President Donald Trump has described November’s midterm elections as an inflection point for his second term, asserting that Republicans maintaining control of Congress is a political imperative.
But in a key battleground state, the president appears to have created a new issue that’s left Democrats wondering if Christmas has come 10 months early: a battle over a bridge that’s been in the works for almost a decade.
On Monday, Trump threatened Canada in a social media post, saying that he would “not allow” a bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, to open until the U.S. is “fully compensated for everything we have given them, and, also importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve.”
The brass knuckles approach from the president, which comes amid an escalating trade war with Canada and lingering pique over Prime Minister Mark Carney’s remarks in Davos last month, is hardly new. He’s threatened to hold other major projects hostage — including funding for a major bridge and tunnel project in New York, which he said he’d release in exchange for naming New York’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles International Airport after him.
