WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump backed away from his keyboard warrior trolling in his first meeting with Canada’s new prime minister, saying his monthslong threat of annexing the nation as the 51st state would only happen if Canadians wanted it, even as he continued pushing the outlandish premises undergirding his trade war with Canada and every other nation.

“You know, it takes two to tango, right?” Trump said before claiming that Canadians could get lower taxes, free military protection and — somehow — better health care if they joined the United States. “It would be a really wonderful marriage.”

Mark Carney, for his part, made clear more than once that that was never going to happen.

“There are some places that are never for sale,” he said. “Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign the last several months, it’s not for sale. It won’t be for sale ever.”

For much of the meeting, though, Carney — a former central banker with a doctorate in economics — seemed to have a difficult time getting a word in as Trump ― a reality TV game show host who bankrupted casinos ― laid out one false belief about international trade after another.

He said that the United States does not “do much business” with Canada, that the U.S. “lost” $1 trillion to China last year and that Americans “subsidize” Canada “$200 billion a year.”

In fact, Canada is the United States’ largest export market, and the U.S. last year sent $440 billion worth of goods and services there. Trump, yet again, is conflating a trade deficit with the U.S. budget deficit in the figures he cites on China and Canada, and the first has little to do with the second. In any event, the numbers are nowhere near accurate. The United States had a trade deficit in goods with China of $295 billion last year and one of $64 billion with Canada.

Trump also complained that cars made in Canada — by U.S. automakers — are imported for sale into the United States, even though he himself signed and continues to praise the United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement that slightly modified a decades-old rule permitting cars made primarily in those three countries to cross borders and be sold without import taxes.

“We want to make our own cars. We don’t really want cars from Canada. And we put tariffs on cars from Canada,” Trump said.

Trump’s fact-free rants about trade, in fact, started a half-hour before Carney even arrived at the West Wing.

“I look forward to meeting the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney. I very much want to work with him, but cannot understand one simple TRUTH — Why is America subsidizing Canada by $200 Billion Dollars a year, in addition to giving them FREE Military Protection, and many other things? We don’t need their Cars, we don’t need their Energy, we don’t need their Lumber, we don’t need ANYTHING they have, other than their friendship, which hopefully we will always maintain. They, on the other hand, need EVERYTHING from us! The Prime Minister will be arriving shortly and that will be, most likely, my only question of consequence,” he wrote in a social media post.

During the 35 minutes of the meeting that the news media were permitted to witness, Carney several times tried and failed to counter a claim Trump had made or to respond to a question. He was left offering looks that appeared to range from frustration to bewilderment.

Toward the end, he finally was able to correct one of Trump’s falsehoods. “We are the largest client of the United States in the totality of all the goods,” he said. “You know, 50% of a car that comes from Canada is American. That’s not like anywhere else in the world.”

It was the first time the two had met in person, although they have spoken over the phone twice. Trump at the start of the Oval Office photo opportunity acknowledged that his own words and actions about Canada may have led to Carney’s recent election win.

“I think I was probably the greatest thing that happened to him, but I can’t take full credit,” Trump said. “His party was losing by a lot and he ended up winning.”

Carney became prime minister when Justin Trudeau stepped down earlier this year. His Liberal Party was expected to lose to the Conservatives in the coming elections, but that was before Trump stepped up false attacks on Canada for cheating the U.S. on trade while continuing to claim that the country would become the 51st state. The Liberals wound up winning the April 28 elections with nearly enough seats for an outright majority.

“I’m glad that you couldn’t tell what was going through my mind,” Carney told reporters at a news conference later in the afternoon when asked what he was thinking as Trump was holding forth. “Thank you, I guess, for your question.”