Threatening Canada

Trump posted this last night on Truth Social.

A lot of people went off on him. A lot of other people chided those people for chasing a bright shiny object and ignoring important things, like Senator Majority Leader John Thune’s claim he has the votes to confirm an accused rapist as Secretary of Defense and Trump’s impending sentencing in Manhattan, if the Supreme Court doesn’t get him out of it.

The truth is, there is a lot happening all at once and it’s all important. This is the trauma of Trumpism.

But don’t skip over the story of Trump’s aggressive behavior towards our allies. I wrote briefly about that last night in a column called Whiplash, pointing out the importance of taking it in because it’s a marker of Trump’s inamorata, authoritarianism—and an early sign of where he is heading. We need to pay attention to markers like that and discuss them with people around us who’ve hit the snooze button on waking up to the reality of Trump 2.0. This is for the people who are carrying on as though nothing unusual is happening.

It’s not just theoretical. We have an abject lesson in front of us today that illuminates what Trump’s behavior toward our allies could cost us.

As fires burned across Los Angeles last night, “tornado fires” my husband called them because of the winds that whipped the flames, our neighbor, Canada, showed up to help. This is video of a Canadian firefighting plane trying to help bring the Palisades fire under control.

In the TV show “The West Wing,” there’s a moment where Josh Lyman, Deputy Chief of Staff in the White House, is discussing an opportunity to do good. He says, “If your neighbor’s house is on fire, you don’t haggle over your garden hose.” Good leaders don’t. And when you need your neighbors to help you out, hopefully they’re there for you too, with their hose, or their plane, as the case may be. That’s probably not going to happen if you keep talking about forcefully annexing them.

Trump seems intent on fracturing our relationships with our friends and our neighbors. It’s more than just the bright shiny thing of the moment. We are not impervious. We, too, can need help. Who will be there for us after Donald Trump runs them off?

My thoughts and prayers are with everyone in the Los Angeles area today, hoping they are safe. Climate-change-fueled events like this are just one of the reasons we need strong leadership in our country at this moment. We need our friends and neighbors too.

We’re in this together,

Joyce