Furious Canada Prepares for War if Trump Invades

0:00Ben Meiselas:Right now, new FanDuel customers can get up to$300 back in bonus bets every day for 10 days. Place a tournament bet using the token, and if it doesn't win, you'll get up to$300 back in bonus bets every single day for 10 days straight. You can even mix things up with same-game parlays for a shot at a bigger payout. FanDuel, it's time to dance. 21 plus in President Select States. Bonus bets are non-withdrawable and expire 7 days after receipt. Tokens are received in increments of 1 per day. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. John Stamos here in partnership with Cologuard, and I've got to say, so you're 45 or older and at average risk.

0:37So what? That doesn't mean your life comes to a halt. No way. You can still do all the fun things you've been doing, but it's time to take your health a little more seriously.

0:45Ben Meiselas:Colon cancer screening needs to be on your docket, and it's as simple as the Cologuard test. Don't worry. You got this. What was your college soundtrack?

1:03Ben Meiselas:The sound may have changed a bit, but the vibes remain unmatched.

1:12Next stop, the yard.

1:16Ben Meiselas:Let your student remix their own college soundtrack at Rutgers New Brunswick. This message comes from NPR sponsor Paramount Plus and the new original series The Madison. Taylor Sheridan's most intimate story yet. The Madison follows a family raised in a world of digital distraction, forced by tragedy to truly see one another and come together. Starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell. The Madison. New series streaming now, only on Paramount Plus. This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. Last year, I went through many different life changes. I needed to take a pause and examine how I was feeling in the inside to better show up for the ones who need me to be my best version of myself.

2:02Ben Meiselas:When you're navigating life's changes, Talkspace can help. Talkspace is the number one rated online therapy, bringing you professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatry providers that you can access anytime, anywhere. Living a busy life, navigating a long distance relationship, becoming a first stepfather. Talkspace made all of those journeys possible. I could speak with my therapist in the office. I could speak with my therapist in the comfort of my home. I was never alone. Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a$0 copay. No insurance, no problem.

2:35Ben Meiselas:Now get$80 off your first month with promo code SPACE80 when you go to Talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save$80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com.

3:13Ben Meiselas:as Trump is using with Venezuela, as Trump has used with Canada, right? Putin saying, this is our historical territorial land. And Putin's pretext with Ukraine was to make up, I'm here to do denazification, which everyone's like, what the hell is he talking about? But that's how authoritarians think. Donald Trump is now saying with respect to Venezuela that they stole our land, they stole our oil. He's saying that they're shipping fentanyl and killing Americans when there's no fentanyl coming out of Venezuela. This is the same language that Donald Trump has used against Canada. 51st state is a threat.

3:55Ben Meiselas:We're going to take you over. And just like the language Donald Trump is using with Venezuela, when it comes to Canada, Donald Trump's saying the people of Canada are killing the people in the United States by sending over the fentanyl and that this, if you look at this border, these are our lands and this border is just arbitrary and we should be able to take it over. That's the language of war. And I think people in Canada, their military forces leaders are seeing what Sergei Lavrov is saying. And they know Sergei Lavrov, who's Vladimir Putin's top foreign minister, is out there saying right now, we are already in World War III.

4:34Ben Meiselas:That's the language that Russians are using. We're in World War III right now. And the question is, where's the United States in this World War III dynamic? At least, you know, we know where Europe stands and Canada stands and Australia stands and the US seems to be taking the side of Putin. So let me just show you, I think this is how the people of Canada see it. The leader of Midas Canada, Charlie Angus, I think he covered this in detail and I want to share with what he just told me. Charlie Angus talks about how Sergei Lavrov in Russia says we're in a World War III posture right now. Play this clip.

5:13Sergei Lavrov, Putin's hard man and the guy who was invited into Trump's White House, as a good friend, it seems, is declaring that the Third World War has already begun. It's a new form of war. It's a war of pressure. And part of that war in Canada is an economic war to break us. This is what Donald Trump has stated, his determination, and we aren't breaking.

5:37Ben Meiselas:And then Charlie Angus, the leader of Midas Canada, talks to us about preparedness and military preparedness and how Canada is building this civilian army, how Canada's top general says that Canada is ready for war, how Canada is looking very skeptically right now at purchasing F-35s from the United States because, for all you know, Donald Trump in the U.S. can try to manipulate the F-35s. And so they're looking more towards Sweden's grippings, which may not be as good of a plane as the F-35s, but at least Sweden says they're going to work with Canada to help build this together. And Canada can have some ownership over building the weapons for the future, a future without the U.S.

6:25Ben Meiselas:Here's Charlie Angus talking about the preparedness of the Canadian military right now. Let's play it. Let's talk about preparedness. is. General Marie Carignan, head of Canadian Forces, gave some end-of-year interviews, and she says Canada is ready, ready to go if needed. Now, this woman is a serious badass. Okay, she was born in a mining town. She's apparently an incredible dancer. She served in the peacekeeping mission. She was in Golan Heights. She was in Bosnia. She commanded task force Kandahar. She's got a whack of medals, including some from the United States. And And General Kerrigna was talking about how much things have changed in terms of the threat.

7:06She says, you know, we divested air defense systems in 2000 because Canada was fighting a counterinsurgency war and we didn't need it. But she says, now the situation has changed. The air is contested and we have to get back into the business of air defense. So is that defending our airspace from Putin? Or are we also talking about the threat south of the border? She says that Canada's regular force right now is 65 ,677 soldiers, and the target is to get to 71 ,000. So far, recruiting for the last two years has not gone badly. Last year's target was 6 ,400 new members. They finished at 6 ,600, and this year's target is 7 ,600.

7:50She was asked about the whole question of DEI. We see how in the United States, the Pentagon is flushing pages of famous Americans, the code talkers. you know, Jackie Robinson getting rid of a black head of their armed forces. But General Keringa, she says, listen, in Canada, we value the differences of men, women and their backgrounds. And in the military, conformity as part of team dynamics can be absolutely deadly. She says that what she's looking for is to build a larger network of expertise to support the military, and that includes civil service, the emergency management, and building community resilience.

8:34I think that that's her way of talking about this citizen's army and how they can work together with the Canadian military. We're going to get to that in a second. In terms of preparedness, she says we're ready. Who knows? I'm no expert. But Canada does have an enormous amount of experience. We were the front lines in Kandahar, which was the heart of the Taliban, and nobody gave us anything there. It was full at war from the get-go, and we have a lot of people who had experience there. We've been on the front lines in terms of the Russian threat, with training in Latvia and Ukraine. So you can be rest assured the Canadian trainers are coming back, having also been trained in what 21st century hybrid warfare looks like.

9:19And we also have an enormous amount of expertise in places of conflict like Yugoslavia. So we bring a lot to the table in terms of that. You know, I don't want to be talking about this really, but this is the state of the world that we're in, is starting to assess where Canada is going to be in times of increasing threat.

9:42Ben Meiselas:More from Charlie Angus talking about this civilian army, this 300 ,000 strong civilian army and how the ingenuity of Canada needs to really be tapped into here here play this clip what we need to be doing is looking at local teams who bring a lot of expertise with them you know first aid IT radio dispatch training people in search and rescue evacuation traffic you know in case of an emergency to have people trained at the ground level to help do that that will make things move a lot faster. In terms of reaching out to the civil service, we have people with enormous amount of expertise, because if this is run by the HR of the Canadian military, it's going to move as slow as molasses in January, and it's not going to happen.

10:35Think of what happened during COVID, when they were initially going to use the existing programs like EI to get money to people who've been forced off work. Certainly my party, the New Democratic Party were saying, this will take forever. It's way too cumbersome. It's too high bound with the bureaucracy. And over the Easter weekend, Canada's civil service created the CERB program that got$2 ,000 to every person who wasn't able to work and got it out the door quickly. That's what happens when you think outside the box. So that's what we need to be doing here is thinking outside the box of thinking of this as not simply, you know, boots on the ground and uniforms and marching, but thinking of creativity and using the strengths of Canadians.

11:18Ben Meiselas:All right, let's talk some facts here. Four companies control over 80 % of the U.S. meat industry. Not good. And China now controls the largest portion of U.S. pork. Not good. These companies are using really awful tactics, in my opinion, to crush American family farms. and with the additives they're putting into our food. Americans are stuck with sketchy meat not made in America truly. So what can we do about this? Let me tell you about a company that's coming up swinging on behalf of the American Family Farms and your family's food security. They're called Moink. You know we love Moink here at the Midas Touch Network.

12:00Ben Meiselas:The business is simple. Moink's meat comes from animals raised outdoors where a pig is free to be a pig. Their farmers are given an honest day's pay for an honest day's work, and they deliver meat straight to your doorstep at prices you can actually afford. Born, raised, and harvested right here in the United States of America. MOINC is helping save rural America, which you all know we need more than ever right now. I love MOINC, especially their bacon, and I know you will too. Join the MOINC movement today. Hey, support American Family Farms and join the Moink movement today at moinkbox.com slash Midas Touch right now and get free bacon for a year.

12:43Ben Meiselas:That's one year of the best bacon you'll ever taste, but for a limited time. It's spelled M-O-I-N-K box.com slash Midas Touch. That's moinkbox.com slash Midas Touch. Join the movement. And then an important part of what Charlie was telling all of us, and he was talking about how, you know, Ukraine at first and lots of the world didn't think that Russia would actually invade Ukraine the way they did. The same way everyone would be like, it's preposterous. The United States is not going to seek to invade Canada. The U.S. isn't going to be doing this. Of course, come on. What happens after Venezuela?

13:26Ben Meiselas:What happens after Colombia, right? I mean, after Trump's bloodlust, you don't think it's a possibility that he'd be the language that he's using. 51st state is, as Canadians recognize it, war language. And that's what infuriates Canadians more than infuriates. So this is an important point that Angus talks about. And he said, look at what happened in Sumy. Look at what happened in Sumy in Ukraine. Here, listen to what he says. Here, play this clip. I want to read to you a section from this new book by Tom Mooch, The Dogs of Maurypole, about the opening days of the Ukraine war. It's one of the reasons I've been so obsessing about the need for us to be thinking of preparedness is because the Ukrainians didn't quite believe that in the 21st century, their next door neighbor would just come across the border with tanks.

14:20And so when it happened, they weren't quite prepared. and it was the ordinary citizens of Ukraine who basically put themselves in the path of the Russian advance that slowed it down and stopped it before it got to Kiev. And the Battle of Sumy is something that's really an important but overlooked moment. He writes, The Battle of Sumy comes the closest to the image of a desperate bedraggled civilian guerrilla army fighting overwhelming odds. When the Russians marched in, even the Ukrainians expected to be overwhelmed here. Many of the city administration fled, but the ordinary people of Sumi did not.

14:58When the Russians attempted to encircle and then bypass Sumi with a massive armored column, they were met by small teams of defenders who sallied forth and knocked out their logistics. There were only about 50 professional soldiers in Sumi with very little in the way of heavy weapons. So light were the forces that the Russians did not even bother to bring air defenses to support their troops here. Yeah, and then they ran into the drones. But in Sumi, the effort was almost entirely led and self-directed by the citizens themselves, becoming a true people's defense force. There were only a few thousand civilians with rifles, a few dozen anti-tank weapons, and no armored vehicles or heavy weaponry.

15:38But by mid-March, the Russians were scared to enter the city. Here's the thing. Canadians understand the mission. Canadians will do what is necessary. And I am hoping against hope that Lavrov is wrong, that this new global conflict hasn't begun. I'm hoping against hope that Donald Trump will be defeated in the midterms and we will somehow go back to whatever. But I don't expect that. And when I see the situation in Venezuela, where Trump is now threatening the people of Venezuela, And he's not, you know, America has a long history of interfering in Latin America with CIA coups and Guatemala and Chile and other places.

16:28But what the language about Venezuela is a total shakedown that he basically says the Venezuelans stole our money. We're here to get it back. This is the kind of language of gangster gunboat diplomacy. And we see from the Trump doctrine, he believes he can apply that to Canada. And we've already seen multiple threats of what we owe America and what we are doing to threaten America. So am I saying that what's happening in Venezuela will happen to Canada? No. But we can't take anything for granted. So I believe that there's a huge opportunity by building resilience because it sends a message. It sends a message.

17:05Don't you think about it now. Don't you think about it ever. We have managed to throw MAGA back this year again and again because they continually underestimate us and we continually stand up and show up. You know, I will end with what Winston Churchill said to Adolf Hitler. You, sir, you do your worst. We will always do our best.

17:29Ben Meiselas:Now, in this past week also, we heard from Prime Minister Mark Carney, who talks about the relationship that they're building in Canada with the rest of the world, other than the United States. Play this clip. When I go or the Minister of International Trade or Minister of Finance goes and meets with any country in the world, with one exception, any country in the world, they want to do more business with Canada. They are desperate to do more business with Canada. And we, yeah, because we have much of what they want, and they respect us. They respect us because we respect the rule of law. We have the right values.

18:17Ben Meiselas:We're good partners. And it's just an enormous amount of opportunity. So I am hugely optimistic and I'm optimistic because these opportunities are being created by people like the people in this room and across this great country. A recent press conference was just held with Prime Minister Carney and the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford. And here's how Doug Ford refers to the position of Ontario relative to Donald Trump whining about the ad. Like they're still whining about the ad. Trump and Pete Hoekstra, who's the United States ambassador to Canada. Watch what Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, says.

18:57Ben Meiselas:Here, play this clip. By not backing down, are you putting your own interests ahead of people in the sector? In what sector? I believe you just can't roll. I'm in a different position. I'm not speaking for the prime minister. I'm speaking for the people of Ontario. We're getting hit the most out of any single province in this entire country. He's attacking our steel industry, attacking our automotive sector, attacking our manufacturing, our pharmaceutical, our life sciences. I'm not going to sit back and roll over and, you know, not fight back to protect the people and their jobs of Ontario. It's as simple as that.

19:35Ben Meiselas:That's my job, to protect the people of Ontario. I'm going to continue fighting to make sure we get a fair deal with the U.S. I can tell you one thing. I'm going down to sign a deal with the governor in New York tomorrow. I can tell you I talk to governors almost every week, almost every single day, a senator or congressperson, Republican or Democrat. Even Republicans say they don't agree with the deal, but they're too scared, except four of them that crossed the floor to vote with the Democrats about three or four weeks ago. So I'm going to fight like I've never fought before to protect and protect the communities in Ontario, protect their jobs and protect the people.

20:16Ben Meiselas:And then you had the U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra recently whining about the ad. He's still complaining and like crying. This guy's like a crybaby, still crying about the ad. Dude, get to grow up. I mean, just the amateurish, the immaturity, the the the hatred of Canada by the U.S. Ambassador to Canada. And the people in Canada despise this guy, despise this guy. Here, play this clip. Why does the, I don't know if it's the White House, Donald Trump, or Americans in general took such offense to that ad? It's never happened before. Foreign governments do not come into the United States of America and run political ads during our election campaign season.

21:00Ben Meiselas:If they want to do that, they are, as we've said, they are setting precedent. No one has ever tried this before. And it's not, you know, people have said, Pete, why are you upset? It's kind of like, think about it. Okay, the president mentions an election in Canada. And I think there have been reports that says Canadians weren't happy about that. Okay, this is taking a comment by a political person, whether it's the president or the prime minister. But then the government making a conscious decision to take taxpayer money, significant,$75 million, and say, we're going to run on the World Series.

21:57Ben Meiselas:We're going to run it on Fox News. We're going to run it on NFL Sunday football. And the intent is to influence and divide the Republican Party, a specific political objective. There is also the distinction, though. That was a provincial ad. That was sponsored by the government of Ontario, not the government of Canada. The level at which the United States is engaging in these discussions. Yeah, it was. We know that. But no distinction. When I was in Congress, and you'd like to think that everybody that is in your congressional district knows you, in America, it is in my congressional district, and it's this way for every congressional district, about 50 % of our constituents could not name who their congressperson was.

22:56Ben Meiselas:They don't live and breathe politics each and every day like those of us who are involved in that business. The Americans saw an ad that at the bottom of it says paid for by maybe the province of Ontario or whatever. But it's very clear. This is an ad run by coming from a government institution in Canada. and then also later in that interview and in more recent interviews as well hoaxstras be hoaxstras saying well canada if they don't want to buy our f-35s good luck look the bottom line is that there's a there's a trust factor here and i think you know one of the things that canada is learning from ukraine as well is how to build this drone this drone army up um and we've we've reported on this before, but focusing on having drones ready to go at the border in case there is a US invasion.

23:55Ben Meiselas:No one knows. I mean, Trump's behavior right now is dangerous. It is that of an authoritarian. It's that of Putin. And so Trump's, and let me ask it to you this way. Do you think absent a forceful international pushback, what do you think Donald Trump would do to Canada. You have any doubt that he would invade Canada? He said that he said as much. So I think Canada is beginning to take this very much, much more seriously. You tell me what you think. And hat tip to Charlie Angus for reporting on, you know, it's not hyperbolic. I think that this is a strong possibility. I think people need to take this seriously.

24:39Ben Meiselas:Hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million. Thanks for watching. Hey, Midas Mighty. It's Ben, Brett, and Jordy. And we just want to thank you for being the backbone of this movement. This year tested us more than ever, but together we prove that pro-democracy voices don't just compete, we win. We took on the entire MAGA machine, won a Webby for podcasts of the year. The Midas Touch podcast. And you were with us every step of the way. And trust us, what we're working on next is bigger, bolder, and built for 2026. Let's keep this momentum going. Spread the word. We are just getting started. Shout out to the Midas My Day!

25:39Ben Meiselas:code audio when you shop omahasteaks.com today with over 100 years of unrivaled quality and variety omaha steaks understands what you need to get dinner done plus every bite is backed by their 100 percent guarantee omaha steaks is your weeknight win so get the world's best everyday protein during their spring savings event go to omahasteaks.com for an extra 35 dollars off when you use promo code audio at checkout. That's OmahaSteaks.com. Promo code A-U-D-I-O. Terms apply. See site for details.