An old law-school buddy of JD Vance has told the vice president he’s retracting an open invite to Canada because of the Trump administration’s “rhetoric” towards his country.
Jamil Jivani, a Conservative legislator in Canada’s parliament, first met Vance at a wine-and-cheese reception at Yale Law School 15 years ago. The pair grew close, with Jivani reading a passage from the Bible at Vance’s wedding and describing him as a “brother” in an Instagram post.
The political landscape has shifted, however, and so has the tone of their friendship. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for Canada to become the “51st state” of America and imposed 25 percent import taxes on various Canadian goods as well as aluminum and steel imports.
Jivani insists he and Vance will remain friends despite the crisis in relations between their two countries, but admits that now would not be a “constructive” time for the vice president to visit.
“Right now we have strong political disagreements, and that’s kind of how it is,” he told Politico. “They [the Trump administration] need to probably reconsider some of their rhetoric and their policy before coming to Canada.”
“Our country should deserve more respect before being able to welcome them.”
Jivani won re-election this week in the Toronto district of Bowmanville-Oshawa North, as his party lost an election fought against the backdrop of Trump’s political and economic attacks.
Jivani’s party, led by the populist Pierre Poilevre, had looked certain to win but saw its huge poll lead crumble as the new Liberal leader, former central banker Mark Carney, set himself up as the more credible anti-Trump candidate.
For his part, Jivani came under attack during the campaign over his friendship with the American VP.
“They created commercials about me and JD being friends. They doctored pictures of us and dropped them in mailboxes in my riding [district],” Jivani said.
“The misrepresentation of who I am, what I believe in, the misrepresentation of my commitment to this country, that stuff, was very, very frustrating.”
Bowmanville-Oshawa North is an area with a deep connection to the auto industry.
His constituents, many of whom work in a General Motors, escaped potential economic turmoil on Thursday when the Trump administration scrapped planned 25 percent levies on non-American cars and parts.
New guidance means that parts compliant with the 2020 Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement should be exempt from duties.
Despite the win, people are still wary of their southern neighbors and Jivani and Vance have drifted as a result. “We haven’t talked in a while,” the 37-year-old said.
“He’s busy, I’m busy. It’s just the nature of the work that we do. Certainly, the way they’ve talked about Canada has been a problem for me personally. I’m a proud Canadian. I’m focused on my community, and we’ll see what happens next.”
Jivani is hopeful that the two will reconnect later. “We were friends before politics, we will be friends after politics,” he said.
“This is a guy that I played fantasy football with for the last 15 years. He’s now the vice president and that’s a unique situation.”
He added that the political disagreements are nothing new.
“It’s just the nature of having a friend in a situation like this. I kind of just acknowledge that we’re in different places, we have different priorities. He does his thing, I do my thing. And when this is all over, I’m sure we’ll talk again,” he said.
Jivani is a former columnist for the broadsheet newspaper National Post, and wrote a piece in 2020 about their friendship after Vance’s Appalachian family memoir Hillbilly Elegy was made into a movie.
“If you had told me 10 years ago that my best friend from law school would be a self-described hillbilly, I’d have laughed in your face,” he wrote.
He described how the two men met at a wine-and-cheese evening to welcome new students to Yale: “I didn’t know so many different kinds of cheese existed. And I had never tasted wine before. Needless to say, I felt out of place. Across the room stood a fellow student who seemed equally unfamiliar with wine and cheese.
“We went on to develop a strong friendship, forged through moments of shared discomfort over the course of our three years in the Ivy League.
“We were by one another’s side for awkward interactions with professors and classmates, life-changing job interviews, and hundreds of hours of studying. We became such good friends that I eventually performed the Bible reading at his wedding.”
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