is united today in standing up to Donald Trump is it's not our first rodeo. We had a big confrontation in the first Trump administration, and it had a happy ending. And in that first Trump administration, it was a real team effort, and we developed a three-part playbook. Part one was collaborate where you can. Work hard to identify areas where you have a shared interest and do something about it. So, you know, something that we knew matter to the Trump administration was high. paying blue-collar jobs, matters to Canada too. And we developed a novel clause, which is in the trade deal that we have that's currently

in force, to protect high-value jobs in North America. Second thing was, do not capitulate. And we had a line that we repeated many, many times, which was, we do not escalate. but we do not back down. When the U.S. imposed illegal and unjustified tariffs on Canada in 2018, we retaliated dollar for dollar. And, you know, I wish that that was a lesson that not only Canada had learned, but that all of America's traditional partners had learned. And I really believe, you know, we don't get to do history over. but I really believe that had we had a united allied response when the U.S. first imposed

those illegal and unjustified tariffs in the spring of 2025 and had everyone retaliated together, I think you would have seen a very different Donald Trump after that. We see that when you meet him and respond, he backs down. Remember, Taco, Trump always chickens out. But you have to stand up to him for that. Staying informed of what's going on in the world is overwhelming and with good reason. In a time of media bias and mistrust, it's tough to know what the truth is. That's where our sponsor, Straight Arrow, comes in.

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Precisely, as soon as the Europeans actually started standing up for themselves, you saw the U.S. back down. And so I think that was really a huge, huge mistake. And then the final thing I would say, Joanna, that was like the third part of our three-part playbook was we called it the donut strategy. And it was a recognition that the president is one guy, but America is a vast country. And it was kind of having trust in Americans, you know. We had a very systematic plan to go out and talk to mayors, governors, businesses, trade unions. And we tried to enlist the whole country, all of Canada, in this effort.

And what we believed was Americans are basically good people. They are basically decent. They are basically smart. and they know that they have a win-win relationship with Canada. They don't actually want to have a fight with Canada. And we believed that if we explained to them what was happening, they would agree with us and they would pressure their president. That is what actually happened.

And that is something that I think all of America's friends need to be doing. And you know what's interesting. You always know something is working when, the U.S. administration doesn't like it. So the U.S. ambassador, it's true, the U.S. ambassador to Canada has warned Canadians not to talk to Americans ahead of the midterms, not to let them know how much they are hurting themselves. And there was this episode that I write about in my book when the Premier of Ontario, he is a small C conservative guy. He's also a capital C. Conservative guy. He is the farthest from woke you could imagine a human being to be, okay?

And he did what I thought was brilliant, is he produced an ad using the words of Ronald Reagan, that he played on American TV during the World Series, basically arguing that trade with Canada is good and free trade is good and being a good ally to your allies is good. Ronald Reagan saying this. and it drove President Trump absolutely nuts. To me, that shows it works and the donut strategy really matters. Well, there's also a scene in your book where Chuck Grassley, the Republican senator, realizes that America is on the wrong side of these trade negotiations, and he starts channeling back channeling around to Trump.

So your sense of pulling in other people, I mean, Trump very much rules. as an administration of one and your ability to reach out to those around him and get them to start squeezing him was I thought super effective. So Mark Carney, your former colleague, Prime Minister of Canada, has emerged de facto as the leader

of the Western world at this point. Is that something he expected to do? And so far he appears to have been good at it. What do you give his chances for carrying on? I think that Mark, Mark is doing an outstanding job. I think he's doing an outstanding job inside Canada. And I agree with you, Joanna. He is doing an outstanding job in showing the world that it's okay to stand up to the Trump administration. I really hope that that example will emboldened, you know, other American allies. And, And I hope that example, you know, will also be seen in the United States. Something pretty amazing is right now in the United States, Canada's retaliatory tariffs

are more popular among Americans than American tariffs imposed against Canada. Wow. That's amazing. And that is amazing. Like, like, think about that for a minute. They are happier to have us imposing tariffs on them than them imposing tariffs on us. And, you know, in Canada right now, there is generally a pretty negative view of the United States. I'm sorry to say, dear American listeners.

And, you know, the general Canadian view is it was one thing for Americans to elect Donald Trump once. But to elect him a second time says something fundamental. about the United States. And I think Canadians also observe, with, you know, astonished sadness, the great capitulation of so much of America, not only of the Republican Party, but of many, many others. When I see opinion polling like that, that Americans actually don't like the U.S. tariffs against Canada, that Americans actually support Ukraine and oppose Putin, That gives me hope in America.

And it gives me some hope. We'll have to see what happens that Americans recognize how badly off course their country is and how much harm their country is doing to its own national interest, to its own values with its treatment of its allies. So, you know, knock on wood. But, you know, I think the midterms will be a very important data point for America's partners because it will be a chance for us to learn what do Americans actually think. To what extent is Donald Trump today speaking for America or speaking for himself? So can you just give us another sense of the emotional, the psychological tax of negotiating with Trump and his people.

I mean, in the book, you talk about how exhausting it is. And I ran into Justin Trudeau, the former Canadian Prime Minister, obviously earlier this year. And he said he was just so grateful to be out of it and just the energy required to deal with, with this constant aggression from someone like Donald Trump. Does Mark Carney, do you think, have the energy, to keep going.

So let me first say one thing about Justin Trudeau. And I do write about this in the book. He had backbone when it counted in our relationship with the United States. And I think that it's really important to recognize that. I think that was, you know, one of his fine, maybe that was his finest hour to quote Churchill. and it was far from self-evident that that was the right thing to do. So, you know, hats off to him. And I think his example is helping Canada today and should help the world.

I do want to say, I'll say two more things about like the exhaustion point. So the first one is, you know, I personally, Joanna, am not of the school that we should feel sorry for politicians. and that we should kind of feel like, oh, the poor little darlings, you know, they're so tired by their service and leadership. You know, there can be this kind of, you know, this school of politicians were like, oh, it was so hard. It was hard on me. It was hard on my family. Sure, it's hard on you and your family. But you know what?

Being a cleaning lady is hard on you and your family. Working for minimum wage, really, you know, in a nursing home, hard on you. in your family and you get a lot fewer kudos and perks than politicians do. Well, in fact, in the book, you talk about how much you enjoyed being a politician and how difficult it was to step down. And you very rarely hear politicians actually saying that. Yeah. And I think the ones who don't say it, I mean, everyone has a different experience. But I think most politicians love politics. That's why it's so hard to drag them out of it. And that's why, you know, they're like Banquo's ghost and keep on haunting politics again.

But I will tell you one story that maybe gives a flavor of what it's like to be on the inside of negotiating with the Trump administration. And this was from a shorthand that quite organically developed between me and Cecilia Malmstrom. She's a Swedish liberal and was the EU trade commissioner. So she was negotiating with the Trump administration on behalf of the EU. I was negotiating on behalf of Canada. And like entirely organically, without ever saying anything, we developed this shorthand, which was if you said, I'm going to Mordor. That meant you were traveling to Washington, obviously. she sent me a text once saying Gandalf going to Mordor next week.

And I knew that that meant Angola Merkel is traveling to Washington. Hilarious. So obviously referring to the Tolkien books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lord of the Rings. And in this kind of version of things, Gandalf going to Mordor. I mean, it's just a hilarious shorthand. It's not anything that I think we would have expected how politicians talk under

the radar. But it kind of makes sense, right? And in this version of things, the Europeans were the elves. I think you can see that. I saw, you know, because like they're sort of cultured and refined and maybe a little bit of the old world. Canadians were obviously to me the hobbits. I'm very short, so that made personal sense to me. I do not have big hairy feet, though. I'm will say Prime Minister Trudeau didn't love the Hobbit analogy for himself. He's maybe a little too dashing to naturally see himself as a Hobbit. And you know who Saran was. I think we do know who Saran was. So one of the things I also found incredibly interesting about your book is you are the mother of three children. In fact, I discovered we had our babies in the same hospital.

Shout out to the former St. Luke's Roosevelt who's since been taken over. You were frequently the only woman in the room sitting around the table. And I wondered what you'd taken away from that experience in terms of watching power being wielded. So I'm going to say something that may sound kind of weird, but actually is true. So like I am a person who is like proud to be a woman, you know, being, you know, I'm a mother of three. I've been married for 28 years. You know, I wear dresses a lot. I have long hair. And I love being a woman. Having said that, when I do my job, whether it was being a reporter in my early 20s in the collapsing Soviet Union, whether it was covering, you know, the Chechen war, or whether it was negotiating a trade deal with Europe and negotiating a trade deal with the United States. I would never kind of think, here I am a woman doing this. I just thought, here I am a person doing this.

And I just tried to do it to the best of my abilities. So I was a little bit like not conscious of myself as a woman doing it, if that makes sense. Having said that with hindsight, when I sort of reflect on my experience, I definitely think there was, you know, an extent to which I could sometimes be dismissed in domestic politics. And I offer a few examples of that, you know, the opposition saying, you know, she needs adult supervision. I don't think you would say that about a man with my experience at that time I was in my late 40s. sometimes it could be a good thing. You know, sometimes, you know, for example, to get our trade deal with the EU and Canada has now had a trade deal with the EU for 10 years, amazing.

And it's actually a deeper trade deal than NAFTA because it includes government procurement, which the U.S. has never allowed to have in trade deals. We had to do a little bit of jiu-jitzy. So we had to force the Europeans to take responsibility. for getting the deal across the line. We had just done as much as we could, and we had to make their own complicated politics their problem, not ours. And that meant walking out on a negotiation, which is a tough thing to do. And it's tough to do it in a way that seems friendly and not hostile.

I think probably the fact that I'm a five-foot and maybe a little bit woman, and I was genuinely sad walking out, made it easier for the Europeans to see our action as what it was. You know, actually friendly. Actually, we really did want the deal, but we really did need them to take responsibility for it. And I think maybe if I were like, you know, a six foot tall kind of blustery bombastic man, that might have been harder to do in a gentle way. So sometimes it can be an advantage. Okay.

And then final comment, just about the title of the book, Unreliable Boyfriend. I can't imagine a Canadian male politician writing a book saying Unreliable Girlfriend. Yes. You can hold it up again. It's fine. We want people to buy your book. It's a very good read. It's a very good read.

And who knew that you could take something as dry as Canadian trade negotiations and bring it to life in such a way? But what made you choose the title? Of course, I love the title. The former editor is a former editor of Cosmopolitan. I loved the title. A few Canadians have been a little sniffy about it. And I do actually quote Cosmo. I quote the original Cosmo girl.

So I chose the title for two reasons. One was, you know, these relationships, international relationships, we can kind of think about them as being, you know, some dry, esoteric IR theory. But of course, they're not just that. They're also about human beings and about passions and emotions. And I thought that was important to reflect and meaningful to reflect. truthful to reflect. But the main reason I chose a playful title is I wanted to break out of, you know, I wanted to break this conversation about international trade, about international alliances out of the ghetto of quote unquote experts. And, you know, I think these are

issues that matter in the daily lives of all of us, they're too important to be left to the experts. And I would actually say, I think the populist right has done a better job of bringing the conversation about these issues into the popular discourse, including Donald Trump, right? Like he made tariffs a thing that people were talking about. The most beautiful word in the dictionary. I am tariff man. And I think liberal Democrats need to reclaim that conversation from our perspective. So that was my real effort. And I tried, I really did try to to write a book that was fun to read, that was vivid, that told human stories because this matters to us all. Well, it is fun to read. It is vivid and it's full of characters. It's full of people and you're the biggest character, obviously, in the book. And it's fascinating. You've had a fascinating life and I'm excited to see what you do next and what you write next. And I also want to refer to plutocrats, your previous book, which also foresaw exactly what is going on right now. And as we've done a little bit in this conversation, you can, you know,

You talk about the impact the oligarchs had in Russia, in Europe, and we're seeing the impact of Americans' homegrown oligarchs right now. So, Christopher Friedland, thank you very much for joining us, and I can't wait for your expert. Thank you so much. I love the conversation. I love that conversation with Christian. I love the fact that we could roam from the plutocracy.

We could roll from Elon Musk's outsized influence, especially in the midterms, to what it's like actually sitting opposite Donald Trump at the negotiating table and her admission that actually he can be very funny, he can be very charming, he can seduce you and obviously that's what he's been doing to lots of people who have to deal with him. Nevertheless, she stood strong, Canada stood strong and they were able to push back on him and he capitulated in many areas. So write and let us know what you think of the conversation. We love your comments. We read them. I answer as many as I can. I can't answer all of them, but I do try. And we'll see you back tomorrow for our live

inside Trump's head. Well, it was really live in L.A. last night. Michael Wolf and I had so much fun at the Terrogram Ballroom in downtown Los Angeles. And you get the full benefits, the video, the sound with a live audience, which was so much fun for us. And I think I want to say there was a bar. there was a bar there. So some of the laughter may have been encouraged by things that were imbibed, should I say. But we had enormous fun and we very much hope you enjoyed tomorrow's episode of Inside Trump's Head. Big thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passer, Heather Pissarro and Neil Rosenhaus. So the good news is we have so many Bee Beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out. And we really really

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