A top U.S. admiral gave a puzzling response when pressed on whether he would attack Canada if President Donald Trump ordered him to.
Samuel J. Paparo, who leads the U.S. Pacific Command, was asked at a joint military conference in Canada on Wednesday under what circumstances he would obey an order to launch military action against America’s northern neighbor, according to the Ottawa Citizen.
The admiral, visibly caught off guard, called the question “needlessly emotional” but avoided giving a straight answer.
“I find that—I find that scenario to be, uh, absolutely and utterly preposterous,” Paparo said, as seen in a video shared on X by Wiretap Media. “And so, uh, I follow the—I follow the orders of the commander-in-chief, but, uh, that is a needlessly emotional question.”
“I don’t find—forgive my, forgive my saying it, too—is that, uh… Canada is a close ally,” he continued.
Paparo paused for a moment, laughing nervously before adding, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be—insult you.”
The reporter replied that the admiral still hadn’t answered the question.
“I said I follow the orders of the president and I find it to be a, uh… would you ask me, please, also, what my attack plans are for the Martians?” the military commander replied jokingly before saying he rejected the premise of the question.
Asked about Paparo’s comments and whether the U.S. would ever attack Canada, the Pentagon told the Daily Beast it had “nothing to provide.”
Tensions between the U.S. and its neighboring ally have risen in the wake of the trade war sparked by the Trump administration.
Administration officials, as well as the president himself, have fanned the flames by attacking Canada with childish insults.
Over the last week, Cabinet secretaries, including Sean Duffy, Scott Bessent, and Pete Hegseth, have mocked the Canadian military, while Trump has ordered the rebranding of Lake Ontario, which sits between the two nations’ borders, as “Lake America.”
Trump’s fascination with renaming bodies of water began last year when he ordered the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed as the “Gulf of America.”
On Wednesday, the president also suggested on Truth Social that the Strait of Hormuz, which has been a point of contention amid his quagmire of a war with Iran, should be renamed to the “Trump Strait.”
Last week, he also pondered renaming either the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean after himself.
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