Trump is off his rocker, and GOP politics is off the rails

HALIFAX—No sense mincing words. For the last year, and with each passing day, it is getting clearer that Donald Trump is off his rocker, and GOP politics is off the rails. You can't make up the stuff that is coming out of Trump’s mouth with zero pushback from the gaggle of sycophants trying to ride his crazy coattails to power. According to Trump: Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, are eating their neighbours' cats and dogs; shoplifters would be shot in their tracks, as he advised the recent Republican convention; U.S. General Mark Milley, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed for speaking with a Chinese general; illegal migrants are taking over whole American towns with weapons the U.S. military has never seen before; immigrants need to be rounded up and shipped out by the millions. “Get them out!” is the new chant at Trump rallies; a vast arsenal of federal power should be used against immigrants; women won’t even think about abortion if Trump gets elected because he will be their “protector”; you can’t vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris because she is a communist; what if Russia wins the war with Ukraine? After all, Trump notes, they beat Napoleon and Hitler; every time Volodymyr Zelenskyy comes to the U.S., he goes away with $100-billion. You, too, can buy “authentic” Trump coins for only $100—to go with your MAGA hat, digital mugshot trading card, and Trump Bible; a 100 per cent tariff on Chinese cars is a great idea. A 200-per-cent tariff on John Deere tractors assembled in Mexico is a great idea—unless you’re a farmer who wants to buy one of the famous machines; and since when does a former U.S. First Lady get a quarter-of-a-million-dollar appearance fee to speak to Log Cabin Republicans? Did donors pay? Who? All of these things are the stuff of nasal coffee rockets, or at least they would be if 52 per cent of per cent of Americans didn’t believe Trump’s presidency was a success. With all that happened in those four years of pandemonium: the eight trillion dollars added to the national debt, a million people dead from COVID, disarray in NATO, playing huggy-bear, kissy-face with the Putin-Kim-Orban set, no wall on the southern border, and two impeachments—most Americans still call that success. Which means that Trump’s absurd candidacy is no laughing matter for Canadians. There are so many ways that a second incarnation of President Trump could hurt this country. And let’s not kid ourselves. If Trump thinks that Harris is a communist, just imagine how he would size up Justin Trudeau in a second term. Actually, you don’t have to use your imagination at all. Trump has already called Trudeau a two-faced, far-left lunatic whose real father might have been Fidel Castro. He talks like a guy who is always writing a sidebar story for the National Enquirer. When Trump ran the White House, he didn’t hesitate to use his country’s vast economic influence over Canada. That’s what can happen when you send 80 per cent of your exports to one country. Back then, Trump increased duties on soft-wood lumber from Canada, and imposed punishing tariffs on our steel and aluminum that led us to impose counter tariffs. The sad fact is that a great deal of what can be done in Canada on a variety of files depends heavily on the attitude of the administration in power in the United States. The life-and-death struggle against climate change, for example, depends on a closely integrated effort by all polluters if the planet is to have any chance of meeting emission targets. The world got a great break from the Americans when President Joe Biden rejoined the Paris climate agreement. Trump doesn’t have an environmentalist bone in his body. Nor is he a free trader. He is an arch protectionist and isolationist. He is the guy who pulled the Americans out of the Paris Agreement, and he may do that a second time if he wins in November. Remember, he is firmly on the record saying that he doesn’t believe global warming is caused mainly by human activities. Cows breaking wind, you see. Trump has the power to undermine much of what the Trudeau government is doing on the climate front. The former president has already said that it was a mistake to cancel the Keystone pipeline. That is perfectly consistent with his new motto if he wins in November: “Drill, baby, drill.” And there is another ominous implication if Trump regains the White House. During the Biden Administration, the president encouraged the transition from gas to electric vehicles. He did that with a combination of subsidies, building charging stations, and generous tax credits. Trump has promised that he will reverse the Biden EV mandate on Day One of his presidency to protect the jobs of auto workers in Michigan. So what will that mean for the billions of dollars Ottawa and the provinces have invested in massive battery plants in Canada? Would anyone be surprised if Trump imposed outlandish tariffs on Canadian-made EV batteries as he has promised to do on Chinese EVs? But the most frightening word on the horizon should Trump win the White House is "water". Let’s call this one Trump’s "Very Large Faucet” whopper. Campaigning in parched California, Trump said: “You have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the North, with the snow caps and Canada, all pouring down. And they have, essentially, a very large faucet and you turn the faucet, and it takes one day to turn, and it’s massive … and you turn that, and all of that water goes aimlessly into the Pacific. And if you turned it back, all of that water would come right down here, and right into Los Angeles.” Reality check. Except in Trump’s confabulating brain, there is no such system to channel water from Canada or the Pacific Northwest to Southern California. But never mind that. The big news is that Trump is already thinking about Canadian water. Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times