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President Donald Trump spent years promising to make Mexico pay for a wall at the US southern border. Mexico did not.

In a strange twist, Trump is now threatening to block the opening of a bridge at the northern border that Canada actually already paid for.

This is either next-level negotiation or a misunderstanding of the facts, or both, but an ultimatum Trump made on social media is the latest in a string of erratic moves that have confused his fellow world leaders.

The Gordie Howe International Bridge is basically completed

Trump should have previously known that the brand-new Gordie Howe International Bridge, which connects Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, is set to open early this year, since his first administration tried to speed up construction in 2017.

The bridge is entirely funded by Canada, which decided to foot the bill after years of waiting for buy-in from the US. Conservative groups in the US have opposed spending taxpayer dollars on the bridge.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday that the House of Commons prays for and mourns the victims of the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting.

Canadian Prime Minister Carney to shooting victims: ‘All of Canada stands with you’
Dilkens said construction of the Gordie Howe bridge is the culmination of a 25-year process that has involved presidents, prime ministers and governors.

He acknowledged it will take many years for Canada to recoup the billions it paid for the bridge, but after that, proceeds from tolls will be split with Michigan. Meantime, he rattled off the economic argument that led to the bridge’s construction in the first place, linking the US auto industry to Canadian parts manufacturers.Dilkens said he hopes the US and Canada can come to a larger agreement to improve the USMCA to mutual benefit later this year, but he also said he hopes Americans see the chaos to world trade being caused by current US tariff policy.

Trade deals, he said, “have served to the benefit of putting a lot of bread on the table of US families as well as Canadian families.”

At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Donald Trump spoke from prepared remarks as he discussed the persecution of Mariam Ibrahim. Ibrahim was unjustly imprisoned and sentenced to death in Sudan in 2014, in a case centered on her Christian faith, until she was released that same year following a global outcry.

Trump correctly said: “Believers all over the planet rallied to Mariam’s cause, prayed for her protection, and successfully pressured for her release.”

But then the president appeared to ad-lib – and claimed that he was the one who got Ibrahim freed.

“I did that. I did that. I did that with one phone call, actually,” he said. “And she had such support, it was so easy. And when I explained it to the powers that be: ‘Yes, sir, we will do it right away.’ I just wish I knew earlier. But it’s a big world with a lot of people.”

For years, Trump has told fictional stories that feature unnamed people referring to him as “sir.” This was another one.

Ibrahim was released in 2014, during the Obama administration. Trump did not become president until January 2017. He was not even a presidential candidate until June 2015. There has never been the slightest indication that a private citizen in the US, a businessman and celebrity at the time, was the person who convinced Sudanese authorities to let her out of prison.

One interesting revelation in the new documents is that a former police chief recalls Trump calling the Palm Beach Police Department around 2006, according to the Miami Herald.

“Thank goodness you’re stopping him,” Trump said, according to an FBI document describing an interview more than a decade later with the former chief. “Everyone has known he’s been doing this.”

If everyone knew, why didn’t anyone say anything?

Companies are responding
DP World, the Dubai-owned logistics giant, replaced chairman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem. The news comes after Massie and Khanna named Sulayem, whose name was redacted in coarse messages to Epstein over the course of years. At one point, Epstein wrote to bin Sulayem, “I loved the torture video.”

DP World declined to comment on bin Sulayem’s relationship with Epstein when contacted by CNN before his removal.

Kathy Ruemmler, the former Obama White House counsel, will step down later this year from her lucrative position at Goldman Sachs, it was announced on Thursday. She was long known to have communicated with Epstein, but the recently released documents showed her to be closely advising Epstein long after he was a convicted sex offender.

Both Trump and Clinton deny any wrongdoing with regard to Epstein, and simply appearing in the Epstein files, as both men repeatedly do, is not evidence of any kind of wrongdoing. Whenever someone is mentioned in the files, you’re likely to see a disclaimer like that: Simply appearing in the Epstein files is not an indication of inappropriate or illegal behavior.But there is certainly a taint that has affixed itself to the powerful people with whom Epstein once interacted, and it is amplified for people who continued to interact with Epstein long after he was convicted on state prostitution charges over his involvement with underage girls.

When should people have known?

The Hollywood lawyer Casey Wasserman exchanged flirty emails with Maxwell in 2003, before allegations against her or Epstein were public. He has lost at least one high-profile client, Chappell Roan, in recent days, but is set to keep his post as head of the board coordinating the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Wasserman said he regretted his correspondence with Maxwell in a statement reported by the Associated Press in January, adding that the exchange “took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light.”

The first reports of Epstein’s deeds began to trickle out in court and in the media in 2006, and he was convicted in 2008.

Chief recalled Trump saying ‘everyone’ knew

Munich, Germany — 

Many of the Democrats who came to the Munich Security Conference this weekend want to be president. But even if one of them can win the White House in 2028, they may find they can no longer claim the title every American president since the 1940s has borne: leader of the free world.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom went on stage to insist his state is more permanent than President Donald Trump. But he acknowledged in an interview with CNN that the leaders he met with believe the damage to the transatlantic alliance is irrevocable.

Progressive star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York came to pitch a left-wing populist foreign policy but made headlines for a massive stumble instead.

European thought leaders were reduced to offering a brief standing ovation to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose speech was far more conciliatory than the one Vice President JD Vance delivered at the same gathering last year. But Rubio had kicked off his trip telling American reporters: “The old world is gone.” He also left the conference to fly onward to Slovakia and Hungary, two countries led by strongmen sympathetic to Trump.

The conference’s opening remarks from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz crystallized Europe’s new reality in what seems to be rapidly becoming a post-American century.