Why one New Yorker fled to Canada after Trump won the White House in 2016

Many people have heard it, or maybe even thought it themselves: “If _______ wins the presidential election, I’m leaving the country.” It’s usually a desperate, empty threat. But Stephen Shainbart actually did it.

Shainbart was a lifelong New Yorker who moved to Canada after Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. He wrote a book about it called “I Actually Did It!: Becoming Canadian because of Trump.”

“I feel really happy about it. I feel a little bit safer. I don’t feel fully protected, but I think had I just stayed, I would have been more worried,” Shainbart says. “I’m still an American citizen, but now I have two options. Two countries.”

Trump won’t be president forever, but despite that, Shainbart has no plans to return to the U.S. anytime soon.

“I wouldn’t say never. I might,” Shainbart says. “I think that Donald Trump is as much of a symptom of a problem with the United States as he is a cause of a problem in the United States.”