In fairness, the US paid for the Panama Canal and have continued to sustain it despite no "ownership".

Panama is only relevant because of the US investment in the Canal and they claim ownership when it suits them and then cry poverty every time investments need to be made.

Panama is currently playing with fire by courting foreign interest that doesn't align with the US, who are effectively their paymasters.

It's not a sudden "empire-building" move by the US. The fact that the canal exists at all has always been because of the US Empire. Panama is playing a dangerous game of FA&FO.

To me, the canal thing is the only thing he's mentioned that is possible. There's a stipulation that does allow for that, just like there's a stipulation that the crown can do away with parliament in the UK. Doesn't mean it's an unlikely provision to be invoked without a lot of negative baggage to the point they are not likely to happen.

Trump is just throwing out every threat he can. There's simply no realistic way to unilaterally take Canada, or the canal, or Greenland.

Normal people would try to negotiate trade relations. Megalomaniacs would decide to just take something even if they try to soften the taking with money.

China buying the US actually makes a lot of sense. I think if every citizen there was offered $5million they’d vote yes.

> I think if every citizen there was offered $5million they’d vote yes. And it’s entirely reasonable from the USA perspective as it’s not that much overall for the US.

That's almost $300 billion dollars?

As far as I'm aware we have no laws about going and making a moron out of yourself advocating for giving the country away. Nor do I particularly think we need any, morons can be morons, the rest of us can ignore them (and I say this as someone strongly against the idea of joining the states).

Naked sedition would be promoting an actual invasion, not just floating the idea of Canada joining as the 51st state voluntarily and figuring out the logistics of how that could happen (which as far as I can tell is all this is).

We don't have an equivalent of the American Logan Act that would make this illegal.

I don't think there's any need to arrest anyone as a show of strength. I don't feel the threat of an actual American invasion and I like living in a free society that doesn't go around arresting people for political show. Most of us are offended by Kevin being a self appointed negotiator on behalf of Canada but it's not like government is bound by anything he says so if he wants to talk in private with Trump as a private citizen so be it.