Who knew that by “America First” President Trump was referring to all of the americas?
At least to settle that question, I have company in Marjorie Taylor Greene, the now-former Georgia congresswoman and one-time Trump devotee who remains stalwart in her America First movement. green tweeted on Saturday, just before Trump's triumphant press conference on the United States' decapitation of the Venezuelan government through the military arrest of Nicolás Maduro and his wife in the middle of the night: “This is what many in MAGA thought they had voted to end. Boy, were we wrong.”
In fact, it is wrong. Nearly a year into his second term, Trump has done nothing but exacerbate the domestic problems that Greene identified as America First priorities (lowering the “rising cost of living, housing and health care” within the 50 states), even as he has pursued the “endless military aggression” and foreign adventurism that States First despise, or at least used to do. Another Trump scam. Another lie.
Here is a surprising statistic, thanks to military times: In 2025, Trump ordered 626 missile strikes around the world, 71 more than President Biden did in his entire four-year term. Targets so far have included Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, Iran and the waters off Venezuela and Colombia. Lately he has threatened to hit Iran again if it kills protesters who have been marching in the streets of Tehran to protest the country's pitiful economic conditions. (“We are locked, loaded and ready to go,” Trump posted Friday.)
The president doesn't like “forever wars,” he has said many times, but he sure loves quick booms and secret movie operations. Let us leave aside, for now, the attacks in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. It is Trump's new claim of “run” Venezuela, which has signaled the beginning of its mind-blowing bid for American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. Any such ambition increases the possibility that quick actions will turn into quagmires.
As Stephen Miller, perhaps Trump's closest and most like-minded (read: unhinged) advisor, described the administration's management worldview on Monday to CNN's Jake Tapper: “We live in a world, the real world, Jake, that is ruled by force, that is ruled by force, that is ruled by power. These are iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
You know, that old, amoral iron law: “Might makes right.” Music to the ears of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as they pursue their own hegemonic expansion, confident that the United States has given up its moral authority from which to object.
But it was Trump, the branding expert, who gave his name to the White House worldview (his own, of course): the Donroe Doctrine. And it was Trump who spelled What that could mean in practice for the Americas, in a warmongering, chest-thumping performance Sunday upon returning to Washington aboard Air Force One. The would-be king of the United States turns out to be a would-be emperor of an entire hemisphere.
“We're in charge,” Trump told reporters about Venezuela. “We're going to execute it. We're going to fix it. We're going to have elections at the right time.” He aggregate“If they don't behave, we will make a second attack.” He continued, suggestively and sinisterly: “Colombia is also very sick” and “Cuba is about to fall.” Looking north, he coveted more: “We need Greenland from a national security situation.”
On the other hand, Trump has recently saying that the leftist president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, “has to watch his ass” and that, given Trump's discontent with the impassive Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, “Something will have to be done with Mexico.” In their cases, as well as Maduro's, Trump's apparent complaints have been that each has been complacent or complicit with the drug cartels.
And yet, just last month Triumph forgiven the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in a US court and sentenced 45 year sentence for his central role in “one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world.” Hernández helped traffickers send 400 tons of cocaine to the United States, to “shove the drugs under the faces of the gringos.” And Trump pardoned him after less than two years in prison.
It is therefore implausible that a few weeks later, the president of the United States actually believes in the need to take a hard line against leaders he suspects of being complicit in drug trafficking. Maybe Trump's real motivation is something other than drug trafficking?
In his appearance after Maduro's arrest, Trump used the word “oil” 21 times. On Tuesday, he announced on a social network mailOf course, he was taking control of the profits of up to 50 barrels of Venezuelan oil. (Not that he cares, but that would violate the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to appropriate money coming into the U.S. Treasury.)
Or perhaps, in line with the Monroe Doctrine, our current president has a retroactive drive to dominate half the world.
Lately his attention has been focused on Venezuela and South America, but North America is also in his sights. Trump has long said he could target Mexico to attack cartels and that the United States' other North American neighbor, Canada, should become the 51st state. But it is a third of North America – Greenland – that he has the most intentions on.
The frozen island has fewer than 60,000 inhabitants, but mineral wealth is increasingly accessible given the warming climate that Trump calls a hoax. For him, claiming rights is not just an American problem. It is an existential threat to NATO given that Greenland is an autonomous part of NATO ally Denmark, as Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said. warned.
In 80 years, no one imagined that NATO, bound by its principle that an attack on one member is an attack on all, would be attacked from within, and even less so from the United States. In a remarkable statement On Tuesday, US allies rallied around Denmark: “It is up to Denmark and Greenland, and only them, to decide on matters relating to Denmark and Greenland.”
Trump's insistence that controlling Greenland is essential to US national security is insane. The United States has had military bases there since World War II, and all of NATO views Greenland as critical to defending against Russian and Chinese invasion of the Arctic. Still, Trump has not ruled out using force to take the island.
He imagines himself as the emperor of America, of all of it. America first.
Blue sky: @jackiecalmes
Rags: @jkcalmes
UNKNOWN: @jackiekcalmes
