Trump’s unhinged proposal to take Gaza, “relocate” more than a million starving people to an unspecified locale, and turn their bombed homes into a resort for the wealthy didn’t go over well. Following his threats to Colombia, Panama, Mexico, Canada, Denmark, and Greenland, the civilized world is aghast at the madman at the helm, and has learned a new lesson: that America betrays her allies. It is a dangerous lesson from which the US may never recover.
Anti-American forces, on the other hand, are giddy.
Russia and China can stop infiltrating our social media with bots, Trump is doing their work for them. Putin has long known that Trump and Musk would destroy the U.S. government from within while abandoning our allies, and he is elated to watch his hopes materialize. China’s Xi takes a more economically calculated approach but likes what he sees. Even Islamist militants will thank Trump for breathing new life into their Great Satan propaganda.
Trump follows a consistent playbook
No one knows how seriously to take Trump’s insanity. It could all be a non-stop ruse to distract from his robbing the treasury as Musk dismantles it.
Last week’s outrage-du-jour, Trump’s tariff drama, was merely put on hold, which means we have to watch Trump cosplay as a “strong negotiator” all over again in just 30 days.
Trump craves attention like an addict craves opioids, so he manufactures drama on a closed loop feed. To his base, the only audience he cares about, Trump’s theater looks like governance. At least the playbook is consistent: 1. Declare an emergency 2. Blame someone. 3. Coerce the blamed to do or say something, anything, even if it’s the same thing they’ve said or done for years, or will worsen the problem. 4. Declare victory, no less impressive for being hollow. 5. Watch Fox and the oligarch-owned media fawn.
Trump’s tariff drama was pointless
The Wall Street Journal editorial board leans consistently Republican in support of low taxes for the wealthy and barely-there regulations. Even they described Trump’s sloppy, across-the-board tariffs on Canada and Mexico as “The dumbest trade war in history.” They might have added, “for no legitimate reason.”
Trump’s tariff theatrics created chaos and uncertainty for two of our most important allies and trading partners. Stepping back from the brink, Trump claimed both countries made major concessions, no doubt calling him ‘Sir’ in the process, and agreed to delay the tariffs. Fox News fawned on cue, end of scene, on to the next act.
But about those concessions. Trump, declaring an “emergency” under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, demanded that Canada and Mexico do more to stop migrants and fentanyl from crossing the border. Long predating Trump’s demands, however, Canada had already launched a strike force to combat organized crime and money laundering, and had already deployed additional resources, including technology, to the border. These “concessions,” Prime Minister Trudeau announced to everyone outside the Fox bubble, were already in progress before Trump “demanded” them. Squeezing Canada at all, when Canada is responsible for under 1% of America’s fentanyl while Americans are 100% responsible for the demand, is next level stupid to begin with.
The farce played similarly in Mexico. Trump claimed that Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, promised to reinforce the U.S.-Mexico border with 10,000 members of its National Guard as a result of Trump’s “tariff threat.” But Mexico, like Canada, had already acted, having agreed to beef up border enforcement several years ago under the Biden administration. Mexico had already deployed 10,000 troops to the border, without the threat of tariffs, causing illegal crossings and drug fatalities to plummet.
None of these facts stopped Trump and Republicans from taking a victory lap, or the imbeciles at Fox News from cooing about a win that wasn’t.
Our neighbors brought a surgical scalpel to Trump’s rock fight
Trump’s fantasy that Canadians- now booing our national anthem- want to be our 51st state is certifiably insane. First, they are progressive. Second, they have universal health care and gun laws.
Canada and Mexico are our customers, as we are theirs. They are American farmers’ and American manufacturers’ biggest export destinations. Somehow, in smacking them with 25% across the board tariffs, Trump didn’t think they would smack us back, and seemed surprised when they announced retaliatory tariffs of their own.
The takeaway from the whole fiasco is that our neighbors’ leaders are smarter and more mature than ours is, and not just because they played Trump’s ego with token concessions. They also responded to Trump’s Neanderthalic hammer attack with a surgeon’s scalpel.
Mexico and Canada had the good sense to not only coordinate their national responses, but to precisely aim them at GOP officials who are aiding and abetting Trump’s lunacy. Their retaliatory tariffs were joint, coordinated, and aimed at specific products exported from precise geographic regions in Republican-controlled states.
Canada listed 1,256 such items, including oranges and fruit from Ron DeSantis’ Florida; appliances from Lindsey Graham’s South Carolina; household goods from J.D. Vance’s Ohio; motorcycles and coffee from southern Pennsylvania (where voters supported Trump); food, agriculture products, textiles and furniture from Texas and Louisiana, along with Kentucky Bourbon and distilled spirits exported from Southern states.
Their targeted response suggests our neighbors know more about our domestic politics than most Americans do. It’s oddly comforting, like the whole world isn’t getting stupid, it’s just us. Our neighbors are also aware that half the US loathes the felon in chief, while Republican senators fear him. When Trump runs out of other drama (he hasn’t threatened Asia yet) and re-starts the tariff fiasco, Mexico and Canada will hit southern states where it hurts. The pain may help GOP senators relocate their missing spines.
NOW READ: Elon Musk's Doge boys think this is a video game as Trump plots his 2nd coup
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, the Haake Take, is free.