Trump’s Rage at Canada Just Got Worse—and Putin Is Quietly Celebrating

In an interview on Fox News, President Donald Trump angrily signaled that his goal of making Canada into a “fifty-first state” is “real” while ranting that Canada is supposedly taking advantage of us. Whatever Trump actually intends, Vladimir Putin has been cheering on Trump’s various threats toward Canada, especially the threat of tariffs. Russia is also happy about Elon Musk’s efforts to gut the U.S. Agency for International Development. We talked to international relations professor Nicholas Grossman, who explains why Trump’s rising anger at Canada is alarming even if he doesn’t fully intend to send in troops. Grossman also details how all these moves show that Trump is signaling a genuine repositioning of the United States in the international order—and why this repositioning has Putin so gleeful. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.