How can you convince Americans that Tylenol is safe when the president says it isn’t? Again, the world is left wondering whether America is ruled by a madman who doesn’t believe in science, and would easily shut down all free and fair reporting if he could.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on September 29, 2025.

OTTAWA—The decision by United States Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr to threaten ABC following late-night comments by comedian Jimmy Kimmel was even derided by Senator Ted Cruz.

Cruz is a well-known supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, but he characterized the Carr threat as a page straight out of a Goodfellas book and called the comments “dangerous as hell.”

Even as Kimmel’s suspension by ABC’s parent company Disney Entertainment was lifted due to public outcry, Trump was moving to muzzle more critics.

In a harsh rebuke to a question from an ABC reporter at the White House, Trump attacked the journalist, ABC, and media in general, bragging that he was now suing The New York Times and would win.

The lawsuits should come as no surprise, since, even during his time in the private sector, Trump delayed paying many creditors by simply dragging out the court process when sued for payment.

But the fact that the FCC, which is supposed to be an impartial licensing body, would threaten retribution because of a late-night comedic attack mirrors life in a dictatorship.

Trump doubled down when the Kimmel suspension was short-lived. “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this one. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16-million. …This one sounds even more lucrative.”

Then he and the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services went off on another tangent, claiming that women who take Tylenol during childbirth could be responsible for causing autism in the fetus.

Robert F. Kennedy. Jr. bears a family name known globally, but the vast majority of his own family does not support him.

Only one cousin endorsed him in the last presidential campaign, and 50 other family members, including all his siblings, lined up with then-U.S. president Joe Biden to oppose Kennedy’s independent bid for election.

Along with being a well-known anti-vaxxer, Kennedy has stated that COVID was “ethnically targeted” to spare Jewish and Chinese people. According to a Vanity Fair article, Kennedy has also stated that anti-vaxxers suffered worse persecution than German Holocaust victim Anne Frank. He also believes that an alternate shooter killed his own father, and after interviewing the convicted perpetrator, Sirhan Sirhan in prison, proclaimed Sirhan’s innocence.

One of Kennedy’s first actions was to pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization, and deny the current measles epidemic, despite medical evidence showing the greatest hike in outbreaks since the virus was officially declared eliminated in 2000.

Now Kennedy’s focus, and that of the president, is on Tylenol. Despite zero evidence to back up the pair, both men held the press conference to decry the use of the pain-killing acetaminophen.

To many, the move was simply viewed as another channel changer. To overshadow the Kimmel return to the airwaves, the Tylenol move was designed to get people talking about something else.

It has also thrown Johnson and Johnson, one of America’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, into a public-relations frenzy.

How can you convince Americans that Tylenol is safe when the president says it isn’t?

Again, the world is left wondering whether America is ruled by a madman who doesn’t believe in science, and who would easily shut down all free and fair reporting if he could.

The tongue lashings regularly administered by the president to those who oppose him have been replicated by multiple of his appointees.

U.S. ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra recently had the nerve to claim at a Halifax Chamber of Commerce event that he was “disappointed … that it is very, very difficult to find Canadians who are passionate about the American-Canadian relationship.”

What planet has the ambassador been living on? The only person responsible for the meltdown in Canada-U.S. relations is his boss. It was Trump who belittled our former prime minister, constantly referring to Justin Trudeau as “governor,” and it is Trump who has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada by using economic levers rather than military ones.

Trump has followed up with the threat via a constantly-moving target of tariffs that is costing both his country and Canada dearly.

As ambassador, Hoekstra’s job is to try and smooth over differences between the two countries. He should be acting as a quiet go-between working to solve problems. Instead, Hoekstra is burning his Canadian bridges.

Like many Trump appointees, the ambassador has made it very obvious that his job to kiss the president’s buttocks.

King Charles discreetly smirked when the president went off-script at the recent royal banquet in London. The world is smirking, too.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

The debate moderator rebutted the pet-eating immigrants claim, but that didn’t faze Trump, who said he’d seen the carnivorous behaviour talked about on TV.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on September 16, 2024.

OTTAWA—I ate dawg to celebrate the debate-thrashing administered to former president Donald Trump by future president Kamala Harris.

My dawg wasn’t real. It was a hot dog confection created by the team at Tavern on the Falls on Sussex Drive in the nation’s capital.

Called da dawg, it includes corned beef and sauerkraut atop the large steamy that the restaurant is known for.

This dawg choice was perfectly timed because everyone was talking about Trump’s bizarre debate claim that dogs and cats were being eaten by immigrants who should not have been let into the United States. Trump literally screamed that illegal immigrants were eating people’s pets in Ohio.

ABC’s debate co-moderator David Muir immediately rebutted the claim saying that Springfield city manager Bryan Heck had already laid waste to that false accusation. That didn’t faze Trump. He said he had even seen the carnivorous behaviour being discussed on television.

Trump was referring to a discredited internet claim that Haitian immigrants were kidnapping people’s pets to cook them for dinner.

That internet nugget had been peddled by his running mate J.D. Vance who was reported to have clarified the pet-eating rumours might have been false.

Trump’s shouts about eating dogs prompted Harris to laugh out loud, which spiked Trump’s temperature even further.

Even when the debate’s subject matter was supposed to be delving into other issues like economic policy, Trump focused his pitch almost exclusively on Democratic immigration policies that he claims have let millions of criminals into the country.

He went on to say that the crime rate around the world is going down because Harris and U.S. President Joe Biden have created border policies that are letting all foreign lawbreakers to move to the United States. He said that was causing a spike in American crime.

When Muir pointed out that the American crime rate had gone down, Trump ignored that fact and simply pointed to his own experience, declaring he had taken a bullet in the head because of Harris’ policies.

Trump was referring to the assassination attempt on July 13 where his ear was allegedly grazed by a bullet that killed a rally supporter but he was saved because he moved his head at the last minute.

His ear appeared fully intact on debate night. Sporting a new haircut, the side of his head was visible. No tear or scarring is visible on the lobe.

Trump trumpeted his near-death experience, but didn’t seem too out of sorts until Harris mentioned how many people were leaving his rallies from boredom.

The former president kept his lips pursed throughout that line of attack, and went on to waste valuable airtime explaining how his crowds were bigger than hers, and how much he was loved by the people while she was hated, even by President Biden.

Harris was deftly able to bait her opponent on a number of issues, but also managed to engage in economic issues in support of small business and housing.

She repeated her positive claim that she would be running an “opportunity economy” while in government, expanding the child tax credit, and lowering prices for food and prescription drugs.

She also peppered Trump with questions about his inconsistent position on abortion. He recently said he would oppose a Florida referendum banning abortions after six weeks into a pregnancy, and then reversed his position the following day.

For her part, Harris agreed to reinstate a national policy to take the abortion decision out of the hands of government and give it back to the women whose bodies are affected.

She went on to accuse Trump of currying favour with dictators who could easily seduce him with flattery and favours.

Trump helped make her point by telling his audience that he has the support of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban who is known as an autocratic strongman cosying up to the Russians.

Trump also dodged questions about whether he supported Ukrainians in their fight for survival following a Russian invasion of their sovereign territory.

When asked repeatedly whether he supported Ukraine, the former president simply ignored the question, and repeated that he would have the issue solved before the presidential swearing-in if he were elected president.

All the post-debate punditry seemed to say that Trump was badly beaten by a better-prepared, calmer Harris who was more presidential in demeanour.

The former president was more into personal attacks than in convincing Americans he was fit to govern.

If he is defeated, Trump’s political effigy should read “Let them eat dog.”

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.