Donald Trump’s Canada War Proves He’s A Few Curds Short Of A Poutine
The U.S. president is out of his mind.
Donald Trump has declared economic war on Canada. This is not simply misguided or outright bad policy. It’s literally insane. The mainstream media has studiously avoided questioning the president’s sanity, but Tuesday night, CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Liesman called out the mad MAGA king.
“I am going to say this at the risk of my job … but what President Trump is doing is insane,” Liesman said on Tuesday’s edition of The Exchange. “It is absolutely in sane. It’s about the eighth reason we’ve had for the tariffs. Now he’s saying he’s putting 50 per cent tariffs on Canada unless they agree to become the 51st state. That is insane.” (Watch below.)
It’s obviously alarming that Liesman admits that he could lose his job for pointing out that the emperor is nude and very stupid. The media has set a pattern of proactive surrender to Trump. They don’t dare provoke the mad king. Liesman has an Emmy Award and shares a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting at the Wall Street Journal. None of that will protect him from Trump’s lunacy. All truth-telling these days is a revolutionary act.
The Madness of King Donald
Trump is a malignant narcissist, with psychopathic delusions of grandeur, but he was always that way. Yet he didn’t try to invade Canada during his first term, but as Liesman points out, there are no guardrails around Trump this time. That’s hardly a new insight. Kamala Harris frequently warned voters about this fearsome prospect, but she was dismissed as a pronouns-obsessed Cassandra.
“There were people around [during Trump’s first term] who seemed to … I don’t know what the word is … but smooth over some of the edges,” Liesman said. The word he’s looking for is “magical thinking.” A normal president needs good people around them to help inform their many difficult decisions. They don’t require emotional support straitjackets, like Trump does.
During Trump’s first term, there were more than a few advisers and staffers who at least tried to constrain his worst impulses. They were either fired or resigned in horror. That includes former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who later revealed that Trump had a dictator-crush on Hitler, the one from the Holocaust.
“Well, but Hitler did some good things,” Kelly recalled him saying. “[Hitler] rebuilt the economy.”
This has proven to be more than just a careless remark. In a fascist regime, like Nazi Germany, the economy is managed for the greater benefit of the state. That matters more than increasing profits and wages or improving the overall standard of living. Notice that Trump and his stooges keep talking about how loyal MAGA Americans should happily endure some economic pain for the glory of Trump.
“This will be the Golden Age of America!” Trump raved last month on social media. “Will there be some pain? Yes, maybe (and maybe not!). But we will make America great again, and it will all be worth the price that must be paid.”
A sane president doesn’t deliver proclamations similar to Lord Farquaad’s “Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.”
Fascism is pro-business, so long as business owners submit to state control. We’ve already seen CEOs eagerly kneel to Trump. However, America is part of a global economy, and Trump’s chaos is in no way good for business.
“I think all of that is bad for the attraction of capital,” Liesman said. “We need massive amounts of capital if we want to fund our deficits, pay for the things we want to pay for, sell our bonds and have high stock prices. And it seems as if this administration is doing everything it can to chase foreign capital away.”
“Insanity is not a strategy,” he added. Unfortunately, Republicans disagree. They are all in on Trump’s madness, like he’s the hereditary monarch who you must appease if you want to keep your head.
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, during an appearance on Fox News, pushed Trump’s mad dream about conquering Canada, which I repeat is insane.
“The best way to actually merge the economies of Canada and the United States is for Canada to become our 51st state,” he said. “Canada is gonna have to work with us to really integrate their economy, and as the president said, they should consider the amazing advantages of being the 51st state.”
Canadians hate the U.S. government, and they’re avoiding our country like it’s all just one big Tampa. Canadian celebrities are posting messages on social media that sound as if they’re citizens of a nation under siege by a hostile power, which they are. (Here’s the delightful Lauren Ash.)
This is hardly the “art of the deal.” Canadians absolutely loathe Trump, and his threats to Canadian sovereignty have caused national pride to surge, particularly in Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies and British Columbia. Canada’s liberals and conservatives are united in their disgust for Trump, but he still won’t take “no” for an answers, which is consistent with his character and rap sheet.
Trump lacks the frontal lobe capacity for civil negotiation. He only comprehends taking whatever he wants through dominance and trickery. This explains why he was so eager to gut U.S. foreign aid. He can’t understand fostering good will and building lasting alliances through “soft power.” He favors “hard power” techniques, such as coercion, intimidation, the threat of force, economic sanctions, or direct payoffs. It’s why he cozies up to dictators and bullies democratic allies.
Vice President J.D. Vance declared the other day with a huff and a puff that if “we need to take more territorial interest in Greenland, that is what President Trump is going to do … He doesn’t care about what the Europeans scream at us.”
Our allies are used to a bit of tough guy bluster from Republican presidents, but Trump’s trade war and expansionist rhetoric have pushed Canada too far. They’re fighting back with retaliatory tariffs, and Trump is responding like a spoiled child, complaining that someone he hit for no reason, hit him back even harder.
Now, Trump’s personal state media over at Fox News is trying to frame Canada as the aggressors in the war that our reduced-for-quick-sale Putin started and could end at any moment.
“Yesterday, our neighbors to the north decided they wanted to do things the hard way,” Jesse Watters said on his show, sounding like the guy who collects the protection money. “[Canada] slapped a 25 percent tariff on electricity coming into the country, which would jack up utility prices in New York, Michigan, Minnesota. Trump hit back this morning, announcing he was doubling the tariffs on Canadian steel from 25 percent to 50. The Canadians didn’t like that. And they fired the first official shot of the American-Canadian war.”
Watters insisted that retaliatory tariffs are “an act of war.” He said, “That’s like a utility company telling the Army base next door they’re going to shut their power.” His simile does contain the word “like,” but that’s about all I can say for it.
Trump’s trade war is more than just a terrible idea. Hoping to acquire Canada like it’s an Atlantic City casino is just insane. What’s worse, though, is that Trump’s madness is a shared one in the U.S. — folie à douchebags like Vance and Watters think Trump is flexing U.S. “hard power,” but he’s only weakening much-needed U.S. alliances. Other nations whose citizens elect sane leaders are realizing that they can’t trust the United States. The lunatic is running the asylum, and the damage is only beginning.
Wouldn't it be hilarious if Canada announced that it is making Puerto Rico a province? That's the world I want to see.
To those of us who try to think and act rationally, Trump's statements and actions seem like totally unforced errors which cannot possibly succeed. But to Trump, chaos is the point. Destroying the normal functioning of government and foreign policy is the point. And the benefits to him are many, and ultimately financially beneficial.
He is already reaping enormous gobs of cash through selling influence to the mega-wealthy. And he is making it impossible to track everything that is happening in the background as he Gish Gallops through the system. His career was essentially started by selling out to Russian oligarchs who needed to launder their cash. Trump discovered that he could capture a portion of the wads of money that needed a place to hide. Now he is doing the same thing with our government and our financial system. He cares only about enriching himself and the grifters and sleazebags that understand what he is doing, and who have jumped aboard the bandwagon to slurp up the dregs.
There is no way for this all to end but badly...either for him or for us.