What if Trump is serious about Annexing Canada? Yes, Trump is serious as he has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada, and “Peace” is never part of his DNA as he just Bombed the hell out of Yemen along with the bloody Gaza Carnage… No question if he can do it, only when and how?

USA tried to invade and annex Canada in 1812 and were severely defeated by a largely outnumbered British force.

Thinking the unthinkable: Will Trump come for Canada by force?

Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada. Can he do it? If he can, then how?

As Canadians wait for the next moves in President Trump’s  trade war to bring Canada to its knees, they should remember his long game.

“Trade” is not the only adjective that you can put in front of the word “war”.

Try “real.”  ​

Remember “lebensraum” (“living space”) from the 1930s? It was Hitler’s deluded marriage of expansionism and nationalism, allegedly necessary for ​Germany’s ​survival, that fuelled his murderous pursuit of European domination. In Trump’s mind, Canada has fresh water, land, wheat, rare minerals, wood, aluminum, steel, uranium, lobsters and better maple syrup.

​Too few took Hitler seriously ​in 1938. We should take Trump seriously now, because annexation is not a fun family b​oard game.

Let’s answer a few questions:

Is Trump serious about annexation?

Yes. He has said it too many times, in too many places. He means business.

Is he constrained in any meaningful way?

No. He’s surrounded by sycophantic true believers who support him in acting mean, quickly and unpredictably.

Captain Canada on the 51st state after one talk with Nutlick

What If Trump Is Serious About Annexing Canada?

Don’t expect Pete Hegseth to stand in his way.

President Donald Trump has some strange obsessions: Diet Coke, windmills, water pressure, and more recently, annexing Canada. “The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty-First State,” Trump wrote on social media recently, in one of his many comments suggesting that the US will subsume its northern neighbor.

The Canadians have not been amused by such rhetoric. “What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us,” former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned earlier this month after talks with Trump. And many Canadians don’t view Trump’s ranting about annexation as simply an extension of his trade war but as a possible prelude to a real war.

“Trump is delusional if he believes that 40 million Canadians will passively accept conquest without resistance,” Aisha Ahmad, an international security scholar and professor at the University of Toronto, wrote last month in The Conversation. “There is no political party, or leader, willing to relinquish Canadian sovereignty over ‘economic coercion,’ and so if the US wanted to annex Canada, it would have to invade.”

Thus far, Trump has not raised the possibility of sending actual troops to Ontario. Instead, he seems to believe he can achieve this Canadian Anschluss by simply crushing Canada’s economy and leaving it no choice but to join the US.

Can Trump economically destroy Canada, bring us to our knees, begging to be State 51?

Opinions vary, but he can certainly hurt us, even while ​also hurt​ing the USA.

​The “Canada has leverage” arguments aren’t ​completely reassuring; Trump will respond to every challenge with greater force than Canada can ​probably bring to bear.

​He ​recently mused ​”Maybe we’ll ​just put 100% tariffs on ALL  cars from Canada April 2nd. We don’t  want them.”

(So​, then? We gamble ​our ​future on CEOs Mary Barra (GM) and Jim Farley (Ford) and Liz Shuler (AFL​-CIO), begging like penitents, in front of Trump’s desk in the Oval Office?)

But Canada in 2025 is not Austria in 1938. “Canada will never, ever be part of America,” declared newly elected Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney last week, making the country’s position crystal clear. And, last month, the Canadian Armed Forces announced that after years of declining enrollment, it had seen a surge in enlistments since Trump took office, with about 1,000 more applicants than last year. (Canadian officials couldn’t attribute the new rash of interest to Trump’s threats, but they didn’t rule it out, either.)

Given that Canada will never voluntarily join the US—which it is adamant about—would Trump try to use force to annex it? And would Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth go along with this crazy plan?

During Trump’s last administration, his own staff obstructed him from following through on some of his more harebrained schemes—military action against Iran, for instance, or Venezuela. Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has said he had to head off Trump’s calls for law enforcement to shoot protesters in the legs during the George Floyd disturbances outside the White House. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley once had to call his counterparts in China to reassure them that, in fact, Trump was not going to order a military strike on the country.

But that was then. Now complete loyalty to Trump seems to be the primary qualification for government service. His new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth does not seem inclined to serve as a bulwark against his commander-in-chief’s basest instincts. The former Fox News host appears to have been chosen specifically because he seems to lack either the intelligence or sobriety to stop Trump’s crazy schemes.

During Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) pressed him about whether he’d agree to use military force against our allies. He didn’t say no. “Senator, one of the things that President Trump is so good at is never strategically tipping his hand,” he replied. “And so, I would never, in this public forum, give one way or another direct what orders the President would give me in any context.”

While Hegseth may be a well-known Trump sycophant, what about rank-and-file soldiers, who would have to do the dangerous work of attacking some of our closest allies?

Last weekend, I went to a ham radio event in Vienna, Virginia, where a lot of guys who spend their time prepping for various disasters, EMP attacks, or the zombie apocalypse had gathered to trade vintage radio tubes and portable antennae. Many of the amateur radio enthusiasts also were veterans, and I thought they might have some insights into whether ordinary soldiers would agree to attack Canada.

“Why would we do that?” said Frank Haynes, a 94-year-old Korean War veteran, who seemed utterly baffled by my absurd question.

Robert Jeffery, a 20-year Navy veteran and former Virginia militia member who I’ve known since he was active in the tea party movement, said there was no way the military would go along with such a scheme. “Let’s just say that if [Trump’s] going to invade Canada,” he told me, “he’s going to do it solo.”

“Let’s just say that if [Trump’s] going to invade Canada, he’s going to do it solo.”

Later, I put the Canada invasion question to another Trump voter I know, Gary Durand, a retired DC police lieutenant and a former Army paratrooper who served in Panama shortly before the US invaded it the last time. “I think if he did that, Congress would immediately invoke the 25th Amendment,” he told me. “It would most likely be considered an unlawful or immoral order. But I also don’t believe he would ever order that.”

Durand is not alone among Trump supporters who believe the president would never engage in such aggression against an ally. After all, Trump campaigned as the “peace” candidate, with surrogates like MAGA influencer Scott Presler directly appealing to young men with promises that Trump would never send them to war.

Republicans have largely dismissed Trump’s territorial expansion plans as a spitballed idea no more likely to materialize than his military base on the moon. In a January interview about Trump’s threats to also take over Greenland, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. downplayed Trump’s language as just another example of how the president “speaks very boldly” as a negotiator. He insisted that Trump “is the president that kept American troops out of war. He is not looking to be able to go start a war, to go expand American troops.”

Lankford’s comments, though, sound a lot like the Wall Street masters of the universe and other Republican Trump supporters who were sure that the erratic reality TV star would never follow through on his campaign pledge to impose high tariffs on US allies. Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, then angling to become Trump’s next Treasury Secretary, assured the Wall Street Journal back in October that any tariffs Trump imposed would be “strategic” bargaining chips, not blanket trade sanctions that would destroy the economy. Brian Riedl, who served as an aide to former senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio), told the Washington Post in September that Republican officials he’d spoken with believed Trump’s tariff threats were just “bluster.” (He also added that he thought they were “in denial.”)

But here we are, six months later, with Trump intentionally crashing the stock market with massive tariffs on allies as he follows through on some of his campaign promises.

At least one important MAGA luminary thinks Trump is deadly serious about annexing Canada. In early February, former Trump White House adviser and convicted felon Steve Bannon told Global News, a Canadian news outlet, that he believes that Trump’s rhetoric about Canada is evidence that he’s seeking “hemispheric control.”

Trump has “really thought this through,” Bannon said, explaining the sophisticated geopolitical strategy he believes informs the president’s plans. Trump’s fight with Canada, Bannon argued, stems from his focus on the Arctic, parts of which are becoming more accessible to China and Russia because of climate change. The region, he said, is going to be the “great game of the 21st century,” and Trump knows that Canada’s northern border is poorly defended. If Canada doesn’t agree to become the 51st state, Bannon suggested, Trump will force it to.

A few Democrats in Congress have also seen the danger of Trump’s annexation threats. “As with everything with Trump, it’s hard to know whether he’s serious, whether he’s lying, whether he’ll back off,” Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.) told me in an interview. “But I think we have to take him at his word when he says he wants to expand the territory of the United States.”

Magaziner says that for him, “the alarm bells started ringing” during Trump’s inauguration. “In his speech, he said one of his goals was to expand our territory, which to me was jarring,” Magaziner told me. “That has not been the goal of the US president in well over a century.”

In contrast to some of the people with whom I spoke, Magaziner thinks the military definitely would follow Trump’s orders if he wanted to attack Canada. “That’s their job and their role,” he said. “But Congress doesn’t have to go along with this.” That’s why, earlier this month, he introduced the “No Invading Allies Act,” which would ban military funding for any operations to invade or seize territory in Panama, Greenland, or Canada without Congressional authorization.

So far, the bill has only a few co-sponsors, all Democrats, and it will require Republicans to move it forward in the House. But despite the unlikelihood of garnering GOP support, Magaziner thought it was important to put the issue on the table given Trump’s continued sparring with Canada.

“It’s insane that we’re having to have this conversation,” Magaziner said. “But the Republicans do not have the courage to stand up to Trump. I think they are in a state of denial, just as they were in denial about tariffs and his plans to cut Medicaid. Trump’s not letting it go. And we can’t ignore the possibility that he’ll do something reckless.”

1st day of the 2nd U.S invasion of Canada

Can anyone else help us?

Short answer – How?

Effective answer – No, or probably not soon enough.

What other countries could come up with the financing quickly enough to make a difference?

We have no other geographic neighbours. Ships take time, there are no roads or pipelines to Europe or Asia.

Is a South-to-North armed incursion realistic to even think about?

It is not impossible, ​although ​horrific to contemplate.

The 1973 War Powers ​Resolution ​says the President cannot commit the US to armed conflict in a foreign land without the consent of Congress. (Easily granted by this appallingly compliant US House and Senate!)

But a President always has the power to use military force to protect Americans and American interests under threat in foreign lands.

​The US invaded Grenada in 1983 “to protect American students” and Iraq in 2003, just because the President was itching to do it.

So, would Canadians ever threaten Americans or American interests in Canada?

With perhaps hundreds of thousands out of work and their families in trouble later this year,  Canadians will be understandably desperate, angry, frightened and wanting to do something!

Maybe a drunken bar fight with Americans living somewhere in Canada, or a Molotov cocktail thrown at the US Embassy or an Amazon fulfillment centre?

That could easily give Trump an excuse.

Could Trump just create the provocation for an incursion?

Sure. Remember the faked anti-German purges, provocations and murders in Czechoslovakia in 1938 before its annexation, and on the Polish-German border in late August 1939 which became Germany’s excuse for starting ​the Second World War.

Trump has the Proud Boys and ​o​ther pumped-up Christian Nationalist groups, all well-armed, who could  easily be encouraged to covertly head North and cause trouble.  And those groups have Canadian cousins who’d be ecstatic to join the chaos.

If Ontario Premier Doug Ford really cuts electricity heading south, there will be widespread US anger.

And events can spiral quickly out of control.

It would not take a lot of trouble in Canada directed against Americans to get Washington riled up enough to start down this very ​grim  road. Trump  has the power, he’d clearly love an excuse and is in control of a super-power machine, run by his lap dogs.

He can be mean and untrustworthy and never forget – he says he wants this!

So, what do Canadians do right now?

Being turned on by one’s closest international ally and neighbour has created shock and disbelief here.

Boycotting Florida orange juice and Kentucky bourbon doesn’t seem enough!  We will have to suffer through.

A little sense of outrage from anywhere in USA would be comforting​, but don’t hold your breath! They’ve barely noticed.

But assuredly, we won’t be on our knees for this President.

Update:

Trump Orders US Military to Plan Invasion of Panama to Seize Canal, White House drawing up plans for increasing troops in Panama amid Trump’s push to reclaim canal

Alternate History…