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5jili By MICHELLE L. PRICE and ROB GILLIES NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump’s recent dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his visit to Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral were not just exercises in policy and diplomacy. They were also prime trolling opportunities for Trump. Related Articles National Politics | Trump names Andrew Ferguson as head of Federal Trade Commission to replace Lina Khan National Politics | Biden says he was ‘stupid’ not to put his name on pandemic relief checks like Trump did National Politics | Biden issues veto threat on bill expanding federal judiciary as partisan split emerges National Politics | Trump lawyers and aide hit with 10 additional felony charges in Wisconsin over 2020 fake electors National Politics | After withdrawing as attorney general nominee, Matt Gaetz lands a talk show on OANN television Throughout his first term in the White House and during his campaign to return, Trump has spun out countless provocative, antagonizing and mocking statements. There were his belittling nicknames for political opponents, his impressions of other political figures and the plentiful memes he shared on social media. Now that’s he’s preparing to return to the Oval Office, Trump is back at it, and his trolling is attracting more attention — and eyerolls. On Sunday, Trump turned a photo of himself seated near a smiling first lady Jill Biden at the Notre Dame ceremony into a social media promo for his new perfume and cologne line, with the tag line, “A fragrance your enemies can’t resist!” The first lady’s office declined to comment. When Trudeau hastily flew to Florida to meet with Trump last month over the president-elect’s threat to impose a 25% tax on all Canadian products entering the U.S., the Republican tossed out the idea that Canada become the 51st U.S. state. The Canadians passed off the comment as a joke, but Trump has continued to play up the dig, including in a post Tuesday morning on his social media network referring to the prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.” After decades as an entertainer and tabloid fixture, Trump has a flair for the provocative that is aimed at attracting attention and, in his most recent incarnation as a politician, mobilizing fans. He has long relished poking at his opponents, both to demean and minimize them and to delight supporters who share his irreverent comments and posts widely online and cheer for them in person. Trump, to the joy of his fans, first publicly needled Canada on his social media network a week ago when he posted an AI-generated image that showed him standing on a mountain with a Canadian flag next to him and the caption “Oh Canada!” After his latest post, Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Tuesday: “It sounds like we’re living in a episode of South Park.” Trudeau said earlier this week that when it comes to Trump, “his approach will often be to challenge people, to destabilize a negotiating partner, to offer uncertainty and even sometimes a bit of chaos into the well established hallways of democracies and institutions and one of the most important things for us to do is not to freak out, not to panic.” Even Thanksgiving dinner isn’t a trolling-free zone for Trump’s adversaries. On Thanksgiving Day, Trump posted a movie clip from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” with President Joe Biden and other Democrats’ faces superimposed on the characters in a spoof of the turkey-carving scene. The video shows Trump appearing to explode out of the turkey in a swirl of purple sparks, with the former president stiffly dancing to one of his favorite songs, Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” In his most recent presidential campaign, Trump mocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, refusing to call his GOP primary opponent by his real name and instead dubbing him “Ron DeSanctimonious.” He added, for good measure, in a post on his Truth Social network: “I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious ‘Meatball’ Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will.” As he campaigned against Biden, Trump taunted him in online posts and with comments and impressions at his rallies, deriding the president over his intellect, his walk, his golf game and even his beach body. After Vice President Kamala Harris took over Biden’s spot as the Democratic nominee, Trump repeatedly suggested she never worked at McDonalds while in college. Trump, true to form, turned his mocking into a spectacle by appearing at a Pennsylvania McDonalds in October, when he manned the fries station and held an impromptu news conference from the restaurant drive-thru. Trump’s team thinks people should get a sense of humor. “President Trump is a master at messaging and he’s always relatable to the average person, whereas many media members take themselves too seriously and have no concept of anything else other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” said Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director. “President Trump will Make America Great Again and we are getting back to a sense of optimism after a tumultuous four years.” Though both the Biden and Harris campaigns created and shared memes and launched other stunts to respond to Trump’s taunts, so far America’s neighbors to the north are not taking the bait. “I don’t think we should necessarily look on Truth Social for public policy,” Miller said. Gerald Butts, a former top adviser to Trudeau and a close friend, said Trump brought up the 51st state line to Trudeau repeatedly during Trump’s first term in office. “Oh God,” Butts said Tuesday, “At least a half dozen times.” “This is who he is and what he does. He’s trying to destabilize everybody and make people anxious,” Butts said. “He’s trying to get people on the defensive and anxious and therefore willing to do things they wouldn’t otherwise entertain if they had their wits about them. I don’t know why anybody is surprised by it.” Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

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Will Riley scored a game-high 19 points off the bench as No. 25 Illinois shrugged off a slow start to earn an 87-40 nonconference victory over Maryland Eastern Shore on Saturday afternoon in Champaign, Ill. Morez Johnson Jr. recorded his first double-double with 10 points and 13 rebounds, Kylan Boswell posted 13 points and Tomislav Ivisic contributed 11 for Illinois (4-1). Coming off a 100-87 loss to No. 8 Alabama on Wednesday, the Illini led by as much as 52 despite hitting just 10-of-40 3-point attempts. Jalen Ware paced Maryland Eastern Shore (2-6) with 10 points before fouling out. Ketron "KC" Shaw, who entered Saturday in the top 20 of Division I scorers at 22.3 points per game, went scoreless in the first half and finished with seven points on 2-of-11 shooting. The Hawks canned just 22.1 percent of their shots from the floor. Illinois broke out to a 6-0 lead in the first 2:06, then missed its next six shots. That gave the Hawks time to pull into an 8-8 tie on Evan Johnson's 17-foot pullup at the 12:21 mark. That marked Maryland Eastern Shore's last points for more than seven minutes as the Illini reeled off 17 straight points to remove any suspense. Johnson opened the spree with a basket and two free throws, Ben Humrichous swished a 3-pointer and Tre White sank a layup before Kasparas Jakucionis fed Ivisic for a 3-pointer and an alley-oop layup. Jakucionis set up Johnson for a free throw, then drove for an unchallenged layup to make it 25-8 with 5:15 left in the first. Evan Johnson snapped the visitors' dry spell with a driving layup at the 4:56 mark, but Illinois went on to establish a 35-15 halftime lead on the stretch of 11 offensive rebounds that turned into 12 second-chance points and 13 points off UMES' 10 turnovers. Maryland Eastern Shore needed nearly four minutes to get its first points in the second half as Illinois pushed its lead to 42-15. The Illini margin ballooned all the way to 70-24 on Boswell's driving layup with 8:11 to go. --Field Level MediaVancouver-based bookkeeping service Bench Accounting has announced its sudden closure, potentially putting hundreds of staff out of work. The company that has described itself as North America's largest bookkeeping service for small businesses says on its website in a "notice of closure" dated Friday that the platform is "no longer accessible." The statement acknowledges that the closure is "abrupt and may cause disruption," and says the firm is committed to helping customers "navigate through the transition." Bench has previously said it had more than 600 employees and had received investor funding of US$113 million. It said it moved to Vancouver and changed its name to Bench in 2013, having started out in 2012 as 10sheet Inc in the U.S. Calls to Bench's Vancouver office went to voice mail and did not immediately receive a response. But the company's former CEO and co-founder Ian Crosby released a statement on social media on Friday, saying he was "very sad" about the closure. Crosby, who said he was ousted by the company's board about three years ago, said there was a lesson in the fate of the company. "I hope the story of Bench goes on to become a warning for VCs (venture capitalists) that think they can 'upgrade' a company by replacing the founder. It never works," he said. The University of British Columbia Sauder Business School alumni said he had been avoiding speaking publicly about Bench since his exit, but wanted to make a statement in light of the company's demise. He said that in 2021 he had been battling with some board members over their strategy for a "new direction" that he thought was a "very bad idea." "Rather than continuing to fight with me, they opted to just replace me, thinking that they could run the company better themselves," he said. "I was totally convinced that their approach would destroy the company. I opted to resign rather than fight." Other bookkeeping companies were quick to reach out to Bench's former clients, with rivals such as Acuity and Better Bookkeeping making reference to Bench's closure in social media pitches. A spokeswoman for B.C.'s jobs ministry said they were looking into a request for comment. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 27, 2024.