Donald Trump has already seized one Canadian asset: our attention

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Donald Trump is shamelessly trolling and manipulating Canadians, according to a bevy of experts who suggest a variety of strategies we can adopt in response.

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“On the one hand, giving the trolling air time plays into Trump’s time-tax, the distraction of it all, taking one of our most precious resources: attention,” said Vass Bednar, managing director of the Canadian Shield Institute, a public policy think tank, said of a recent Trump social media post which portrayed Canada as part of the U.S.

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“On the other hand, his immature aggression is a reminder that we are not dealing with a typical or predictable administration and need to act accordingly,” she said in an email to National Post.

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The Truth Social post made by Trump over the Labour Day weekend showed all of North America, Greenland, Iceland and the Caribbean illustrated with the U.S. Stars and Stripes. It harkened to Trump’s rhetoric about Canada as the 51st state and his talk about a strategic need for the U.S. to take over Greenland.

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Iceland summoned its U.S. ambassador over the post, but official Canada mostly shrugged after years of similar Trump trolling.

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Peter Jones, University of Ottawa professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, told the Post that “it’s very difficult to know if (Trump is) just having his version of fun, or if there’s a rationale behind it, and that’s the problem.”

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He points out that when Trump first began referring to Canada as the 51st state, “many dismissed it as a sick joke. Now, people aren’t so sure. Certainly, Greenland and Denmark (and much of the EU) don’t dismiss his threats against that territory as a joke. They believe he is ready to move against them.”

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He suggests going back to Trump’s second inaugural address, when he laid out “a vision of America as a country which is still expanding, still planting its flag over new territories. Many felt it was rhetoric, but it now seems he may have meant it.”

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He notes Trump’s explicit mention of aiming to “take over through economic coercion, not military means. I think we have to be prepared to take him at his word that this is what he really believes.”

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As someone who grew up in Philadelphia, Carlo Dade, director of International Policy at the University of Calgary told National Post that Trump’s trolling reminds him of schoolyard tactics he grew up with. And, he says, it’s “a standard tactic in the business community … used enough to be immediately recognizable and generate an eye roll.”

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It done to “throw your opponent off, get under their skin, distract attention, occupy the public discourse. If folks are talking about this, they’re talking about an agenda you’ve set, not something else. It’s a public negotiation tactic.”

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However, Dade notes, “the twist with Trump is that through executive authority he can make good on some of his taunts, he can disrupt markets, etc.”

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Therefore, Dade advises, “the trick is to balance not encouraging him against not being dismissive.” And that means not making any public comments, while privately preparing for the worst case. He says the best example of this may be Alberta Premier Danielle Smith dealing with this during her first Mar al Lago visit.

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“When Trump brought up 51st state, her reported response was ‘Ha, ha, very funny, now about oil’.”

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Brian Rathbun, professor of international relations and political science at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, says: “Trump and strategy never belong in the same sentence. This strikes me as the kind of trolling he likes to do as a kind of self-soothing when he is not really in control of a situation.”