I was reading this Times piece about the mass protests in Iran. The language the regime is using to describe the pro-democracy protests is pretty much the identical language that Trumpists are using to describe protests in America.
If - hopefully, hopefully - the Iranians finally throw off their awful government, Trump will no doubt take credit for it, but make no mistake, he wants to be Supreme Leader himself.
The atrocious murder of Renee Good in Minnesota by masked agents of the state has been likened to the Orwellian line of "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." This connects - and rightly so - the actions of the Trump administration with 20th century totalitarianism. I don't think they've achieved it, but that is clearly their goal.
However, in describing Trump himself, I think Krugman is correct here and here. Trump clearly sees himself as a monarch, a sovereign. His actions work to blur the lines between the state and his person. He sees the achievements of the state as HIS achievements and the resources of the state as HIS resources. This is why dissent of any kind is "treason," because the king is the sovereign.
The basic, foundational idea of America - the thing we are celebrating this year's 250th anniversary - is that the people are sovereign. Trump's "L'etat cest moi" bullshit is deeply, deeply Unamerican. The raid to get Maduro was a very impressive bit of work by the extraordinary professionals of Joint Special Operations Command. Trump thinks he did it. He crowed about watching it on TV, like he was playing some sort of video game and the controller was in his hands. His desecration of the East Wing of the White House is reminiscent of some fading potentate building a palace in his own honor to stave off the looming reality of his own mortality.
I honestly am not going to predict the fallout from Good's murder or Trump's illegal actions in Venezuela. I've been humbled trying to predict things where Trump is involved. Still, shooting a white mom in the face is not likely to increase support for his internal deportation policies. Those policies were never popular, as people wanted more border security, not attacks on their schools and neighborhoods in an effort to deport some roofers, line books and housekeepers. Before these events we had two polls on Trump's job approval. CBS had 41-59 or 18 points "underwater" and Rasmussen (Rasmussen!) had him 45-53 or 8 points down.
ICE itself has seen support collapse, from +16 to -14 in November. That number is sure to fall further. People want the border "secure" but they don't want raids on apartment buildings, they don't want masked goons provoking confrontations on American streets. Support for abolishing ICE entirely has reached 42%, up from 29% in 2018. Not yet the majority position, but this was before ICE start shooting people in the face and then being held unaccountable for their actions.
I've been learning about pre-Norman Britain, and it is striking how the character of government often depended so completely on the character of the king. Trump is a man of low character, and his administration reflects this. I was reflecting on the fact that "shame" isn't actually a bad thing, if it serves a moral code. Relentless shame is debilitating, but if you wrong someone and feel shame, that's actually good. It allows you to make amends and rectify your behavior.
Trump's superpower is shamelessness, and that extends to his courtiers, who smear Renee Good rather than reflect on their actions that led to her slaughter in the streets of her hometown by agents of the state that are not welcome there. Their king revels in the blood on his hands, he bathes in it.
But hopefully, America remembers that we are not a nation of kings.
Yesterday, video clearly showed an ICE officer in Minneapolis shoot and kill a woman who was "in the way" of an ICE raid. He violated many basic rules of law enforcement - don't stand in front of a vehicle; don't discharge your weapon into a moving vehicle - and he basically murdered her for "not complying."
Immediately the Trump administration made false claims about the woman, the incident and the nature of the threat to ICE. There are so many disturbing aspects of this incident that it does remind me of January 6th, in terms of which aspect I should be angriest about.
This happened for one reason only: Trump and Stephen Miller are looking for performative acts of oppression and intimidation in "blue" cities. They aren't finding the hundreds of thousands of "illegals" in these cities, and maybe they are stupid enough to think that this is just a matter of more raids. In fact, these wholesale assaults on civil liberties very much feels like the point of all of this. They've started to focus on Minnesota because of a fraud case surrounding day cares, which is currently being adjudicated. Yes, it was a crime, but it's being dealt with appropriately. The pretext is all that matters.
It is, of course, depressing to go online and see the inevitable toeing of the party line for what amounts to the lynching or extrajudicial killing of Renee Nicole Good. All the Trump sycophants and fascists immediately assumed the GroupThink about radical antifa leftists and the utter bullshit that - apparently in their minds - justifies shooting a mother in the head from point blank range.
It is also incredibly depressing to see the "she should have just complied" crowd place the cause of her death on her as opposed to the ICE agent who was very much NOT in danger of imminent death. That these are the same people who think Ashlii Babbit is a martyr and January 6th was no big deal is not surprising.
It is the ability of Trump and Trumpism to get their followers to believe the lies - even with obvious video evidence showing the opposite - that is truly terrifying. The actual act of violence is appalling, but life can be cruel and capricious. Terrible things do happen.
It is watching the entire Republican Party bow down before an altar of lies that is so unsettling. How can you recreate civic democracy under those circumstances?
As Trump's imperial project stalls at home, with the National Guard removed from American cities and Republicans beginning to buck him in the House, Trump looks afield to sate his imperial pretensions. As with everything he does, it's stupid - a sort of "Didn't Do The Reading" attempt to mimic the late Gilded Age of McKinley: tariffs and wars of empire.
Richardson notes his rambling, incoherent speech yesterday, and how it ties to his renewed threats against Greenland. This is a great example of Stupid Imperialism. (All imperialism is pretty stupid, but this stuff is...woof.) Trump wants Greenland because it looks huge on a Mercator projection and because he heard they have rare earths. Rare earths are not "rare" but are simply hard to refine. China - who doesn't give a shit about polluting its own air and water - have moved into a monopolistic position on rare earths because they have built infrastructure, not because they own the dirt.
Even with Venezuela, Krugman notes that much of Venezuelan oil wealth is hypothetical to the point of being fictional. It's heavy, bitter crude rather than the light, sweet crude that refines most easily into usable petroleum.
Let's leave aside the stupidity of Trump saying we "run" Venezuela, when we obviously do not. Let's leave aside the stupidity of tearing apart the NATO alliance to annex Greenland for no meaningful advantage. Yes, the process is stupid and thuggish.
The thing is, the GOAL is stupid, too. The original mercantilism arose from Malthus' insight into the economics of scarcity. If there was a limited amount of a good or resource, it made sense to have a national monopoly on that. Adam Smith and the industrial revolution ended that basic idea - even if it took a century to learn that it was dead. There is no advantage to an empire, which is why - leftist caterwauling to the contrary - America largely did not pursue a true empire. When we did, it largely ended poorly.
The dumbification of America has happened, because one of our two major parties has lobotomized itself to reflect the imbecility of their Orange God.
Richardson makes a compelling case about the links between Republican rhetoric surrounding Democratic electoral victories that stretches back to the 1990s, and Trump's efforts to overthrow electoral democracy five years ago today.
She goes on to note the common thread from his two impeachments and the complete faceplant from Merrick Garland to delay the appointment of Jack Smith and then the SCOTUS' grant of immunity for presidential actions and how that created the lawlessness we see from Trump now.
Trump's whole life has been a bully who uses his money to bully contractors and debtors and escape the most significant consequences for his actions. He ran for president - allegedly - to boost his ability to start some sort of OANN type "Trump TV" to challenge Fox from the right. (Let that sink in.) Once he won, he now has to continue to bully and threaten to stay on top. The entire system of constitutional checks and balances is as foreign to him as calculus is to a sea urchin.
January 6th was the moment when the old Republican Party could have held him responsible for his actions and we could have escaped this nightmare. If ten more Republican Senators had voted to convict in the Senate - and they all knew he was guilty - then we would not be staring down the insanity of 2025 and now 2026. We would not be threatening Greenland/Denmark. We would not be levying tariffs on whatever seizes his fancy. We would not be rounding up citizens and residents and deporting them to offshore gulags. In fact, there probably (certainly) would be a Republican president right now anyway, given the anti-incumbent tides that swept the world after Covid. They could have had their tax cuts and deregulation.
Instead, it has become a party steeped and dependent on fear-mongering conspiracy theories.
Instead, democracy in our country is undergoing a series of battering blows every day.
Donald Trump is a depraved, small, heartless man with the mental architecture of a Jersey Turnpike toilet. However, the real locus of evil on this fell times is Stephen Miller. His recent incantation of the threats against Greenland and Denmark is a great example of just how batshit insane his political impulses are.
The threats against Greenland are a great example of the stupidity and evil of Trumpistan, and how they are effectively the same thing. Greenland hosts American military bases as a member of NATO. They are our allies, especially against Russia and maintaining the UK-Iceland gap. It is otherwise a barely inhabitable frozen wasteland. It has "rare earths", but again, rare earths are not rare, just hard and dirty to refine. It also looks huge on a map. This cascading features of stupidity are what drives Trump and Miller to threaten a long time ally.
And this doesn't even cover his jackbooted thugs breaking into schools.
Miller is most likely universally reviled in whatever remains of the old Republican Party - a party that itself was hardly a beacon of intelligence and decency. I am hopeful that there are enough of the old Republicans left to muzzle this rabid Pomeranian before he does even more damage to our country.
Among the more stupid utterances from our most stupid president was Trump's assertion of a Donroe Doctrine because people "hadn't heard about the Monroe Doctrine." That's always a tell that he has just learned something. Now, most anyone with a working knowledge of US History remembers the Monroe Doctrine, but the reason they remember it is often muddled.
The Monroe Doctrine was largely the brainchild of John Quincy Adams, Monroe's Secretary of State and an experienced diplomat. Quincy Adams had been our minister to Russia during the Revolution when he was about 19 years old. The situation was that during the Napoleonic Wars, Spain had been both weakened and liberalized during Napoleon's conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Existing elites in the Spanish New World colonies were upset at the democratic and anti-clerical reforms coming from the puppet government in Madrid, so Continental Spanish America rose up in wars of independence stretching from Mexico to Argentina.
After Napoleon had been defeated and the forces of monarchical conservatism had created the Concert of Vienna to maintain order in Europe, they looked westward to reestablish Spanish control of the New World. Britain, who had benefitted from the newly opened ports and was ideologically disposed to freer trade, wanted to enlist American help in guaranteeing Spanish America's independence.
Adams realized that the real guarantor of that independence was the British Navy. Still, riding the wave of American nationalism that resulted from the War of 1812 (fought against the British, and therefore making it hard to visibly align with Britain), Adams wrote the doctrine that the New World was to be free from further colonization of any kind, and it was American policy to guarantee this. In return - in a laughable boast at the time - the US would remain aloof from European affairs.
Very few people on either side of the Atlantic took much note of the Doctrine at the time. It was not a law or treaty, it was just something James Monroe said. Britain made sure no one crossed the Atlantic to reinstate Spanish colonialism, until the Civil War came. With both the US and UK preoccupied by the war, France installed a Hapsburg prince, Maximillian, as Emperor of Mexico. Once the war was over, Grant moved a full army to the Rio Grande, France withdrew support and Maximillian died before a Mexican firing squad. The Monroe Doctrine was revivified a bit there.
However, the real prominence of the Monroe Doctrine came at the end of the 19th century, with America's war against Spain. This conflict focused American military planning on the building of the Panama Canal after the war and this in turn led to America - a country founded on anti-imperialism and self-determination, which the Monroe Doctrine buttressed - becoming an imperial power. We seized and held Puerto Rico, Guantanamo Bay and would later help wrest Panama from Colombia.
Teddy Roosevelt would issue his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, stating the US was the sold policeman and debt collector for the Western Hemisphere, especially the Caribbean. Many of the small countries rimming the Caribbean were deeply in debt to European powers and incapable of paying those debts off, at least in part due to the corruption in their Customs Departments. Because most revenues at the time came from import duties, control of the Customs Houses was a great way to get rich. This had been true in the US as well, until civil service reform helped end that corruption. Roosevelt initiated a period of American bullying and quasi-imperialism that lasted until his cousin, Franklin, began the Good Neighbor policy.
To recap: The original Monroe Doctrine was an expression of America's deep antipathy towards imperialism. In the late 19th and early 20th century, it actually became a lever to shift America into a quasi-imperial power, leaving the US very much hated until FDR reversed that policy. Since then, America had vacillated between supporting and opposing democracy in the Caribbean basin.
What Donald Trump is expressing in his Donroe Doctrine is a return to the worst of Teddy Roosevelt's imperialism but ramped up to 13 out of 10. TR - and Wilson with his invasion of Mexico - embraced the sort of paternalistic racism that at least had benevolent intentions - as misguided as they were. TR took over Customs houses in order to forestall European creditors from coming in and doing the same. Wilson invaded Mexico, because they were under a terrible miliary dictator during a revolution. Neither wanted or certainly stated such a naked statement of intentions to loot those countries.
Donald Trump's operational persona is and always has been that of a wannabe Mafia Boss. He uses threats and boasts to cow opposition, but as we have seen, he usually backs down when he's opposed with sufficient resolve. This bullying persona meshes with Don Trumpeone, the insecure mob boss who needs to display dominance and opulence, because deep down, he knows he's the son his parents were disappointed in.
Trump is stripping away even the pretense of paternalism in favor of naked predation. In the Puzo/Coppola mythology of the mob, the first Don Corleone was a protector of the poor immigrants of New York, whereas Michael becomes simply a ruthless, heartless killer. Trump is that ruthless killer, devoid of human connection or feeling, alone in his darkened mental landscape and seeing the entire world as either wolves or sheep, and visualizing himself as the biggest wolf of all.
This is, to borrow a phrase from conservatism, deeply un-American.
The idea that Trump launched his raid in Venezuela to distract from both the Epstein Files and Jack Smith's testimony about Trump's criminality is a solid theory. I do think, however, that there were a lot of agendas pushing the escalating attacks on Maduro over the last year. Rubio wants regime change in Caracas and Havana. Hegseth wants to watch Delta Force kill people. Trump wants the oil. It is worth noting that Venezuela's oil is of notorious low quality, making it difficult to refine and use productively. However, that subtlety is unlikely to matter to Trump's lizard brain. For instance, rare earths are not "rare" it's just hard to refine them. Still, that fucking moron just heard "rare" and wants to annex Greenland.
As Elliot Morris points out, Americans do not want to go to war in Venezuela. The results are pretty stable, as most Americans remember what happened the last time we invaded a country to install a friendly government. A plurality of Republicans oppose this move as well, especially those who aren't in the MAGA cult.
Morris also noted a few days ago how different the perceptions of Trump are depending on whether you watch Fox News. This is a huge problem in deprogramming people from the MAGA cult. As long as they get this incredibly warped view of reality from Fox, their loyalty to this president will be unchallenged. In the Fox Cinematic Universe, Trump did a cool-assed John Wick-Rambo raid. For the rest of us, the essential impression is that this was tactically impressive and strategically incoherent. Amazing job kidnapping the president of a sovereign country, I guess. What now?
The fundamental question at this moment is whether we really will be putting "boots on the ground." If we are, that requires Congressional approval that I don't think will be forthcoming. Trump will likely ignore this and do it anyway, which creates yet another chapter in our ongoing constitutional crises.
So, does this distract from the Epstein and Smith news? Yeah, sure. But not in a good way, because people aren't really on board with another example in naive nation building.
We have no way of knowing what comes next in Venezuela. There is a democratic opposition there, although a lot of them are in exile. While we removed Maduro, the basic power structure that surrounded him is still in place and can likely only be dislodged by a full ground invasion.
Let's take a moment to look at the history of American-led coups and removals from power. In 1954, the CIA helped overthrow Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. The coup was successful, but two young radicals - Che Guevara and Fidel Castro - began to look at the US as the fundamental enemy of liberty and equality in Latin America. Later, the CIA would try and remove Castro via the Bay of Pigs invasion. This pushed Castro to ask the Soviets for nuclear weapons for self-defense. The resulting Cuban Missile Crisis nearly ended human civilization.
Also in 1954, we overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh. The resulting brutality of the Shah's rule led to growing anti-American sentiment that erupted in the 1978 revolution, the consequences of which we are still wrestling with.
In 1963, we gave support to the Vietnamese military to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem. The subsequent chaos and destabilization led inexorably to America's military presence being necessary to prop up the South Vietnamese government. To be clear, Diem was terrible (like Maduro), but by supporting Thieu's coup, we "owned" the outcome. This led to Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn Rule" which states that when "you break it, you own it." It's why coalition forces did not march on Baghdad in 1991.
In the late '60s and '70s, we supported right wing regimes in South America and at least one coup in Chile. While I don't think replacing Allende with Pinochet necessarily made America any safer and it led to thousands of political killings and repression in Chile, it wasn't an abject failure the way many other coups were.
Similarly - and really the most similar to today - we deposed Manuel Noriega in 1989, because of his ties to the Colombian cartels and the coming cession of the canal to Panama. The US had a long presence in Panama and the transition to better governance was fairly easy, once Noriega was gone. I have no doubt that this was the model for someone like Rubio. Venezuela is not Panama.
Under HW Bush, we not only invaded Panama, but we did NOT invade Iraq. We did, however, try and stabilize Somalia, a haphazard plan that led to the Battle of Mogadishu.
The most recent examples of US-led or abetted regime change are, of course, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Iraq has remained a troubled, fractious place, and it took a decades long occupation and thousands of American deaths. Of the three, it was the most successful example. Afghanistan immediately collapsed back into Taliban rule and Libya remains a failed state.
If we look at the Fragile State Index, Afghanistan is tied for 7th, Libya is 16th and Iraq is 31st. Venezuela is 30th, which suggests that there is precious little stability to build on. Trump is out there saying that we are going to "run" Venezuela. That is impossible without Congressional consent. Existing authorities in Venezuela are calling bullshit on this.
(In case you're wondering, the US has fallen to 141st out of 179 countries, ranked the same as Argentina, Hungary and Barbados.)
As I'm writing this, that big fucking dumbass is on TV basically admitting that we attacked and deposed Maduro for oil. Unless we are prepared for an Iraq-style military occupation, it seems very unlikely that we are going to find much support within Venezuela for this. Sure, Venezuelan emigres in South Florida are going to be stoked. But within the power structures of Venezuela, you cannot maintain political legitimacy by being a Quisling traitor to your own national sovereignty. You had Trump bloviating about how the new president, Delcy Rodriguez, was eager to work with America to help exploit their oil at the very same time that she was on TV denouncing the attack.
I know why Rubio wanted this. He wants regime change in Venezuela and Cuba, because he's a neo-con whose parents fled Cuba. I know what Hague-seth wanted this. He's got a war-boner and loves the idea of sending Delta Force on a Chuck Norris mission.
Trump, however, is a fucking mobster. He wants the oil. He was likely promised the oil by Rubio in order to get permission. Rubio strikes me as precisely the same sort of credulous boob who though we would be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators.
They have no idea what is going to happen next.
Congratulations, Team Trump. You won the news cycle!
That means nothing if you can't implement something productive out of this gross violation of international law and the American Constitution.
This morning's strikes on Caracas and the arrest/kidnapping of Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, is a perfect distillation of Trumpist policy.
First, it was likely tactically pretty sound. If they really did manage to get Delta in and out of the capital with the president of another country...that's pretty impressive. However, we should note that this is fundamentally impressive on the level of staff officers in the US military. Trump - even Hegseth and Rubio - were not stooped over a table gaming out scenarios. They gave JSOC a mission, and the mission was successful. To this point.
Winning the daily news cycle is Trump's biggest political strength.
Second, what was the strategic endgame here? Politically, Maduro is a bad guy who no one is going to feel much sympathy for. Here are some other unsympathetic bad guys: Saddam Hussein, Moammar Ghaddafi and Sheik Omar. We toppled or helped topple these dictators and the result has been decades of chaos, civil war and civic unrest.
Trump and the people around them are not long term planners.
Third, this was almost certainly illegal. Having a warrant for Maduro does not give the US the right to invade a country - even for a few hours. Rubio and Hegseth lied to Congress a few weeks back when they said they were not pursuing regime change in Venezuela. There is no recognized "right to attack another country because you don't like their leader."
Trump and his minions routinely lie and break the law.
The stated reasons for invading Venezuela are going to be some boilerplate about drug smuggling and - I think - weapons charges (which seems thin). Trump has pardoned the former president of Honduras who was convicted of being a drug smuggler and the head of various crypto schemes designed to launder money for cartels. It's not about the drugs. It's about the oil. Yes, Hegseth and Rubio aren't going to admit that, but Trump already has! He can't fucking help himself. This is about looting natural resources.
Trump is obsessed with oil, rare earths, you name it, in the pursuit of immediate material gain.
I saw one response along the lines of "There is no international rules-based order, might makes right and we wanted him gone, so he's gone." This is a form of hyper-realist foreign policy thinking that a state is alone in an anarchic world and must pursue its advantages with single-mindedness. International Law is therefore a joke. This represents a fundamental shift in American policy that is more cohesive than "Trump like dictators." Trump likes power and the expression of power. What we did in Caracas was smarter than what Putin has done in Ukraine, but it's the same fundamental approach to international affairs: might makes right. It is also part of the Trumpist foreign policy that makes the Western Hemisphere America's hegemonic playground.
Trump's admiration of Xi and Putin is based in their willingness to violate international norms, which he has always wanted to do.
This is a distraction from a lot of bad news. Millions of Americans are going to be priced out of health insurance in the next week. The Epstein files are trickling out. Trump's declining health is in the news. He's tremendously unpopular.
Trump - when cornered - commits outrageous acts to change the subject.
So, that's it. That's the nature of Trump's political persona in one lethal act.
More to follow.
UPDATE: Trump is basically saying we are going to annex Venezuela because of the oil.
If you want to get a really compelling vision of how Trump 2.0 has led to a web of shady dealings, kickbacks and grifts, The New York Times did a great job with this story.
I was hoping that the end of the mayoral election would mean being able to stop paying attention to NYC politics.
I was naive.
As Krugman points out, NYC is doing great. It's recovered from Covid in ways that place like San Francisco really hasn't (yet). Crime is down, life expectancy is up. Some good policy decisions, like congestion pricing, have worked; others are still up for grabs, and NYC is a great ground zero for "abundance" experimentation, when it comes to housing.
Having just driven to JFK yesterday, I can attest both that the area around Flushing has improved a lot over the last decade, it's still vaguely dystopian in its aesthetics. Business fronts just look dirty and tired. The Van Wyck remains the single worst road in America, with construction that has never ended. If you were from a small town, and flew into NY via JFK or even LaGuardia, you would probably think it was a failed city on the brink of collapse.
But it's not. It's old and grungy, sure, but it works in it own chaotic way. It will be interesting to see what Mamdani can actually achieve, given NYC's fractious politics and power structures. I'd wager he does some good, but falls far short of the dreams of his most ardent supporters.
Best of luck, New York. Except for the Mets.
