SINGAPORE: President Donald Trump said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “learned” from the mistake of criticising him and it’s going to cost Canada “a lot of money”.

Trump adviser Peter Navarro, meanwhile, said on Tuesday he made a mistake when he said “there’s a special place in hell” for Trudeau.

At a news conference on Tuesday after his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump recounted his recent tough exchanges with Trudeau. He said the Canadian leader must not have realised that Trump had televisions on Air Force One, allowing him to monitor Trudeau’s news conference at the end of the G-7 summit.

“That’s going to cost a lot of money for the people of Canada. He learned,” Trump said wagging his finger. “You can’t do that. You can’t do that.”

The president said he was annoyed by Trudeau’s comments about not letting Canada get pushed around. “He’s giving a news conference about how he will not be pushed around by the United States. And I say, push him around? We just shook hands. It was very friendly,” Trump said.

“There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door,” Navarro said on Fox News Sunday.

Navarro seemed to apologise for the remarks on Tuesday. “Let me correct a mistake I made,” Navarro said at a Wall Street Journal conference on Tuesday, according to video provided by the newspaper’s CFO Network. “In conveying that message I used language that was inappropriate.”

When asked about Trump’s remarks in Parliament on Tuesday, Trudeau said he supports Trump’s efforts on North Korea and looks forward to the details of that agreement. “On his comments, I’m going to stay focused on defending jobs for Canadians and supporting Canadian interests,” Trudeau said before walking away from reporters.

Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2018