Donald Trump says he's ‘really not trolling’ about making Canada the 51st US state

Donald Trump has flirted with the idea of making Canada the 51st US state on multiple occasions since returning to the White House. While it has raised several eyebrows and even drawn criticism, the president is not joking about it. In a new interview with Time magazine, the commander-in-chief confirmed that he is “really not trolling” about expanding the American territory.

Trump says he's ‘really not trolling’ about turning Canada into the 51st US state

In the interview published Friday, a reporter asked Trump, “You’ve talked about acquiring Greenland, taking control of the Panama Canal, making Canada the 51st state. Maybe you’re trolling a little bit on that [last] one.”

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To this, the president replied, “Actually, no, I'm not.” His question prompted a journalist to follow up with, “Well, do you want to grow the American empire?”

“Well, it depends,” Trump said, adding, “As an empire, it wasn’t — these are not things that we had before, so I’d view it a little bit differently if we had the right opportunity.”

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The POTUS continued to say, “Yeah, I think Greenland would be very well off if they, I think it’s important for us for national security and even international security.”

“I think Canada, what you said that, ‘Well, that one, I might be trolling.’ But I’m really not trolling,” he added, reiterating his point. However, since Mark Carney took over as the Canadian prime minister, Trump has rarely spoken about his idea to annexe his neighbouring country.

Before that, Trump poked fun at the former Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, calling him “governor.” “Canada is an interesting case. We lose $200 to $250 billion a year supporting Canada,” he further told Time.