I believe Donald Trump

Twelve days into 2025 and I have already broken what amounted to my one and only New Year’s resolution.

I made a vow not to succumb to the easy temptation to write about the madness every time Donald Trump pens an insult-laced tweet or bombastic statement – without, of course, using spell check.

My calculation was that there would be ample opportunity after the US president-elect takes the oath of office later this month to devote time and space to his manic meanderings.

Part of the selfish reason why I promised myself that I would try to avoid, if possible, having to examine the meaning and implications of Trump’s signature spasms of absurdity was to shield myself – briefly, at least – from the undeniable psychological harm he has wrought on the world’s wounded psyche.

From the moment he announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2016, Trump has dominated our gaze and attention. Every depressing day since has been a cacophony of lunacy that has taken a stiff toll on the mind, spirit, and soul.

But escaping Trump has become impossible. Cloaked in enormous power, he continues – uninhibited by truth or decency – to burnish his insatiable narcissism and ego, offering us a bitter taste of the carnival of chaos looming on the not-to-distant horizon.

On Tuesday, Trump held a rambling news conference at his gilded ode to himself in Florida – Mar-a-Lago.

Among the countless examples of Trump’s stream-of-consciousness inanity were his musings about the “drip, drip, drip” of faucets and gas heaters.

“[A] gas heater is much less expensive,” Trump said. “It’s a much better heat and, as the expression goes, you don’t itch. Does anybody have a heater where you go and you’re scratching and – that’s what they want you to have.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the garbled synapses of the future president of the United States at work.

Ridicule aside, it would be a grave mistake to confuse Trump’s stumbling incoherence with a lack of iron-clad conviction.

As I have written earlier and often, Trump is, in my view, a bona fide fascist. Fascists don’t bluster. Fascists don’t joke. Fascists don’t josh around.

Trump has a plan – saturated in authoritarian means and rhetoric – to realise what he described as a “golden age” where years of “weakness” will be replaced by a return to America’s rightful greatness, the jarring sequel.

Trump has assembled an obedient administration to fulfil his grand ambitions for America – with little, if any, resistance from a Republican-controlled Congress, the Supreme Court, or the prostrate billionaire owners of large swaths of corporate media seeking his good graces.

So, when Trump insists, again and again, that he will use military force, if necessary, to impose America’s hegemony over Greenland and the Panama Canal, for “vital” national security reasons, I believe him.

Trump was asked if he could “assure the world” that he would not, as president, use “economic or military coercion” to achieve his territorial aims. His quick reply was: “No.”

I believe him because, as history has confirmed, that is precisely what fascists are inclined to do.

As a Canadian, I also believe Trump when he warned that he would use America’s singular economic might, in effect, to compel Canada to become the 51st state.

I did not laugh. Instead, I shuddered when Trump was asked whether he was “considering using military force to annex and acquire Canada”.

The question was as remarkable as Trump’s response. “No, economic force,” he said, “because Canada and the United States, that would really be something.”

Fascists don’t “float ideas” involving seizing land, canals, or annexing sovereign nations. Once born, these “ideas” take tangible shape and form and, inevitably, blueprints are drawn up to turn them into reality.

As a result, I do not consider Trump’s promised aggression even against NATO allies as a “negotiating ploy” or a familiar tool to “distract” – as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently suggested – from the onerous costs of the incoming president’s proposed across-the-board tariffs on Canadian goods imported into the US.

I am convinced that an emboldened Trump means to make America’s “golden age” come true – damn international law, damn territorial integrity, and damn Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty that states that an armed attack on one NATO member is an attack on all members.

It is time to dispense finally with the jejune reasoning that Trump is “kidding” when he makes “outlandish” comments such as possibly declaring war – economic or otherwise – on Greenland, Panama, or Canada.

Look, Trump believes every fantastical word he utters. Canadians, among others, have to admit it and confront a fascist bully – bluntly, plainly, and loudly.

A host of federal politicians rushing to social media to post missives scoffing at Trump’s “hysterical” schemes will not suffice.

The premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Andrew Furey, understood what needed to be said and how to say it.

“[Trump’s] history has been to create chaos in an attempt, in a confusion with humour. But then often those become policy statements and reality. So, to dismiss it as a joke is, in my opinion, not the right thing to do,” Furey said.

Canada, he added, is a “strong and sovereign country and it will always be a strong and sovereign country”.

Trump’s threats to Canada’s sovereignty were, the premier said, “completely unacceptable”.

Then, Furey, to his credit, issued a stark forewarning of his own directed at Trump.

“Sovereignty comes at an incredible price; a price paid by blood by Canadians, Newfoundlanders and Labradoreans, and to try to take that away is going to come at a significant cost.”

Hear, hear, Sir. Hear, hear.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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