The idea that Trump is a Russian agent, or that Putin has kompromat on him and so he’s dancing to Putin’s strings is just ridiculous. It’s not impossible, but it’s so incredibly unlikely.

Having said that, this is exactly how Putin would want Trump to act if he were a Russian agent. It’s also hard to believe that any US president would be this pro-Russia if the Russians didn’t have blackmail material on him.

If Trump pushed any harder for pro-Russian / anti-American policies there’s a chance the GOP might actually grow a spine and stop him. He has a slim majority in the senate, and he’s already doing things that are causing GOP senators to vote against him. If he were a Russian agent his handlers wouldn’t want him to lose control over the GOP, because then he’d no longer be useful to them.

So, here we are in a situation where either the US president is a Russian asset, or he’s not but might as well be.

All the spy thrillers of the cold war prepared me for a world where politicians were brainwashed and blackmailed. What they didn’t prepare me for was a world where these politicians were enthusiastically supported by their parties despite there clearly being something wrong with their decisions.

A related question: why is the “big tough guy” image a guy in a truck?

Like, you push a pedal with your foot to make your vehicle go vroom vroom. A granny could do that.

Surely a tough guy is a guy who is straining huge muscles to make a bike hit 50 km/h. A skilled guy is one who can maneuver his bike down a narrow mountain-bike track.

Imagine looking back in history and seeing a dude being carried around in a sedan chair and thinking that was the ideal image of masculinity, rather than the surely jacked dudes carrying him.

Yeah, the UK would be bargaining from a weak position. As a founding member of the EU it was bargaining from a strong one and could get concessions.

But, maybe if they say “hey, let us in and give us some exceptions and we’ll let you talk to our good buddy Canada”…

Let Canada join in too.

With the threats from the US, Canada could use some closer ties to Europe too. There are already historic ties to the UK that have weakened over the last few decades.

IMO there’s some bad blood between the UK and the EU. The EU probably wouldn’t want to just take the UK back after Brexit. And, from the point of view of the UK, the Brexit voters are still out there, and if the EU makes re-entry too humiliating, they’d raise a stink.

But, if you include Canada it’s no longer just the UK rejoining the EU. It can be a new thing, the Canada-UK-EU pact: CUE. Conservatives who were pro-Brexit might be mollified because they tend to be more likely to be monarchists, and this can be seen as strengthening ties between two countries where Charles is the head of state. It also gives Canada and the UK a bit more bargaining power together than if they both tried to strengthen ties to the EU separately.

My guess is that if this allowed for freer movement of people and media, Quebec would be happy to have closer ties to France, Belgium, Switzerland and the other places in Europe where French is spoken.

We all should be working together to protect ourselves from Trump. And, even if the US survives Trump and elects someone sane as president in 4 years, recent history has shown that the US just isn’t a reliable partner anymore. It’s just too volatile and chaotic. Given the proximity, Canada will inevitably have strong ties to the US, but there needs to be some “plan B”.