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TOP STORY
As the U.S. awoke to a renewed Liberal government on their northern border, Americans of all political persuasions embraced the view that they — for better or worse — had caused it.
“Carney owes his job to President Donald Trump,” was the Tuesday view of the Washington Post editorial board, declaring that the U.S. president had singlehandedly thwarted the election of a populist Conservative government in Canada.
The Centre for American Progress Action Fund — a left-wing Washington, D.C.-based think tank — framed Carney’s win as a model for how anti-Trump rhetoric can win elections.
“Prime Minister Carney’s success demonstrates that resistance to President Trump’s bullying has mass popular appeal,”
.
Actor Billy Baldwin, a perennial backer of progressive causes, cheered Carney’s victory with a viral social media post declaring “Trump singlehandedly delivers the election for the liberals in Canada with his 51st state bullsh-t.”
Trump singlehandedly delivers the election for the liberals in Canada with his 51st state bullshit.
Congratulations to Prime Minister Mark Carney from all of us down here in the 11th Province !!! 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 🤣 pic.twitter.com/KcBrIp80G7
— Billy Baldwin (@BillyBaldwin) April 29, 2025
Even Rolling Stone, which put Justin Trudeau on the magazine’s cover in 2017, opined that Canada’s newest Liberal government was effectively a Trump creation. “Donald Trump single-handedly elected a new Canadian Liberal Government that was down 25 points in January with his endless ‘51st State’ bloviation,”
.
Conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro broke down the Canadian election in an extended segment on his Tuesday show, framing it as a direct failure of Trump’s foreign policy.
“Let’s be real about this; the rhetorical attacks on Canada have not actually resulted in a net good for the United States,” said Shapiro. A perennial critic of Trump’s tariff policy, Shapiro said that the White House’s habit of “yelling at Canada” had helped install a “far left-leaning internationalist” hostile to U.S. interests.
“All of this started off as a joke, and I think President Trump is so committed to the bit at this point that he couldn’t get off the train,” said Shapiro, in reference to Trump’s repeated pledges to turn Canada into the “51st state.”
A Republican consultant
quoted anonymously by Politico on Tuesday
was of a similar view, saying the outcome in Canada was a “pretty specific result based on the tariffs and 51st state trolling.”
Trump himself appears to be of the view that he bears responsibility for the Canadian result. Just prior to the campaign, Fox News host Laura Ingraham directly accused Trump of aiding the Liberals with his anti-Canada rhetoric, to which Trump replied “I don’t care.”
“I’d rather deal with a liberal than a conservative,” he added.
On Monday, The Atlantic published an interview with Trump in which he acknowledged that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had been on course for victory prior to his own November victory.
“You know, until I came along, remember that the conservative was leading by 25 points,” said Trump, adding “I was disliked by enough of the Canadians that I’ve thrown the election into a close call.”
The reaction of some Trump allies was to blame Poilievre himself, alleging that he “
,” or hadn’t been sufficiently deferential to Trump’s Make America Great Again banner.
“This isn’t about Trump. (Poilievre is) just a bad candidate with a worse campaign. Poilievre is Canada’s Mitt Romney,”
by the MAGA-aligned X account Election Wizard.
Curt Mills, editor of the American Conservative, said Poilievre would have been “Canuck DeSantis,” a reference to Ron DeSantis, the popular Republican governor of Florida who challenged Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.
“Trump will (and has already) weirdly get on with Carney,” wrote Mills in a social media post. “Trump vibes with the smart, hyper-Machiavellian center left type.”
Prediction: Trump will (and has already) weirdly get on with Carney. Trump vibes with the smart, hyper-Machiavellian center left type. His relationships with Macron and Starmer are strong. ..He isn’t actually friends with Boris Johnson. Poilevre could have been Canuck DeSantis https://t.co/yjJqtNgQQ2
— Curt Mills (@CurtMills) April 29, 2025
The heterodox U.S. publication Compact similarly tried to position the win of Carney as a kind of indirect Trump victory, as the Liberals had won on an unusually nationalistic program.
“The fact that the liberals were only able to beat Trump by embracing the language of national independence, national interest, and sovereignty make clear that Carney’s electoral victory happened on Trumpian terrain,”
.
IN OTHER NEWS
The world’s non-U.S. media was also quick to frame Canada’s race as the “Trump election.” A sample of headlines:
- Canadian PM Mark Carney wins snap election upended by Trump’s threats. Le Monde (France).
- Trump made Carney’s turnaround victory possible. BBC (United Kingdom).
- Canada’s Liberals ride Trump backlash to comeback election victory. RNZ (New Zealand).
India’s NDTV, meanwhile, was
that former NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was gone. Singh has long been unpopular within conservative Indian circles for his perceived warmth towards Sikh nationalism.
And Chinese state media
that China will “develop its relations with Canada based on mutual respect, equality and mutual benefits” after the election, although that’s pretty standard talk for Chinese media.
The Conservatives’ only chance at winning on Monday night was to attract outsized rates of voter turnout. That obviously didn’t put them over the finish line, but voter turnout did end up being slightly higher than normal. About
68.7 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot for the 45th Canadian general election
, the highest since 1993 – and a rate far higher than the 62.6 per cent who showed up in 2021. Still, this means that the largest single block of voters in this election was the non-voter. The Liberals were re-elected by 30 per cent of eligible voters, while the non-voter tally came to 31.5 per cent.
This newsletter covered the phenomenon of more than 300 candidates endorsing a “Vote Palestine” platform pushed by the Palestinian Youth Movement, an extreme anti-Zionist group that openly celebrated the October 7 massacres. Well, 93 per cent of those candidates didn’t get elected, including
some of the most vocal anti-Israel MPs in the House of Commons
. Among them were New Democrats Niki Ashton, Blake Desjarlais, Matthew Green and Joel Harden.
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