A number of celebrities and media personalities claimed in 2016 that if Donald Trump won the presidential election that they would move to Canada — one actually did.
WATCH:
Mark Nykanen, who served as NBC News’ Washington correspondent from 1980 to 1988 and later was the press secretary for Jerry Brown’s presidential campaign, appeared on CNN on Sunday to discuss his move to Canada.
“My wife and I looked at each other [when Trump was elected] and said: ‘Time to hit the road.’ And we did. We had the house on the market within two weeks,” Nykanen said.
Nykanen explained that he felt a sigh of relief when he and his wife finally made it across the border into Canada, noting that the election of “racist, openly sexist” Trump was his “trigger point.”
“When we came across the border, we’re driving in and when you see this Canadian flag all of a sudden my wife is sighing and so am I. And we’re both going, ‘ahh.’ And you know what that was? I think that was the emotional response of two Americans who were no longer living in a country constantly going to war,” Nykanen said through tears.
This isn’t the first time that the Nykanen family fled the United States when unhappy with the state of politics. They originally moved to Canada in 2003 when President George W. Bush gave the order to invade Iraq, and then finally came back to live in the United States in 2016. A year later, they were gone again.
Christopher Smith also contributed to this report.