Donald Trump admitted to misleading Justin Trudeau, and now people have feelings

During a fundraising speech in Missouri, Donald Trump, famous for his tortured relationship with facts, did something he doesn’t often do: he admitted that, on one occasion, he said something that he wasn’t sure was true.

In the president’s telling, he was talking to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. (This story probably takes place during Trudeau’s visit to Washington early last year.) Trudeau reminded Trump that the U.S. has a trade surplus with Canada. “I had no idea,” Trump reportedly told his donors. “I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid. … And I thought they were smart. I said, ‘You’re wrong, Justin.’" According to Trump, a White House staffer went to run the numbers and discovered that Trump was correct. Except, Trump wasn’t correct. At least, not according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which estimates that the U.S. had a $12.5-billion trade surplus with the U.S. in 2016, when both goods and services are taken into account. And so, in trying to make himself sound like a master trade negotiator, the U.S. president has somehow achieved the opposite. Here’s what people are saying.

Donald Trump, for his part, says that you should probably just trust Donald Trump on this one:

Daniel Dale, who fact-checks Donald Trump more or less full time for the Toronto Star, points out that Trump’s trade numbers aren’t the only things about this story that seem false:

It is very convenient that Trump’s high standards for truth in mass media disappear every time he encounters a fact he doesn’t like:

Jeet Heer, a New Republic writer known for his long Twitter essays, restrained himself to a single tweet:

The news doesn’t always have to be surprising, bud:

And what were Trump fans saying?

This guy thinks the Washington Post is part of the Great Media Conspiracy against the president:

Are you bluffing if you don’t actually know what cards you’re holding?

There is a grain of truth to this:

And a parting thought. Canada can’t save you, lady. You have to save yourself: