10 months ago
CALGARY — A year ago, Tucker Carlson was calling on Americans to invade and “liberate” Canada from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Now, he’s getting the red carpet treatment in Alberta.
Carlson’s two-stop tour of Canada brings MAGA to its heartland just as Trudeau’s government is suddenly consumed by how it would respond to a second Donald Trump presidency.
Trump has floated Carlson as a potential running mate, never mind their hot-and-cold relationship, but the former Fox News host says he doesn’t want to talk about it.
“There was a time when journalists knew that talking about the future was a fruitless endeavor. In fact, it wasn't journalism. So I'm not going to respond to that,” Carlson told POLITICO in an interview before ending the call with some dramatic flourish.
“I have to go because my plane is taking off,” he said. “I'm gonna go liberate Canada.”
The far-right darling’s liberation mission features two sold-out events in Alberta, with 4,000 people attending in Calgary and 8,000 in Edmonton. Entry tickets in Calgary cost C$200, plus hundreds more for a seat with catered lunch, organized by a small PR firm that has produced separate events in Canada for George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama.
The Canadian junket follows a string of international trips that have fueled chatter about the fantasy draft role Carlson could play as vice president or foreign envoy in a potential Trump administration.
Speculation about the latter was fueled by Carlson’s decision to spend the fall rubbing shoulders with far-right populists such as Argentina’s Javier Milei and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. A visit to Spain placed him at a Madrid protest with far-right Vox party leader Santiago Abascal, accusing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez for being a tyrant and dictator over an election deal with Catalan separatists.
Carlson was poised last spring to release “O Canada,” a documentary he teased with a provocative trailer that included Trudeau in the likeness of Adolf Hitler. The project was permanently shelved after the anchor was suddenly sacked by Fox News.
Now, Carlson has retrained his focus on Trudeau. But despite all the airtime he’s devoted to bashing the third-term leader, Carlson now insists he finds it all a bit boring.
“I can't imagine a less interesting figure. I mean, he's so uninteresting. He has to dress up in costume to get people's attention,” Carlson explained and laughed over his own reference to Trudeau’s blackface incidents which conservatives often use to deride the prime minister’s progressive values.
“He's never said an interesting thing. He's never had an interesting thought. I don't even think his divorce is very interesting — and that says a lot.”
An American savior in Canada
Carlson’s Alberta trip marks his first trip to Canada since before the pandemic — or in his words, since before Trudeau’s “autocratic government took power and turned it into Cuba.”
Canada, a G7 country, is not Cuba.
“I live right near the border of eastern Canada,” said Carlson, who owns a home in Maine with a main residence in Florida. “I've spent my life going to Canada, and I love Canada sincerely.”
He praised Canada’s size, vast energy reserves and wilderness. “The firewood is literally endless,” he said, “And the trout are bigger.”
His Alberta arrival is not without controversy.
The hard-right provocateur’s focus on Canada took root during the so-called Freedom Convoy’s three-week occupation of Parliament Hill, a protest that immobilized downtown Ottawa with semi-trailer trucks, RVs and vehicles. Emergency laws were invoked for the first time ever to dislodge protestors, a motley crew of truckers, people against vaccines and Covid mandates, conspiracy theorists and voters fed up with Covid and Trudeau.
“Canada, under Justin Trudeau, has become, effectively, a dictatorship,” the then-Fox News host said on an episode that aired last February, a year after the convoy protest.
“Why don't we liberate it? We're spending all this money to liberate Ukraine from the Russians, why are we not sending an armed force to liberate Canada from Trudeau? And I mean it,” he said at the time.
The Calgary show is part of Carlson’s new “live events” side hustle. In anticipation of his visit, more than 17,000 people signed a petition calling for the cancellation of his Edmonton stadium show over concerns his “hate speech, misinformation and extremism” could make the LGBTQ+ community feel unsafe.
Carlson expressed outrage over the implementation of Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) law, which he identified as an issue motivating his Canadian speaking tour.
At least 44,958 medically assisted deaths have been recorded in Canada since the law was introduced in 2016, according to a government report published last year.
An overwhelming majority of deaths involved lives where natural death was “reasonably foreseeable.”
The Canadian government faces a March deadline to decide whether or not to expand the medically assisted death law to people who identify a mental disorder as their sole underlying condition for eligibility.
Conservatives have accused the Liberal government of promoting a “culture of death,” concerned the expansion will accelerate a slim but growing trend in the percentage of medically assisted deaths in cases where natural death was not predictable.
Carlson pointed to MAID as evidence that Canada is slipping into a totalitarian state.
“I just have to awaken people to what's very obvious from a distance,” he said. “Why are the Canadian people putting up with it?”
The issue, though highly sensitive and emotive, has not eclipsed housing and affordability as a top political wedge that could decide the next Canadian election.
Unease over Carlson’s Alberta whistle stops will be fodder for political debate in Canada as Trudeau’s approvals struggle to recover from record lows with his Liberals trailing Conservatives.
Ottawa getting serious on Trump strategy
Trudeau's inner circle has been gaming out how the specter of Trump's comeback — and the intrusion of MAGA apologists like Carlson into Canadian commentary — could influence the Liberals' odds in the next federal election.
Under law, the next Canadian election must take place on or before Oct. 20, 2025, giving the Liberals a maximum 21-month runway to figure out their election and Trump strategy.
This strategy was first deployed months ago. Trudeau spent the fall accusing rival Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre of leading a party that he says is importing a “right-wing American, MAGA influence” in Canada.
Trudeau spent Tuesday in a Montreal meeting with his Cabinet ministers and the country’s U.S. envoy, Kirsten Hillman, and debuted a “renewed Team Canada engagement strategy” to weather a potential Trump White House 2.0.
“Obviously, Mr. Trump represents a certain amount of unpredictability, but we will make sure we're pulling together and preparing for whatever eventualities,” Trudeau told reporters Tuesday.
Across the country, in downtown Calgary, Trudeau will be an easy political punching bag for Carlson and his guest, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, whose own conspiracy theory diet has seen her tout tonic water as a Covid treatment and hydroxychloroquine as a cure.
Both Carlson and Smith are symbols of a growing mainstream hard-right political counterculture, one that is sympathetic to waves of anger currently felt by voters.
The temptation for federal Liberals to attack Smith and her supporters for associating with Carlson will be irresistible, but also risky.
Trudeau’s Liberals deployed similar gambits during the 2019 and 2021 federal election campaigns, scoring points by accusing Canadian Conservatives of being MAGA copycats.
Conservatives have shrugged off the Liberals’ past attempts to link the party to Trump, stating they trust Canadians can pick up the differences between their cause and the MAGA movement.
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