Just for context, the CTV story linked doesn't mention it, but before Trump's ragetweet, one of the Morouns met with Lutnick, Trump's secretary of commerce. For anyone who hasn't heard of them yet, the Moroun family across the water makes passive income in the billions off the Ambassador (troll) bridge. They even donated 1M to a Trump superPAC less than a month before Trump's tweet.
The timing of the donation and Trump's seeming change in position toward the new bridge is "somewhat of an unusual case" in the campaign finance world, according to Devin Judge-Lord, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
"Usually everybody has strong incentives for these kinds of donations to not get attention," said Judge Lord, adding that a position change "would normally only be taken if they didn't believe they would generate a lot of news coverage." CBC, Feb '26
The Morouns spent something like 30M back in 2012 opposing the Gordie Howe - made a fake group called The People Should Decide that created a petition that called for a referendum to amend Michigan's constitution, just to preserve their monopoly. When that didn't work in their favour, the next year they started suing:
Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun has named the U.S. departments of State, Transportation, Coast Guard and Homeland Security, as well as the Canadian government, in a lawsuit to stop a new Detroit River bridge.
In the 92-page lawsuit filed in federal court in February, Moroun claims he has a “perpetual and exclusive franchise right” to operate the Windsor-Detroit crossing without competition from another bridge [...]
“I’m not surprised, they have an enormous sense of entitlement.” The bridge company’s claim to exclusive rights to bridge traffic at the Windsor-Detroit crossing is something “nobody takes seriously. They are lashing out in all directions and trying to stop progress,” [Canada’s Consul General Roy Norton] said, “This is what they do.” - Windsor Star, Apr 2013
