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Comment by AnotherGoodName | Hacker News Reader

There were literal statements of annexation. Brushed off by some "that was a joke" but they were made.

Lets not downplay that fact.

I personally can downplay them as a joke because it is a joke. The mostly likely path forward for anything like that would instead a certain oil rich province voting themselves independent and then asking the US for aid or to join.

And, if it wasn't a joke, then that's even more of a reason to consider meeting your 2% NATO agreement instead of just phoning it in.

They were not joke and no one laughed at them either. They were posturing and trying to be threatening. They were coupled with start of actual trade war and intentional attempts to weaken Canada.

Calling them jokes is just a lie, retroactively trying to make it better.

They were an objective joke/troll, but multiple psychological studies on certain mindset patterns under stress show that some are intellectually unable to get certain types of jokes.

You really can't weaken Canada much more than it is.

It is irrelevant. It was not a joke and it was coupled with hostile actions. Calling it a joke is massively dishonest and no one laughed or considered it funny at the time

Millions laughed, ergo joke.

The only country to have ever invaded us is the USA.

Their national anthem is about a battle in that war.

It's downplayable because Trump isn't actually serious about it. He's serious about something until he learns what's possible. Some things are possible (absurd tariffs), other things are not (declaring war on a bordering country).

Let’s not downplay jokes. Lol

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