What did Donald Trump do today?

He won an election… in Canada… for the Liberals.

Canada held elections today, and the result was a clear victory for the incumbent Liberal Party. Prime Minister Mark Carney's party is projected to retain control of Parliament, either in coalition or an outright majority. This is a shocking result: after three full terms in the majority, voter fatigue had begun to set in for the Liberals, and the Conservative Party had been widely expected to win a substantial majority themselves.

But Trump's bizarre taunts about making Canada the "51st state," and the trade war he started with the United States' most important trading partner, radically changed the race. 

The Liberal Party color is red, and the Conservative Party is dark blue.

Viciously anti-Trump sentiment fueled a comeback for the Liberals, who campaigned directly against Trump's annexation threats, and a broad spectrum of leftist-to-moderate conservative voters rallying to it. While Trump was none too popular among Canadian conservatives, with some of the sharpest reactions to the Trump trade war coming from right-wing populists, the party led by Pierre Poilievre was too closely aligned with Trump on policy positions.

Trump's own partisanship was never in doubt: he has always loathed former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose relative youth and popularity seemed to infuriate him, and sometimes provoked him to tantrums during his first term. Today, in a last-ditch attempt to rally Canadians to the polls for his favored candidate, Trump posted this:

Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!

"The man" Trump was referring to was Pierre Poilievre, but in fairness to the Conservative leader, he holds very few of the views Trump attributed to him. Nevertheless, the damage by association with Trump was done: Poilievre even lost his own seat in Parliament to a long-shot Liberal challenger.

Why does this matter?

• Neither Canadians nor Americans are nearly as stupid as Donald Trump seems to think they are.
  

• Interfering in a foreign country's elections should probably be left to the experts.
  

• Trump might want to worry less about his popularity in Canada and more about how Americans are feeling about him.