At Vox, Alex Ward is arguing for the importance of the latest reports about President Trump’s repeated inquiries into invading Venezuela last year. Ward raises two points that I wish I’d highlighted in my post on this subject. First, even if this catastrophic idea was never implemented, Donald Trump’s public references to the idea — both to Latin American leaders and to the press — provided a massive propaganda coup to Venezuela’s dictator/president, Nicolas Maduro. The prospect of U.S. intervention in that country is an idea Maduro had used in the past to consolidate support, and he did so again when these reports came out last year. Second, Trump’s discussion of this idiocy with Latin American leaders surely did harm to America’s relationship to our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. Our president may be ignorant of the long and terrible history of American imperialism in Latin America, but the leaders of those countries are surely not.
Ward also importantly puts Trump’s discussions with his advisors about invasion in the context of contemporaneous events. Significantly, these talks occurred within days of his “fire and fury” comments regarding North Korea and a general atmosphere of increased nuclear tensions. As Ward puts it, “So, in the middle of all of that, Trump apparently thought, “You know what would be a great idea right now? Launching a military invasion in South America.”
That his advisors appear to have steered President Trump away from this hideous path must be weighed against the fact that the president had such incompetent and destructive inclinations to begin with. As a fuller picture has emerged over the extent of his inquiries around a Venezuela invasion, those who feared the darkest possibilities of a Trump presidency regrettably find their fears confirmed. And like I noted yesterday, it is little comfort that the invasions that the president referenced in his discussions with staff — Grenada and Panama — were themselves politically-motivated stunts meant to boost the domestic standing of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, respectively. His Venezuela musings should only increase our concern that as his presidency continues to flounder, Donald Trump will not hesitate to look abroad for ways to distract and rally the public under the banner of military action.