Carney’s teleprompter quits, and he turns it into a joke about Trump

President Donald Trump welcomes Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney outside the White House. Photo by Anna Moneymaker /Getty Images

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Mark Carney’s teleprompter quit during a housing announcement in Toronto on Wednesday, and the prime minister used the pause to take a shot at Donald Trump.

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“I would like to inform you that the teleprompter has ceased to function,” Carney said. “Unlike a certain world leader, I do not view this as a conspiracy.” The crowd laughed.

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Carney did not name Trump, however, last September, the U.S. president’s teleprompter failed during his address to the United Nations General Assembly, and he said afterward that he had been sabotaged.

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Trump listed three problems from that visit. An escalator he and first lady Melania Trump had stepped onto stopped, the teleprompter went out and he said the sound was off. He told the assembly that whoever was running the prompter was “in big trouble,” then read from paper until it came back on.

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He later called it “triple sabotage” in a post on Truth Social, demanded an investigation and said those responsible should be arrested. Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary-general, said in a statement that a videographer from the U.S. delegation, moving backwards up the escalator ahead of the couple, may have set off a safety mechanism that brought it to a stop.

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The Toronto event was a housing announcement with Mayor Olivia Chow. Carney also faced questions on the 50 per cent U.S. tariff set to hit a range of Canadian goods on Aug. 19 and said he is “very involved” in the negotiations.

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Trump was in Las Vegas later the same day, speaking about tax cuts ahead of November’s midterm elections. He turned to tariffs and ran through countries he said had used them against the U.S., among them China, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Canada.

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“I love the people, but they’re nasty,” Trump said of Canada. His remarks came after Carney’s, but there was no indication he had heard the prime minister’s joke.

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Carney had tried the joke before. At a Greater Vancouver Board of Trade event in May, he started a teleprompter line about a conspiracy theory and stopped short of telling it.

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“Happens, it happens,” he said, laughing, The Hill reported. “I’m not going to go into the — I’m not going to say who I — you know what, there’s a teleprompter joke I could tell about a conspiracy theory, but I think I, it’s probably not….”

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On Wednesday, he finished it.

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