Trump continues to talk about US expansion: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online edition of From the Politics Desk, our evening newsletter that brings you the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News political team from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s issue, we put Donald Trump’s repeatedly stated desire to annex Canada into historical context. Plus, national political correspondent Steve Kornacki takes a closer look at the counties that have seen the most dramatic political changes during the Trump era.

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Canada, Greenland, Panama Canal: President Trump continues to talk about US expansion

At a freewheeling press conference Tuesday at the resort of Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he will use military force to gain control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, and that Canada’s Catherine Doyle , suggested the idea of ​​considering using “economic power” to acquire Bourne Hillyard. Report.

A reporter asked President Trump if he could assure the nation that he would not use military coercion against Panama or Greenland, as he has said in recent weeks. President Trump said, “No, I can’t guarantee either of those things, but I can tell you this: We need it for economic security.” He later said he would not use military force against Canada, only “economic power.”

“That would really be something,” President Trump said of U.S. control of Canada.

“Let’s remove the artificially drawn lines and see what that looks like. And it’s going to be much better for national security as well,” he added.

“There’s no snowballing chance that Canada will become part of the United States,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on television after the broadcast.

Historical context: As Scott Brand writes, President Trump’s refreshingly confident sentiments about the ease and popularity of Canada’s admission to the United States are nothing new.

During the War of 1812, President Thomas Jefferson told Philadelphia newspaper editor Thomas Duane, “The acquisition of Canada this year will be a mere matter of marching to the vicinity of Quebec.” (Spoiler alert: That wasn’t actually the case.) Among other things, the National Park Service notes in an article about this comment that many people in the U.S. “mistakenly assumed that Canadians would welcome the arrival of U.S. troops.” “It was,” he points out.

According to historian John W. Quist, in the late 1800s, each of the major American political parties developed some degree of pro-annexation sentiment, with a common belief that the annexation of Canada would be “peaceful and welcomed by Canadians.” It is said that they came together based on this clue.

Canadian polls reveal a unique political culture that is very different from the United States. ”

A September poll from the Environmental Institute showed Canadians favored Vice President Kamala Harris over President Trump by a 3-to-1 margin before the election, compared to the same rating four years ago. President Trump fared better than Joe Biden, especially among young Canadians. (Polls showed that a plurality of Canadian conservatives supported him this time, but not in 2020.)

Pew Research Center research shows that Canadians have generally had a favorable opinion of the United States over the past quarter century, but that rating has not declined since the Trump era and in 2020. This dropped to 35%, but after Biden’s election, his favorability rating recovered. Environics Institute polling shows similar trends.

Meanwhile, in Greenland, Asta Rajvanshi points out that the King of Denmark has changed his country’s coat of arms for the first time in more than 500 years, making Greenland more prominent. And Donald Trump Jr. arrived in Greenland on Tuesday, accompanied by at least two incoming White House officials.

Areas of the country that saw the biggest political changes during the Trump administration

Written by Steve Kornacki

The Trump era has brought dramatic changes to the Republican-Democratic coalition. One way to visualize the scale of these changes is to zoom in on America’s political map.

Using the 2024 election and the 2012 election (the last election without Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee) as bookends, we can measure partisan movements in all 3,143 counties in the country during the Trump administration.

Nationally, the country has moved 5.5 points in the Republican direction over the past 12 years. From Barack Obama’s 3.8-point popular vote margin in 2012 to President Trump’s 1.5-point victory in 2024. However, some numbers differ at the county level. chart.

Here are the 25 counties that trended Republican by the widest margins during the Trump administration.

The political changes in those areas are staggering. For example, Starr County, on the Mexican border in southern Texas, had the longest continuous streak of voting Democratic in presidential elections of any U.S. county until President Trump broke it last year. Or Elliott County, Kentucky, located in the coal country of eastern Kentucky. Trump has won by 62 points, 51 points and 44 points in his three campaigns. Prior to that, however, Elliott had supported the Democratic Party in every election since joining the party in 1869.

Both Mr. Starr and Mr. Elliott embody one of the two demographic characteristics common to all 25 of the Republican-leaning counties.

The Star State’s residents are 96% Hispanic, the second-highest concentration in the nation. The other nine counties on the list also have majority Hispanic populations, with concentrations ranging from 51% to 95%.

Elliott, on the other hand, is 96% white. However, an overwhelming proportion of the white population (89%) does not have a four-year college degree. The county’s median household income is also much lower than Kentucky as a whole. This basic profile also holds true for the other 14 counties on the list, which are predominantly white and blue-collar.

At the other end of the spectrum are the 25 areas that most decisively moved toward Democrats during the Trump era.

Other demographic characteristics figure more prominently in places with strong Democratic leanings. Seven of the counties are in Utah and have significant Mormon populations. Similarly, two-thirds of the population of Madison County, Idaho, is Mormon. Mormons are politically conservative as a group, making Utah one of the most reliably red states in the country. However, even among the Republican support group, there is an unusually cold attitude towards Mr. Trump. Trump endured his worst performance at the state level in the Utah primary in 2016, and faced significant resistance again in last year’s primary.

Democrats also won during the Trump administration in Henry and Rockdale counties, two Georgia counties experiencing rapid population growth driven by an influx of middle-class African Americans.

The remaining 16 counties on the list stand out for two reasons. One is their wealth. Eleven of them have a median household income in the six digits. Teton County in Wyoming (home to the Jackson Hole Resort), Boone County in Indiana, Forsyth County in Georgia, Los Alamos County in New Mexico, and Johnson County in Kansas all rank first in the state for median household income. It is ranked first. Falls Church, Virginia (technically not a county, but functions as one within the state) ranks second overall in the state. Broomfield County, Colorado, and Collin County, Texas, ranked third in the state.

These 16 locations also have large populations of white residents with four-year college degrees. Each region has a higher concentration of white adult residents with at least a bachelor’s degree than the national average. In Falls Church, for example, 82% of white adults have a college education, the third-highest number among the nation’s 3,143 counties (or county equivalents).

That’s all from the political desk for now. Today’s newsletter was edited by Adam Wallner, Scott Brand, and Bridget Bowman.

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