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Doing double duty also helps his day job as provincial premier: The more he dons the cape of Captain Canada, the less he needs to wear Ontario’s mistakes — lightening his load.

This week, the premier reprised that dual role by lashing out at U.S. President Donald Trump with some of his most insulting and insinuating language yet: Canadians can’t “wave the white flag� when they’re being beaten black and blue, he began.

“We should never do that. We should hit him back twice as hard,� Ford insisted.

“If you roll over, this guy will just keep beating you and beating you and beating you,� he continued, recounting the advice he gave Prime Minister Mark Carney earlier in the week.

“No, let’s start hitting back. Start hitting back hard again.�

On Thursday, Carney didn’t take the hint, heed the advice or hit back hard. Not as easy as it looks.

In an afternoon phone call with Trump, the prime minister opted for more of the same suasion. The result was more of the same, with no sign of success for Carney nor relief for Canada.

No surprise there. No one has yet found a way to stand up to Trump — or stick it to him — without being squashed.

All that said, Ford’s shtick is to go off script, giving voice to popular rage with ad-libbed anger and impromptu insults. Another sample:

“He has a rude awakening — we aren’t going to roll over, we aren’t going to kiss his backside,� Ford thundered this week.

Yet thunder only goes so far in a storm. Up close, it’s not so simple.

When Ford exhorts his audiences — “We’re going to fight like we’ve never fought before� — he knows it ain’t so.

Earlier this year, Ontario’s premier loudly threatened to cut off electricity exports to a modest client base in U.S. border states. But Ford quickly backed off when the Americans pushed back.

To be clear, Ford isn’t criticizing Carney personally. To the contrary, he keeps heaping praise on the prime minister as the best person for an impossible job.

So what exactly is the premier trying to achieve by offering free advice about how he’d do the job? In truth, he is neither coaching nor goading the PM.

He is merely playing a role. Not so much good cop/bad cop, more like looking out for number one.

The political benefit from tossing off those fulsome insults and empty threats against Trump is that they are merely performance art — political theatre without political consequences. Yet it makes for clever provincial politics.

His international pretensions and national aspirations helped Ford cruise to his third majority government in this year’s provincial election. After many months of channelling the anger of the country, and the anxiety of the province, he keeps cashing in every chance he gets.

For it is the best of both worlds: Ford gets to opine on Canada-U.S. issues from the comfort of Queen’s Park, knowing he won’t be held fully accountable for any national miscalculations or provincial misrule.

The international calculus is complex.

Carney has made it clear that anytime Canada counterpunches on tariffs, it hurts us more than it hurts the other guy. There are strong arguments for strong retaliation, but Carney’s counter-argument is that the U.S. economy is 10 times the size of Canada’s total output.

Targeting American exports not only makes Canadians pay more for manufacturing inputs and consumer goods, it also has one-tenth the impact on the giant U.S. economy. That’s an equation without equality.

It’s true that Carney fought a fiercely anti-American election campaign last April — an echo of Ford’s own winning provincial campaign in February. But that was then (mid-campaign); and this is now (postelection).

Today’s reality is best expressed by Trump himself, as he put it just this week in a context that is different yet comparable. Speaking to Fox News, he was trying to cut Ukraine down to size while bending it to his will (and that of Russia):

“You don’t take on a nation that’s 10 times your size,â€� Trump lectured the Ukrainians.

While the president has a point about Ukraine being outgunned, he misses the point about who fired the first shot. Ukraine didn’t “take on� Russia — it was the reverse.

Closer to home, Canada didn’t pick a fight with America. But it’s getting picked on all the same.

Carney is compelled to choose his words more carefully, as other international leaders must. All those appeals to Trump’s vanity are in vain, but provoking the president is a high-risk enterprise.

The premier can get away with his rhetoric and antics because, for all his federal fantasies, he remains provincial in reality. He operates with impunity, free to take pokes and potshots that make people feel better — without making matters worse.

Ford knows by now how to scratch an itch. He also knows it can be comforting — and distracting — as people suffer yet more bites at home and abroad.