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Donald Trump excels in every field, including surrealism. Leonard Cohen sang “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin!” but it’s completely outclassed by Trump’s “First we take Greenland, then we take Canada!” And he’s going to take the Panama Canal, too!
It’s probably just bluster and nonsense, but it has already taken down Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister for the past nine years. His resignation last week was the delayed consequence of a row with his deputy, Chrystia Freeland, last month over his “weak” response to Trump’s threat to slap a 25 percent tariff on Canadian exports to the United States.
The actual annexation threats came a bit later, and most Canadian journalists assumed that they were just a way of scaring Canadians into accepting the new tariffs or making other concessions. They’re probably right, too — but what if they are wrong? This is Trump we’re talking about here.
The Panamanians, by contrast, just shrugged. They have been invaded by the U.S. before, most recently in 1989, but only around 500 Panamanians were killed that time and after a while the Americans went home again, as they usually do in the Caribbean (Grenada, Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua).
And the Greenlanders were simply bemused by Trump’s offer to buy their country, as was the Danish government, which looks after the island’s defense and foreign affairs. It has been a long time since countries bought territory from other countries, and seizing it by force is illegal. Nevertheless, Copenhagen increased its defense spending on Greenland by $1.5 billion.
The threats may all be empty, and they certainly reveal a profound ignorance. However, what seems faintly comical viewed from abroad is taken seriously by some people in the U.S.
For example, Official Presidential Sidekick Elon Musk has recently tweeted that “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government.” He posted it as a Yes/No poll, and 73 percent of his fans backed his idea of invading the United Kingdom to free the British from the tyrant Keir Starmer.
It’s not enough to say that they’re just yanking our chain. That’s probably the right answer, but you’d feel really stupid if they really did mean some of it and you woke up one morning to find American troops in your street. On the other hand, what could you do to lessen that possibility that wouldn’t look equally stupid?
It’s the same dilemma you always have when dealing with the threats of madmen, real or fake. Let’s just look at the bright side, which is that Trump’s threats have finally forced “Governor” Trudeau, as Trump mockingly calls him (implying that what he governs is just an American state) to resign.
That is good news because it opens up a faint possibility that Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre will not be the next prime minister of Canada. An election is due no later than October, and so long as Trudeau was in the race Poilievre was the sure winner.
Poilievre is not really a Canadian Trump, though he shares most of the same ideas. He’s smarter and more presentable, more like U.S. Vice President-elect JD Vance but just as much a part of the extreme right.
As long as Trudeau was in office, Poilievre seemed bound to win, not so much because ideological rants are the Canadian style but because Canadians had really come to loathe Trudeau. The intensity of the hostility to him in otherwise calm and reasonable people was astonishing.
Now that he’s announced his resignation and the Liberals will have a new leader, there’s at least a small chance that Poilievre will not be the next prime minister of Canada. Otherwise, by the end of this year all of mainland North America will be ruled by the hard right — except Mexico, of course.
