Trump says he loves Canada, but it should not exist

Richard Hall, The Independent

It’s rare for threats of annexation to be delivered with a smile. But in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, Donald Trump repeated his intention to eliminate Canada from the map and occupy Greenland with the same casualness that one might order lunch. “I love Canada. I love the people of Canada. I have many friends in Canada — the great one, Wayne Gretzky, the Great. How good is Wayne Gretzky? He’s the great one. I know many people from Canada that are good friends of mine,” Trump said with a smirk, before explaining why the country shouldn’t exist anymore. “Canada only works as a state,” he went on. “If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it, between Canada and the US, just a straight artificial line. Somebody did it a long time ago — many, many, decades ago, and makes no sense. It’s so perfect as a great and cherished state.”

It was not all bad news for Canadians, however. In this terrible vision of the future imagined for them, presumably after a brutal insurgency by the Royal Mounties has been crushed in the Canadian Rockies, and after millions have fled to become refugees in other parts of the Commonwealth, Trump promised that those left behind could keep their national anthem — but as a state anthem.

“‘O Canada,’ the national anthem. I love it. I think it’s great. Keep it, but it will be for the state, one of our greatest states, maybe our greatest state,” Trump continued. Trump’s comments come as a trade war between the two former close allies has spiraled out of control in recent days. Just as concerning as the casualness of the threat was the justification behind it. It is perhaps the first time in modern history that a leader has threatened to annex a country for aesthetic reasons. “This would be the most incredible country visually,” Trump said of the new land he would create from the ashes. Trump’s threats were made all the more jarring because they were interspersed with repeated calls for peace between Ukraine and Russia.

“Thousands of young people are being killed a week, and we want to see that stop,” Trump said. “They’re not Americans, and they’re not from the Netherlands for the most part. They’re from Russia and they’re from Ukraine, but they’re people.”

There was a grim irony here in that his rhetoric on Canada bears a striking resemblance to Vladimir Putin’s own words on Ukraine. For years before he launched his invasion of Ukraine, Putin engaged in a similar campaign of attacks on the validity of Ukraine’s existence, repeating the falsehood that it was “not even a real country.” Sitting alongside Trump as he laid out his plans for world domination was the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, who would in theory lead the fighting force that would be forced to respond militarily if Trump followed through on his threats. Moving on to Greenland, with an appetite that would make Napoleon blush, Trump suggested that the NATO chief might be able to help him take over the Danish-owned territory.

“Well, I think it’ll happen,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question.

“And I’m just thinking, I didn’t give it much thought before, but I’m sitting with a man who could be very instrumental. You know, Mark, we need that for international security,” Trump said, addressing Rutte. Rutte had obviously watched the horror shows of Volodymyr Zelensky and Keir Starmer’s visits and trained for weeks in the art of deflection and flattery. He masterfully batted away each of Trump’s invitations to sanction his sweep across the northern hemisphere. “So when it comes to Greenland, yes or not, joining the US, I would leave that outside for me this discussion, because I don’t want to drag NATO in that,” he said. “But when it comes to the high north and the Arctic, you are totally right. The Chinese are using these routes. We know that the Russians are re-arming. We know we have a lack of ice breakers,” he continued, dodging an international incident. With Greenland, too, Trump offered up a lackluster justification for invading the territory of a fellow NATO member.

“Denmark’s very far away,” he said.

“A boat landed there 200 years ago or something, and they say they have rights to it. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t think it is, actually,” he added, as Christopher Columbus turned in his grave. But he was insistent that the annexation of Greenland would happen, and for the first time raised the prospect of military action to achieve it. Again, with a wink. “You know, we have a couple of bases on Greenland already, and we have quite a few soldiers, and maybe you’ll see more and more soldiers go there,” he said. “I don’t know, what do you think about that, Pete?” he asked US defense secretary Pete Hesgeth, the former Fox News host who now runs the most powerful military force the world has ever seen, and who was standing nearby. “Don’t answer that, Pete. Don’t answer that,” Trump said, with a laugh.