United Nations and Abraham Lincoln

Waldorf Astoria: He curtly told a news conference at the United Nations yesterday that he had faith in the better angels of Americans' nature, noting he was paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, according to The Chronicle Herald. Later in the evening he told a friendly high-powered crowd in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel that he'd only been able to introduce policies like a gender-parity cabinet and welcoming refugees because voters had supported his approach to politics. "As much as I was able to do, and my government was able to do, we only did it because Canadians made a choice: to choose a more open, fair, positive way of doing politics," he told the crowd, which included the heads of McDonald's, Campbell Soup, Shell, and the Carnival Corporation. The prime minister has been asked repeatedly during his visits to Washington and New York what he thinks of the Donald Trump phenomenon and he hasn't directly mentioned the billionaire name. Then he added: "That is certainly something that I hope resonates through political systems around the world." That last line prompted laughter and perhaps his loudest applause of the evening — louder even than his references to the gender-parity cabinet, which is why he was invited to the gala and given the award from the women group Catalyst. But he keeps getting asked — and he insists he'd work with whoever Americans elect, while sometimes sprinkling that with an allusion to the better angles of Americans' nature. Amid the claps, he added: "I'm not thinking of any place in particular!" Several former Canadian ambassadors to the U.S. have publicly warned the prime minister not to talk about the U.S. election, saying it would be a mistake to turn Canada into an issue in a messy election. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.