Eight years ago, President Donald Trump spoke about the U.S.-Canada relationship in glowing terms.
He hosted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House in February 2017 for one of his first joint appearances alongside a foreign leader. Trump opened by noting the nations “share much more than a border,” highlighting “the special bonds that come when two nations have shed their blood together — which we have.”
[…]
“Canada only works as a state,” Trump said Thursday. “We don’t need anything they have. As a state, it would be one of the great states anywhere. This would be the most incredible country, visually. If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it, between Canada and the U.S. Just a straight, artificial line. Somebody did it a long time ago, many many decades ago. Makes no sense. It’s so perfect as a great and cherished state.”
“But why should we subsidize another country for $200 billion?” Trump continued, adding, “And again, we don’t need their lumber, we don’t need their energy. We have more than they do. We don’t need anything. We don’t need their cars. I’d much rather make the cars here. And there’s not a thing that we need. Now, there will be a little disruption, but it won’t be very long. But they need us. We really don’t need them. And we have to do this. I’m sorry.”
[…]
A source with direct knowledge of the discussions told NBC News that Trump is heavily focused on Canada in conversations with aides, who believe he is completely serious about making the country the 51st state — even with Trudeau out of power and a new prime minister in place.
Why is he so fixated now? No one knows. He never raised the issue before.
In private, Trump has made specific demands the Canadians say they could never agree to. The president made clear in a phone call with Trudeau last month that he wants to revise the boundary between the two nations set by a 1908 border treaty, as two Canadian officials said and was previously reported by The New York Times and Toronto Star…
The president has also mentioned renegotiating agreements that dictate how the Great Lakes and Columbia River are governed, the official told NBC News, adding that Trump wants to control the Northwest Passage, a maritime path that begins west of Greenland and cuts through Northern Canada to the Arctic Ocean.
“He wants our water,” the Canadian official added. “He wants to take the water.”
Marc Miller, the Canadian minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, said that for Trump, Canada’s allure is its natural resources. The president separately wants American access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as compensation for the aid given to the war-torn country.
He’s got it in his head that he’s some kind of Roman conqueror. (He said he “invaded” Los Angeles the other day too.)
Mark Carney, the former Canadian and British central banker who was sworn in as prime minister on Friday, described “dark days” ahead for his nation after being elected to lead the Liberal Party.
“These are dark days — dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust,” he said. “We are getting over the shock — but let us never forget the lessons. We have to look after ourselves and we have to look out for each other.”
There is no rational explanation for this.
This is not showmanship or “transactionalism.” He has dementia, just like his father, and this global conqueror fantasy isn’t the only sign. His inane obsession with the California water is part of it too. In fact there are dozens of examples in which he’s just way more erratic and bizarre than he used to be (and that’s saying something.) The people around him almost certainly see it and you know that Musk does too.