More specifically, Trump threatened to bring Canada to its knees; to subject it to blunt “economic force” until it submits blindly to his desires, like an escort in one of his gilded Trump Hotels. “Canada and the United States, that would really be something,” he mused to a titillated press corps. “You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like.”
No one, least of all Canadians, knows how seriously to take all this. On the one hand, joining Canada to the United States is effectively a legal impossibility. Put aside the fact that 80 percent of Canadians don’t want it—rewriting the Canadian Constitution in any capacity would require the consent of the 20 percent that live in French-speaking Québec, who have succeeded many times in holding the country hostage over much smaller matters than total cultural dissolution.
All this goes some way to explaining why the last time Trump threatened Canada with “economic force”—in November he vowed to implement 25 percent tariffs if Canada did not placate his concerns about border security—officials jumped into action to appease him. At a moment’s notice, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Lago, to enjoy the “excellent conversation” at the court of the mad king himself. It was there, Fox News tells us, that Trudeau “laugh[ed] nervously” while Trump first floated the idea of annexation. Two weeks later, Canada had committed to nearly $1 billion in new border security spending.
The Canadian media, meanwhile, has responded the only way it knows how: with cringe comedy, capitulation, and genteel concern. One columnist insisted Trudeau failed by not responding with a joke about the War of 1812 (Ford had already made it, a day earlier). The right-leaning National Post, meanwhile, well on its own way to being dismantled by American hedge funds, offered a step-by-step guide on how to actually annex Canada, “regardless of whether that makes you feel sick or fills you with joy.” All the while, the public broadcaster’s headlines politely pleaded for clarity: “Trump has threatened Canada in all sorts of ways. What does he really want?” What they really wanted to ask was, “Why is he being so mean?”
But therein lies the problem. In situations like these, one can never be sure what exactly is motivating Trump. But it is unsettling that what he has so far demanded has been things the U.S. has more or less already received. America does not need to go to war with Greenland to gain economic and military access: It has it already. Perhaps what Trump is really after is the thrill of conquest and domination. We know Trump will wreak great havoc for symbolic submissions to his own power and glory—just look at the renaming of Nafta. Now, he is returned to command as a wounded tyrant, hepped up on the fumes of manifest destiny. Trump may simply want to grab some country, any country, “by the pussy”—and Canada’s is (forgive me) wide open.
Our next prime minister, meanwhile, is all but certain to be Pierre Poilievre, a sapling-like Trump Lite known for being “MAGA’s favorite Canadian” and a dead ringer for The Simpsons’ Milhouse. When first asked about Trump’s threat of annexation, he called for “locking arms with American economic allies,” and publicly begged Elon Musk to build Tesla factories in Canada. His party is more than 20 points ahead in the polls.
Perhaps, in the end, it would be the worst of all for those same Republicans now baying at Canada’s doorstep. It took one day of learning about Canada for right-wing Americans to realize that they would in all likelihood be adding 40 million Democrats to their number. “Canada would be a blue-state behemoth, matching California in population … and, presumably, in reliably Democratic politics,” Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of the National Review, wrote in an editorial. “We might think we’d annex Canada and make it more like us, but … Canada would surely make us more like it.”
Isn’t that a thought? Perhaps then, annexation might not be such a bad thing after all.
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