Who knew that by \u201cAmerica First,\u201d President Trump meant all of the Americas?<\/p>\n
In puzzling over that question at least, I\u2019ve got company in Marjorie Taylor Greene, the now-former congresswoman from Georgia and onetime Trump devotee who remains stalwart in his America First movement. Greene tweeted<\/a> on Saturday, just ahead of Trump\u2019s triumphal news conference about the United States\u2019 decapitation of Venezuela\u2019s government by the military\u2019s middle-of-the-night nabbing of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and his wife: \u201cThis is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end. Boy were we wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Wrong indeed. Nearly a year into his second term, Trump has done nothing but exacerbate the domestic problems that Greene identified as America First priorities \u2014 bringing down the \u201cincreasing cost of living, housing, healthcare\u201d within the 50 states \u2014 even as he\u2019s pursued the \u201cnever ending military aggression\u201d and foreign adventurism that America Firsters scorn, or at least used to. Another Trump con. Another lie.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a stunning stat, thanks to Military Times<\/a>: In 2025, Trump ordered 626 missile strikes worldwide, 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\u2019s threatened to hit Iran again if it kills demonstrators who have been marching in Tehran\u2019s streets to protest the country\u2019s woeful economic conditions. (\u201cWe are locked and loaded and ready to go,\u201d Trump posted Friday<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The president doesn\u2019t like \u201cforever wars,\u201d he\u2019s said many times, but he sure loves quick booms and cinematic secret ops. Leave aside, for now, the attacks in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. It\u2019s Trump\u2019s new claim to \u201crun\u201d<\/a> Venezuela that has signaled the beginning of his mind-boggling bid for U.S. hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. Any such ambition raises the potential for quick actions to become quagmires.<\/p>\n As Stephen Miller, perhaps Trump\u2019s closest and most like-minded (read: unhinged) advisor, described the administration\u2019s worldview<\/a> on Monday to CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper: \u201cWe live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.\u201d<\/p>\n You know, that old, amoral iron law: \u201cMight makes right.\u201d Music to Vladimir Putin\u2019s and Xi Jinping\u2019s ears as they seek hegemonic expansion of their own, confident that the United States has given up the moral high ground from which to object.<\/p>\n But it was Trump, the branding maven, who gave the White House worldview its name \u2014 his own, of course: the Donroe Doctrine. And it was Trump who spelled out<\/a> what that might mean in practice for the Americas, in a chest-thumping, war-mongering performance on Sunday returning to Washington aboard Air Force One. The wannabe U.S. king turns out to be a wannabe emperor of an entire hemisphere.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re in charge,\u201d Trump said of Venezuela to reporters. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna run it. Fix it. We\u2019ll have elections at the right time.\u201d He added<\/a>, \u201cIf they don\u2019t behave, we\u2019ll do a second strike.\u201d He went on, suggestively, ominously: \u201cColombia is very sick too,\u201d and \u201cCuba is ready to fall.\u201d Looking northward, he coveted more: \u201cWe need Greenland from a national security situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Separately, Trump recently has said<\/a> that Colombia\u2019s leftist President Gustavo Petro \u201cdoes have to watch his ass,\u201d and that, given Trump\u2019s unhappiness with the ungenuflecting Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, \u201cSomething\u2019s going to have to be done with Mexico.\u201d<\/a> In their cases as well as Maduro\u2019s, Trump\u2019s ostensible complaints have been that each has been complacent or complicit with drug cartels.<\/p>\n And yet, just last month Trump pardoned<\/a> the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, who was convicted in a U.S. court and given a 45-year sentence <\/a>for his central role in \u201cone of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.\u201d Hern\u00e1ndez helped traffickers ship 400 tons of cocaine into the United States \u2014 to \u201cstuff the drugs up the gringos\u2019 noses.\u201d And Trump pardoned him after less than two years in prison<\/a>.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s implausible that a few weeks later, the U.S. president truly believes in taking a hard line against leaders he suspects of abetting the drug trade. Maybe Trump\u2019s real motivation is something other than drug-running?<\/p>\n In his appearance after the Maduro arrest, Trump used the word \u201coil\u201d 21 times. On Tuesday, he announced, in a social media post<\/a>, of course, that he was taking control of the proceeds from up to 50 barrels of Venezuelan oil. (Not that he cares, but that would violate the Constitution, which gives Congress power to appropriate money that comes into the U.S. Treasury.)<\/p>\n Or perhaps, in line with the Monroe Doctrine, our current president has a retro urge to dominate half the world.<\/p>\n Lately his focus has been on Venezuela and South America, but North America is also in his sights. Trump has long said he might target Mexico to hit cartels and that the United States\u2019 other North American neighbor, Canada, should become the 51st state. But it\u2019s a third part of North America \u2014 Greenland \u2014 that he\u2019s most intent on.<\/p>\n The icy island has fewer than 60,000 people but mineral wealth that\u2019s increasingly accessible given the climate warming that Trump calls a hoax. For him to lay claim isn\u2019t just a problem for the Americas. It\u2019s an existential threat to NATO given that Greenland is an autonomous part of NATO ally Denmark \u2014 as Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned<\/a>.<\/p>\n Not in 80 years did anyone imagine that NATO \u2014 bound by its tenet that an attack on one member is an attack on all \u2014 would be attacked from within, least of all from the United States. In a remarkable statement<\/a> on Tuesday, U.S. allies rallied around Denmark: \u201cIt is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s insistence that controlling Greenland is essential to U.S. national security is nuts. The United States has had military bases there since World War II, and all of NATO sees Greenland as critical to defend against Russian and Chinese encroachment in the Arctic. Still, Trump hasn\u2019t ruled out the use of force to take the island.<\/p>\n He imagines himself to be the emperor of the Americas \u2014 all of it. Americas First.<\/p>\n Bluesky: @jackiecalmes<\/a>
Threads: @jkcalmes<\/a>
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