Scarcely a week ago, U.S. warplanes and drones were streaking across the Caracas night sky to deliver a swift end to the reign of the Venezuelan strongman Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. The extraordinary display of kinetic violence delivered a stunning reminder about the reach of the world\u2019s most powerful military\u2014and symbolized the start of a new chapter for the man who commands it.Donald Trump has been emboldened. The president and his advisers believe that the strike both reignited his political momentum and underscored the lack of concrete limits on his ability to wield power at home and abroad. He blew past the need for congressional approval\u2014or even notification\u2014and has reveled in brandishing armed forces to intimidate foreign foes and friends alike. He seized upon a deadly confrontation on a cold Minnesota street to accelerate his push to put masked, armed federal officers in Democrat-run cities that didn\u2019t vote for him. And he brought his campaign of retribution against perceived political enemies to a new target, one that could undermine faith in the pillars of the nation\u2019s economy.Even for Trump, it\u2019s been quite the week. But this is more than just a series of dizzying news cycles. The White House, after months of struggle, believes that it has found its footing again. Trump, though never restrained, is now pure id, acting on impulse and goaded on by advisers who see an opportunity to further expand executive power.His poll numbers are still low, and the aura of invincibility that he held for the first half of last year is gone. The MAGA base has been fractured, and some Republicans have objected to his plans, while many more quietly worry that the president is ignoring the economic issues that will likely decide this year\u2019s midterm elections. But Trump simply doesn\u2019t care.Steve Bannon, Trump\u2019s longtime adviser, put it to me this way: \u201cIt\u2019s a full flex.\u201dThe first days of 2026 have been breathtaking in their share of Wait, he did what? headlines, cable chyrons, and news alerts. The Caracas strike, though rumored for weeks, happened so quickly that many Americans who\u2019d gone to bed unaware that a capture operation was under way woke up to an image of Maduro wearing a Nike tracksuit and handcuffs. Trump then announced that the United States would \u201crun\u201d Venezuela\u2014wait, what?\u2014and also take much of its oil. The military\u2019s triumph then inspired the president and his advisers to renew a call to seize Greenland, thoroughly alarming European leaders who have watched in horror as Trump\u2019s desires for a strategically placed but largely uninhabited sheet of ice have escalated from social-media trolling to an existential threat against the NATO alliance. Where else could Trump wield American power? Perhaps in Iran, which has been engulfed by mass protests, leading the president to threaten action against an oppressive regime that has bedeviled the United States for nearly half a century.Back home, an ICE agent in Minneapolis fired three bullets into the car of a 37-year-old mother who had been protesting deportation operations. Trump, instead of calling for national unity at a time of tragedy, blamed the victim, and his administration sent more armed officers to the city. And his retribution campaign\u2014faltering to this point, to be sure\u2014targeted the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who is now the subject of a Justice Department investigation. The normally soft-spoken Jerome Powell called it payback for a disagreement on interest rates and warned that Trump had jeopardized the Fed\u2019s independence, perceived by many as the bedrock of American financial stability.Oh, and for good measure, the White House launched a website on January 6 that thoroughly twisted the facts of the 2021 insurrection, as Trump, once more, suggested that U.S. elections, including the upcoming midterms, could be rigged. The next day, Trump sat for a two-hour interview with a newspaper he often derides to express regret for not seizing voting machines in 2020 and to bemoan the impact of civil-rights legislation on white people.[Read: Donald Trump wants you to forget this happened]\u201cIt\u2019s insane,\u201d Senator Mark Warner of Virginia told me, as he recapped the events of the past week, including the threats against Powell and Greenland. \u201cThis is beyond ludicrous. What is he even talking about? At what point is enough enough?\u201dMany second-term presidents, coming to grips with their fate as a lame duck, turn to an area in which they have the most unilateral control: foreign policy. Yet it\u2019s been surprising to see how firmly Trump has embraced a new plan of international action. He campaigned in 2016 against so-called forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and pledged to avoid such military entanglements. But then he fell in love with the \u201cone and done\u201d strategy of a quick burst of military action\u2014such as the bombing of Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities last June\u2014and blustered about Maduro for months before green-lighting the strike.He surprised many\u2014and outraged the isolationist factions of his base\u2014by repeatedly declaring that the U.S. would be heavily involved in Venezuela for years. Besotted with Venezuela\u2019s ability to flood the market with oil, Trump has set up what critics say is an extortionist racket of the South American nation. He has told its new leader, in essence, Give us the oil we want, and we\u2019ll let you stay in power, and has privately joked that Venezuela could be in the running to become the 51st state, two people close to him told me.[Read: Trump seizing Greenland could set off a chain reaction]There\u2019s likely more to come. Some in the administration believe that Cuba could be next, and White House aides told me that Trump will be briefed tomorrow on an array of options for intervention in Iran, including some military operations that are ostensibly meant to protect the protesters but that could also hasten the end of the regime. Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out using military force to seize Greenland, even though it could shatter the globe\u2019s most enduring and successful alliance. Greenland is part of Denmark, a fellow member of NATO (Article 5 of NATO\u2019s charter declares that an attack on one is an attack on all). European leaders are so spooked by Trump\u2019s bellicose rhetoric that they\u2019ve publicly rebuked the United States. Germany and the United Kingdom are considering troop deployments to Greenland. Trump, though, seems unbothered by the blowback to his threat to redraw the world\u2019s maps. Making a deal instead of using force would be \u201ceasier,\u201d the president told reporters last night on Air Force One, adding, \u201cBut one way or the other, we\u2019re going to have Greenland.\u201dTrump, of course, is no stranger to the strategy of flooding the zone with outrageous statements and acts, making it hard for his political opponents and the media (not to mention the general public) to keep track. White House aides and close allies privately acknowledged to me that they have been grateful to control the news cycle in the early days of 2026.But Trump is still set to begin the second year of his term far weaker than he was in the first. He is an unpopular president, per polling, and most Americans dislike both the strong-arm deportation tactics at the center of the Minneapolis protests and Trump\u2019s efforts to use the Department of Justice to carry out his political vendettas. West Wing aides have been eager to shift the conversation away from the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein controversy, which, when it erupted over the summer, was the first moment when many Republican lawmakers seemed willing to defy Trump. (The DOJ has repeatedly missed deadlines to release all of the materials in the case; the story will likely spring back to life when more comes out in the weeks ahead.) The White House has also begun to take on its thorniest political issue: high prices. As part of its news blitz this month, the Trump administration has unveiled measures meant to drive down the costs of prescription drugs and credit-card fees, as well as to make mortgages more obtainable.[Read: Does Congress even exist anymore?]The White House spokesperson Kush Desai told me in a statement that the blitz is part of the administration\u2019s work in \u201cimplementing the free market policies like tax cuts and deregulation that do work rectifying the \u2018America Last\u2019 policies that have let Americans down.\u201dBut some in the GOP remain concerned that Trump is distracted and that the flurry of foreign-policy flexing will be a sugar high that wears off quickly. Others have urged him to stop meddling with allies. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, in a floor speech last week, said that he was \u201csick of stupid\u201d and urged Trump to focus on his domestic legacy.Indeed, Republican lawmakers have sent word to the White House that affordability, not military interventionism, remains top of mind for their constituents, and that voters don\u2019t much care about what\u2019s going in distant lands such as Venezuela and Iran\u2014and can find Greenland on the map only because it\u2019s drawn disproportionately large.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scarcely a week ago, U.S. warplanes and drones were streaking across the Caracas night sky to deliver a swift end<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}