The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 20 episode of the
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
It’s becoming harder to dismiss President Trump’s deranged designs toward Canada. In a new interview, Trump said straight out that Canada is “meant” to be a fifty-first state, explicitly using the language of imperialism on national television. At the same time, Trump appears to be adopting what some experts are calling a very credulous line toward Vladimir Putin in the current peace talk. This comes as a surprising new poll shows that American public opinion is actually shifting against a soft line on Russia. What if Trump’s designs toward Canada and Russia are related? William Saletan, a writer at The Bulwark, has an interesting new piece making exactly this case—that, in effect, Trump is almost deliberately adopting the same view of Canada that Putin has of Ukraine, that both are there for the pickings for each of them—so we’re talking to Will today about all of this. Thanks for coming back on, Will.
William Saletan: Hey Greg, it’s great to be with you.
Sargent: I want to start with this really crazy new Trump quote about Canada. It’s becoming harder and harder to dismiss Trump’s apparent desire to annex them. Listen to this exchange with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.
Laura Ingraham (audio voiceover): But you’re tougher with Canada than you are with some of our biggest adversaries. Why?
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): Only because it’s meant to be our fifty-first state. I mean it. Listen to this for a sec ...
Ingraham (audio voiceover): OK, but we need their territory. They have territorial advantage. We’re not going to let them get close to China, right?
Trump (audio voiceover): Look, I deal with every country, indirectly or directly. One of the nastiest countries to deal with is Canada. The people that now.... This was [former Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau—good old Justin, I call him “Governor Trudeau”—his people were nasty.
Sargent: He says they are “meant” to be a fifty-first state. Putting aside the obvious derangement here, in which he’s clearly still enraged with Trudeau over some imagined slight or something, that is the language of imperialism, isn’t it, Will?
Saletan: Oh yeah. Trump is an imperialist. He has, from the day he retook office, been talking about territories that he can claim or reclaim all over the hemisphere, basically: Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal. He’s gone beyond that, of course, and talked about taking over Gaza. He’s like a crazy real estate guy merged with a nineteenth-century American imperialist. I know people said, 20 or 30 years ago, America is an imperialist country and we’re trying to take the oil from Iraq. Remember, the Bushies, the Republicans of that day, denied it. Donald Trump is right out there saying he wants land, he wants territory, and he wants mineral wealth.
Sargent: And Will, didn’t a lot of people tell us that Trump won on a backlash to American involvement abroad?
Saletan: Right, right. There’s so many ironies to that, Greg. Trump said, There were no wars when I was president. The first thing he does is come in and start a trade war. That’s the one that Americans are feeling now. But in addition, there’s this threat to coerce Canada into becoming a state. There’s the increasing belligerence; there is the implicit threat that there could be military conflicts, perhaps not with Canada but in other places. So I think it’s a serious threat of hostilities of various kinds with former allies.
Sargent: It’s probably worth noting that [on] Trump’s trade war with Canada, he sometimes says straight out that if they want to avoid tariffs, they should become a state. That’s a direct and explicit declaration that he’s using economic warfare to weaken Canada to force it to submit to his will.
Saletan: Yeah, it is. It is. Now, people say, OK, Trump’s not Putin. Fair enough. Trump’s not Putin—he’s not marshaling armies on the border with Canada and threatening to go in—but he is using the leverage that Donald Trump has always used. Remember, Donald Trump has been an economic belligerent his whole career. He has always threatened and used economic force to coerce the behavior he wants. He is absolutely on a regular basis, Greg—literally every week, if not every day—threatening Canada with economic consequences, saying, We can strangle you, we can cut you off at the knees, you have to become a state. And let me just throw in one more thing, because you highlighted in that comment to Laura Ingraham: He used the word “meant.” Canada is “meant” to be the fifty-first state. That is the language of manifest destiny. That is the language of you must become one of us. It is America’s destiny; it is my destiny to expand America to absorb the whole continent.
Sargent: And he actually used this type of language in another way too. He recently essentially said that they just drew a line on the map between Canada and the United States, as if this was an arbitrary thing. That’s Putinesque language. He’s basically saying, Oh, they’re not a real country.
Saletan: Right, it is. One of the things that I did for this article was I went back and looked at: What did Vladimir Putin say about Ukraine before he went in? And there were two things. He published an article about seven months or half a year before he went in. Then three days before he went in, he gave a speech along the same themes. And many of the things that Donald Trump says about Canada, Putin said those about Ukraine—The line was artificial, we are all really one people, there’s no such thing as a separate Ukraine.
Also, Greg, bizarrely, something that I had forgotten: Putin talked about how Ukraine was ripping off Russia, and how Russia had given all these subsidies to Ukraine, in very similar language to the way Trump fantasizes about how Canada is a beneficiary of the U.S., how they’re leeching off us, and how they’re nothing without us. [It’s the] same language from Putin. And the craziest thing of all is that in his article in 2021, Vladimir Putin said that the relationship between the United States and Canada was a lot like the relationship between Russia and Ukraine—it was the same kind of hate: It’s all really one people, the line is artificial. Very creepy.
Sargent: I want to get back to that, but let’s go to the call that Trump has now had with both Putin and Ukrainian President Zelenskiy. The administration is trying to say they’ve made great strides with Putin toward peace. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said it’s now a relatively short distance to a full ceasefire, yet the Kremlin is saying that Putin’s number one condition for a ceasefire is completely halting all assistance to Ukraine. I thought Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist, got it right. He said this is proof that Putin is not, as Trump foolishly believes, looking for peace with Ukraine; he’s looking to own Ukraine. Friedman also says, Don’t believe anything the administration says about Putin’s supposed desire for peace. That seems right. Why would we ever give Trump the benefit of the doubt on anything here for even a second?
Saletan: Right. Remember though, Greg, that all during the fall campaign, Donald Trump said he was going to end the Russia-Ukraine war in his first 24 hours after he got elected. It’s now been two months not since he got elected but since he’s been in office, and he’s not really any closer. So he’s got this fiction out there that he’s going to resolve the war—in fact, the timetable has already lengthened—and he’s not there. He has to pretend. He has to pretend that progress is happening, even though, as you just pointed out, it’s not. And Putin can string this out because Trump is so eager to portray anything Putin says as a concession, as a step toward peace.
Literally, we have contrary versions of events. The Russian Foreign Ministry says, Here’s what happened in the call, and Trump outright denies it. Trump claims that there was not any discussion of whether the United States would continue to aid Ukraine, and the Russians are like, No, our position was, and we said it, that you have to cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine in order for us to get to an agreement.
Sargent: It’s really interesting you say that. Trump has to demonstrate in some sense that progress is being made, and saying that requires softly interpreting what Putin is saying.
Saletan: Right. And remember when Trump had Zelenskiy in the Oval Office and he kept saying, You know, we’re emboldening you. Every time we give you aid, it emboldens you to not cut a deal? Well, what is Trump doing with Putin right now? It’s exactly that. Everything Trump does—threatening Zelenskiy, threatening to cut off and literally cutting off intelligence sharing with Zelenskiy, cutting off aid on its way to Zelenskiy that was already approved by the previous administration and by Congress—he’s taking all these actions which embolden Putin, and Putin is responding in exactly the way you or I would predict by hardening his position and not making concessions.
Sargent: There’s this new Gallup poll which is quite striking and heartening, I think. It finds that a majority, 53 percent, now want the U.S. to continue supporting Ukraine’s efforts to reclaim its territory, even if that means staying involved for a long time. That’s a jump from December. And get this: Nearly 80 percent say they fear Russia would violate the terms of a peace agreement, and seven in 10 fear the settlement will be too favorable to Russia. It seems clear to me, Will, that we may be seeing something like a thermostatic effect here, in which Americans are starting to swing against the orientation of the party in power. What do you think?
Saletan: I agree. I thoroughly agree. And Greg, I cannot tell you how heartened I am by this poll. Now look, I am notorious for my rosy scenarios, so you take this all with a grain of salt—but I believe that what is going to come out of the second Trump administration, what is already happening, is a consolidation of American public opinion, of a majority in response to Trump and in rejection of what Trump is doing on a whole host of things. But now we’re just talking about Russia and Ukraine. There was, before Trump came in, a sentiment that we were doing too much to support Ukraine; those numbers have now flipped. There was this, as you point out, the feeling that we should end the war rather than require Russia to relinquish territory that it had taken from Ukraine; those numbers, on a smaller scale, have now flipped. What this tells me is Trump has failed so far in his attempt to fundamentally change the culture, the beliefs of Americans.
Let me go back again to February 28: Trump and Vance have Zelenskiy in the Oval Office, and they sandbag him. Everybody remembers this scene where they accuse him of being ungrateful. That scene was created by Trump and Vance; they staged this in order to make him look bad. They wanted to change American public opinion to move with them to decide that Ukraine was the bad guys, that they were ingrates, that we should stop supporting them. What this poll tells me is that they failed. This poll began three days after that scene in the Oval Office and went on for a week after that. And what it tells me is Americans didn’t buy it, that they are where they were before, that they think that Donald Trump has gone too far in the direction of undercutting Ukraine and capitulating to Putin.
Sargent: I think you’re absolutely right. Vance essentially said straight out something like, Why aren’t you more thankful to us? That was clearly an effort to not just cast Zelenskiy as a submissive, groveling figure—and that didn’t work either because he pushed back pretty hard—but also to portray Zelenskiy as an ungrateful figure, as you say. This seems to me to have been an effort to condition the American people to get ready to accept an outcome of the negotiations in which Zelenskiy would have to relinquish that territory. And that failed.
Saletan: Right. And in fact, if I recall correctly, Greg, Trump sat there, he watched Vance and Zelenskiy go back and forth, and then he comes in and says, Don’t tell us how to feel. He takes Vance’s side and he says out loud, I let this go on, this back and forth between the two of you, because I wanted people to see this. He knows the cameras are running. He’s got the whole media there. He stages this. He wants to make Zelenskiy look like the bad guy. It’s an attempt to corrupt American public opinion. And Greg, this has been my concern all along. We know that Trump is one of the worst people this country has ever produced. The question is, What are we going to become? Are we going to become like him? Is he going to fundamentally change us? And he has changed way too much, but these numbers tell me that there is some core of moral decency and sanity, that Americans are rejecting Trump’s capitulation to Putin.
Sargent: Well, these numbers will also be heartening then. Majorities are turning against Trump on Canada as well. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that 58 percent disapprove of Trump’s handling of trade with Canada and only 31 percent think Trump has it right on our Northern ally. I don’t think it’s an accident that public opinion is turning on Trump on both Russia and Canada right now, do you?
Saletan: No, and I’m not exactly certain to what extent Americans associate the two with each other. The Canada situation is, in part, just economics, right? It’s that people think it’s stupid for us to pick a fight with a friend, as Canada is our closest trading partner. And for people who don’t understand this, the American economy is deeply integrated both with the Canadian economy and the Mexican economy. It’s not just that they have their factories and we have ours and we’re competing and they try to sell into us; it’s that we’re exchanging supplies and parts. The whole supply chain is integrated. You can’t cut off the Canadians or cut off the Mexicans without spiting— we’re hurting ourselves when we do that. So part of that is economics.
The other thing, Greg, the part that’s connected to Ukraine perhaps is, Do Americans have a sense of who are our friends and who thinks like us? Who our fellow democracies? Ukraine, a democracy. Canada, a democracy. Russia, an autocracy. North Korea, an autocracy. Do Americans still care about those moral distinctions? And I’m seeing some signs, both with the numbers on Canada and the numbers on Ukraine, that Americans still have that distinction in their minds.
Sargent: Yeah, one could actually look at this as Trump thinking, at least at the outset, that he could bamboozle the American people into thinking all this stuff with Canada is just a shrewd leverage play, that he’s trying get the upper hand in tariff talks and that sort of thing. But as usual, he and MAGA have overplayed this and revealed their actual designs. And those designs, I think, are potentially what really are causing a public backlash—this perception that it actually is an imperialist design on Canada, which is just utterly crazy, on Trump and MAGA’s part. I think that’s maybe what’s going on here.
Saletan: Yeah, and one of the things that Laura Ingraham raised with Trump is the idea that, Dude, you mess around with.... Canada was our friend. Canada was favorably disposed. Trump has done everything possible for about four months running to insult Canada, to antagonize Canada, to threaten Canada, to scare Canada. This went way beyond a joke. And the result is, she tells him, You know, you’re messing with internal Canadian politics at this point; in their election, they may well galvanize a political coalition in defense of Canadian autonomy and against the threat from America. And Greg, that phenomenon is not going to be isolated to Canada. The more Trump threatens every single nation that used to be our friend, the more we’re going to see trade relationships and military alliances that are built not just to protect these countries against Russia and China but against us.
Sargent: Well, maybe the way to think about this is that it’s a fundamental rejection of what you might call Putinism as executed through the Trump vessel. I want to read a line from your piece, which is a very good one, about Trump, “He sees Ukraine through Putin’s eyes. They’re the same eyes through which Trump stares hungrily at Canada, Greenland, Gaza, and the Panama Canal. They’re the eyes of a predator.” This, I think, is now becoming clear to people.
Saletan: Yeah. And Greg, I think it’s very healthy for people to see this. Look, I’m as distraught as you and many others are that the U.S. government has come to this—that we’ve become the bad guys, that we’re openly threatening our allies, that we’re threatening military conquest, that we’re not even pretending anymore to be going abroad in the name of values. We’re just doing it to take things. We’re just going to Ukraine and saying, How much of your mineral wealth can we confiscate while giving you nothing? Trump’s talking in the last 24 hours about, Hey, we could get a better deal with Russia in terms of minerals than with Ukraine.
Everything is about acquisition. Everything’s about confiscation. It’s about dominion. And I think it’s a very healthy thing for other nations in the world to recognize that this behavior, whether it comes from Putin the predator or Trump the predator, is dangerous, and that they need to unite against it.
Sargent: It’s funny that they’re talking like this, given that they’re supposed to have so much respect for national sovereignty.
Saletan: Right, right. There is no real respect for national sovereignty, of course.
Sargent: Right. I want to go back to what you said, to close out here, about how Putin essentially suggested to Trump that he see Canada the way Putin sees Ukraine. It’s worth noting that having the U.S. threatening Canada is very much in keeping with Putin’s interests, precisely because he wants to break up our alliances.
Saletan: Right. It serves him in multiple ways. One is that Trump is systematically destroying the Western alliance. It’s not just with Canada but also with Europe. Trump’s line was that Putin went into Crimea when Obama was president, and then Putin goes into the rest of Ukraine when Biden is president, but in between, when I was president, Putin didn’t do anything. Greg, the reason Putin didn’t attack Ukraine while Trump was president is that Putin was busy capturing a much more important target, which was the United States of America. There was the whole Russian influence operation in the 2016 election. And it was what Trump did during that time, which was to fray NATO, to tear apart the fabric of NATO.
In his second term, Trump is absolutely doing Putin’s bidding in terms of threatening all the NATO allies. My God, we’re practically threatening a war with Denmark. How is that accomplished? Canada? Greg, it used to be a joke. It was like a South Park joke, the United States fighting with Canada. Trump’s achieved these jokes, and he’s made them real and scary. So yeah, Trump is absolutely doing Putin’s bidding in terms of destroying all of the alliances of the United States.
Sargent: Just to your point about how Trump is essentially becoming Putin and seeing the world through his eyes, I believe Trump recently used a line like this. Putin took Ukraine from Obama, and then Putin took more of Ukraine away from Biden—as if these things were our possessions that Putin had taken, right?
Saletan: Right.
Sargent: I want to ask you though, Will, where does this all end up? Where do you see it on both fronts really finishing?
Saletan: Well, I’m very much concerned, Greg, that in Trump’s mind, it’s all connected. And the connection, what I fear, is essentially the old spheres of influence idea. Trump wants dominion over North America. He’s pretty much said it. If you just look at his description, from the Panama Canal to Canada to Greenland, that’s the continent. He wants to establish our dominion over this space. Meanwhile, he looks over at Ukraine and thinks, Eh, that’s Putin’s business, that’s Putin’s dominion. And that was what Putin said in his 2021 article, in his 2022 speech; he wants to reconstitute the Russian empire, the former Soviet bloc.
I just think there’s a deal to be cut here between Trump and Putin. What Trump has been saying over the past 24 hours since he talked to Putin is basically, Hey, things are going great, even though, in fact, Putin is not making concessions with regard to Ukraine. Putin is talking with Trump about other things—about cooperation on extracting minerals and all sorts of other things in which they have a common interest. That is Trump selling out Ukraine. It is Trump selling out and granting Putin his empire in Asia and in Eastern Europe in exchange for looking the other way while we do our thing.
Sargent: And what happens with Canada?
Saletan: I think Canada is not going to get invaded but is going to be dealing with the tariffs that come down on April 2; is going to have to be developing alternative suppliers. Honestly, Greg, if Trump keeps up his tariff regimen, I’d think that we’re just going to start to see trade relationships formed between former trading partners of the United States. And they’re going to go around us because they have to.
Sargent: I think that’s right. I think the through line here is that Trump and Putin are the real geopolitical men swallowing up the “fake” countries; each one respects the other’s right to do that. It’s almost like mob bosses carving up territory.
Saletan: Well said, Greg. Very well said.
Sargent: Will Saletan, it’s always wonderful to talk to you, man. Thanks for coming on.
Saletan: Thank you, Greg.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.