By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
September 2, 2026
It turns out that the supposed master of “The Art of the Deal” has no idea how to close one.
That’s the real takeaway from President Donald Trump’s temper tantrum over the breakdown in trade negotiations with Canada—a breakdown that resulted in Trump petulantly declaring that he was going to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” just to show our northern neighbors how really, really, really, REALLY unhappy he was with them for not backing down even when he threatened to hold his breath until he passed out.
Trump’s decision to slap a different moniker on that great lake earned worldwide derision.
(And, geez, can’t he summon any more creativity than to plagiarize his earlier brain fade regarding the Gulf of Mexico, which he relabeled “the Gulf of America?” What’s next—the River of America, the Creek of America, the Ditch of America and the Swamp of America?)
Leaders from other nations said—some in code and some outright—that negotiating with the current president of the United States was like trying to talk about nap time with an overtired and overstimulated 2-year-old.
Every time they think they’re about done and junior’s head is about to hit the pillow, Trump erupts with a fresh howl and a new set of demands. It’s around that time other nations decide that they’re done with babysitting our problem child.
Certainly, that seems to be the case with Canada.
Let’s be clear about something.
Only a mean-spirited moron could fail to reach an accord with the Canadians. For more than 40 years, I’ve traveled extensively in that lovely country. I have spent many a pleasant hour in the company of the people who live in that friendly nation.
Canadians are not confrontational. They believe solutions are always better than fights. They are devout worshippers in the faith of going along to get along.
Even their oddly endearing linguistic distinction—the curious habit of turning even declarative sentences into questions by adding “eh?” at the end—suggests a commitment to hearing and considering other points of view.
But even nice guys have their limits.
Push Canadians far enough and they, like everyone else, will push back.
That’s what they did here.
They were well within their rights to do so.
What Trump now trashes as a deal horribly disadvantageous to Americans is one that he himself negotiated during his first term as president. If it was so obviously and disastrously one-sided, why did the self-proclaimed master negotiator propose it and then agree to it in the first place?
And if, upon reflection, the president realized he’d made a mistake and put together an agreement that wasn’t good for the United States, wouldn’t it have been wiser to approach the Canadians as the friends and neighbors they always have been rather than by blustering, threatening and, finally, having a huge meltdown over the name of a lake?
My guess is that if Trump had approached the Canadians by saying that some parts of his original deal were hurting the United States, Canada would have responded positively because, until this president, that nation always has valued, even treasured, its tight and enduring bond with America.
But that would have required our commander-in-chief to conduct himself as an adult and do a grown-up thing.
He would have had to acknowledge that his first deal was a mistake and accept responsibility for making a mistake.
That, evidently, is way, way, WAY beyond Donald Trump’s capacity for growth.
So, instead we experience the edifying spectacle of the president of the United States changing the name of a lake—a name that has been in place for almost half a millennium—just to show that he’s really, really, REALLY unhappy that he didn’t get his way.
While the rest of the world laughs at us.
Some of this nonsense will disappear when Donald Trump no longer is president. Lake Ontario once again will be called Lake Ontario, just as the Kennedy Center and the Gulf of Mexico once again will assume their proper names.
But other countries will continue to remember the way we treated Canada—our closest friend and neighbor—during this strange and delusional period.
And those nations will wonder, even after Donald Trump has left office, if we ever again will turn the White House into an unsupervised daycare center.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Also, the views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
