President Donald Trump gushed about his dreams of expanding America’s borders by taking over Canada while the NATO chief sat silently beside him.
“Canada only works as a state,” the president said during his Oval Office meeting with Mark Rutte, the Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The NATO chief stayed mum as Trump ranted on about his fantasies of border expansion.
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“This would be the most incredible country visually,” Trump imagined, dismissing the existing U.S.-Canada border as an artificial line.
“If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it, between Canada and the U.S., just a straight artificial line. Somebody did it a long time ago, many, many decades ago, and makes no sense,” he said.
Trump is currently waging an economic war on Canada and has repeatedly questioned the country’s sovereignty. He first joked about annexing the country as the 51st U.S. state in December and soon after began referring to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “governor.”
NATO operates under the principle of collective defense, meaning an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. But Trump appeared unfazed by the implications of suggesting the U.S. take over Canada.
“It’s so perfect as a great and cherished state,” he said, before announcing the northern neighbor would be allowed to keep its national anthem, O Canada. “I love it. I think it’s great. Keep it, but it will be for the state, one of our greatest states, maybe our greatest state.”
While Trump’s comments likely set off alarm bells for its NATO allies, he also failed to soothe market volatility by remarking there will be a “little disruption” due to his trade wars.
After imposing steep tariffs on Canadian, Chinese, and Mexican imports in recent weeks, Trump opened a new front by hitting the EU with 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum on Wednesday.
The bloc swiftly retaliated, upon which the president threatened 200 percent tariffs on wine, Champagne and other alcohol imports from Europe Thursday morning.
“The European Union is very, very nasty,” Trump said while sitting alongside Rutte, a former prime minister of the Netherlands.
The U.S.-Canada border was established through a series of agreements spanning centuries and primarily follows the 49th parallel line of latitude—the “artificial line” Trump is referring to.
The 1846 Oregon Treaty, negotiated by President James K. Polk, extended the line west of the Rocky Mountains and largely finalized the U.S.-Canada boundary.
Under Polk, a steadfast believer in “manifest destiny,” the U.S. saw the largest expansion of its territory. Naturally, Trump is an eager admirer of the president: He reportedly traded a White House portrait of President Thomas Jefferson for a portrait of Polk last month.
Trump may also want to remember that King Charles remains Canada’s symbolic head of state, and annexing the country would effectively undermine the royal family he is known to admire obsessively.
