» Joe Rogan tees off on Mark Carney: ‘Just as bad as Trudeau’

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After vowing to stop visiting Canada while Justin Trudeau was still in charge, Joe Rogan is weighing in on new Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that Canada should become the 51st state.

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“We got to become friends with Canada again. We have to … this is so ridiculous,” Rogan said during a conversation with comedian Michael Kosta on an episode of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast this week. “I can’t believe there’s anti-American and anti-Canadian sentiment going on. This is the dumbest f—ing feud.”

After Kosta questioned whether anti-Canadian sentiment was spreading in America amidst a trade war launched by Trump shortly after he assumed the presidency, Rogan said there is a wave of hostility towards his country’s neighbours.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of idiots that now think, ‘They’re our f—ing enemy. Why are we subsidizing Canada? How come they don’t have their own military?’” he said, echoing Trump’s repeated assertions that America is propping up the country. “Well, they don’t, so let’s deal with it.”

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When Kosta suggested that now that Trudeau has resigned there could be a shift in relations between America and Canada, Rogan took a swipe at current Liberal Leader Carney.

“They got a new guy, who’s just as bad,” Rogan said, laughing, as he offered a brief assessment of Canada’s 24th prime minister. “It’s the same thing … 150 people voted, and now they have a new guy running the country.”

Rogan then briefly explained to his listeners how elections in Canada differ from the U.S.

“Their whole election system is so different,” he said. “They don’t have a specific time where they have elections, so … the whole thing is so crazy. I don’t know what’s happening with their politics, but I just want America and Canada to get along. I think it’s ridiculous.”

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Trump has fueled tensions between the countries after his promise to impose tariffs on Canadian imports into America and his constant calls for the country to become the 51st state.

“Canada only works as a state,” Trump said last Thursday. “We don’t need anything they have. As a state, it would be one of the great states anywhere. This would be the most incredible country, visually. If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it, between Canada and the U.S. Just a straight, artificial line. Somebody did it a long time ago, many many decades ago. Makes no sense. It’s so perfect as a great and cherished state.”

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Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the notion of Canada as a 51st state came out of Trump-Trudeau talks last November.

Rubio said Trudeau told Trump that Canada “couldn’t survive as a nation-state” if the U.S. went ahead with threatened tariffs on Canadian imports.

“At which point the president said, well, then you should become a state. And that’s where this began,” Rubio told reporters at last week’s meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Charlevoix, Que.

Trump “loves Canada,” Rubio insisted. He simply “made an argument for why Canada would be better off joining the United States from an economic perspective and the like. He’s made that argument repeatedly, and I think it stands for itself.”

“It’s crazy. It’s crazy. Simply put, it’s crazy. Full stop,” Carney said in response to the ongoing rhetoric.

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Rogan said he doesn’t want to see Canada become the 51st state, but conceded that he thinks “it would be fun if it happened.”

“It would be fun. I think Greenland is more accessible. We can probably buy that if we want a 51st state,” he told Kosta. Plus, if global warming “is real,” he jokingly said, Americans would have someplace to go where they can keep cool.

Rogan’s comments come after he told fellow podcaster Theo Von back in January that America should annex Mexico after taking control of Canada.

“Here’s what I think, I think we take Canada and then we go right into Mexico,” he said.

Rogan also shared a screenshot to his Instagram of a Truth Social message from Trump saying “many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State.”

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He commented on the post, which garnered more than 358,000 likes, “I say we let Mexico in too.” 

mdaniell@postmedia.com

-With files from the Associated Press

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