Was it all about the grift?

The Trump Administration's bait and switch on Venezuela and Greenland

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That didn’t take long.

There are a couple of things that hold true about the Trump Administration. One is that news cycles move blindingly fast. Another is that if you defend Donald Trump, he’s almost certain to hang you out to dry in just a few shifts of the news cycle. That has never been more apparent than this week.

Saturday, we woke up to the news that the US (meaning Donald Trump) had attacked Venezuela. In the days that followed, there was a spirited debate about the legality of the president’s unilateral order to attack a sovereign nation that had not attacked us, as well as whether regime change was justified.

Fast-forward three days to Tuesday, and the president executes a sharp about-face, leaving egg on the face of his defenders. Tuesday night, with Venezuela’s communist regime still in place and cracking down on dissidents and journalists, Trump posted the following message on social media:

Social media screenshot from @JDVance

So, it looks like regime change is out the window, at least in the near term, but not necessarily the idea of the US running Venezuela’s oil industry. The oppressed will stay oppressed, and no, those refugees fleeing the still-in-place dictatorial regime are not welcome. Trump revoked the protected status for Venezuelan refugees in October, and if you think they will get it back, I have some oceanfront property to sell you in Caracas.

If you’re wondering where Trump gets the authority to unilaterally negotiate an oil deal treaty with Venezuela, let me just say don’t be naive. Unitary executives don’t need no stinking constitutional or legislative approval. Don’t you knew what time it is? Seriously, any long term commitment to Venezuela is going to require congressional buy-in.

What is not out the window are Nicholas Maduro’s residence in a federal prison cell and the idea that America (meaning Trump) will take Venezuela’s oil. Per the statement from the president, Trump gets control of 30 to 50 million barrels of “high-quality, sanctioned oil,” which will supposedly be sold to “benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.” Minus a piece of the action that, if Trump’s history of defrauding charities is any guide, will be substantial, I’m guessing.

Venezuela’s oil production was about 1 million barrels per day prior to the US blockade. Oilprice.com reports that production was being slowed prior to the attack. The oil in question is valued at about $2 billion.

There is a nonzero possibility that the announcement is mostly fantasy. The president has a history of announcing ludicrous amounts of foreign investment in the US that mostly turned out to be ephemeral. Many countries have repudiated these claims, and if the amounts were taken at face value, the claimed investment amounts would cripple their national economies.

That may be the case with Venezuela as well. Any announcement that is solely sourced to Donald Trump should be taken with a large dose of salt. There have been other indications of a deal from the US side, notably by Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, but I have not seen any confirmation from the Venezuelans.

The plan reportedly focuses on getting access for US oil companies quickly while kicking the can of regime change down the road. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the US would control Venezuelan oil “indefinitely,” but various US officials said there was no current plan to send troops.

I think this plan is legit, at least to some extent. The Venezuelan regime does not care about its citizens. It is focused solely on remaining in power. If it can buy off Donald Trump for 30-50 million barrels of oil, newly-installed President Delcy Rodriguez is likely to take the bargain and consider it money well spent. She might even throw in a few million extra barrels to buy a pardon for Maduro if she wants to go back to being second banana. (A little banana wars humor there.)

I’ll add a caveat, however, that Trump’s grand pronouncements often contain a lot of hype that disappears along the way to implementation. One of my axioms is that Trump cares far more about the headline than the policy. I’d bet that will turn out to be the case here.

As revealed so far, the plan contains three phases. The second phase, after the initial oil sale, is that the US gets access to Venezuelan oil. The third phase involves a “transition” to a new government. I’m pretty sure we will get to phase two, but I would not be surprised if phase three never happens.

Hours before the news of the alleged deal, I said that Trump had two options, neither of them good. Option one was to restart attacks in hopes of destabilizing and overthrowing the regime. Option two was to claim victory and move along. It looks like Trump is taking option two. The claim of a deal, real or not, allows him to save face, something that is very important to authoritarian strongmen.

And it does seem that Trump is moving along. The Administration is focused like a cat following a laser pointer, and the object of its desire is now once again Greenland. The mask is coming off, and the Trump Administration is increasingly bellicose and aggressive toward our NATO ally, Denmark, which oversees Greenland.

Darth Stephen Miller said the quiet part out loud; he actually yelled it in an interview with Jake Tapper. In a rambling rant combining elements of the Monroe Doctrine with manifest destiny and a smattering of lebensraum, Miller responded to a question about Venezuelan elections by arguing that freedom depends on our annexation of Greenland and claiming, “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”

I’m sorry, sir, this is a Wendy’s.

For a long time, the word “imperialism” was overused. The left used it to describe almost any international activity or pressure, but the word definitely applies to the Trump Administration, both in terms of making Venezuela a vassal state and the threat to annex Greenland. That’s ironic, by the way, because they came to power as isolationists arguing against “forever wars.” The shift has been whiplash-inducingly fast, but apparently, they don’t mind imperialism as long as the objects of the conquest don’t fight back.

The same people who told us that Trump would not attack Venezuela are now telling us that he won’t invade Greenland. Secretary of State Rubio told the Wall Street Journal that the war talk is supposed to be a negotiating tactic in an attempt to purchase Greenland from Denmark. The Administration is perilously short on credibility, and I’m not sure I buy this claim. In any event, Denmark won’t sell because the island is mostly autonomous, and Greenlanders don’t want to be part of the US. At this point, few could blame them.

Public opinion does not mean much to Trump, however, and he could try to force the issue by co-opting the independence movement or an outright invasion that might be paired with some sort of false flag emergency. He is already claiming that Greenland is surrounded by Chinese ships that apparently sailed from Cloud Kuckoo Land (Wolkenkuckucksheim).

We don’t know what Trump’s endgame is in Greenland, but I have a theory. There have long been rumors that Trump wanted to get the US out of NATO. These rumors date back at least to his first term. In response, Congress passed a law prohibiting presidents from unilaterally withdrawing from the alliance.

But what if the whole alliance fractured? What if there was such a big rift that the entire organization became untenable? What if our NATO partners kicked us out, or created a separate alliance without us, a sort of geopolitical Ancient Mystic Society of No Homers?

Annexing Greenland might do that. If it didn’t touch off a shooting war with Europe, it would probably damage our alliances beyond repair. One possible response would be for European nations to evict the US from its European bases. These bases have been used to protect Europe from a Russian invasion as well as to project American power around the globe for more than half a century. Their closure would chiefly benefit Vladimir Putin, although China would welcome the American retreat as well.

It’s entirely possible that Trump, who says he is committed to NATO and recently challenged Putin by seizing a Russian-flagged tanker, might just be fishing for more protection money (“you’ve got a nice island there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it”), but European democracies don’t make payoffs as easily as do South American dictatorships. If a deal is struck, however, you can bet that it will primarily benefit Donald Trump.

The second Trump Administration is increasingly unhinged, but it is also increasingly corrupt. Trump is so corrupt that his corruption is transparent. He knows that we know, and he doesn’t care. Trump’s recent move to steer management of DC golf courses to his own companies is relatively small potatoes but par for the course (golf joke!) when it comes to Trump’s grift.

The biggest downside to all this is the negative effect on the world. Trump gets his payoff, but the people of Venezuela keep their dictatorship. Russia and China get weakened Western alliances and larger spheres of influence. To many smaller countries, China is becoming the more stable and lesser evil option. That’s not going to be good for the free world.

We might also see a European resurgence. The countries of Europe realize the need for a counterweight to Russia, and they understand they can no longer trust the US. Europe’s sphere of influence is likely to grow at our expense. As I said shortly after Trump returned to office, he’s not making America great again. He’s making us irrelevant.

COLD KILLING An ICE agent shot and killed a US citizen in Minneapolis on Wednesday. The incident was captured on video, but the opposing sides see different things. The Administration has backed the agent, while the mayor has called on ICE to leave the city.

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