President Donald Trump has been unambiguous about his plans to exact retribution against his perceived enemies during his second term, even directly positioning himself with his rally-goers during his campaign with the statement: “I am your retribution.”
Trump has made quick work of some targets since resuming office, removing Inspectors General from numerous federal agencies, pardoning all those convicted for their conduct on January 6, firing DOJ officials connected to Trump’s own federal indictments, and planning a purge of FBI agents whose work (past and present) he views as dangerous to his agenda.
Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel — who published what is commonly called an enemies list in his book Government Gangsters (2022) — signals an unremitting emphasis on the President’s promise to cleanse the federal workforce of anti-Trump sentiment, which the President characterizes as synonymous with anti-American sentiment.
Patel’s list, believed to accurately represent Trump’s list, includes numerous Republicans, even former Trump administration figures — former FBI directors James Comey and Christopher Wray, ex-Attorney General Bill Barr, and former National Security Adviser John Bolton are on the list, as well as Democrats.
The intent to avenge is clear enough to have stirred Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) to warn his Senate colleagues vis-a-vis Patel’s confirmation: “For God’s sake, to give the most sweeping investigative agency in the United States and the world over to this man to settle political scores is something we’re going to regret.”
Yet Trump’s purported list of “enemies within” — while extensive — does not represent the full extent of his sense of us against them, which also shows the President creating standoffs with longstanding U.S. allies.
Trump has subtly threatened Denmark with the annexing of Greenland. He has threatened Panama with the seizing of the Panama Canal. He has questioned the wisdom of America continuing to aid Ukraine.
Trump has also targeted Mexico, for the current trade deficit and for its role in the U.S. southern border challenges, threatening Mexico with tariffs as a punishment for its failure to more effectively control the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.
(Tariffs against China, which also target trade deficits, hit the fentanyl issue too and are in part about the Chinese sending fentanyl ingredients to Mexico and enabling drug cartels there.)
But Trump’s rage against Canada, a longtime friendly U.S. ally and trade partner has surprised observers more than his Mexico and China antagonism. The challenges the latter two nations present to America are plain enough, as China’s role in the drug trade is undisputed and Mexico is the major supplier of fentanyl to the U.S.
Yet Canada, which faces the same level of Trump tariffs as Mexico, is not on a scale with Mexico as source of America’s fentanyl flow.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents “seized just 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border last year, according to statistics released publicly by the agency. Meanwhile, about 21,100 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the Mexican border,” according to a recent CBS report.
And while the U.S. has a trade deficit with Canada, a large supplier of energy, Trump claimed recently in a Fox News interview that “we lose $200 billion a year with Canada, and I’m not going to let that happen. It’s too much. Why are we paying $200 billion a year essentially in subsidy to Canada? Now if they’re a 51st state, I don’t mind doing it.”
[NOTE: Data do not bear out the President’s trade deficit claims concerning Canada. TD Bank produced a study here showing, among other figures, that the “U.S. trade deficit with Canada was 1/8 the size of China’s and 1/5 that of Mexico.”]
The lack of commensurate scale between Mexico and Canada — when it comes to the fentanyl problem and the deficit — and yet the equal levels of proposed tariffs have Trump critics asking if the Canadian leadership — especially the lame duck prime minister Justin Trudeau — is in Trump’s cross-hairs for reasons that are more personal than political.
Kurt Andersen, a longtime Trump scourge and media personality, wondered aloud this weekend whether Trump’s rage at Trudeau stemmed in part from the friendly intimate moment the Canadian PM shared with Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, caught in a photo that went viral in 2019.
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Andersen isn’t alone in speculating that there’s possibly more to Trump’s Canada position than politics. Toronto Star writer Linda McQuaig started a recent column about the issue by writing: “Other than the possibility he’s still seething over the time Melania made eyes at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Donald Trump’s obsession with beating up Canada makes little sense.”