If it’s not about Trump, then we can safely ignore EVERYTHING he says about Canada.
Time to close the thread, we’re done here.
You are distorting what I’m saying again. I said it wasn’t just about Trump, not that it wasn’t about him at all.
So who was saying the US should invade Canada before Trump started talking about “our 51st state”, then?
Presumably various fascists did that, but it doesn’t matter since it’s the future ones that’ll do so.
So you got nothing, then.
He has his fear.
Precisely. As I said above, Trump is not a person who is good at keeping secrets or speaking obliquely, and is pretty much incapable of not just saying whatever pops into his head at the moment. If he had any intent of invading Canada, not only would he explicity say so, he’d be boasting about how easy it would be (“It will take about two weeks, three at the most, and no American lives will be lost” e.g.) and how “terrible” it would be for Canada. He doesn’t want to do that, because for as blusterful as he is, he’s not a hawk - he’s viscerally disgusted by the thought of death, is cripplingly incapable of handling the sight of blood, can’t stand to look at sick or injured people because it reminds him of his own mortality, and generally thinks of anyone who dies for a cause as a loser.
The only reason he’s blathering about “our 51st state” is because it got a cheap pop from the marks the first time he said it and because threatening and bullying people (albeit with the expectation that someone else is going to make good on his threats for him because he’s too lazy to do it himself) is his idea of how to negotiate.
Right. The only thing I disagree with is that I think Trump thinks that Canada and Greenland would be good additions to the US for reasons of national security, etc. But, as usual, he has inchoate ideas and intentions, resulting in inchoate trolling.
This is all just variations on the standard argument of “It is unthinkable and Can’t Happen Here, therefore it WILL NOT happen” that people keep trying to use to downplay the danger of Trump and the Republicans. It is not a valid argument, and one Trump regularly disproves.
Denial has so far proven a useless shield against fascism and narcissism.
That’s reductive. I’m saying it would be fundamentally against Trump’s character as has been consistently displayed in the public for decades for him to be planning an invasion of Canada but not openly talking about it at every opportunity. He is incapable of keeping secrets because he loves bragging about how smart he thinks he is and how much he thinks he knows. He doesn’t play 5-dimensional chess - he eats the pieces, spends 45 minutes on the toilet trying to pass them the next day, and then declares victory.
Why do you imagine that Trump would need approval or specific funding to start a war? He has de facto dictator power.
Having said that, invading Canada is very unlikely. There are many more likely ways for Trump to vent his malice. He’s already sent the Army’s USACE into California to sabotage that state’s water supply.
Its my understanding that congress has the power of the purse. Congress are the ones that pass funding bills. With no money, the executive branch can’t carry out a war.
Of course with the democrats being spineless, who knows if they’d just continue to fund an unjust war year after year like they did in Iraq.
The Army Corps of Engineers was not “sent into California” - it already owned and was responsible for the operation and maintenance of the dams in question.
That is a gross distortion.
I and others have adduced multiple factors (I have also called them “filters”) that reduce the probability/possibility of an invasion of Canada. OTOH, the logic that you and those who agree with you in this thread are using seems to be, “The scarier the possibility, the more likely it is.” That’s not rational.
I think anyone would agree that some things are easier for Trump to do than others. Invading Canada would be massively difficult militarily, politically (domestic and international), and socially.
Even Hitler did not invade another country until his regime was five years old, and his first target, Czechoslovakia, was a fairly easy one, being directly next to Germany and relatively small in area. He was not able to invade Poland until he had a non-aggression pact in place with the USSR with a secret protocol that they would divide the country between themselves.
Look what happened to Hitler in WWII. Look what’s happening to Russia now. No one wants to go down that path, including the US people, military, etc.
Trump just says the Invasion of Canada is part of an anti-fentanyl campaign or WTF, and uses money left over from the Dept. of HHS or WTF. Who’s going to stop him? The D Congressmen go home, grab their six-shooters and form a posse?
Some people seem to think a system of checks and balances is still in effect. That doesn’t mesh with reality.
Do you know how much military operations cost? They cost trillions. Trump can’t get that money without congressional approval.
Granted the democrats are spineless and some of them may support funding for a war, which is extremely sad. But still Trump needs congress to pay for the war.
Congress is, after all, run by Republicans.
Yes, in the house they have a 1 vote margin of error. The GOP lost about ~20 votes in the house in 2017 when they tried to pass the tax cuts, and when they tried to pass ACA repeal.
If DJT wants money for a war or any other reason the GOP House will give it to him as long as they have a majority.
They can start a war however, and given Canada’s military weakness and geography the war would be over before Congress had any say in the matter.
And given the way both Trump and Congress have been acting it’s quite possible that Trump would simply demand by fiat that the money be handed over bypassing Congress entirely, and that Congress would just let it happen. Trump doesn’t care about the law, and Congress doesn’t appear to care about preserving its own authority.