Donald Trump posted a bizarre image depicting himself standing on a mountaintop beside a Canadian flag on Tuesday after he made headlines for a reported joke to the country’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
“Oh Canada!” Trump captioned the image, which appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence.
Trudeau flew to Florida last week to meet the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago estate after Trump threatened to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian products. Fox News reported that, during the meeting, Trump joked that if Canada’s economy can’t survive under the proposed tariffs, then perhaps Canada should become the 51st state of the U.S. and Trudeau could be its governor.
Trudeau reportedly laughed nervously at the comment.
Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who attended Friday’s dinner at Mar-a-Lago, later told reporters Trump was “teasing” and it was “in no way a serious comment.”
Critics quickly pointed out a flaw in Trump’s image: The mountain in it resembles the Matterhorn, which is in Switzerland, not Canada.
However, a handful of people argued the formation looked a little bit like Mount Assiniboine in Canada’s British Columbia.
AI-generated mountain aside, it’s peculiar for the U.S. president to be joking about annexing its neighbor, and people on social media said so, calling the post rude, unfunny, disrespectful and “spectacularly dumb.”
