WASHINGTON—Top aides to U.S. President Donald Trump hurled public and personal insults at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday in a baffling and unprecedented attack one suggested was intended as a show of strength to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

The insults were by far the harshest words Trump’s administration has levelled at any allied leader. They demonstrated a level of public vitriol not seen in Canada-U.S. relations in more than 50 years.

Trump began the onslaught with a Saturday tweet in which he called Trudeau “dishonest and weak.” In Sunday interviews on CNN and Fox News, Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, and senior trade adviser, Peter Navarro, used still more disparaging adjectives — “amateurish,” “rogue,” “sophomoric” — and vaguely accused Trudeau of a “double-cross” and “betrayal.”

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Navarro delivered the most incendiary comment: “There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door.”

Trudeau declined to respond directly, saying on Twitter that what truly “matters” is the accomplishments of the G7. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said: “Canada does not believe that ad hominem attacks are a particularly appropriate or useful way to conduct our relations with other countries.”

The Trump fury was especially bizarre because it did not seem to be prompted by anything Trudeau had actually done. Kudlow and Navarro claimed the problem was Trudeau’s post-G7 press conference — in which the prime minister criticized Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs in the same restrained manner he had been employing all week.

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Kudlow eventually offered a kind of explanation: Trudeau’s criticism had made Trump look weak, he said, and Trump does not want to be seen by Kim as weak when they hold their summit on Tuesday.

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“Kim must not see American weakness. It’s that short,” Kudlow said.

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“POTUS (president of the United States) is not gonna let a Canadian prime minister push him around, push him, POTUS, around, President Trump, on the eve of this,” Kudlow said. “He is not going to permit any show of weakness on a trip to negotiate with North Korea.”

There is no obvious precedent for White House aides publicly slamming an allied prime minister in such personal terms. Other presidents and prime ministers have had testy relations — Richard Nixon famously used a profane word, in private, to refer to Trudeau’s father, Pierre — but neither side has publicly demonstrated this level of hostility since John Diefenbaker feuded with John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s.

“I think people hear this kind of stuff on CNN and they think, ‘We’ve gone off the rails. This is a whole new realm of crazy because none of this makes any rational sense,’ ” said Christopher Sands, director of the Center for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins University. The attack on Trudeau comes across as so unreasonable that Trump will have to “tone it down” and attempt a “public rapprochement,” but the relationship can be substantively damaged in the interim, Sands said.

Trump, who ran on his opposition to “political correctness,” often attempts to excite his base, and himself, by deviating from long-held norms about polite behaviour.

“You’re dealing with a Grade A bully,” said Paul Frazer, a former Canadian diplomat and now a Washington consultant.

Trump’s abrupt shift in his approach to Trudeau, whom he had previously appeared to like, comes at a high-stakes moment in the bilateral relationship. The two sides are still attempting to negotiate a new North American Free Trade Agreement. And Trump is now threatening to impose tariffs on foreign automobiles and auto parts, which would dwarf the impact of the steel tariffs.

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Freeland attempted to turn the focus from the personal insults to Trump’s “illegal and unjustified” tariffs, which he has officially imposed on “national security” grounds. Such tariffs are the most important insult, Freeland said, and Canada has no choice but to respond, in “sorrow,” with reciprocal, equivalent tariffs.

“We use fact-based arguments,” she said.

She added: “At the end of the day, common sense will prevail. And, you know, the fact that we’re united right now is going to help us to get there.”

The insults prompted an outpouring of support for Trudeau from allies and politicians across the political spectrum in both countries.

Conservative opposition leader Andrew Scheer said on Twitter: “Canada’s Conservatives continue to support the Prime Minister’s efforts to make the case for free trade. Divisive rhetoric and personal attacks from the U.S. administration are clearly unhelpful.”

Incoming Ontario premier Doug Ford said on Twitter: “We will stand shoulder to shoulder with the Prime Minister and the people of Canada.”

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, said on Twitter: “There is a special place in heaven for @JustinTrudeau.”

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Trudeau plans to retaliate to Trump’s 25-per-cent tariff on Canadian steel and 10-per-cent tariff on Canadian aluminum with an equivalent dollar amount worth of tariffs on dozens of U.S. products. Navarro, a hardliner on trade who has Trump’s ear, claimed that this retaliation is “nothing short of an attack on our political system.”

Trump roiled the G7 summit with his belligerence toward Canada and Europe and with his call for Russia to be invited back into the group. He added further tension by giving a news conference in which he again blasted his allies’ trade practices. He later rejected the countries’ joint statement, via tweet, hours after he had agreed to accept it.

Returning to the administration’s frequent strategy of accusing Trump’s opponents of the behaviour Trump is being accused of, Kudlow alleged Trudeau was the one who had damaged the alliance with his own news conference.

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“You don’t walk away and start firing bullets,” said Kudlow, who at one point called Trudeau “Pierre Trudeau.” He added: “He really, actually, you know: he did a great disservice to the whole G7.”

Former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, Trudeau’s predecessor, appeared on Fox soon after Navarro. He said, “I don’t understand the obsession with trade relations with Canada.”

“This is the wrong target. And from what I understand of American public opinion, I don’t think even Trump supporters think the Canadian trade relationship is a problem,” Harper said.