"The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State," Mr. Trump wrote on social media. "This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear. Canadians taxes will be very substantially reduced, they will be more secure, militarily and otherwise, than ever before, there would no longer be a Northern Border problem."
Mr. Trump has cited the flow of undocumented migrants and fentanyl into the United States in placing tariffs on goods from Canada.Credit...Jason Redmond/Agence France-Presse " Getty Images
Echoing his private comments to Mr. Trudeau in their February phone call, he said about the border: "The artificial line of separation drawn many years ago will finally disappear.''
He also said "O Canada," the national anthem, "will continue to play, but now representing a GREAT and POWERFUL STATE within the greatest Nation that the World has ever seen!"
Much of the world has been seeing Mr. Trump's fixation with annexing Canada as a joke, or merely bluster to push for concessions on trade and other forms of economic integration. It's been regarded as the least realistic and plausible of Mr. Trump's territorial ambitions, which also include annexing Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, and wanting to reclaim the Panama Canal.
But Canadian political leaders, and Canadians at large, have been taking Mr. Trump deadly seriously.
What part of these facts are clickbait, Oneironut? Show your work.