Donald Trump's Threats Against Canada No 'Head Fake' -

U.S. President Donald Trump takes a question from a reporter after Tulsi Gabbard is sworn in as Director of National Intelligence in the Oval Office at the White House on Feb. 12, 2025 in Washington, D.C.

“Flooding the zone” is a football term, but it’s been appropriated by political people.

In football, flooding the zone happens when a team sends a lot of receivers to one side of the field – to force the other team to overcommit defenders to that side of the field, and thereby leave the middle or opposite side of the field exposed.

Political guys loves sports metaphors, because it makes them sound like tough guys, instead of what they mostly are, which is dweebs who never got picked for any team, and who got involved with the debate club instead.

Donald Trump’s Reubenesque former chief of staff, Steve Bannon, is apparently out of jail now, and he loves to use that term.

In 2018, Bannon famously said this to a writer at Bloomberg: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh–.”

Politicos love that tough-guy jocky stuff. So, over on the search engine Bing, which keeps track of these things, “flood the zone” shows up in 2,280,000 places, most of them in the context of politics. Sorry, football.

So, that’s what the aforementioned Trump is now doing, albeit without the assistance of Bannon (see jail, above). He’s flooding the zone with sh–, to distract from his real purpose.

There is literally not enough room in this entire newspaper to properly describe what Trump and his winged monkeys have done in the 27 days since he was re-inaugurated (feels like 27 years, don’t it?) – suffice to say it’s been a lot.

He’s thrown Ukraine to the Russian wolves. He’s threatened to use military force against Denmark, a NATO ally, to seize Greenland. He’s threatened force against Panama, another ally. He’s freed Jan. 6 felons, and fired FBI agents.
He’s pulled out of the World Health Organization and hired an anti-vaxxer and former junkie to run health care. He’s changed the names of mountains and bodies of water to things he likes better. He’s barred reporters who ask questions he doesn’t like.

And, most significantly, he’s threatened to use “economic force” against Canada. He’s said, a couple dozen times, that he wants to make us the 51st state. He’s mocked our prime minister and our leader of the opposition. He’s said that we offer nothing of value. And so on and so on.

There’s another sporty term, which is “head fake.” It means moving your head to fake a change in direction when you’ve got the puck or the ball or whatever. Some people, like Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, had convinced themselves that Trump’s anti-Canada rantings were all a head fake – that is, until Trump announced tariffs on Canadian oil and gas, and then it didn’t seem very head fake-y anymore. That woke up her and the oil patch.

The two best prime ministers of my lifetime were Jean Chretien and Stephen Harper (I worked for the former, full disclosure, and occasionally irritated the latter). Once retired, former prime ministers write their memoirs and tell inoffensive war stories to Rotarians. They generally stay out of domestic politics.

This week, Harper gave an extraordinary speech at an event in Ottawa. He said if he was still running things, “I would be prepared to impoverish the country and not be annexed, if that was the option we’re facing.”

Those are strong words. And he went on: “I would accept any level of damage to preserve the independence of the country.”

This week, I spoke with Chretien for my Kinsellacast podcast. He spoke approvingly of Harper, and what Harper had said.

“Our independence – there is a price to pay for that, “Chretien told me. “I would pay it. And that is exactly what Harper said. There might be a cost to that, and we have to face it.”

This, of course, is a lesson that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is now learning – the hard way. He still seems to think it’s a head fake. He doesn’t seem to understand that, when our country is under attack, we desperately want a leader to rally behind. Not a guy who likes to sneer that the country is “broken.”

It may be flooding the zone, fellow Canadians, but it’s not a head fake. It feels pretty real. Our former ally and friend is coming after us, hard.

As one of my political friends – a proud Conservative – said to me Thursday night: When one of us gets hit from behind, we all go over the boards to defend him.

Because, if one of us falls, we all fall.