Today's News: Reactions to Trump's newest "51st State" threats

So when Trump was babbling on and on to the generals yesterday, he once again said Canada should become the 51st state. 

Canada didn't laugh:

Hey Canada, Trump brought up his whole “Canada should be the 51st State” again today, for the first time in a while, to a room full of all the top-ranked military leaders in the United States. I’m sure that’s a coincidence. Right?

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— Brent Toderian (@brenttoderian.bsky.social) September 30, 2025 at 7:06 PM

I can tell you that as a Canadian, Trump once again mentioning Canada as the 51st state at this military gathering is a five alarm fire. Over my dead body.

— lindylousabine.bsky.social (@lindylousabine.bsky.social) September 30, 2025 at 1:04 PM

Trump once again says, "Become the 51st state." Canada responds.

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— Doug Aoki (@nantanreikan.bsky.social) September 30, 2025 at 11:12 AM

And who thinks Canadians are polite? Trump's talk makes us furious:

Trump constantly "floating" Canada becoming the 51st State is a quasi declaration of war. Annexation would mean decades of war, millions of dead, & a Pyrrhic victory for the 🇺🇸, which would become legendary. 🇨🇦 CANADIANS WILL NEVER KNEEL FOR THE LIKES OF A BRONZER-ENCRUSTED, WANNA-BE DICTATOR!

— Edge O. Erin (@edgeoerin.com) September 30, 2025 at 1:55 PM

you can’t bribe me w a missile defense system bc i’d rather be blown to smithereens than have canada become the 51st state

— strawbaby jam (@strawbbfields4ever.bsky.social) September 30, 2025 at 2:20 PM

Its always hard to know how seriously to take this. But some are worried:

I’ve known Trump long enough to know he always foreshadows his next moves, they start as a tease to soften the ground so to speak, get folks acclimated with the unthinkable. Bringing up Canada as the 51st state in a room filled with U.S military top brass is no accident.

- Noel Casler

Read on Substack

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And then Canada as 51st state came up in the same speech. It's not going away - it just dies down a bit before resurging. Canadians need to keep Trump in mind as discussion about our upcoming budget revs up. We need to prioritize the must-haves over the nice-to-haves. #Canada #cdnpoli

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— Prairie Socialist 🇨🇦 (@prairiesocial.bsky.social) September 30, 2025 at 3:36 PM

Here's a good commentary:
The Planet Democracy: Unfiltered North

Canada Is Not Your 51st State, Donald. Not Now, Not Ever.
Donald Trump just told a room full of U.S. generals that Canada should become the 51st state. It's a calculated pressure campaign, and Canada's answer must be loud, , clear, and unwavering.
Well, here we go again. Just when you thought the political noise south of the border couldn’t get more absurd, Donald Trump went and topped himself. He stood in a room full of top U.S. military commanders and pitched the idea of annexing Canada. ...
...the venue changes everything.
When you float the idea of another country joining the union in front of military leaders, you’re not just spit-balling. You are deliberately shifting the conversation from “that’s absurd” to “is this a strategic objective?” It moves the idea from the fringes of political fantasy into the rooms where real-world power is discussed.
“When you pair annexation threats with a military backdrop, it stops being just a culture-war zinger and starts sounding like a pressure campaign: economic squeeze here, security leverage there, sovereignty on the table everywhere.”
This is a calculated test of our boundaries. Trump is checking to see how we’ll react. If we laugh it off as “just Trump being Trump,” he learns he can push harder next time. This isn’t rhetoric. It’s a strategy. And we would be fools to ignore it.
While there’s a fringe separatist element in Alberta making noise, the vast majority of Canadians are united on this. We are not interested in becoming a vassal state. We are not for sale, and we are not for annexation. We are seeing “Buy Canadian” movements gain steam as people choose to invest in our own industries. The government is rightly looking for new trade partners to make us less reliant on a neighbour who sees us as a doormat.
.... What This Means for Canada
-This is a deliberate escalation. Trump’s “51st state” talk is no longer a joke. By saying it to military leaders, he’s testing our response to a direct threat against our sovereignty.
-The economic war is real. The new tariffs on lumber and furniture are designed to inflict maximum pain on key Canadian industries to force political concessions.
-Hollywood North is next. Trump has already threatened a 100% tariff on film and TV productions, which would devastate major industries in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
Our response must be unified and strong. This isn’t a moment for partisan squabbling. Canada must speak with one clear voice: our independence is non-negotiable.

And here is a chilling piece about the broader implications of Trump's raving at the generals:
Justin Ling / Toronto Star (gift link)

We need to stop being so naive about what America is becoming. Trump and his secretary of war just showed us why
....We did not take any of this seriously enough at the time, and now it is all manifesting faster than anyone could have anticipated. He has already deployed masked goons to round up immigrants and spread obscene conspiracy theories about transgender people. He’s ordered the creation of a military “quick reaction force” to put down protests and reiterated Tuesday that the military will be asked to “handle” the “enemy from within.”
Canada has utterly lost its ability to respond to things moving at this speed — largely because we have grown reliant on waiting for Washington or Brussels to act for us. We no longer have the luxury of this complacency. We are watching a fascist takeover of our closest neighbour and the world’s largest military: Sitting back and hoping things work out is no longer an option.
Some have been naive and gullible about this trend for too long. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre clearly copied Hegseth’s rhetoric — similarly promising “a warrior culture, not a woke culture” — and he should finally have to clarify what he means by that.
The serious people in this country, however, are clear-eyed about the extent of the threat. I’ve spoken to senior defence and security officials in recent months, and they knew the kinds of steps that would need to be taken to fully disentangle ourselves from a regime sliding into illiberalism. But they also lack political direction: Prime Minister Mark Carney, still balancing his chummy relationship with the president, has not ordered any kind of change in our posture vis-a-vis our southern neighbour.
And what has that got us? On Tuesday, as he rambled about his “golden dome” project, Trump bragged that “Canada called me a couple of weeks ago, they want to be a part of it. To which I said: ‘Well, why don’t you just join our country? You become the 51st state.’”
He is serious about this, and we need to stop being so damn naive about what he will and won’t do. His administration is plotting regime change in Venezuela and has been implicated in clandestine work in Greenland. There is no reason to think that Canada will be spared from his unhinged willingness to use American power to remake the world in his image.
The thing about despots, though, is that they get awfully lonely. It’s time we start really preparing for what comes next.
Real action, here, does not take the shape of flashy and performative actions, but of serious and structural changes. Some of the most important actions may never be publicly seen at all. It means revising agreements and cancelling memoranda of understanding. It means not sending our Canadian Armed Forces to train with units who no longer feel bound to the Geneva Convention and marking intelligence ‘for Canadian eyes only’ because it could be used to commit war crimes. It will mean creating systems within NATO that operate separately from Hegseth’s new warrior corps. This will invoke Trump’s ire, no doubt, but history teaches us that appeasing despots rarely works out.
But there will come a point where we need to make our objections clear, and where we will need to rally our allies into speaking up as well. Trump’s adventurism in South America will be a direct security challenge to Canada. His new affinity for committing war crimes will implicate the Canadian Armed Forces, who serve shoulder-to-shoulder with the U.S. military on many fronts. His comfort to fellow autocrats and despots will be a direct threat to the countries still pursuing democracy.

Some interesting video clips too:

Meidas Touch: Charlie Angus describes the American "farmageddon", Canadian questions about Ambassador Hoekstra, and Angus' message to Trump "You can do your worst, sir but we will do our best!"


Doug Ford: "This guy's too much... When I talk to Republican governors, they don't agree with him but they're too scared to say anything. Isn't that a shame?"


CTV's Scott Reid: "We become the punching bag for Trump as he is having domestic political problems. Expect to see more..."

 

And this is a really fascinating discussion - Andrew Coyne on The Munk Debates: "he wants to stick the military on dissenters in the United States. What purer definition of fascism is there?"

This great cartoon seems appropriate to insert here:

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Trump never seems to realize his own toxicity - likely, no one dares to tell him:

in Canada, the Liberals were historically unpopular, then Trump started talking about the 51st state stuff, the Liberal leader did a lot of talk about resisting him, and the polls looked like this:

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— blaine (@jblainefoster.bsky.social) October 1, 2025 at 12:31 PM

This might be the fastest way, really:

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