\n Critics of the US ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro this weekend have regularly invoked President Donald Trump\u2019s comments during the 2016 campaign.\n <\/p>\n
\n Back then, Trump vocally decried \u201cregime change,\u201d setting himself up as the non-interventionist candidate in the race. \u201cDonald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk<\/a>,\u201d read a headline on a piece by The New York Times\u2019 Maureen Dowd.\n <\/p>\n \n Some have suggested this mission isn\u2019t exactly in line with Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d rhetoric, including a few Republicans<\/a> like Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and outgoing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.\n <\/p>\n \n But to better understand just what Trump ordered in Venezuela, you\u2019ve got to go back to the first time he (briefly) ran for president: 1999.\n <\/p>\n \n During Trump\u2019s appearance on MSNBC\u2019s \u201cHardball,\u201d Chris Matthews peppered the new third-party candidate with questions about recent US foreign policy adventures. And some of his answers would sound at home in his 2016 campaign. Vietnam was a \u201cdisaster.\u201d As for the idea of forcibly replacing leaders we don\u2019t like, like in Grenada? \u201cI don\u2019t like it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But there were a couple of notable exceptions.\n <\/p>\n \n One was Cuba, where Trump said he supported the Bay of Pigs invasion but actually wanted to go further \u2013 with bombings. (\u201cI think that you wouldn\u2019t have had a Fidel Castro had Kennedy done the bombing,\u201d Trump said in that 1999 interview.)\n <\/p>\n \n The other was the ouster of its Panama\u2019s strongman leader, Manuel Noriega \u2013 which many have compared to Trump\u2019s ouster of Maduro<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI tend to like it,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWhat he\u2019s done with Panama was terrible. I mean, generally speaking, I want to stay away. But Panama is getting very close to home. A bad guy. Drug trade all over the place, killing people all over the place.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n That does sound a lot like Trump\u2019s case for deposing Maduro.\n <\/p>\n \n Indeed, there have always been caveats to Trump\u2019s criticisms of \u201cregime change\u201d and holes in his anti-war veneer<\/a>, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. But he didn\u2019t dwell on them because the US was a very war-weary country after more than a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it was more politically advantageous to look like the \u201cdove\u201d candidate.\n <\/p>\n \n But there is no question that Trump\u2019s second term has featured a rather stark shift in how he defines and carries out an \u201cAmerica First\u201d foreign policy.\n <\/p>\n \n While before it clearly had an isolationist bent; today Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d is mostly along the lines of America does and takes what it decides is in its interest.\n <\/p>\n \n It\u2019s not just Venezuela, after all.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump has in recent days also threatened a bevy of other countries, including the aforementioned Cuba, as well as Colombia, Greenland, Mexico and Iran<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n He previously spoke about taking the Panama Canal, as well as making Canada the 51st state.\n <\/p>\n \n And he\u2019s launched more than half a dozen high-profile bombings this year \u2013 of alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, as well as in Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.\n <\/p>\n \n In about one year, Trump has struck or threatened roughly 1 out of every 15 countries in the world.\n <\/p>\n \n That is decidedly not as advertised.\n <\/p>\n \n Last decade, Trump said all of the following:\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe must abandon the failed policy of nation-building and regime change that Hillary Clinton pushed in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria.\u201d (2016 Republican National Convention)<\/p>\n \u201cThe current strategy of toppling regimes with no plan for what to do in the day after only produces power vacuums that are filled simply by terrorists.\u201d (September 2016)<\/p>\n \u201cHillary Clinton is trigger-happy. She\u2019s raced to invade, intervene and topple regimes. She believes in globalism, not Americanism.\u201d (September 2016)<\/p>\n \u201cWe will break the cycle of regime change and refugee crisis that has gone on for so many years.\u201d (September 2016)<\/p>\n \u201cWe will abandon the policy of reckless regime change favored by my opponent.\u201d (September 2016)<\/p>\n \u201cWe will stop racing to topple \u2026 foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn\u2019t be involved with.\u201d (December 2016)<\/p>\n \u201cOur policy of never-ending war, regime change, and nation-building is being replaced by the clear-eyed pursuit of American interests. It is the job of our military to protect our security, not to be the policeman of the world.\u201d (2019)<\/p>\n \n As you can see, these comments didn\u2019t generally rule out regime change, full stop, but rather cast Clinton\u2019s and others\u2019 versions of it as haphazard and counterproductive. Trump generally focused on opposing regime change and nation-building in the Middle East.\n <\/p>\n \n Today, Trump is making a different argument, more akin to what he said in 1999. Places like Venezuela are closer to home and, thus, of more concern to the United States. So keeping them in line and policing them is apparently \u201cAmerica First.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n That\u2019s basically what Trump has said in recent days when he has been challenged on this point.\n <\/p>\n \n Asked Saturday how invading Venezuela is \u201cAmerica First,\u201d Trump responded much like he did to Matthews.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI think it is because we want to surround ourself with good neighbors,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWe want to surround ourself with stability. We want to surround ourself with energy.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Pressed Sunday on his past comments opposing \u201cregime change,\u201d Trump responded: \u201cThis isn\u2019t a country that\u2019s on the other side of the world. This isn\u2019t a country, like, we have to travel 24 hours in an airplane. This is Venezuela. It\u2019s in our area.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The president added that getting Venezuelan oil would bring prices down, and that\u2019s \u201cgood for our country.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n It\u2019s certainly a version of America First. It\u2019s just not the version he was selling when he first ran for president \u2013 or even in his most recent campaign.\n <\/p>\n \n But it didn\u2019t take long after that 2024 campaign for Trump to start talking about taking Canada and Greenland<\/a>, then about \u201cmanifest destiny.<\/a>\u201d That started very shortly after his win.\n <\/p>\n \n Today, his political social media account is depicting him lording over all of North and South America<\/a>, while a State Department account is declaring the Western Hemisphere to be \u201cOUR Hemisphere<\/a>.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n This seems to be a version of Trump that was always there, but that he just suppressed for a while because it wasn\u2019t politically feasible.\n <\/p>\n \n And now all the people that jumped on board with him because they thought he was a \u201cdove\u201d get to confront a new reality \u2013 that Trump might actually be the most expansionist American president in many decades.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Critics of the US ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro this weekend have regularly invoked President Donald Trump\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":{"0":"post-390200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}