Sitting within the depths of Steve Bannon‘s chaotic War Room, Global News has a crucial query for the right-wing media mogul: How seriously should we be taking the president’s insistence that Canada should change into the 51st state?
Very, apparently.
Bannon, a former top aide to U.S. President Donald Trump, says he knows exactly what’s happening. Dramatically shaking his rumpled grey hair, he tells me that we, Canadians, are “misreading the situation” before crossing his arms and launching right into a spiel that he seems to have been waiting his whole life for — drawing from his experience serving within the navy, within the Pentagon and his master’s degree in national security studies.
He’s unequivocal in his belief that Trump’s interest in Canada is strategic and geopolitical and that we’re missing the purpose by being fixated on tariffs and trolling.
“The world is now coming to Canada, and it’s coming in a giant way,” Bannon says with a prophet’s conviction.
“You were isolated before. You’re not isolated now.”
Steve Bannon tells Global News from his War Room that Trump’s plans for Canada transcend tariffs.
Ashleigh Stewart
That’s because, Bannon says, the Arctic goes to be the “recent game of the twenty first century” and a military weakness that he calls Canada’s “soft underbelly.”
Melting polar ice caps are making the far north more accessible to countries like Russia and China, meaning Canada has to do more to guard its vulnerable northern frontier — and, in turn, protect the U.S. And if Canada refuses, Bannon says, Trump will force us to. By annexing Greenland, retaking the Panama Canal and securing Canada’s northern border, Trump is outwardly trying to ascertain a north-south economic and military corridor.
It’s all about “hemispheric control,” Bannon says.
Since asking Trump himself offers various results, Global News sought out those with insight into how he thinks.
Even after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was offered a reprieve from a looming trade war, Trump continued to suggest Canada should just surrender its sovereignty anyway. It’s clearly still on his mind.
So, all those jibes about “Governor Trudeau” and Canada because the “51st state”? Global News asks.
He’s not trolling, Bannon counters. He’s “really thought this through.”
“Let me be brutally frank. Geo-strategically, you don’t really have an option [but to join us] in the event you want your sovereignty because from the north, from the Arctic, it’s going to get encroached in an excellent power competition that you just don’t have the flexibility to win.”
Bannon doesn’t speak on behalf of the U.S. president. In truth, the 2 have a tangled history. Trump fired him from his role as White House chief strategist in 2018, after which Bannon went on to reinvent himself because the host of his War Room podcast and as one among the highest evangelists of the MAGA movement.
U.S. President Donald Trump embraces Stephen Bannon in the course of the swearing-in of senior staff within the White House on Jan. 22, 2017, in Washington, D.C.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
But this populist and nationalist MAGA school of thought is closely aligned with Trump’s pondering — and it considers Trump its leader. The White House’s recent torrent of executive orders — cutting down on federal bureaucracy, waging a war on immigration and promoting economic nationalism — reflect Bannon’s guiding principles.
Once we visit the War Room, a brand new intern (the granddaughter of his assistant of 40 years) has arrived to switch six producers who, he says, are all going to work for the brand new Trump administration.
As Bannon continues laying out Trump’s grand plan, he doesn’t try and conceal his pride that his underlings are going to work for his former boss.
“It is a major geostrategic job … Have a look at your northern border. You’re totally, completely exposed … it was once your biggest defence. Now it’s your biggest vulnerability,” Bannon says.
Canada itself has long recognized the issue: Leaders have called beefing up security within the Arctic because the “most urgent and necessary task” facing the Canadian Forces amid a changing geopolitical and physical landscape, due to climate change. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, too, has called for a joint Canada-U.S. NORAD base in Northern Canada to bolster Arctic security.
Each Trump detractors and disciples can see the rationale behind Trump’s supposed continental aspirations.
“It’s not a joke,” says Elliott Abrams, the longtime State Department official and Trump, Bush and Reagan administration veteran.
“Security experts listed here are talking rather a lot more concerning the Arctic than they were 10 years ago. That’s the form of thing that could be resolved by saying, ‘We now have common interests, we’re going to work together closely … there’s an escape hatch from this.’”
‘Canada is getting all of it unsuitable’
Bannon’s War Room occupies the primary floor of a stately red brick semi-detached near Capitol Hill in central Washington D.C., within the shadow of the Supreme Court of america. It seems an ironic location for Bannon’s command post, surrounded by the very institutions his anti-establishment, populist and nationalist movement rails against.
Even Trump is taken into account “a moderate” figure within the movement nowadays, Bannon says, in comparison with right-wing compatriots like himself, a convicted felon currently awaiting trial on charges that he duped donors who’ve money to construct a wall along the southern U.S. border. He has pleaded not guilty to the fees.
“We’re the furthest right before you allow into the fever swamps,” he says.
Bannon also oversaw the Breitbart News website — a voice for the alt-right movement starting from white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites — before joining the 2016 Trump campaign. He’s been vocal of his frustrations and distrust of the “mainstream media.”
“We just had a sweeping victory and no one can define populism here … the media looks at us as exotic animals in a zoo.”
There’s little question he’s an influential figure, but his enduring influence on the U.S. president is unclear. When asked how often he speaks to his former boss, he says, “Don’t you are worried about that,” before conceding he has interviewed Trump just once in five years. When asked why so seldom, he says: “I don’t must interview him.”
They do seemingly share a playbook, nevertheless. Trump’s unrelenting flow of executive orders and initiatives within the early days of his administration was famously described by Bannon in 2018 as “Flood[ing] the zone with sh*t.” They’re each guided by the identical populist, nationalist beliefs.
And he’s desperate to share his insight. First, on tariffs and why “Canada is getting all of it unsuitable.”
Steve Bannon was formerly U.S. President Donald Trump’s chief strategist.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
“This isn’t a punitive tariff on a valve coming from Canada to Detroit. That is something very different,” Bannon says from behind a table with a podcast mic angled towards him, his lower half obscured behind a stack of paper and books.
A life-sized photograph of Bannon, surveying the horizon with a steely gaze, leans against an unlimited War Room flag, facing the space at a cluttered table where Bannon himself sits, wearing his real-life steely gaze. Behind him, placards of his quotes — “There aren’t any conspiracies, but there aren’t any coincidences” — and spiritual paraphernalia jostle for space.
“[Trump’s] saying, ‘Hey, America is the very best market on this planet, it’s a golden door. If you should are available here, either ship what you are promoting here to fabricate, otherwise you’re going to pay a giant total tax. But in the event you’re contained in the golden door, there’s no tariff.’”
But, from Bannon’s perspective, it stays unclear whether those tariffs are a tool of economic force being exerted over Canada to bend to Trump’s Arctic empire-building exercise or if it’s a way for Canada to purchase into the protection the U.S. will offer from encroachments.
That’s at its core, he says, behind several of Trump’s current obsessions. Having control over the Panama Canal means shipping routes are secured from the south. Constructing an “Iron Dome” — the U.S.-funded air defence system in Israel, which borrows, partially, from the Reagan administration’s ill-fated “Star Wars” initiative — secures the skies.
Annexing Greenland means a U.S. submarine base could be built to dam the Russian navy from its bases in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. Then, the Northwest Passage — a network of waterways that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago — “changes the economics of trade with Asia, with Japan and East Asia and with that a part of Russia,” Bannon says.
Renegotiating the CUSMA could make Mexico, america and Canada “one super economic entity.”
“And in that regard, that’s a game changer for Canada. President Trump gets a partnership with Greenland, secures the Panama Canal, and makes sure that they’re robust democracies like Bolsonaro in Brazil and Milei in Argentina. Then we’ve almost accomplished hemispheric defence.”
And, experts say, he has a degree.
‘It isn’t all smoke and mirrors’
Abrams is just not in Trump’s inner circle. But he has held senior positions in three Republican administrations — Reagan, Bush and Trump. It was a controversial run; Abrams was reportedly up for Trump’s deputy secretary of state role but was denied for criticizing him. He was also convicted for lying to Congress over the Iran-Contra affair within the late Eighties.
Lately, Abrams could be found on the Washington-based think-tank and deep establishment group, the Council on Foreign Relations, where he speaks to Global News.
Abrams is skeptical that Trump has a well-considered grand plan, the best way Bannon believes. But he can see why the Arctic could be a giant priority for the U.S. president.
Elliot Abrams says people mustn’t dismiss Trump’s demands as “smoke and mirrors.”
Getty
“We aren’t going to be invaded by Russia. You is likely to be,” he said, referring to Canada. “So how is it possible that you just spend a smaller amount within the region?”
Canada’s federal government announced late last 12 months that it was committing $34.7 million up front and $7 million ongoing over a complete of 5 years to a brand new Arctic policy. That pales compared to Denmark’s recent pledge of $2B and a 2016 pledge from the U.S. for $5.2B.
Abrams questions why nobody has been tapped to oversee Trump’s Iran policy, which can signal shifting priorities. He doesn’t know where all that is going but cautions Canada from disregarding Trump’s threats — tariffs or a play for its sovereignty — out of hand.
“I’d not take the view that it’s nothing, that it’s all smoke and mirrors … because that final result could be a defeat for him.
“Trump’s got to have something.”
And as is usually the case with Trump, his demands are shorthand for something else.
The U.S. president’s social media posts give a glimpse into his list of wants beyond what he’s saying out loud. On Sunday, he said billions were being spent to “subsidize Canada” and that “Canada should change into our cherished 51st state.” That subsidy appears to be referencing the reported trade deficit of about $60 billion (not $250B as Trump repeatedly asserts).
A day later, he led a tweet about speaking with Trudeau, with incredulity, that “Canada doesn’t even allow U.S. banks to open or do business there,” before referencing fentanyl again.
Canadian officials have repeatedly said lower than one per cent of fentanyl entering the U.S. comes from Canada.
But this scattershot approach is anything but improvised, says a former influential figure on foreign policy in the primary Trump administration, who asked to not be named as he’s advising this administration. Because, he says, Trump’s recent foreign policy is incredibly well thought-out.
‘There’s been substantial planning by his people’
Trump’s 2016 foreign policy team was “inexperienced and really ill-prepared on foreign policy,” the influential official says. He’d focused on North Korea and Iran and “made a variety of mistakes.”
“This foreign policy could be very, very different. It’s much broader and more sophisticated. There’s been substantial planning by his people and plenty of think tanks, including ours,” the official said. But he does imagine Canada has been “caught within the crosshairs” of Trump’s fixation on the southern border.
The official went on to reference Bannon’s blitzkrieg strategy.
“[All his planning] has enabled him to put out a variety of initiatives suddenly, like flooding the zone with ideas because there’s been a lot preparation and a lot trial by error from the primary administration.”
But when hemispheric defence is Trump’s grand aspiration, he’s keeping those cards near his chest. The official said he hadn’t “written any policy papers or talked to any Trump people about that.”
But, he admitted, Trump’s 51st state comments had “caught a variety of us off-guard.”
“But I don’t think either country wants this to go very far. I feel that Trump might move on to other issues … and as he racks up some initial wins, even small ones, he’s going to make use of that as momentum to take care of greater problems just like the Middle East and the Ukraine war and coping with China.”
However the trade disagreements are a significant sticking point for Trump. Canada’s closed markets, similar to supply management, are a long-held Trump irritant. The behemoth south of the border wants access to Canadian markets for all types of products and services, namely telecoms and banking.
“The U.S. has some real grievances with Canada. And while the border and fentanyl could also be one among the problems …I’m unsure if those are the central issues,” says Christopher Hernandez-Roy, deputy director of the Americas Program on the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
That extends to provide management, the digital services tax, the softwood lumber dispute and the bipartisan defence issue, amongst others.
“The Biden administration form of tried to nudge Canada diplomatically, and the Trump administration goes to shock Canada into spending more on defence. It’s a matter of constructing sure the Arctic is secure, ensuring that NORAD modernization is on time and on budget. I’m sure they’re having conversations far beyond just fentanyl and migration across the border,” says Hernandez-Roy.
As for the tariffs, Hernandez-Roy says the move “is mindless” because Canada is a bountiful source of critical minerals — critical for making semiconductors and in a spread of defence applications, a market China had previously monopolized.
“It’s a self-defeating exercise if what you’re attempting to do is make a fortress North America against China and Russia because Canada’s economy is intimately linked with that of america. And in the event you devastate that economy, which is export-dependent, Canada goes to need to search for other markets.
“And the just one that can win there’s going to be China.”
But to the query of whether this punishment would push Canada toward China, Bannon has no coherent answer. It isn’t clear if which means they aren’t anxious or haven’t considered it.
He says Canada has “already been infiltrated by the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]” and that while “Canadians are well-meaning and nice and decent people, you have got a tough time facing the hard issues.”
But, he desires to be clear: Trump thinks very favourably towards Canadians. He says it as if this might dull the blow of Canada’s current predicament.
“[Canada] is something we’ve talked about for years, at our first meeting. He holds Canada in very high esteem,” Bannon says.
“He’s at all times had a troubled relationship with Trudeau because, let me be blunt, you may quote me, he’s a punk. Yeah, he’s only a punk, and he’s much too near the CCP.”
Steve Bannon calls Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ‘a punk’ during an interview with Global News. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File).
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But he says the western provinces of Canada, and Danielle Smith, most notably, “really get it.” He says he met with many representatives from “Canada’s West,” they usually were “throughout different dinners I went to.”
He even had some around to the War Room, he says, but he won’t disclose who. But he does say they’re concerned about partnering with the U.S. — even when the remainder of the country is just not.
“Before, strategically, you didn’t need america. They were nice to be an ally of — now you wish us. It’s the one technique to stop the good power competition, which you’re going to lose. Tell me how that’s going to play when Russia and China start making physical incursions into northern Canada … how are you guys going to reply? Are you going to lose northern Canada?
“Well, in the event you’re partners and/or a part of america, you don’t need to worry about that because we’re not going to let that occur.”
