Trump’s Canadian Temper Tantrum

In 1904, a library and opera house were purposely built on the US/Canada border. Inside this beautiful Victorian building, neighbors from Rock Island, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont shared this public space to learn, to gather, to read, and to talk. There was no border wall here, just a symbolically painted line on the floor. For more than a century, that line didn’t divide people; it connected them.

Canadians didn’t need a passport. Americans didn’t need permission. You walked in through the shared door, you used the library, and when you were done, you walked out. This building became a symbol of what it means to be good neighbors. It was a living argument against fear, nationalism, and manufactured conflict and separation. It reminded people that a border didn’t change your needs or your dignity. You could be from a different country and still belong in the same room.

But now that has all changed.

The Trump administration ended unrestricted Canadian access to the Haskell Free Library. What was once a shared public building is now a reminder of our fracture. And this is exactly what Trump and his enablers want.

Because this isn’t just about a library at all. It’s about isolation. It’s about eroding our ties to other countries, to our allies, and to each other. And it didn’t start here.

Earlier this week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford ran a television ad featuring President Ronald Reagan. The ad calmly, factually, and powerfully warned about the dangers of Trump’s tariff and trade policies. It focused on his threats, especially the proposed 200% tariff on foreign pharmaceuticals, and explained, in Reagan’s own words, how tariffs hurt Americans, hurt Canadians, and damage the global economy as a whole.

It was the right ad at the right time. Smart. Strategic. And true. And Trump had a full-blown meltdown over it.

He posted on Truth Social: “ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.”

Trump ended up adding an extra 10% tariff on Canadian goods, even though Ford declared, “We’ve achieved our goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels.”

Ford added, “In speaking with Prime Minister Carney, Ontario will pause its U.S. advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume.”

This was humiliating for Trump. He was embarrassed. So he punished the entire country with more tariffs.

And this is how he governs, by retaliation, by instability. Emotionally and without regard for the harm he is doing to our relationship with one of our strongest allies and closest neighbors.

And that isolation doesn’t stop at the border. In fact, that’s where it begins.

Because the library wasn’t the first relationship Trump cut off. One by one, he’s dismantling our global connections. Not just with rivals, but with allies. Friends. People who’ve stood with us in war and peace, in trade and tragedy.

He’s pulled us out of humanitarian agreements. Withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization. Undermined NATO. Threatened to leave the World Trade Organization. Tried to end hurricane data-sharing with our closest neighbors.

This is what happens when you see cooperation as weakness. When you treat every alliance like a threat. When you believe isolation is strength. This is the mindset of someone who either doesn’t understand how the world works, or does, and is trying to sabotage it on purpose.

And we’ve seen this before.

Francisco Franco promised to protect Spain after the civil war by cutting it off from the world. He called it self-sufficiency. He said foreign influence was dangerous. So he sealed the borders, rationed the food, and told people to be proud of their sacrifice. But it wasn’t sacrifice. It was starvation. It was economic collapse. It was the slow strangling of a country trying to survive on pride alone.

Joseph Stalin locked down the Soviet Union so tightly that truth itself couldn’t breathe. Books were banned. Foreign broadcasts were jammed. Ideas were criminalized. People were disappeared. The outside world became a scapegoat. And because no one could look in, and no one was allowed to look out, millions were buried in silence.

And then there was Hitler’s Germany, where he took it beyond just isolationism, where “Germany First” became more than a slogan. It became policy. Hitler used nationalism and isolationism as a weapon. He pulled Germany out of the League of Nations. He cut ties with democratic countries. He silenced dissent, banned foreign press, criminalized outside influence, and told his people that only he could protect them. The world was the enemy. Truth was the enemy. Connection was the enemy. And by the time the rest of the world could intervene, the damage was irreversible.

And now Trump is braiding isolationism and nationalism together. That’s what “America First” really means. Not pride. Not patriotism. But power through isolation. Loyalty through fear. And a promise that you’ll be safe, as long as you stop asking questions and bow to Trump, and only Trump.

And even here, in the United States, we’ve made this mistake before. In the 1930s, we turned inward. We said Europe’s problems weren’t ours. We refused to take in Jewish refugees. We stayed neutral as fascism swept across the continent. And by the time we woke up, it was almost too late.

This is the pattern. It’s not new. Every one of those leaders promised strength through isolation. Every one of them left their people weaker, poorer, more afraid, and more alone. And now Trump is doing it again, repeating the exact same playbook.

And if you think this is only about foreign policy, it’s not. Because Trump’s isolationism isn’t just cutting us off from the world. It’s cutting us off from each other. That’s the real goal. Make the country so fractured, so disconnected, so suspicious of one another, that we forget we’re even a nation at all.

I was reminded of that just a few days ago, reading the comment section under one of my posts. Someone wrote: “And still, this doesn’t affect me. So not my problem.”

It made me pause for a long time. Not because it was unusual, but because it was shamelessly honest. That’s what made it so devastating. It was the clearest expression of where we are right now as a country. The American sickness isn’t just cruelty. It’s indifference. It’s care for ourselves far beyond the collective care we feel for each other.

We already live in a nation built on individualism. On pulling yourself up. On minding your business unless it helps our personal agendas. On believing that if something isn’t hurting you directly, then it must not really be happening at all. Or if it is, the people suffering probably deserve it.

And that mindset is exactly what Trump is counting on. Isolation abroad. Alienation at home. Because if we stop seeing each other, we stop fighting for each other. But we do see each other. We just choose not to let ourselves care.

We pass each other in silence. We scroll past suffering. We tune out bad news with the excuse of protecting our peace. We’ve learned to flinch at empathy, to label compassion as weakness. But the truth is, when we stop feeling for one another, when we stop checking in, showing up, reaching out, we’re not protecting peace. We’re surrendering it.

But it is our problem. Every single part of it. The neighbor we no longer speak to. The family member we ghosted over politics. The child who can’t afford their asthma medication. The pregnant woman losing prenatal care. The trans teen being hunted by laws. The sick, the poor, the vulnerable, this is the soul of our country we’re watching disappear. Not in one single catastrophic event, but little by little, as we let each other slip through the cracks.

That is the true cost of isolation. It starts with a closed door between two nations. It ends with closed hearts between people who live on the same street.

And if we keep living like this, disconnected, desensitized, indifferent, we will lose far more than our alliances. We’ll lose the very idea of America.

We weren’t built to live like this.

A country is more than a border. More than a flag. More than a man barking orders into the void because someone bruised his ego. A country is people, connected by care, bound by duty, and held together by the invisible thread of shared responsibility.

Trump and his enablers are unraveling that thread more and more each day, not by accident, but by design. Because an isolated nation is easier to control. A divided people are easier to silence.

Trump didn’t invent this isolation, but he is perfecting it. Turning it into strategy. Into spectacle. Into policy.

But that’s not the country we want. And it’s not the country we have to accept.

Because Trump can close a door between nations. He can poison how we see each other. He can try to break our trust, strain our friendships, and divide us into factions. But he cannot close our hearts. Not our connection to Canadians. Not our compassion for our neighbors. Not our commitment to one another.

And he will not define what it means to be American. We will.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather