You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Ford

Nobody likes a nitpicker, least of all the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute

Good to see an old friend pop by the Reagan Library. Five days ago.

On Oct. 15, the Ontario government of Premier Doug Ford started running ads in the United States that used excerpts from a radio speech Ronald Reagan delivered when he was the U.S. President in 1987. On Oct. 23, last night, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute announced on X that the Government of Ontario “did not seek or receive permission” to “use and edit the remarks” and that the Reagan Foundation was “reviewing its legal options in this matter.”

Two hours after that, President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that because of Ford’s Reagan ads, all trade talks with Canada are now “terminated.”

Here’s a video of a fun chat that took place at the Reagan Library on Sunday, four days after the ads started and four days before the reprisals kicked in, between Eric Trump, the Executive Vice President of The Trump Organization, and David Trulio, who since 2023 has been the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute.

The occasion was a book signing for Eric Trump’s new book, Under Siege. The crowd, at $47 a head, sounds large and happy.

From 2016-2018 Trulio was the chief lobbyist for Lockheed Martin, builders of the F-35 stealth strike fighter, and before joining the Reagan Library he was Managing Editor, Head of Strategy and Editorial Operations, and Digital Managing Editor, for Fox News. Here he is on Fox five months ago with good old Larry Kudlow, chatting about how, when you really think about it, Donald Trump is Ronald Reagan.

Presidential libraries are built by private non-profit foundations but their archiving, museological and public-outreach activities are paid by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Donald Trump fired National Archivist Colleen Shogan in February after complaining for two years that NARA sicced the cops on him over secret documents he was keeping at Mar-a-Lago.

This was always unfair: What NARA does after every presidential transition is look for presidential records to archive. Normally they are not in hotel ballrooms. Anyway Colleen Shogan wasn’t yet at NARA at the time. Whatever. Nearly eight months after she was fired for something she didn’t do, Secretary of State Marco Rubio remains the acting National Archivist of the United States. I am not making this up. And by God if there’s anyone who understands the need to trim your sails for expediency once in a while, it’s Little Marco.

But wait, there’s more.