If you wondered why Trump seemed kind of quiet so far this week, it's because he's been casually trying to influence a foreign election, narcissistically claiming he's on the ballot in Canada, and reviving his interest in annexing the country as the 51st state - on their election day.

https://archive.ph/76DOK

Trump suggests Canadians should elect him, making the country the 51st state

"In a social media post on the day of Canada's election, President Donald Trump suggested that Canadians should vote for him in order for Canada to become the 51st state.

"Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, with ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America," Trump said on Monday, seeming to refer to himself as the candidate.

He added, "America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!"

As student of American imperialism, please let me assure you that this it not the first time our government (such as it is) has engaged in a little foreign election interference, but this story is getting surprisingly little play in the media considering we've just spent the past eight years talking about foreign influence in *our* elections incessantly, and the Trump administration has spent months arguing that social media posts about ending Israel's genocide in Gaza count as supporting a terrorist group. It's also fascinating to me personally because having followed the background stories surrounding the Canadian election, it looks to me like Trump is masking off to imply voting for the Conservative Party and Pierre Poilievre is in fact voting for Trump and a US takeover of Canada. And based on how fast Poilivre tried to deny it, I'm not the only person who felt Trump's Truth Social post could be interpreted that way.

In terms of the political background here, what you need to know is that the Canadian election and politics in general have been a hot mess for the past couple of years. The previous Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau was heinously unpopular in part due to his policies, in part because he's a smarmy technocrat, and in part because of his (justified in my opinion) response to a slow moving coup attempt conducted by the Canadian far right (with plenty of US billionaire backing) known as the Trucker Convoy; which was a lot like a really slow version of January 6th with more parking trucks and rolling coal - it never progressed to storming the government buildings however. This set up Poilivre (very much a Trump-style fascist) to easily win Canada's next election on the same sort of authoritarian anti-woke, anti-trans, anti-govt worker, pro white supremacy and capital exploitation platform as Trump and Trump-like politicians have in the rest of the Pig Empire. The fascists had this one in the bag and everyone knew it probably eighteen months ago at a minimum.

Then, two almost unprecedented things happened. First the ruling Liberal Party had a cabinet revolt that forced Justin Trudeau to announce his delayed resignation, and allowed to the Liberals to install a new leader, Mark Carney. Carney is pretty much a bog standard neoliberal banker, which means he's terrible; but crucially he is not Justin Trudeau. At the same time that's going on Trump literally starts blurting out that he wants to annex Canada in public settings and launches a mini-trade war to try and accomplish that goal in slow motion, before Trudeau even resigns. This then turns the upcoming election, which the Liberals soon announce, on its head. The ruling party surges in the polls, Poilivre and the Conservatives have no idea how to react, and the lead quickly starts slipping through their hands while the Canadian right tries to rapidly distance itself from Trump and Trumpism.

After several weeks of freefalling, the Canadian right, which at this point is more or less just as fascist as our right is, essentially sent Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, an absolute Trump-humping MAGA muppet who also happens to run an entire province in Canada, to beg Trump to shut up about annexing our northern neighbor. For a while, he complied, but the damage was already done and the nazis are expected to lose Canada's election today. Now it would seem that Trump is tired of being silent if Poilivre is just going to lose anyway, and he's trying to throw a mail mary for a last second touchdown a country away. Will it work? Probably not, after all voting *against* Trump is why the Canadian polls turned in the first place. But Trump is pretty sure the answer is always more Trump; and it is news that he's trying.