Montreal, Canada – Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney brushed off President Donald Trump's latest round of 51st state threats, telling reporters "we're not gonna respond."
Carney's comments came in response to a reporter who on Tuesday asked him whether the US ambassador should be asked to leave because he reposted a threat by Trump to turn Canada into the 51st state.
Earlier that day, US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra had reposted Trump, who wrote "51st state!" on Truth Social alongside a screenshot from a Bloomberg article about Canada's recent economic woes.
The post was a continuation of Trump's repeated insistence that Canada would be better off if it became a part of the US. In March, he referred to Carney as "the future governor of Canada."
"The short answer is no," Carney said in regard to the question of whether Hoekstra should be asked to leave. "It's an administration that we have to work with, it's our biggest trading relationship, it's our biggest security relationship."
"We work with the administration, we take the administration as it is, and we're working together in a number of areas," Carney continued.
He underscored that both Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and the country's Chief Trade Negotiator Janice Charette are currently in Washington working to secure trade deals and renegotiate the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
"Look, I mean, the president is an exceptionally active user of social media," Carney said when pressed on the 51st state comments.
"You probably can charge his usage of it, it's only gone up in recent months," Carney said. "And we're not gonna respond or react to everything that he posts."