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“The president was telling jokes. The president was teasing us,” Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc  following a meeting he attended between Trump and prime minister Justin Trudeau last November. Trump used to say this all the time in his first term as president, former Trudeau adviser Gerald Butts said in a . “He’s doing it to rattle Canadian cages,” he wrote. “When someone wants to you to freak out, don’t.”

No one laughed for long. Trump has continued to publicly muse about inflicting economic pain on Canada as his officials talk about statehood as the only good solution, while right-wing influencers in their orbit have gone as far as calling for an actual invasion. It’s a trajectory that observers say showcases Trump’s tendency to throw out outrageous ideas in order to chip away at established norms, the growing role of the attention economy and the right-wing media ecosystem, and the totality with which American politics now dominates public discourse — even in Canada.Ìý

The gravity has sunk in north of the border. LeBlanc backtracked , telling reporters that “the joke is over.”

It began in late November when Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s lavish Florida golf resort, to dine on crab cocktail and oysters and try to talk him out of the tariffs he was proposing to impose on Canadian goods imported to the U.S. It was there, according to sources who swiftly leaked to , that Trump had floated a then-unfamiliar idea: that Canada become the 51st state of the United States of America.Ìý

It’s not clear exactly where the idea came from, but its genesis, at least publicly, seems to track back to Trump. Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney, speaking on Paul Wells’ podcast recently, cautioned against imposing “rational explanations” on Trump’s behaviour, but argued the president’s original fixation may have been the result of a longtime interest colliding with one of the biggest current demands of his base.Ìý

Trump has long had a “particular zeal” for tariffs untethered to conventional wisdom — he took out ads in the Wall Street Journal in the 1980s, Kenney recalled, arguing for tariffs on an economically ascendant Japan — and has been surrounded by a new MAGA coalition focused on raising revenue. Trump also found broad support in last year’s election campaign by narrowing in on fears about border security. Of course, that had previously meant the southern border, but given the interest in security, “why not throw Canada in, too?” Kenney said.

“I think the whole 51st state thing was at first a joke,” he added, “but it started to get a real reaction, and I think that just encouraged him to keep poking it.”

And keep poking at it he did. The same day reports emerged of his musings to Trudeau, Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to post a majestic image of himself standing atop a mountain, a Canadian flag rippling beside him. (There were signs the image was AI-generated, not least being that the mountain he gazed out on appeared to be the Matterhorn in Europe.) 

In a sign of Trump’s ability to rally attention, the topic immediately sparked controversy among Canadians on social media that has yet to die down, according to an analysis of public Facebook posts done by the Social Media Lab at º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøMetropolitan University.

A graph of roughly 60,000 posts between December and March show bursts of chatter about Canada becoming the 51st state, including after a Truth Social post in mid-December in which Trump suggested that many Canadians were eager to join the U.S., and then a Christmas Day post inviting Canadian hockey-hero-turned-MAGA-supporter Wayne Gretzky to run for prime minister, a position “soon to be known as the Governor of Canada.”

The online response shows how sensitive even Canadians have become to pronouncements from Trump, said Philip Mai, a senior researcher and co-director of the Social Media Lab. In between the spikes in attention, the interest in the 51st state never fully died down. “As more and more people became aware, they started looking for (mentions of the 51st state),” Mai said.Ìý

“It’s like when you buy a new car, let’s say a Toyota Corolla, and all of a sudden you’re noticing all the Toyota Corollas on the street,” he said.Ìý

But while Trump claims that Canadians are clamouring to become Americans, the Social Media Lab’s analysis found that emojis told a different story. It observed that posts about Canada becoming the 51st state were more likely to be peppered by the tiny faces that expressed skepticism — think the crying-laughing, shocked or pondering ones, that expressed “a mix of anger, irony and critical reactions to threats to Canadian sovereignty,” as the lab’s analysis .Ìý

As the idea gained eyeballs, it was picked up by right-wing media influencers in the United States who often boost Trump’s ideas. At a time when attention converts to eyeballs, which means money, that took the idea of Canadian subservience even further.Ìý

“I think we take Canada and then we go right into Mexico,” Joe Rogan, one of the biggest fish in the podcasting pond, said in early January, in an episode that has been viewed almost five million times .

“After we destroy the Canadian economy, their will to resist will erode,” podcaster Tim Pool wrote in early February in a post on X that has been viewed almost three million times. “We will then march in unopposed.” (Pool is one of the right-wing influencers implicated in allegations Russia was paying YouTubers for divisive content. that if the claims were true, he was “deceived” and is a “victim.”) 

“The thing that the right-wing media ecosystem understands really well is that conflict is attention and attention is influence,” said Danielle Lee Tomson, the research manager for the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, who studies conservative influencers. They also understand that at a time when there are so many players on the internet competing for eyeballs, she added, being able to attract and keep attention is a new form of currency.

To understand how these podcasters do that, she suggested thinking about improv theatre, in which performers build on the work of others in the group, making up dialogue and characters on the spot. It may not be planned, but if Trump throws out a cue — even something “outrageous or silly or seemingly not even in the realm of possibility, like turning a sovereign country like Canada into a state” — they will start riffing and throwing out new ideas to see what gets under their audience’s skin.

As mainstream media has declined, these formerly fringe podcasters have taken up more space in the public conversation. This is particularly true under Trump, who has courted and cajoled fringe podcasters in a way not seen under other presidents. “Just look at the numbers on a Joe Rogan viewership or subscription base versus even mainstream podcasts or news broadcasts. It doesn’t even compare,” Tomson said. “So even if you are not a Joe Rogan listener, the fact that there are so many Joe Rogan listeners, that is in the zeitgeist and it’s driving attention and conversation.”

In some cases, such as the unproven claim that immigrants to the U.S. were eating pets, the more extreme rumours then get recirculated by mainstream politicians, such as when JD Vance amplified the pet-eating claims in the run-up to the election that made him vice-president, she pointed out.Ìý

When it comes to the Canadian reaction, Mai noticed the conversation had taken a turn for the serious in early February — specifically, on the day Trudeau was caught on a hot mic telling business leaders that Trump’s intention to take over Canada was “a real thing,” a development which sparked another spike of engagement on social media.Ìý

The pattern of social media surges suggest public interest was being driven by comments from politicians, Trump and Trudeau in particular, Mai said. In this case, Canadians seemed to take the threat more seriously once Trudeau signalled that his government was doing the same.Ìý

Regardless of whether these ideas are serious — and it remains to be seen whether Trump is serious about absorbing Canada — Mai and Tomson said the shift in tone in the conversation has bled into the real world.Ìý

In the United States, the claims that Canada should be the 51st state have already seeded a new story about Canada to many Americans — that Canada is in debt to America, that it is not an ally but subservient.Ìý

“So this ties into a bigger populist of, maybe we were getting the short end of the deal. Maybe they owe us something,” Tomson said. It’s “a way of changing public sentiment. Even if you don’t get to a 51st state, it’s a way of changing the narrative about how the world works.” 

North of the border, the seriousness of the conversation is apparent. “You see people cancelling their trips. You see people American vegetables wilting at the store because nobody’s buying them,” Maid said. “People have come to realize we’re actually pretty vulnerable.”