Former prime minister Brian Mulroney says Donald Trump is a "gentleman" who might actually surprise people as U.S. president.
"He's going to have to govern for all Americans, and I think that he has the opportunity of surprising a lot of people and turning out to be more than an adequate president," Mulroney told CJAD 800's Leslie Roberts on Wednesday.
Mulroney, who's known Trump socially for more than twenty years, and has a home in the same Palm Beach, Fla. neighborhood as Trump, says the real estate mogul-turned-politician has never been anything but a "perfect gentleman" with him and his family.
"I didn't see this campaigning part of his nature, and some of it, I thought, was over the line, as many people did."
"He's now down to the business of governing, and he's finding I'm sure that it's a lot different from holding rallies and entertaning the troops. Now, it's very serious business — the lives and the well-being of your citizens depends largely on what you are able to do for them. I think we're going to see a different Donald Trump."
Mulroney, who negotiated the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement and its successor, the North American Free Trade agreement while in office in the 1980s and early 90s, insists he isn't concerned with Trump's musings about reopening or scrapping NAFTA.
"This year, we will do approximately $900 billion dollars worth of trade, back and forth, between Canada and the United States in goods and services, and that is the largest trade between any two countries in the history of the world," Mulroney says. "Nine million American jobs depend on Canadian trade. I think that when Donald was talking about NAFTA during the campaign, he was essentially talking about Mexico. And Mexico, he's talking about immigration, and walls, and drugs, and that kind of stuff. None of that applies to Canada."