‘The joke is over’: Trump’s 51st state trolling is bashed by Canadian leaders
Like a middle schooler at recess, Donald Trump is repeating the same joke over and over – unaware that it’s less and less funny each time.
Granted, calling Canada the “51st State” was never funny. Well, not funny “haha” at least. It was ridiculous – and if anything brought out a bewildered “I can’t believe this is actually happening” sort of chuckle. But after Trump recently announced his intent to annex Canada through the threat of “economic force,” Trump’s “joke” stopped being a laughing matter entirely.
And no one is more sick of it than Canadians themselves.
“The joke is over,” said Dominic LeBlanc, Canada’s Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. LeBlanc believes that Trump’s “51st State” quip is no longer simple trolling, but a political tactic in order “sow confusion, to agitate people, to create chaos knowing this will never happen.”
And if Trump doesn’t know that it will never happen, he’s soon going to find out. The annexation of Canada is an unthinkable geopolitical fantasy – one that America has attempted to realize before. The United States invaded Canada during the War of 1812 – it ended badly. According to historian John W. Quist, America again toyed with the idea of Canadian annexation during the “Manifest Destiny” period of the mid-19th century – but nothing came of it. In the mid 20th century, the U.S. and Canada solidified their relationship as “fierce allies” according to Mount Royal University’s poly-sci professor Duane Bratt, and fought and died for one another in numerous foreign wars.
Other leading Canadian politicians share LeBlanc’s exasperation with Trump. In a direct address to the president-elect, Canada’s Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre said that Trump should know “first and foremost, Canada will never be the 51st state of the U.S.” Poilievre’s stance was mirrored by his political rivals alike, with Canada’s former Prime Minster Justin Trudeau saying that there was about as much chance for Canadian statehood as a “snowball’s chance in hell.”
“It’s becoming very counterproductive,” said LeBlanc of Trump’s joke/non-joke. Trump’s belittlement of Canada as nothing more than an unruly state-to-be has lasting political ramifications, and further muddies the already clouded economic relationship between the United States and its northern neighbor. Trump has announced that he intends to make Canada a hard target for his aggressive trade plan, and charge the nation a 25% tariff on all goods. It’s a drastic move that Trudeau attempted to personally talk Trump down from making by flying all the way out to Mar a Lago to meet with the president elect in person. Trudeau’s efforts were unsuccessful, and the former Prime Minster soon found himself to be a personal target of Trump’s trolling – mocked as Canada’s “governor.”
Trump’s low blows to Canadian sovereignty has earned him a tongue lashing from other government officials, including Immigration Minister Marc Miller, who said Trump’s remarks were “beneath a president of the United States.” Miller added that Trump’s trolling gives a sense of unreality to the state of affairs between the two nations, and said that the entire situation feels “like a South Park episode.”
With the patriotic braggadocio of South Park‘s Randy Marsh, Trump has claimed that Americans “don’t need” Canadian products including cars and lumber, and that the United States is “losing massive” in “trade deficits” with the nation. According to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, the U.S. absolutely does need Canada’s goods, pointing out that “60 percent of [America’s] energy imports are coming from Canada.”
Like Randy Marsh, Trump fails to realize that his bloviating makes America the butt of the joke. The world is laughing at him, not with.
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