In case you haven’t been following the show, Donald Trump has been obsessed with Canada lately.
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He has suggested it could become the “51st state.”
At a news conference yesterday, he said, “You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security. Don’t forget, we basically protect Canada. But here’s the problem with Canada. So many friends up there, I love the Canadian people. They’re great, but we’re spending hundreds of billions a year to protect it. We’re spending hundreds of billions a year to take care of Canada. We lose in trade deficits.”
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He recently shared two maps of the United States that also include Canada on Truth Social, and they are going viral.
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He posted this one and captioned it “Oh Canada!”
And then he posted this one without comment:
Both maps are all over my timeline with two very distinct points of view.
One one said of things there are the people who have had enough.
“Why is he so fixated on this?? It’s insane,” one person said.
“Four years of misery…” another person commented.
And this person said, “We’re going to have WW3 aren’t we?”
On the other side of things politically, you have people celebrating the move.
“Greatness intensifying,” this person said.
Another person called it “The Greater America.”
And this person said, “this is legendary behavior and im disgusted by all the angry comments.”
Anyway, I guess this is our reality now. I need to know what Carly Rae Jepsen thinks.
President-elect Donald Trump made his case Tuesday for Canada, a country of some 41 million people, becoming part of the U.S., saying he would use “economic force” to try to join the two nations and get rid of what he called an “artificially drawn line” between them.
“Canada and the United States, that would really be something,” Trump said at a news conference at his Florida resort.
Trump added that the U.S. doesn’t need “anything they have,” including vehicles manufactured in Canada. “I’d rather make them in Detroit,” Trump said. But he argued that it makes sense for Canada to become part of the U.S. if it is going to rely on the U.S. economy and military to the extent he said it does.
The comments came a day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his Liberal Party well behind in the polls for an election that must occur before Oct. 20, said he would step down as the country’s leader soon.
Trudeau, who has had a complex relationship with Trump for nearly a decade, has been trying to respond to Trump’s threatened 25% tariff on all Canadian goods and services and jibes by the president-elect in which he has referred to Trudeau as “governor,” as if Canada were a state. Trudeau has said that Canada would respond to any such tariff in kind but that it could decimate the nation’s economy while also raising prices for U.S. consumers.
More: Justin Trudeau renews a complicated relationship with Donald Trump
Both Liberal and Conservative party officials have rejected any suggestion Canada would entertain becoming part of the U.S. On Tuesday afternoon, Trudeau posted on social media platform X, “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” adding that workers in both countries benefit from their longstanding trading and security partnership.
Trump ruled out any use of military force in trying to join the two countries, though he stopped short of making such a commitment regarding his interest in annexing or acquiring Greenland or having the U.S. regain some amount of control of the Panama Canal to bolster the nation’s global and economic security.
The president-elect, who will be inaugurated Jan. 20, made several claims about Canada’s reliance on the U.S. that were not borne out by recent data, including that the U.S. is “losing $200 billion a year and more to protect Canada” and that 20% of cars imported into the U.S. come from Canada.
The fact-checking website Snopes.com has debunked earlier claims by Trump that the U.S. spends billions subsidizing Canada. In 2023, Canadian imports accounted for about 14% of the value of total auto vehicles, parts and engines imported into the U.S., according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. Trump has also exaggerated the trade deficit with Canada, whose country is still far more reliant on U.S. business overall than vice versa.
The U.S. spent about $32 million in federal aid to Canada in fiscal year 2022. But Trump has long agitated for member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including Canada, to commit larger portions of their budgets to defense, instead of relying on much larger outlays by the U.S. to protect their common interests. On Tuesday, he said that, as it stands now with Canada, the U.S. military is “at their disposal.”
