Donald Trump spent two years mocking Canada as America’s future 51st state. This week, Europe offered to make Canada its first.
The European Commission’s proposal to make our northern neighbor the EU’s inaugural “associate member” (a status invented just for them) drew riotous applause in Strasbourg… and a tantrum down in North Carolina where Trump was traveling. Within hours of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s announcement, Trump was calling the idea “laughable,” branding Canada “a terrible trade partner,” and threatening to slap “very heavy tariffs” on Europe, or to stop trading with the continent entirely, if he decides the whole thing is a “hostile act.”
Undeterred this morning, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stood before the European Parliament and twisted the knife with a butler’s politeness. Canada was not proposing “a third bloc in order to become a great power rival, only with better manners,” the prime minister said with a smile. His country simply seeks resilience “so no one can control our open markets, impair our sovereignty, threaten territorial integrity or undermine our freedoms, our democracies, our rule of law.” He never uttered the name of the global bully who threatens Canada’s markets, sovereignty, and territory. He didn’t have to. Everyone in the chamber knew who he was talking about, and they gave him a standing ovation.
This is what defiance looks like when a nation does it. Trump has belittled one of our closest allies on the planet since retaking office, with his team relishing in childish memes about Canada as America’s “51st State.” But the mockery turned into cruel reality. Trump hit Canada with 50 percent tariffs; moved to ban their dairy, alcohol, lumber, cars, and so on; and further taunted them about annexation like a mob boss gazing at a storefront that isn’t his.
Canada’s response was not to beg, like the pathetic American law firms that bowed to Donald Trump in his first months back in office. Instead, they’ve walked across the street to build a better future with people who keep their word. Mark Carney didn’t throw a tantrum or melt down on Truth Social. He held his head high and shook hands with other Western leaders and cut a new deal and smiled. Judging from Trump’s reaction, that act is succeeding at the game Trump thinks he’s good at (but at which he’s a total failure): getting leverage.
You have to marvel at the mind-melting incompetence required to produce this outcome. Canada is the friendliest neighbor any great power has ever had. I can personally attest to that. Their officials have sat next to me in some of the tensest, toughest, scariest national security conversations I’ve ever been a part of… put a hand on our backs… and said, “We’re with you.” We share the longest peaceful border on Earth, a continental economy, integrated defenses, and a century of spilled blood in common causes. Seventy percent of Canadian exports come to us. Seventy percent!
Alienating Canada should be diplomatically impossible, like getting into a bar fight with a golden retriever. Who would punch a golden retriever? Yet this president has bullied our closest friend so relentlessly that they didn’t just move down the block. They moved to Europe. I’m certain that historians will study this the way they study lost empires, and they’ll probably struggle to explain how one man managed — with his microwaved mind and Egg McMuffin over-confidence — to do it in under two years, out of pure spite, and basically for nothing.
John Kelly used to say that our former boss, Donald Trump, was a “very, very evil man.” But he’s also an imbecile. Without exaggeration, I think he’s the stupidest man to have held office — any office, of any kind — in our nation’s capital. I’ve worked with a lot of dullards. This one takes the cake.
During the first Trump administration, allied officials would pull us aside after meetings and ask, in their various polite ways, whether America was still America. Back then we could reassure them that we were trying hard to dissuade the president from doing stupid things. That’s not the case anymore. His team was built to be just as moron-ish as he is. And what I’ve noticed is that our allies have stopped asking the question.
Carney told Canadians months ago that they had absorbed the “shock of betrayal” and would learn from it. They’re not waiting around; they’re acting. This week that included a proposed EU membership structure, a floated European security council, joint defense production, critical minerals partnerships, Canadian energy for Europe, shared AI protocols, and student pipelines.
The words they’re using show how badly Trump has blown our leadership of the free world. “A Canada-EU alliance would create a beacon for other democracies,” Carney declared. Being the beacon used to be our job. It was the entire premise of American power. Now we’re watching our own demotion — albeit, delivered politely — to a standing ovation. So much winning, as Trump’s frat-bro aides would say.
So there are two halves to this story. The defiant half is glorious. Canada is demonstrating, for every democracy watching, that the response to Trump’s bullying should be neither submission nor hysteria… but the calm construction of alternatives. We should all take notes. But the other half is the detonation of our legacy and the corrosion of our economy, which means the cleanup ahead of us is historic. Rebuilding trust with allies who have now institutionalized their doubts will take a generation of showing up. And then some. Like people, nations don’t forget the years they had to insure themselves against their best friend.
Ever been betrayed before? I have.
But I also have some hope. Our allies aren’t leaving because they hate America. They’re leaving because they miss us, and they can’t stand the bully who’s holding us hostage. As much as it was a declaration of independence, Carney’s speech also left the door open to better days. The democracies of the world are holding a seat for us, waiting for proof that Trumpism was a fever and not a fatal disease. That proof starts at the ballot box here in the United States in November.
Canada is showing the world how to defy Donald Trump. The least we can do is show them that we’re worth defying him for.
Your friend, in defiance,
DEFIANCE DAILY
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