ANCHOR MAN

If Fox News seems an unlikely landing spot for John Roberts, a guy who got his start pumping out Platinum Blonde on MuchMusic, you probably haven't heard his thoughts on the trade war, the American psyche and POTUS 47

- COURTNEY SHEA

IF YOU WERE a Torontonian with a TV in the 1980s, you knew J. D. Roberts, the heavy metal-loving, mulletsporting, cool-guy music nerd who rose to local fame first as the co-host of The New Music with Jeanne Beker and then as a MuchMusic VJ. Before he hit 30, he'd swapped out interviews with debauched rockers for hard reporting, eventually relocating to the US to anchor the morning news on CBS. The network then named him chief White House correspondent, a role he later also held at CNN, winning Emmys and acclaim for his cov erage of the Iraq War. (He stores the awards in a box in his basement-"I'm not really into 'I love me' displays," he says.)

Roberts's move to Fox News in 2017 surprised many fans, but he refers to the opportunity to work for America's most watched news network (Fox has nearly double the viewers of MSNBC and CNN combined) as a chance to "play for the New York Yankees." He is now the coanchor, alongside Sandra Smith, of Fox's massively popular weekday news show, America Reports, where his dual citizenship positions him at the centre of the US-Canada conversation in a unique way. Here, he talks about the things people get wrong about Donald Trump, his impressions of Doug Ford and his most cherished Canadian commodity.

Thank you for agreeing to this bilateral meeting at such a fraught time between the US and Canada.

Well, I still have my Canadian passport. I have to get it renewed next year. I met a fellow from the Canadian embassy at a pre-inauguration party, and he agreed to help me through the process. It can be onerous for Canadians living outside the country. It pains me to see what's happening to the relationship between Canada and the United States, because it's always been tight. So many Canadians have come down to the US and achieved success in the news business, in entertainment, in music and in other industries.