‘Surprise, surprise!’ Fury ignites over Trump's suspicious Canada bridge threat timing

Social media erupted in outrage Tuesday after a report revealed that President Donald Trump threatened to block a major U.S.-Canada bridge project just hours after his Commerce secretary met privately with the billionaire owner of a competing crossing.

The move came shortly after Howard Lutnick met with Detroit trucking magnate Matthew Moroun, whose family controls the privately owned Ambassador Bridge, a New York Times report revealed. The Moroun family has spent decades fighting construction of the publicly backed Gordie Howe International Bridge, which would battle with the family for toll revenue once it opens.

Social media users, including journalists and other political observers, quickly seized on the timing.

“Aaand there you go: Trump’s sudden about-face on the most important Canada-US border crossing came after meeting with the billionaire family that owns the rival bridge,” wrote Alex Panetta of Politico on Bluesky. “Nice scoop, confirming suspicions of everyone who has followed this file and is familiar with Trump.”

“In any other administration, this would be a huge story,” wrote Will Saletan, a writer at The Bulwark, to his Bluesky followers. “In this administration, it can barely get oxygen because it's buried under a daily torrent of destruction, criminality, and abuse of power.”

“The corruption is just right in the open and so blatant,” Duane Bratt, a political science professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, said in an X post, adding, “And MAGA is just oblivious.”

MeidasTouch editor in chief Ron Filipkowski was even harsher, telling his followers on Bluesky that the Trump administration “is a lawless mafia gangster extortion racket existing to enrich oligarchs at our expense" and "the most blatantly corrupt gangster government in American history."

“Now we learn the billionaire owner of a bridge that will compete w/the new Canada-MI bridge met with Lutnick right before Trump issued his threat to shut down the new bridge,” he wrote Tuesday.

“Surprise, surprise! America’s King of Corruption strike again,” Ron Hughes, a writer and educator, wrote on X.