Summary
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in a private meeting inadvertently broadcast via a hot mic, warned that Donald Trump is seriously considering annexing Canada to secure its critical mineral resources.
Speaking to business and labor leaders, Trudeau claimed Trump’s administration is keenly aware of Canada’s resource wealth and sees annexation as a means to control it.
The comments, cut off after staff realized they were audible, underscore growing economic and political tensions.
He also stressed the need to diversify trade, noting, “Geography means we’re always going to both benefit and be challenged by trade with the United States.”
But I’ve been told by American lemmy users that it’s not serious and that it’s just a distraction, and that I’m a moron for taking it seriously
An American calling you a moron isn’t the insult they think it is.
Hey now! … Well, yeah.
Agreed, it carries very little weight
American here. You’re definitely not a moron. Too many of our own people are for not taking the orange idiot seriously. He may be tremendously stupid, but he has more than enough malice and greed to make up for it. And the people staffing his regime are honestly worse.
According to people on Lemmy, everything Trump does is a distraction. When he starts loading people into box cars and sticking them in ovens, it will still be a distraction.
People give the moron too much credit as a strategic manipulator. He’s not that coy. If he says something, it is because he has no filter and he was genuinely thinking it. His people might talk him out of it (or distract him away from it after the fact), or his aging addled mind wanders off to other things, and only then will it have been a “masterful ploy” to misdirect, or rile up the libs, or gain compliance through threats, etc. Every stupid and evil thing he has said aloud, he meant wholeheartedly at that moment. The problem is he may or may not decide to have follow through on it later, so you don’t know if you should react to it. But if he said something threatening, it is a threat. It isn’t necessarily a threat that will be acted upon. But it absolutely is still a meaningful and serious threat.
Exactly. He has no concept of what a joke is. Or of humor in any way. Have you ever heard him laugh? I sure haven’t.
As his fans always tell us- he says what he thinks.
Sure, most of what he thinks is stupid and/or wrong, but he says what he thinks and it’s only “a joke” when it’s so embarrassing that even he realizes it on some level.
Most Americans don’t realize the scale at which their empire works tirelessly to oppress or subsume all other nations. Telling them about CIA interference in the '70s and '80s blows their fucking minds, let alone what’s going on today across the world. It goes against the narrative that they’re tough but fair stewards of the planet and not schoolyard bullies with nukes who have transformed the global economic landscape to benefit themselves, so it doesn’t make sense to them.
it’s a distraction, but it’s also very real. everything is a disraction from everything else. they’ll get away with whatever they’re allowed. use what power you have to sabotage the things you can and do your best to have faith that someone is doing the same for the things you can’t help. i with there was more to do. i really do. but right now the biggest, most dangerous force in the battle between good, evil, and indifferent are the indifferent. we’re stuck out here desperately trying to convince the indifferent that the news media is fully captured and that the onslaught minorities say is happening is really happening
There’s a lot of gaslighting on Lemmy, specially because of the nature of by and whom it was founded for. Troll factories play both sides: https://www.wired.com/story/russia-indictment-twitter-facebook-play-both-sides/
Well a lot of what he does is distraction. But yeah I think he wants Canada (even though it would shift things left, which he hasn’t thought about and likely won’t acknowledge) and Greenland, cuz big land.
It’s not going to shift things left if Canada was annexed. Even if they were given voting rights (which is doubtful), their population is both a magnitude smaller, and Alberta exists.
How much was the election won by? Pretty sure it was less than 41 million.
They can influence the popular vote, but that legitimately means nothing as far as presidential elections are concerned. For example, if they give the entire country 2 electoral college votes as a state, it’s voter base is effectively irrelevant to the outcome of any future election.
Should Canada be turned into a state and not just controlled as a puppet, they would more likely be given one vote per province, which is 13 votes. With a couple of their provinces being heavily conservative already, as far as shifting things left goes, that would be more like 10 votes. And for context, the state of Florida has 30.
If it were to happen the way it’s “supposed” to, if Canada were admitted as one state it would instantly become the largest state and gain FIFTY electoral votes, as a state gets the same number as they do Senators and Representatives combined. Again, barring the very shenanigans that would likely be the only way this could happen, those fifty votes would be Democratic-leaning for at least a generation. Alberta and the Prairies combined don’t have many more people than the GTA.
You could mitigate the presidential-electoral hit by letting them in as 13 provinces, but then you’re probably adding 16-18 Dem Senators versus 8-10 Republican. The only real hope is to get the Canadians to vote against their interests and split their Electoral votes when almost no other states (and no other large states at all) do so.
That’s assuming it happens aboveboard, of course, which naturally it wouldn’t, and would instead plunge the entire continent into violent misery if not outright war.
Thank you for adding more detail.
Yeah, I’m running under the pessimistic assumption here that incorporating Canada into the United States would not be done fairly or reasonably if it happened. I suspect that they would get a pittance in terms of political representation, justified by the xenophobic and nationalistic guise that “all those Canadian immigrants shouldn’t be influencing American politics.” Probably using talking points like,
Administratively it wouldn’t be one state, it would be 10 states because of the 10 provinces. You have 10 provincial governments that run pretty much the same as state governments. If you didn’t do that you’d have “state” level for the country, and then a second State level for the province, before you get into counties and lower. Canada can not run as one state, as states are set up.