The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Trump’s second-term foreign policy is now just fan fiction performed live. At a Florida rally, Trump promised that once he’s done "neutralizing" Iran, those "beautiful ships" will swing by Cuba, park 50 yards off the coast, and then he’ll send in Secretary of State Marco Rubio to "finish up the deal" — because nothing screams responsible diplomacy like teasing a sequel coup between campaign chants.

Rubio, whose family actually left Batista’s Cuba but who once tried to retcon them into heroic Castro-era exiles, is now openly moonlighting as the CIA’s HR department. On X, he invited people who want "positive change in Cuba" to pursue a "discrete [sic] partnership with the CIA" — yes, he both publicly advertised covert work and misspelled it. U.S. officials and members of Congress dutifully boosted the post, turning what used to be illegal covert meddling into a kind of public influencer campaign for regime change.

This isn’t some one-off brain fart; it’s the logical next step of a security state that now treats foreign countries like stages and coups like branded content. The CIA has already been doing open recruitment for Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans online; under Trump 2.0 and Rubio, that quiet creep has become a megaphone. Intelligence work that was once at least embarrassed enough to hide is now a midterm messaging strategy — and a reminder that for this crowd, sovereignty is optional, but self-promotion is non-negotiable.

Donald Trump, a man who thinks Sharpies are a cartography degree, has signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America”, following his earlier attempt to rebrand the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Canada, which actually shares the lake and named an entire province after it, has responded with the appropriate level of respect: laughter. Bryan Adams has now joined the resistance, armed with a guitar and more historical knowledge than the entire Trump Cabinet.

In his new song Lake Ontario, Adams reminds everyone that the “lake of shining waters” is an Iroquois name, not something cooked up in a presidential tantrum and stapled to an executive order. He also gently notes that Trump’s lake-grabbing stunt looks a lot like a distraction from awkward topics such as the war in Iran and the Epstein files gaining traction. It’s part of Adams’s upcoming album, which also features 51st State, a musical middle finger to Trump’s not-at-all-joking fantasies about annexing Canada. The best part? He debuted the song in the US and got standing ovations, suggesting that even American audiences are getting tired of watching a would‑be empire run by a guy who thinks you can conquer Canada by renaming its water.

The US military says it blew up a “suspected” drug-trafficking vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing five people, and the Trump administration would very much like you to just take their word for it. This is one of more than 70 such strikes in Trump’s second term alone, with over 240 people killed so far in his unofficial sequel to the War on Drugs, now with extra drones and even fewer rules.

Trump and friends claim the US is in an armed conflict with Latin American cartels, which is a convenient way of saying we can bomb whoever we want on the high seas without the annoying burden of trials, evidence, or due process. Minor catch: they haven’t provided any definitive proof that these boats or the people on them are actually trafficking anything, beyond the crime of existing where Trump’s Pentagon feels like dropping ordnance.

Legal experts and human rights groups are pointing out that this looks a lot like extrajudicial killing of civilians who pose no immediate threat to the US, but the administration’s position appears to be that if you say “war” enough times, the Constitution just dissolves into the ocean. America’s new maritime justice system is simple: no charges, no courts, no transparency – just trust us, they were bad, and hope your fishing boat never looks too suspicious from the air.

Alberta just held a referendum on whether to start the process of maybe, someday, considering breaking up Canada, and 75% of voters responded with the political equivalent of: "we've seen Brexit, we’ve seen Trump, we’re good." This is especially awkward for Donald Trump, who spent last week threatening trade war escalation and musing that Canada would end up as the 51st US state, because nothing says "stable genius" like publicly fantasizing about annexing your largest trading partner while you’re already busy torching your own democracy.

Prime minister Mark Carney — yes, the former central banker, now apparently the adult supervision for an entire country — has been selling a plan to make Canada an energy superpower that’s "much less dependent on the United States." Trump helpfully boosted that sales pitch by acting like the clingy ex who thinks yelling about tariffs is a love language. Alberta, historically allergic to Liberal PMs, suddenly discovered that being turned into a bargain-bin Puerto Rico-with-pipelines for President Tariff Goblin might not be the power move separatists promised.

The fine print, of course, is bleak: to keep Alberta inside the federation and out of Trump’s real-estate daydreams, Carney cut deals with Premier Danielle Smith to greenlight a new 1-million-barrel-a-day pipeline and shred environmental rules. So yes, Canada stays together and keeps Trump’s tiny hands off its oil patch – by handing Big Oil a giant victory and turning climate policy into a decorative concept. Meanwhile, Alberta’s separatist brain trust is out here saying founding a country is "super easy" and treating Blackfoot treaty rights as a "speed bump," proving that Trump-style magical thinking and contempt for Indigenous rights are, regrettably, fully exportable.

For now, Canada holds together because its default political emotion is not rage or grievance, but anxiety. They don’t love the country, they worry about it – which, compared to the Trump model of governance-by-tantrum, turns out to be a shockingly effective pro-democracy strategy. While Trump dreams of slapping a flag on Alberta’s oil fields, Canadians are busy doing something far more radical: voting to not blow up their own country for the dopamine hit of owning Ottawa.

Iranian state media has discovered America’s most sensitive strategic asset: the gas pump. With prices spiking thanks to Trump’s made-for-Fox conflict with Tehran, outlets like Fars News are gleefully live-blogging U.S. voter rage while the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps helpfully informs Americans that Trump’s “booming economy” line is, actually, his “biggest lie.” Bold statement for a country that knows a thing or two about state propaganda.

While Iran’s own economy wheezes under U.S. sanctions and an American naval blockade, its leaders are still having a grand time trolling Trump’s political free fall. The speaker of Parliament is out here joking about returning the U.S. to 1970s bond yields, high gas prices, diesel shortages and bell-bottoms, because if you’re going to watch the world burn, you might as well rate the aesthetics. Meanwhile, reports suggest the political blowback has yanked Trump back from the brink of yet another glorious, poorly planned military adventure — with the midterm results now poised to decide whether the U.S. keeps playing oil-price roulette with global stability.

Trump hopped on Truth Social after midnight to announce that “massive oil, gas and mineral exploration” is about to begin in “our new and beautiful Greenland,” which is an interesting way to describe a place the U.S. does not own and where new oil drilling has been banned since 2021. Greenland’s own officials politely clarified that, no, there is no “massive” anything happening, unless you count the size of Trump’s fantasies about annexing other people’s land.

The “experts” Trump cites appear to be a Texas outfit called Greenland Energy and, naturally, Dr. Phil. The company claims there’s $1 trillion in crude under Jameson Land and has been gearing up to drill there despite not actually having permission from Greenland’s government. Dr. Phil’s media company is along for the ride to film a docu-series, because if you’re going to help launder an imperial resource grab, you might as well get some ratings out of it.

This little sideshow just happens to be staffed with Trump-world regulars. Greenland Energy added Carol Craig to its board — she’s deeply involved in Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense boondoggle, the same project he uses to argue that U.S. “ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.” The board chair, Larry Swets, reportedly has Trump’s ear and swears the drilling push is “not related to American annexation,” which is exactly the sort of thing you say when it absolutely is. So the pattern is clear: first you expand the U.S. military footprint, then your friends’ companies sniff around for oil, and finally you scream on social media about how Greenland is basically already yours.