I don't want to go *too* far in praising this article, because there are still a large number of problems with the way it minimizes the danger of Trump literally annexing Canada, but its existence demonstrates that at least one US media outlet (NBC) understands that Trump is not joking, or playing the angles here, and is in fact dead serious about taking over Canada:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-quest-conquer-canada-confusing-everyone-rcna195657

Trump's quest to conquer Canada is confusing everyone

"Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump first mentioned his love for Canadians, including his “many friends” like hockey legend Wayne Gretzky. Then he riffed about how Canada shouldn’t exist as a sovereign country before getting to what has increasingly become a fixation: wholesale annexation of Canada as a U.S. state.

"Canada only works as a state," Trump said 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."

"But why should we subsidize another country for $200 billion?" Trump continued, adding, "And again, we don’t need their lumber, we don’t need their energy. We have more than they do. We don’t need anything. We don’t need their cars. I’d much rather make the cars here. And there’s not a thing that we need. Now, there will be a little disruption, but it won’t be very long. But they need us. We really don’t need them. And we have to do this. I’m sorry."

As I said at the top of this post, this is by no means a perfect article; NBC spends far too much ink focusing on Trump's personal animus towards Justin Trudeau (who is no longer even the Canadian Prime Minister) and allowing named GOP officials to pretend they're confused by Trump's annexation plan even as they enact his orders to try and make that plan a reality. Crucially however, this report *does* make it abundantly clear that Trump is dead serious and his minions know full well that he's not joking:

"Trump has been unapologetic in his quest to conquer the Canadians — an effort he said in January would be conducted by “economic force.” The result has been a disintegration of the relationship between the U.S. and one of its closest allies, and a stock market plunge over fears of ever-increasing escalation of a trade war. Both Canadian officials and Republicans initially thought the president was merely joking, ribbing Trudeau — a longtime foil — after they met at Mar-a-Lago in November. It was after that visit that Trump first publicly floated the notion of absorbing Canada. Few think he’s joking now, and the Canadians have stopped laughing.

A source with direct knowledge of the discussions told NBC News that Trump is heavily focused on Canada in conversations with aides, who believe he is completely serious about making the country the 51st state — even with Trudeau out of power and a new prime minister in place."

Unfortunately, and despite this refreshing frankness, I have some problems with the sloppy journalism and credulous naivety with which NBC states that nobody knows where Trump is getting the idea to annex Canada from, including Republicans in his government. The fact is that MAGA-connected fascist propagandists like Candice Owens (and others) have been advocating for taking over, or even invading Canada since at least 2021-2022 for a variety of reasons; including natural resources, water rights, climate imperialism (although they don't use that term,) and even to protect their ideological brethren in the larger Canadian fascist movement from legal repercussions for their own slow-moving coup attempt in Canada, the so-called "Trucker Convoy." I genuinely have no idea if US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has any clue what Trump is thinking, but fascist media personalities in Trump's orbit certainly do, and this regime has already shown a willingness to outsource official policy from raving nazi dipshits on YouTube, so I don't think "where Trump is getting this idea from" is the kind of puzzle you need Scotland Yard's finest detectives to solve.