President-elect Donald Trump not only wants to make America great again, he appears to be angling to make America bigger.
Trump has turned up the volume in recent days on his calls to acquire Greenland, regain control of the Panama Canal and make Canada the nation’s 51st state.
The president-elect on Tuesday night once again trolled America’s neighbor to the north, posting on social media two doctored maps that showed Canada as part of the United States.
‘Canada and the United States. That would really be something,’ Trump said hours earlier at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. ‘They should be a state.’
A day earlier, the president-elect argued in a social media post that ‘many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State.’
While he said he would only use ‘economic force’ to convince Canadians to join the U.S., he would not rule out military force when it comes to Greenland, the massive ice-capped island in the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans that for centuries has been controlled by Denmark, and the Panama Canal, which the U.S. ceeded control of to Panama over 40 years ago.
‘They should give it up because we need it for national security. That’s for the free world. I’m talking about protecting the free world,’ Trump said of his longtime ambitions to acquire Greenland.
His comments came as Donald Trump Jr., the president-elect’s eldest son, made a day trip to Greenland, flying aboard Trump’s campaign airliner.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen responded, saying Greenland had made it clear that it is not for sale.
‘There is a lot of support among the people of Greenland that Greenland is not for sale and will not be in the future either,’ Frederiksen said.
Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, also shot back at Trump’s musings.
‘Canada will never be the 51st state. Period. We are a great and independent country,’ he emphasized in a social media post.
Additionally, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also returned fire at Trump’s threat to use ‘economic force’ to absorb Canada, saying there is not ‘a snowball’s chance in hell’ of Canada becoming the 51st state.
Trump’s recent mocking of the longtime Canadian prime minister, repeatedly referring to him as ‘governor’ along with his threat to impose massive tariffs on Canada, was likely a contributing factor in Trudeau’s resignation announcement earlier this week.
It was not just Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Trump even pledged during his press conference to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the ‘Gulf of America.’
While Trump’s efforts at American expansion – which has a prominent place in the nation’s history – may never come to fruition, they are immediately forcing world leaders to react and respond, and likely will foreshadow the blunt effect his second administration will have on the globe.
‘I think what he’s doing is setting the tone for the next four years, which is that America is the dominant superpower in the world. We’re the protector of freedom and democracy across the world. We’re the only country capable of pushing back against China, and it’s time we started acting like we’re that country,’ veteran Republican strategist and communicator Ryan Williams told Fox News.
