What's the diplomatic thing to say when the U.S. president insults your predecessor, your close colleague and many others, to boot?

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In his Devil’s Dictionary, 19th-century American writer Ambrose Bierce defined diplomacy as the “patriotic art of lying for one’s country.”

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In this century, it now also includes the patriotic art of listening to lying. These days, diplomats, presidents and prime ministers are required to sit in the garishly gilded Oval Office and listen politely to spumes of BS and bile issuing from the president of the United States. With the exception of a few involuntary grimaces and eye rolls — the man is only human, after all — Prime Minister Carney did his patriotic duty well on Tuesday.

He even began by thanking Donald Trump for his hospitality, yes, that’s only polite, but also for his leadership, which was a little Bierce-ian and must have been a struggle to spit out, given Carney had just spent six weeks telling Canadians Trump’s leadership had the world economy heading off a cliff. But he plowed on, making the right noises about securing borders and working on the Arctic, defence, security and fentanyl (though we argue we aren’t the source of the U.S. fentanyl problem).

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