Trump post dropping interest in annexing Canada is fabricated

"After watching Canadians see their country getting much worse than under Trudeau and increasing their support for Carney, I'm no longer interested in having Canada as the 51st state," the text of the alleged post reads in a screenshot shared to Facebook on March 24, 2026.

The image circulated across platforms including, X, Instagram and Threads. Some users shared the supposed post while appearing to mock some Canadian voters for their preoccupation with Trump but others aimed to highlight an alleged turnaround for the US president who has repeatedly jabbed about Canada joining the United States.

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Screenshot of a Facebook post taken March 25, 2026

Trump's comments on Canadian sovereignty which implied it could become the "51st state" (archived here and here) first fell in the runup to the northern country's 2025 elections, which Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberals won despite a year of dismal polling under former leader Justin Trudeau.

One year since forming government, polls indicate support for the Liberals is at historic highs with 46 percent approval for the ruling party, according to aggregator 338 Canada (archived here).

The president's threats to the US-Canada trade relationship have rocked diplomacy between the two countries and the strained relationship also produced many misleading claims, including fake posts from Trump.

The Truth Social post about abandoning the idea of annexing Canada is similarly fabricated.

Keyword searches of live and archived versions of Trump's Truth Social account did not produce matching results.

Factba.se, an interactive database tracking the president's public remarks and social media activity, recorded no such post in its catalogue, either.

While searches for "51st state" did not reveal mentions of annexing Canada from 2026, the president did refer to Carney as the "future Governor of Canada" in a March 10 Truth (archived here) about invasive Asian carp in the Great Lakes situated between the two countries, reviving an insult he launched at Trudeau at the end of his tenure as prime minister.

The fake post also appears to have originated with satire. One of the earliest versions of the fabricated screenshot shared to Instagram on March 23 captioned the image with the aside: "You know that's a fake post and I made it up."

Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in Canada here.