Falsehoods, Boasts and Bravado: The Surreal Launch of the Second Trump Presidency
AP
By Jeremy Kinsman
January 22, 2025
President Donald Trump delivered two inaugural addresses on Monday; the formal one in the Capitol Rotunda, and the compensatory “real” one to loyalists afterward in Emancipation Hall — laced with falsehoods, boasts, and nationalist bravado. Both set out his second-term intentions.
That Trump’s inauguration unfolded in the crime scene where, on January 6, 2021, a violent insurrection he was impeached for inciting attempted to block the peaceful transfer of power, made the whole performance seem surreal to all but Trump followers, who applauded his subsequent pardons of those responsible.
Trump supplemented his speeches with a blizzard of tweets and executive orders in the first 48 hours of an administration that portends radical change to US foreign policy and to the country itself. Trump seems determined to deliver a first 100 days that will outdo all predecessors.
He ditches foreign policy premises that have guided the US, and by extension, the “free world,” since the Second World War, including the US role as (The Economist leader, Jan 18) “indispensable defender of a world made more stable and benign by democracy, settled borders, and universal values.”
Trump again announced US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change. This time, US defection from climate leadership occurs when warming is closer to the line of real global peril. Trump does not care, as shown by his omission of any reference to climate change (“a hoax”) in his destructively political remarks on the catastrophic Los Angeles fires.
He declared America will use “the strongest military ever seen” in the interests of greater US security and prosperity, untethered by bothersome democratic values. During his presidency US “wars will end,” as he plays the role of global “peacemaker and unifier.”
How does he reconcile this lofty goal with his threat of forceful re-acquisition of the Panama Canal or Greenland, and with his threat to use “economic force” to integrate Canada fully with the US economy, abandoning its history as a sovereign state?
It seems clear that he intends “Make America Great Again” to mean “Make America Bigger.” Danish PM Mette Frederiksen told NATO ally Trump in a conversation Anne Applebaum described as “rough,” that Greenland was neither for sale nor US conquest. Frederiksen reportedly reminded him that Denmark proportionately lost more soldiers in Afghanistan than did the US. But Trump doesn’t care about Afghanistan — or Denmark, for that matter.
In the European parliament on Wednesday, Danish MEP Anders Vistisen was blunter while channeling a sentiment quite likely shared by more than a few of his international counterparts. “Let me put it in words you might understand,” he said, addressing the volatile US president directly: “Mr. Trump, f**k off!”
Indeed, European contacts noted that, in his inaugural rants, Trump didn’t mention any allies, or even essential global cooperative causes. Trump’s America seems prepared to live without basic friends, though right-wing inaugural invitees (Orban of Hungary, Meloni of Italy, Millei of Argentina) telegraphed his essential affinities.
Trump’s backward gaze has landed on an unlikely political muse, presidential predecessor (1897-1901) William McKinley, who expanded US territory in the spirit of America’s 19th century Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. A largely fabricated 1898 war against Spain won the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam, while the US also took Hawaii, extended US possession of Indian and Mexican lands in the West, and designed a Panama Canal.
McKinley is the predecessor who adored tariffs, to finance the US Treasury (before the adoption in 1913 of generalized income tax). He chummed around with the era’s “robber barons,” comparable to Trump’s “tech bros” who had pride of place at the inaugural. McKinley’s assassination on September 6, 1901 by an anarchist, probably sealed his role as model for the man who claimed before his inaugural audience that he was “saved by God to make America great again.
In his inaugural rants, Trump didn’t mention any allies, or even essential global cooperative causes. Trump’s America seems prepared to live without basic friends, though right-wing inaugural invitees (Orban of Hungary, Meloni of Italy, Millei of Argentina) telegraphed his essential affinities.
But why attack Canada, which, as Michael Ignatieff writes in the latest FT Weekend, “is the least of his problems?” Canadian Ambassador in Washington Kirsten Hillman says his threat to impose extremely destructive 25% tariffs is nowhere justified on trade terms. It may well be that Trump’s short-term goal is to hang up “wins” on his domestic aims for the first hundred days, demonstrating that Canada and Mexico are cracking down on the key domestic aggravations of illegal immigration and opioid addiction even if Canada’s contribution to them is incidental.
Ignatieff speculates that Trump anticipates a future, “where the writ of the ‘rules-based international order’ no longer runs and where power over the global economy has devolved to three zones of influence: China in East Asia, Russia in Eurasia, and America with an exclusive sphere of influence in the western hemisphere…Trump’s designs on Canada, Greenland and Panama make sense if you accept, as he might, spheres of influence in the 21st century.”
Trump considers Canada a central component of the US sphere of influence. I agree with Ignatieff that, at a minimum, Trump wants full access to Canadian resources.
But Trump’s aggressiveness toward Canada also seems personal, as is the case for most of his preoccupations. The insulting “51st state” jibes to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were more than an offensive joke from a man rarely seen laughing. My Red Passport podcast colleagues Peter Donolo and Louise Blais suggest Trump very possibly resents rhetoric from Canadians, including the government, deriding him and his movement.
In any case, Canadians, including the Trudeau cabinet, were briefly relieved when Trump made no mention in his speeches Monday of prior threats to impose the 25% tariffs. They speculated hopefully that Canadian officials and business groups had successfully prompted apprehension in Washington that such a drastic act against Canada would carry heavy costs to Americans as well. Trump trashed this comforting thought a few hours later when he informed the media that he might announce on February 1 the 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada for “allowing vast numbers of people to come in, and fentanyl,” adding “Canada is a very bad abuser, also.” It seems to reinforce the extent to which his aggression is indeed “personal.” He obviously rejects the fact that fentanyl seized at the Canadian border and illegal immigrants that cross it are each about 1% of the numbers at the Mexican border.
Canadian trade negotiator Steve Verheul indicates that Trump tariffs of this order would leave Canada with less access to the US market than 166 other US trade partners. As Stephen Harper said, Trump’s threats don’t “sound like the words of “a friend, a partner and an ally.” Premiers of Ontario and B.C. judge that the US is no longer a partner Canadians can trust
Trump uses threats as a negotiating tactic. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, whose balmy audience with Trump at Mar-a-Lago recently produced the assurance that he wasn’t kidding, has advocated diplomacy while other Canadian political players, from Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, are increasingly convinced that Trump needs to grasp the retaliatory, “dollar for dollar” measures Canada will take in response to his manifestly unfair tariffs. Smith aims to interest Americans in a grand bargain that confers on Alberta a tariff “carve-out” for the province’s oil and gas sector, within an integrated North American strategy to dominate world energy.
Energy domination ambition partly explains Trump’s determination of a “national energy emergency”, that makes “drill, baby, drill” his energy mantra. The US leads the world in oil and gas production but needs more to win the energy-dependent artificial intelligence AI race with China.
Consumption of US energy by AI data centres has risen from 1.9% of US electricity use in 2018 to 4.4% in 2023, and could rise to as high as 12% in 2028. Oil and gas production at 13 million barrels a day is already shy of US energy needs, causing the US to import 8.5 million barrels a day, with Canada being the largest source. It confirms that Alberta oil and gas is as relevant as Premier Smith indicates, especially as Trump promises to cut US energy costs by 50% in one year. It is why other Canadian leaders believe “everything has to be on the table” to resolve the threatening mess that Trump has actioned, and why the leverage Premier Smith has forfeited is so valuable.
Coping with the Trump threat will surely be a topic for discussion among like-minded democratic and other leaders. At this point, the goal is to survive Trump’s last term as president. There is a chance, as his firm warning to Putin that the fighting in Ukraine must stop may suggest, that his immense power at home and in the world, may bring some good.
There is also the strong possibility that his administration may descend into a chaos of incompetence and quarrel.
But the whole situation still makes the future of Canada as an independent state “a live, existential question,” per Ignatieff. More broadly, it imperils our hope for a humanist, cooperative world, unless a sense of solidarity in the face of that menace can rally and intervene.
Policy Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman was Canada’s ambassador to Russia, high commissioner to the UK, ambassador to Italy and ambassador to the European Union. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council.