Maybe making Canada the 51st state wasn’t such a great idea.
Calvin Trillin is a longtime staff writer for the New Yorker.
As Wayne Gretzky prepares to take office on Monday as the first Canadian-born president of the United States since the 2026 annexation and statehood of Canada, Washington observers assume he will reverse his predecessor’s executive order mandating that the term “the Great One,” employed for years to refer to Gretzky as perhaps the greatest hockey player of all time, be used only to refer to Donald J. Trump.
The executive order has already been challenged in court on First Amendment grounds. Although Aileen M. Cannon, as a U.S. district judge in Florida, ruled in President Donald Trump’s favor, she was later reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in a scathing decision charging that Cannon had abandoned the constitutional independence of the judiciary when she said, “Anything he does is okey dokey with me.”
Relations between Trump and Gretzky have been strained since Gretzky’s overwhelming victory in both the popular vote and the electoral college over his Republican opponent, Eric Trump. The outgoing president has been highly critical of Congress’s decision, passed hastily once Gretzky’s victory made a second attack on the Capitol seem inevitable, to conduct the certification of the presidential election in an undisclosed location.
In repeated interviews, Trump has described the secret certification as a way of depriving law-abiding citizens of their First Amendment right to hold peaceful political demonstrations. He has pointed out that the Proud Boys, who have had four years to build their stockpile of arms since he pardoned virtually everyone involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, have pledged to refrain from using tactical nuclear weapons on federal property.
Trump, who once saw making Canada the 51st state as a cornerstone of his legacy, appears to blame the large Canadian congressional delegation for spearheading the drive to hold the certification in secret. On social media, he has referred to Canadian members of Congress as “a bunch of deranged losers who, despite being granted the joys and privileges available to Americans, which they don’t deserve, persist in pouring cheese curds and gravy over perfectly good french fries.”
Under persistent questioning by reporters about Stephen Miller’s week-long absence from Washington, Trump administration press secretary Tiffany Trump revealed that the president’s deputy chief of staff has been in Hungary attending (“as an observer only”) the annual meeting of the Convention of Ethnically Cleansed Nations. Apparently, it was former classmates of Miller’s at Santa Monica High School who, in what the press secretary has characterized as “a cruel prank,” started the rumor that he had been hiding out because the incoming Gretzky administration was planning during its first 100 days to carry out mass deportations of dorks.
It remains unclear whether Gretzky will intervene in the federal court case that was filed last year when Elon Musk bought Greenland from Mark Zuckerberg. The outgoing administration has supported the deal, but some congressional leaders remain uncertain about whether Greenland was the Meta CEO’s to sell. Musk has expressed no uncertainty whatsoever, pointing out that, “to sweeten the deal,” his payment to Zuckerberg included, in addition to cash, a nuclear submarine and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Particularly after Trump’s recent Supreme Court nominees were confirmed, he has expressed confidence that he will prevail in court challenges to some of his more controversial policies. That confidence was bolstered by the Supreme Court’s recent decision that, even after he leaves the White House, he can continue to use the Lincoln Bedroom as a storage area for Trump merch, such as onesies embossed with the presidential seal, while awaiting the completion of a warehouse in Trump World, the former Gaza. Delivering the majority opinion in that case, Justice Aileen M. Cannon said, “Anything he does is okey dokey with me.”
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