Maggie Haberman Says Trump Is ‘In an Expansionist Mindset’ – But His Talk of Absorbing Canada Is ‘Clearly Much More of a Troll’
CNN analyst Maggie Haberman said President-elect Donald Trump is being a “troll” when it comes to his talk of annexing Canada, but that he is much more serious about some of his other wild foreign policy ideas.
Trump has repeatedly referred to Canada as “the 51st state” and addressed outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor.” The president-elect also expressed a desire to acquire Greenland from Denmark. Trump has also suggested the U.S. seize the Panama Canal. Moreover, he said he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”
The president-elected revisited some of these matters in a lengthy press conference on Tuesday. Hours later on CNN’s AC360, Anderson Cooper asked Haberman, for her reaction, to which she replied that “these things are not all the same” and noted that Trump floated acquiring Greenland in his first term.
“This idea of acquiring Greenland for strategic purposes has happened for decades,” she said. “It’s never totally gone away, but Trump is clearly in an expansionist mindset. He also keeps talking about Canada as a 51st state. That is clearly much more of a troll and sort of a dominance play.”
Haberman pointed out that Trump saying he would not rule out military action to achieve the aforementioned aims has “caught a lot of people by surprise. It’s not clear if that’s actually something he’s thinking about or something he said.”
Watch above via CNN.