President Donald Trump returned to needling former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau” and talked about annexing Canada in his “100 Days” interview with Time magazine, which was posted online Friday.
The election to replace Trudeau is on Monday. Trump’s tariffs and aggressive rhetoric are widely credited with reviving the fortunes of the Liberal Party, which sank into a 20-point polling deficit against Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives under the unpopular Trudeau. Going into the homestretch, Trudeau’s successor, Mark Carney, is narrowly leading Poilievre.
Canadian Conservatives will probably not love Trump’s interview with Time, during which he served up more of the criticism that helped Liberals rally their voters. Trump pointedly insisted that nothing he said about Canada was meant in jest.
WATCH — Trump on Negotiations with Trudeau: We Don’t Need Canada “for Anything”:
When Time asked if he wanted to “grow the American empire,” Trump mildly objected to the term “empire” but said he was very serious about acquiring new territories, such as Greenland and even Canada. He said he “wouldn’t mind” being remembered as the president who expanded America’s territory for the first time in decades.
Trump said Greenland would be “very well off” if they accepted his offer to become an American state and he argued the U.S. has already purchased Canada on an installment plan.
“I’m really not trolling. Canada is an interesting case. We lose $200 to $250 billion a year supporting Canada,” the president said.
“I asked a man who I called Governor Trudeau. I said, “Why? Why do you think we’re losing so much money supporting you? Do you think that’s right?” Trump continued.
“We’re taking care of their military. We’re taking care of every aspect of their lives, and we don’t need them to make cars for us. In fact, we don’t want them to make cars for us. We want to make our own cars. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need their energy. We don’t need anything from Canada. And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state,” he said.
Trump got into the habit of referring to Trudeau as the “governor” of a putative 51st American state after winning the 2024 U.S. election.
“It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada. I look forward to seeing the Governor again soon so that we may continue our in depth talks on Tariffs and Trade, the results of which will be truly spectacular for all!” Trump said in a December post on his preferred social media platform, Truth Social.
In February, not long before Trudeau formally resigned as prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party, Trump jovially invited “Governor Trudeau” to join him at a watch party for a U.S.-Canada hockey game.
“I’ll be calling our GREAT American Hockey Team this morning to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER SECURITY, will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Besides clearly enjoying Trudeau’s hapless reaction to his non-trolling, Trump frequently used the “Governor Trudeau” heckle to make the point that America has been lavishly subsidizing Canada and, if Ottawa wanted those subsidies to continue, it should request statehood.
This argument has generally not been well-received by Canadians, whose political landscape has been dramatically reshaped by Trump.
Trudeau was already in deep trouble for a variety of reasons, but the perception that he failed to stand up to the swaggering American president helped to finish him off.
WATCH — Oh, Canada… Trump Threatens Canada’s Leadership With Increased Tariff’s for “Abuse” of USA:
The Liberal Party began to rebound as soon as Trudeau was no longer an anchor around its neck and the election was reframed as a contest to determine which candidate could stand up to Trump most pugnaciously, if not most effectively.
The Liberal resurgence was aided by the collapse of its left-wing rival, the New Democratic Party (NDP), which looked like it could stake a claim to becoming the leading opposition party in the days of Poilievre’s 20-point lead but has since faded to irrelevance. Some commentators attribute this collapse to poor leadership by NDP boss Jagmeet Singh, or a movement toward the center-left by the young far-left voters who made Singh a social media sensation during the pandemic years, but whatever the reason, NDP’s loss is clearly the Liberals’ gain.
The Conservatives may have gotten one last chance to flip the Trump script on Thursday when a visibly irritated Carney was badgered by reporters into admitting that Trump talked about annexing Canada during their phone conversation on March 28. Carney presented the conversation very differently in his public remarks at the time, claiming Trump “respected Canada’s sovereignty.”
“He has these things in his mind. This is not news. He raises it all the time. But then the question is, what’s going to be done with it? And does he understand where we stand? More particularly, where do I stand? He is under no illusions,” Carney snapped.
Poilievre, Singh, and Bloc Quebecois candidate Yves-Francois Blanchet all jumped on Carney for misrepresenting his conversation with Trump. Blanchet took the slightly different tack of suggesting Carney was lying now, to goose a little more anti-Trump sentiment out of potential Liberal voters in tight districts.
“I wasn’t there. But what’s clear is that we will stand up for our sovereignty, we will never be an American state, and we will focus on what we can control, which is to reverse the disastrous Liberal economic policies that Mark Carney advised Justin Trudeau to take,” Poilievre said of Carney’s controversial phone call.
“Who can stand up to President Trump, who can build Canada strong, who has the experience in order to do that? That’s the crucial choice that Canadians need to make,” Carney responded.
