It’s the fifth anniversary of what President Trump calls a ‘day of love’ and which ex-special prosecutor Jack Smith says was "a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.” After his inauguration last January 20, Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 of his followers awaiting trial or sentencing or convicted for offenses related to the January 6th US Capitol attack.
TUESDAY 1/6/26
This is No Satire – President Trump meets with Republican congressmembers from both chambers at the Kennedy Center Tuesday to discuss details about the military attack on Venezuela Saturday in which President Nicolás Maduro was deposed to the US, and to discuss our nation’s role in the country going forward, NPR reports.
Notably, NPR's news item refers to the “Kennedy Center” and not the “Trump-Kennedy Center” as its new Trump-seated board has renamed it.
In his news conference at Mar-a-Lago last Saturday, Trump said his administration did not alert Congress ahead of Operation Absolute Resolve because Congress tends to leak. But on The Daily Show Monday, Comedy Central’s ostensibly satirical news show, Jon Stewart played news footage of Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in a press gaggle aboard Air Force One in which the president says that oil company executives were in on the plans before and after Absolute Resolve.
In analysis of the Trump administration’s “Donroe Doctrine” for aggressive Western Hemisphere dominance, The Globe and Mailnotes that Trump referenced the taking of Venezuelan oil “at least 20 times” in his news conference Saturday. This was an explicit warning to China, according to Canada’s national newspaper, because China is the biggest foreign player in Venezuela, accounting for more than 80% of its oil exports.
The newspaper also notes that Trump can thank the New York Post for coining “Donroe Doctrine.”
Returning to satirical media, The Onion is running a story with the headline: “Nicolás Maduro Charged with Felony Oil Possession.”
Who’s Next? … Trump told Fox News last Saturday that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is not running the country.
“The [drug] cartels are running Mexico, [Sheinbaum’s] not running Mexico,” Trump said. “We have to do something.”
Sheinbaum has called on the United Nations to “stop Trump” immediately, the BBC reports.
“We categorically reject intervention in the internal matters of other countries,” Sheinbaum told a press conference Monday, The New Republic reports. “It is necessary to reaffirm that in Mexico the people rule, and that we are a free and sovereign country. Cooperation, yes; subordination and intervention, no.”
Trump more pointedly has mentioned Colombia, Cuba and Greenland as next targets for the Donroe Doctrine of Western Hemisphere dominance.
About Greenland … Former White House aide Katie Miller, wife of White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, posted on social media hours after Operation Absolute Resolve a picture of the map of Greenland covered in the red, white & blue. When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Stephen Miller whether the Trump administration would rule out military action to take over Greenland, Miller would not say “yes,” and said that the country has a population of just 30,000.
“What is the basis of Denmark’s claim?” Miller retorted, asserting that the US as head of NATO and “obviously” should have Greenland.
Tapper quoted Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments to Bloomberg; “I believe we should take the American president seriously when he says he wants Greenland. But I will also make it clear that if the US chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO and then the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War.” –TL
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MONDAY 1/5/26
UPDATE: Erstwhile President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court Monday, telling the court "I am still president," BBC Radio reports.
Not Us, Yet – Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC News Meet the Press host Kristen Welker Sunday that the US is at war with a drug trafficking organization, not against Venezuela. US Military aiding the US Coast Guard will continue to seize oil shipments under sanctions against the country.
The Upshot … “Here’s the bottom line on it,” Rubio told Welker. “We expect changes in Venezuela. Changes of all kinds. Long-term, short-term. But the most immediate changes are the ones that are in the national interests of the United States. That’s why we’re involved there. Because of how it applies as a direct impact in the United States.”
Here, Rubio evoked President Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine,” in which the US controls the Western Hemisphere. And so, the Trump administration cannot allow a country in our hemisphere to “become an operating hub” for Iran, Russia, China, Hezbollah and Cuban intelligence agencies already in Venezuela, he said.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were arraigned in federal court in Manhattan Monday, the New York Daily News reports. His vice president, Delcy Rodřiguez, was sworn in as president Saturday after US Military captured Maduro and Flores at the presidential compound.
The US expects to see cooperation with Venezuela’s government in the next two to three weeks, or two to three months, Rubio said on Meet the Press, where Welker noted Rodriguez has called for the US to release Maduro.
Venezuela will not become a colony, Rodřiguez said, initially. What would it take to keep US Military boots off Venezuelan ground?
For the relationship between Venezuela and the US to change, Rubio replied.
Trump threatens Rodřiguez … In a phone interview with staff writer Michael Scherer Sunday, President Trump told The Atlanticthat if Rodriguez “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
It worked. By late Sunday, Rodřiguez softened her tone, inviting in a statement “the US government to work together on an agenda of cooperation.”
No Nobel winner … The Trump administration continues to refuse to consider installing María Corina Machado, who apparently has been in Øslo, Norway since picking up her Nobel Peace Prize there last month. Machado had advocated for Edmundo González to be sworn in as Venezuela’s president after he won the election last year and Maduro’s government refused to count ballots in his favor.
Is Greenland next?... Also in that Atlantic magazine interview, Trump told Scherer that “We do need Greenland, absolutely.” It is in our hemisphere, after all, and Trump believes it is necessary for the United States’ defense.
To which Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen urged Trump to stop making threats over Greenland.
“The US has no right to annex any of the three countries in the Danish Kingdom,” Frederiksen said, according to The Independent(UK).
Congressional push-back … A few moderate Republicans as well as Democrats have been pushing back on the Trump White House assertion that this is about Maduro’s drug trafficking , not least because the president just pardoned ex-president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year prison sentence for “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) told CBS News’ 60 Minutes Maduro’s removal is a positive thing. But Kelly, a member of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees, said the question of who is going to run Venezuela remains a serious question, leaving open the danger the country could fall into “some form of chaos.”
“I think this president needs to do a much better job articulating to the American people what is the plan going forward here,” Kelly said. “And then explain to the American people what is it really about? Is it about law enforcement, is it about drug smuggling into the United States? Is it about regime change, or is it about what the president said 20 times yesterday; this is about extracting mineral rights, oil, from a foreign nation? He hasn’t made that clear.”
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Walz Out – Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrat who was presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ running mate last year, has dropped his bid for a third term in this November’s election, The Wall Street Journal reports. Walz has faced a massive welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota. –Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa