Is Donald Trump Trying to be the Next Vladimir Putin Before Inauguration Day?

He won't shut up about what he says he wants to do!

If you’re relatively new to the issues related to Kremlin propaganda and how it’s affecting other countries (including the United States), I recommend reading some background posts I wrote that explains things in more detail along with links to other sites where you can read more to educate yourself.

I had debated whether I was going to write about Donald Trump's latest pre-Inauguration Day shenanigans or not because this guy has long been such an attention whore that he has a history of saying and doing outrageous stuff so people will write and talk about him. I really don't want to give him any more attention than necessary. (It's already bad enough that I have to pay some attention to him because he barely won the last election.) I decided to go ahead with writing about Trump's latest antics because I have a few theories about this that the mainstream media isn't even considering.

Donald Trump is acting like he wants to do to some of the US neighbors what Russia under Vladimir Putin had done to neighboring countries like Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine—invade them. And he's making waves before he has even been formally inaugurated as president.

Trump wants Panama to give the Panama Canal to the United States. The Panama Canal was originally built by the US between 1904 and 1914. It was managed by the US for decades, which caused tensions with Panama. In the 1970s the two countries signed an agreement where Panama would have control over the canal and the US relinquished its control in 1999. Trump wants the canal back in US hands because he claims that it is being operated by China, which Panama has denied.

Trump has spoken about Canada becoming the 51st state and he said that he would do so through “economic force.” Justin Trudeau, who recently announced his resignation as prime minister, tweeted on Twitter/X:

“There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.

Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other's biggest trading and security partner.”

That statement prompted this response from Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter/X who is currently hanging around Trump as often as possible: “Girl, you're not the governor of Canada anymore, so doesn't matter what you say.”

Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party who has been called “the Canadian Donald Trump” and is the person most likely to become the next prime minister, bluntly said “Canada will never be the 51st state. Period. We are a great and independent country.”

Trump has been posting images on his Truth Social account where the US borders are redrawn to include Canada, such as this one.

Even Fox News is getting into the act with one of its on-air hosts, Jesse Watters saying that he finds it “personally offensive” that Canadians refused to be annexed by the US while adding “That's what everyone wants in the world—American citizenship.”

Trump also wants Greenland. This article on the BBC News site has some background of this story, such as how Greenland has been ruled by Denmark for 300 years and the Danes want to keep it that way, Greenland has some precious minerals (such as uranium and iron) that the US would love to get ahold of, and Greenland is close enough to Russia that if Russia were to shoot a nuclear missile at the US, they could shoot it over Greenland. That same article also mentioned that throughout history the US had tried to purchase Greenland from Denmark a few times just like it had purchased Alaska from Russia but the Danes said no each time.

Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., flew into Greenland for a day but he didn’t meet with any officials although he shot video footage for future episodes of his podcast. The trip apparently inspired Don Jr. to post what looks like an AI generated photo of himself as a viking.

If all that weren't enough, Donald Trump has even proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. This prompted another one of Trump's sons, Eric, to issue his own tweet saying “GULF OF AMERICA!!!”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded by proposing that North America should be renamed “América Mexicana” (“Mexican America” in English).

What on Earth is going on here?!? Here are a few theories I have about this situation:

Theory 1: Trump is outlining his plans for the immediate future and he is going to do everything that he says he will do in order to usher in a new era of American imperialism. He is probably being inspired by his close friend Vladimir Putin invading other neighboring countries so much that he feels like doing the same thing with America's neighboring countries.

Theory 2: Donald Trump's cognitive decline has accelerated and he is now at the point where he is just saying whatever is in his head at any given moment but he will soon move on to saying something else that is outrageous.

Theory 3: Donald Trump has long had an insatiable need for attention and the recent death of former President Jimmy Carter along with his state funeral has garnered so much worldwide media attention that Trump feels jealous. So he decided to say something outrageous in order to divert attention back to him.

Theory 4: Donald Trump is following the playbook that was developed by his ally Steve Bannon where he once said “The Democrats don't matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” This is known as Distributed Amplification, a type of propaganda whose main purpose is to sow confusion and distrust among the audience as to what is real and what is not.

Theory 5: Russia has somehow encouraged Donald Trump to say these things as a way of sowing chaos among US allies while also justifying Russia's imperialistic expansionism, as explained in this tweet by Julia Davis while retweeing this tweet by Russian state media RT that included a graphic of a cover of The New York Post with the headline “The Donroe Doctrine” and RT’s own message that said “The ‘Donroe Doctrine’ has landed & it's way more ambitious than the Monroe original…..Is any US neighbor safe?”

Theory 6: Some combination of two or more of the previous five theories.

Whatever is going on, it's one of those things that can't simply be ignored outright because there is the possibility that Trump might be serious about what he wants to do after Inauguration Day. Right now we have to wait and see what Trump will actually do in the future. We should focus more on what he actually does than on what he says he will do because we don't know how much of what he says is actually his dementia talking (or his narcissism talking or some other type of personality disorder talking). We need to wait until after he gets inside of the Oval Office again to find out what he will actually do and react accordingly.

If you need more convincing on why we should wait and see what he actually does and not what he simply says, I highly recommend this post on The Opinionated Ogre Substack.

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