O, Canada

When Laura Ingraham of Fox News interviewed Donald Trump on Tuesday night, she

interjected that it seemed he was being tougher on Canada than on some of America’s biggest adversaries, he replied: “Only because it’s meant to be our 51st state.”

When she then asked about the danger of perhaps pushing Canada closer to China, Trump responded: “I deal with every country, indirectly or directly. One of the nastiest countries to deal with is Canada"...

President Trump then wildly exaggerated Canadian tariffs, complained about Canadian politicians, and

Ingraham then asked him to define his end game with Canada.

 “My end game is I don’t want to have a big deficit,” Trump said. “I don’t want to see the United States of America … pay 60 or 200 billion dollars to a country that if they were a state, think of this, would be our biggest, most beautiful — it would be great, this state.”

He added that “Canada pays very little for defence; they think we’re going to defend them … Do you know in NATO they pay less than anybody else?”

He rounded out remarks on Canada by noting that “they give us nothing and they are the worst people to negotiate with, of everybody.”

The Canadian War Museum website in 2014 explained

On 11 September 2001, Al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the United States. The Taliban government in Afghanistan sheltered the terrorist group. A multinational military coalition, including Canada and led by the United States, invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban government and attack Al-Qaeda. Canada’s involvement included efforts to provide security to Afghanistan’s new government after the Taliban were ousted and aid reconstruction in a country torn apart by a generation of war. Later, Canadians contributed to the war against a growing Taliban insurgency….

More than 40,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces served and 158 Canadian soldiers died during the Afghanistan mission. Thousands of other veterans of the war were wounded physically and psychologically, leading to additional deaths by suicide.

Threatening a trade partner and one of our most loyal allies is one of the least reprehensible things, whether well-reported and the obscure, Donald Trump has done this week. Whether it's desire to rip apart NATO; to promote his dream of a world controlled by Russia, Communist China and the USA; financial benefit for him and his family; or mere ego, the evil keeps oozing.

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