US President Donald Trump has called Justin Trudeau “two-faced” over a video in which the Canadian leader appears to mock him at a meeting of Nato leaders.
Footage showed Mr Trudeau, UK PM Boris Johnson and French leader Emmanuel Macron discussing an impromptu press conference held by Mr Trump.
The brief video posted on Twitter by Canada’s public broadcaster, CBC, showed Mr Trudeau chatting with a group of leaders, including Mr Johnson, Mr Macron, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and Queen Elizabeth’s daughter Princess Anne at Buckingham Palace.
At the start of the footage, Mr Johnson asked Mr Macron: “Is that why you were late?”
Mr Trudeau then interjects: “He was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top.”
Mr Macron then appears to tell an anecdote, but his words are drowned out by background noise. An amused Mr Trudeau then replies: “Oh yeah, yeah, he announced… [inaudible]. You just watched his team’s jaw drop to the floor.”
None of them appeared to realise they were being recorded.
“He’s two-faced,” said Trump, near the end of a two-day NATO summit in London, when asked about Trudeau’s private remarks a day earlier in an informal conversation with the leaders of France and U.K. which were caught by microphones and went viral.
However, he lost no time in calling Trudeau a “nice guy.”
Trump also said he had criticized Canada for not living up to NATO’s spending goals.
“The truth is I called him out on the fact that he’s not paying 2% and I guess he’s not very happy about it,” Trump said, adding “he should be paying 2%” and that Canada “has money.”
Trump was referring to national defense spending as a percentage of NATO’s member state GDP, a frequent bugbear for the U.S. leader.
“I can imagine he’s not that happy, but that’s the way it is,” added Trump.
Trump’s remarks on the Canadian leader came only a day after he slammed French leader Emmanuel Macron over the NATO “brain dead” comment last month, calling it “insulting, very disrespectful.”
Since taking office, Trump has gained a reputation for alienating NATO allies and disrupting meetings of the alliance.
On the sidelines of the NATO summit, Trump also gave a luncheon to eight other countries that commit 2% of their GDP to NATO.
Asked about the video, Mr Johnson told reporters: “It’s complete nonsense. I don’t know where that’s come from.”
Mr Trudeau later told reporters that they hadn’t been laughing about Mr Trump’s press conference, but about the location of the next G7 summit – Camp David, the US presidential country retreat.
“I have a very good relationship with Trump,” he added.
During the meetings, Trump said he urged NATO allies to avoid using the 5G services of Chinese telecom Huawei.
